S3E18 - The Radical Reformers (history of Anabaptism)

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Chris: And you know how these leaders get super humble and normal, right? So John of Leiden was like, hey, first of all, I'm the direct successor to King David from the Bible. I don't know if you guys knew that.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: Like, the king David that killed Goliath when he was a twinken. How about that audio snippet we just heard, Kayla?

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Kayla: What a great audio snippet.

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Chris: What a great and relevant thing that we just heard that definitely exists already.

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Kayla: Or maybe funny and timely. Definitely one of the two.

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Chris: Well, I guess we can at least say, welcome to culture. Just weird. We at least know that we need to say that.

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Kayla: We do need to say that. We need to say that. I'm Kayla. I'm a television writer.

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Chris: And I am Chris, a game designer and data scientist. And, of course, we are both podcast hosts and cat owners.

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Kayla: You will hear the cats for sure this episode.

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Chris: They just think they won't go away. Like, it's.

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Kayla: Either they won't go away.

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Chris: Well, they have to be near us. And if we. If we lock them out of the room, all they do is, like, scratch and whine. And if we let them in the room, then they're like, oh, cool, we can chill. And then they, like, play, and they're loud either way. Does anybody want a cat? Is that. I guess that's what I'm saying.

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Kayla: Yeah. Me. I want them.

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Chris: We already have them anyway, Kayla, do you have any business? I'm transitioning from some very shitty banter. Do you have any business?

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Kayla: I don't have business. Do I want to have any business?

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Chris: Well, think about it, and we'll keep this whole dead space on air.

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Kayla: Oh, yeah, I do have a business.

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Chris: Oh, you do?

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Kayla: Yeah, we just. We just came off of. At the time of this recording and basically the time of this release, we just came off of Black Friday, which transitioned smoothly into small business Saturday, and we're just.

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Chris: Is that what the Saturday's called now?

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Kayla: In some circles, but just. It might also be the Sunday. I don't know. I think a small business Saturday. Just a little reminder that mlms are not small businesses. You are not supporting small businesses. If you buy from mlms, obviously you want to support your friends when they're doing things that they're doing. But just a reminder that mlms are not small businesses. They are scams.

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Chris: Best way to support your friends and mlms is to shame them loudly and.

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Kayla: Publicly on social media, preferably because that changes everyone's minds.

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Chris: Yeah, that's not a small business. So is Sunday, like, big corporation Sunday.

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Kayla: I think Sunday is save big tech. I think it's use Facebook as much as you can. Sunday, all right.

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Chris: And then you have Amazon Monday. We all know about that one.

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Kayla: And then tomorrow is giving Tuesday, in which all of the email blasts that I have unsubscribed from over the last year re add me to their lists and ask for money. God, and I wish I had more money to give, but I am but a lowly podcast host. Why keep me off your email blasts, please?

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Chris: It's like, the thing that I really don't like about the email blast thing is that, you know, like, I get that, you know, you have a job to do and it's all about percentages and, like, you have to make my life miserable. And that's how the modern world works, is making my life miserable. But at least don't lie to me with the little checkbox of I don't wish to receive emails when I enter in my account information, like, at least instead of the checkbox, if it was just like, a little statement that said.

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Kayla: A middle finger that, yeah, a little.

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Chris: Middle finger that said, like, we're gonna send you emails no matter what you do, so go fuck yourself. Like, at least if they were honest, it would. I don't know.

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Kayla: Anyway, also, I do want to say one more thing because there is also another event that happens around this time of, like, the consumer calendar year. I think it's buy nothing day.

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Chris: Isn't that redundant? Isn't it?

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Kayla: Yeah, that's true. Buy nothing day is a small but growing movement that accompanies Black Friday. And the idea is that, like, to protest or counterbalance or not participate in the, like, consumer holiday that is Black Friday. Folks are doing buy nothing day where they buy nothing. We even have a current listener and Patreon subscriber who has observed such holiday and told us about it. So I wanted to make sure to mention it on the show here today.

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Chris: Buy nothing day brought to you by Amazon.

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Kayla: You can buy nothing. You can do buy nothing day whenever you want.

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Chris: Well, also, that reminds me, thank you to our Patreon subscribers. I don't really have any business there other than to say, you know, go not on. If you're observing by nothing day, don't subscribe to us on that day. But if you want to do small business Saturday, whatever small business, whatever day, then go subscribe to this small business cult or just weird on our patreon.com dot. Yeah, great.

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Kayla: Cool.

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Chris: We're just, we're part of the problem now.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: All right. That's.

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Kayla: That was true the second we turned the mic on that 1st. 1st episode.

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Chris: That was true the second were born.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Onto the story of today.

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Kayla: So you're gonna tell us a story today. No cult today. Just a story.

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Chris: No, it's a story every time. What are you talking about? Every single episode. It's a story about a cult.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Chris: But actually, you're gonna tell us the story first.

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Kayla: Aw.

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Chris: Kayla, as usual, I have a question for you.

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Kayla: Shoot.

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Chris: It's a bit personal, though, so I want to warn you of that before we proceed. And of course, you don't have to talk about anything on the show that you are not comfortable talking about.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: My question to you, if you are willing to discuss on record.

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Kayla: I poop twice a day.

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Chris: That's it. It's like five.

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Kayla: No, but sometimes, if it's more, my dietitian goes like, you shouldn't be pooping.

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Chris: Or how much fiber you have or.

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Kayla: How much anxiety you have.

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Chris: Yeah. So it's good. So last episode we talked about no nut November. This episode we're talking about poop.

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Kayla: You're talking about. Personally, I just wanted to. That is not the past.

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Chris: No, it's a different personal question.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Chris: My question for you is, can you tell me a little bit about what you did for your birthday this year? The ritual part, not the celebratory parts.

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Kayla: I don't think I had a celebratory part.

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Chris: Was there?

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Kayla: No, it was deep pandemic.

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Chris: Oh, yeah.

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Kayla: That was like bad spike in February.

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Chris: So that was like, especially here. It was like major spike, but it was an alpha spike, so it was.

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Kayla: Like, man, it was nothing.

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Chris: I wish.

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Kayla: Back in the day. Yeah. No, I'm happy to talk about what I did for my birthday this year. This year I was baptized into the ecumenical catholic church.

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Chris: So that was. I have the five w's here to ask you. So what and when was baptism into the ecumenical catholic church? When was on your birthday? Where did we do it?

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Kayla: We did it at the beach. We did it at El Segundo beach.

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Chris: And. By a priest of that church, correct?

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: And how was it done?

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Kayla: We all, you and me and the priest and his cousin showed up at the beach and he asked me some questions, and I lied and said yes.

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Chris: This is on air, dude.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: Do you want me to keep that?

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Kayla: I don't know. Oh, no, because I didn't. I didn't lie. I have my own interpretation and I.

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Chris: Okay, so just in case I don't edit this out, what did you mean? Right.

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Kayla: Okay, so let me continue. He asked me some questions. I answered them with answers that were to my interpretation of what I believe, which I think we on the podcast have a pretty clear understanding of what those beliefs are at this point. And he poured water on my head, and it was water from the river Jordan.

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Chris: That was pretty cool. And we still have some of it. We do still have some of it, yeah. Just to further clarify a little bit, I don't think you were lying to the priest. I think you were. When you say to your interpretation, I think it's people that are long time listeners might know that it's like a. More of a spiritual but not religious type thing where, like, it's true to our.

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Kayla: I can say what my answers meant.

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Chris: Sure.

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Kayla: So my beliefs are more secular than spiritual. I believe when I say. When the priest asks me about, like, God and Jesus. The interpretations of those things for me are the. The physical universe, which allows for the conditions to, For a compassionate. A compassionate human community to exist. And for me, compassionate human community is what the. The christian and catholic faiths are generally about. And things like Jesus and God and the other stories are metaphors and symbols for compassionate human community. And so when somebody's like, hey, do you believe in these things? Yeah, I do, but I believe in them in. In this way. And if you say, like, oh, do you. You know, what do you think about the devil? Well, I'm pro the church of Satan. And also, if you're asking me do I take a stand against any obstacles.

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Chris: For the satanic temple specifically. Right. There's different.

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Kayla: Is that what I said?

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Chris: You said the church of Satan. I'm not sure if that's the same thing.

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Kayla: No, I'm talking about satanic temple, baby.

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Chris: Yeah, there might be a church of Satan that's, like, also dope, but I don't.

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Kayla: No, we're talking about satanic temple on this show. But in the context of this baptism, if the priest goes, you know, boo the devil, I go, boo anything that's an obstacle to the pursuit of a compassionate human community.

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Chris: I think that makes sense.

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Kayla: So those were my answers. And just to also clarify a little further, the ecumenical Catholic church is different from the. What's. The other one is different from the Roman Catholic Church.

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Chris: There's actually. I mean, there's one thing that I have learned doing this episode is that the sharding of. Not sharding. Sharding with a d. Maybe the schisming. No, I like sharding because it paints a picture of the christian faith. Is. Is of multitudes.

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Kayla: Yes, yes.

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Chris: Like, even. Even just within the catholic tradition, there are multiple. There's multiple catholic church. The one that we all are, like, you know and love. Familiar with. With, like, you know, Popey McPoperson is the Roman Catholic Church.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: The ecumenical Catholic Church is very similar, but has some key differences.

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Kayla: The ecumenical catholic church basically is like, yeah, the pope is a cool guy. We also are not beholden to his beliefs and viewpoints. And the ecumenical Catholic Church was founded in the eighties specifically by, I believe, a gay man who was affected by the AIDS crisis. And it was supposed to be a home for the LGBTQ community who did not have much of a home back then. So it's a very gay affirming church. It is a very progressive in its ideals. So, like, divorce is okay. I mean, it's not, like, celebrated, but it's like, yes, woo.

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Chris: Divorce.

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Kayla: Hell, yeah, we'll support you through your divorce. It is. The priests can marry. The priests can be any gender. There's progressive views on reproductive autonomy and things like that.

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Chris: But then it shares a lot of the creeds and traditions of Catholicism. On that, it was like, yeah, we.

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Kayla: Want to be progressive, but we also want the liturgy.

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Chris: Right, right. We want the community, and we want the cultural traditions, but there are some things that we would prefer to be different about who we allow to participate and welcome it.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Do you feel more like part of that community now? After being baptized? Was there like, a before and after there?

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Kayla: I think for me, because it was. The reason why I wanted to pursue baptism was because you're baptized in the catholic church.

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Chris: The Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church, not the ecumenical Catholic. Sorry.

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Kayla: Yeah, our son was baptized in the catholic church right after he was born, right before he died. And so I wanted to have that kind of symbolic, spiritual connection to my family here on earth and, you know, in the spiritual, secular afterlife.

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Chris: Do you feel like that the baptism succeeded in that?

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Kayla: Well, I didn't want you to just be able to have that connection to him.

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Chris: We've also did, but, yeah. So did that succeed? Yes, you did feel like that. Cool. So that covers my. Why did you get baptized? Question. How do you feel about being baptized as an adult versus, like, as a child?

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Kayla: So as an adult, obviously, you can consent to something. You can make a choice to do something. You're coming at it from a place of free will as a child. You don't have those things. I don't necessarily think that's bad or inappropriate. I think that when you're baptized when you're born. It's more of a cultural tradition at that point. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with being born into cultural traditions. It's actually very beautiful to be able to pass those things on to your family. I do think that for some people, not for everybody, but for some people, making that choice later in life might have more spiritual significance for them. But, I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people that were baptized at birth that have plenty of spiritual significance and connection to that moment.

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Chris: So for Arthur, who didn't have the rest of his life, to ponder that, do you feel like his experience being baptized, that was like, what do you feel about the difference between his baptism and yours?

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Kayla: That baptism was 100% for us. I mean, yeah, he was a tiny baby in the throes of dying. He did not really have any understanding of consent or what was going on. The baptism was largely for you and I, who understood what was going on and to forge an emotional, spiritual, symbolic connection in, like, a really tough moment.

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Chris: What do you think a more supernatural believer might say to answer that question?

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Kayla: I mean, I don't know that much about the spiritual, supernatural side of it. I assume that baptism, that moment, it would feel like our child's soul is going to, like, the good afterlife and we'll see him again later. Like, I had people ask me that, like, oh, did you get baptized so that you can see your son again someday? And for me, the answer to that is no. I unfortunately, I don't believe that's something that's going to happen. But having that connection while I'm here does give me comfort and does give me just a little bit of comfort that while I do not think I'm gonna die and then go to heaven and see people knowing that symbolic moment of spiritual connection happened, like, that transcends emotionally and spiritually. That transcends the physical death.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's also the, you know, like, just in case, the pascal's dilemma also that just cover your bases. Of course, we didn't get him baptized in anything else. So, like, hopefully, hopefully Catholics crossed on. The Catholics are right.

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Kayla: But question for you, though.

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Chris: Oh, wow. This is very interesting. It's not your episode, and you're asking me questions.

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Kayla: Well, you're asking me questions about, I know, baptism. You're somebody who was baptized at birth. So what is your connection to that moment?

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Chris: While I am unprepared to answer this, I feel it's kind of what you were saying earlier is that I don't think that either version of baptism. I don't think being baptized as an adult is wrong. I don't think being baptized as a child is wrong. I think that they just have very different spiritual meanings and implications for people.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Which is sort of like what all that line of questioning was about for you, in case you haven't figured that out yet. But I think there's maybe a little bit of. We'll get to that, too, because there's a bunch of stuff that we're going to talk about. So I feel. I don't feel like my being baptized as a child was about consent or not, because the meaning is different for Catholics than it is for people who don't baptize their children, who baptize as adults. Not just Catholics, by the way. There's many christian denominations that baptize children.

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Kayla: Are there non christian denominations that do baptism?

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Chris: Not baptism, but we will get to that.

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Kayla: Oh, interesting.

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Chris: Well, Kayla, I certainly do appreciate your openness to discuss that very personal experience with me for our listeners. I ask you and said listeners to put some of those ideas in your back pocket, because we may come back to a few of those points later in the show. Now, as y'all may have guessed from our opening discussion, today's show is religious in nature, which is sorta kinda the first time we've discussed a religion on cult or just weird, depending on your definition of the word religion.

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Kayla: I'm sorry, we talked about Zumba.

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Chris: Again, depending on your definition of the word religion. Of course, your definition of the word religion is sort of the rub, isn't it? Lord knows I've had many, multiple people suggest to me, oh, you should do such and such religion on the show, which, that's great, and it's honestly like a great suggestion, but there are reasons that we haven't done so for so long. Chief among those reasons is that I'm just lazy. And talking about any established religion at all is pretty daunting because most established religions have a whopping, giant helping of history and cultural context behind them. And as our listeners know, we get a little carried away on context. Secondary among those reasons is, of course, most established religions have a good chunk of followers, and we try not to be culturally insensitive or offensive on the show.

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Chris: But I think this reason is like, I don't know, more or less evaporated for me, because now that we're getting to the end of our third season, we've talked about many groups with many different followers of different stripes. And I think, I hope, I pray we've been fair in our research and analysis, and we try to adhere to the nothing about us without us as much as we are able to. So I feel a little bit more comfortable about that reason, I think, in this juncture of our professional podcast shift. And the third reason is certainly easily the most important reason, and it cuts right to the very center of the beating heart of this show. And that is, what is a religion exactly? What is a cult exactly? Is it a cult or just weird?

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Chris: I mean, even just saying religion in the sentences above, I don't want to offend believers of x religion, and most religions have history and culture. It's inescapable when talking about those things to wonder, okay, but what do I mean by that? What do I mean by religion? What do I mean by established religion? When does it have enough believers? When is it not so niche that we drop the cult pejorative and pick up the religion moniker?

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Kayla: This is what I have been wondering literally my entire life. Literally my entire life.

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Chris: I know. When has it been around long enough or been entrenched in culture long enough that it's a religion, not a cult? This is a very hard question. Capital V, capital h. Very hard. And there's no definitive answer, but we're.

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Kayla: Gonna bring you one here today on cult or just.

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Chris: I actually have that joke, like a sentence down. Sorry, I'll skip it now. No, thank you. Thank you for covering it. Yeah, I mean, there's not like, there's a threshold of believers or like per capita believers or, you know, if you've been x number of years in existence, then that makes you part of club religion. It's just like a feeling, man. You know, it's like, hard to define. So, yeah, so in lieu of a definitive answer, yeah, we made this podcast where we promptly went three full seasons before discussing religion. But hey, the important thing is now, thanks to this show, as you said, we as a civilization now have a definitive, absolute ruling on the matter. It's just absolutely black and white. And cult is definitely a real word with precise and measurable meaning. And, none of that's true.

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Kayla: Of course, I was about to smack you.

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Chris: No, none of that's true. It's a big mess. All of it is a big mess of grey goo, but it always is. And after all, that's why scholars like to talk about things like new religious movements rather than cults. It's for this very reason of language, precision. It marks off a clear boundary for what they are talking about in this case, religious movements that are, relatively speaking, not as old as most other religious movements. It's a new religious movement. Since cult is a colloquial term, we here at the show believe that it can apply to more than just religious groups. Obviously, since most of our episodes have been about those. None of those groups don't use many of the motifs and themes of religions. But that's out of scope for today.

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Chris: But, yeah, I do like the term new religious movement to refer to a subset of what we might call cults, colloquially, specifically, a subset of groups where their primary value mirrors that of more traditional religions. Spiritual growth, penance and atonement, rebirth themes, afterlife, etcetera, that sort of thing.

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Kayla: So not zumba.

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Chris: So. Well, I don't know. I mean, Zumba has all those things.

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Kayla: It does have a before and after hashtag rebirth.

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Chris: Right. Rebirth, penance and atonement. Because it's just so punishing, self flagellating after. I don't know if it's got the afterlife thing.

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Kayla: I think when you die in zumba.

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Chris: You go to Zumba heaven. Yeah, there you go. See, religion, we called it. But again, even this gets super mungy, right? Because there's groups that you'd call like, oh, my God, that's an eleven out of ten on the cult scale, but they'd call themselves religions, right? Right. David Koresh was believed to be the second coming of Christ, and that's probably the easiest example to think of. David Kressh of the Branch Davidians. But munginess and gray area aside, today's show is religion or just weird, or religion or just new religious movement. And before I introduce the topic itself, I do need to state here, and hopefully I'll remember to reiterate this several times. I am not a religious scholar. I'm a data scientist and game designer, as we mentioned at the top of the show.

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Chris: And I am a casual fan of history, and I love learning about things, religious history included. But primary researcher, peer reviewed writer of scholarly articles, I am not. Oh, and the other thing I am is host of a podcast, so I should probably tell you about today's topic, which is the Amish.

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Kayla: Oh, bringing it back.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah, bringing it back.

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Kayla: Bringing it on. Back to episode something. Earlier we did this.

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Chris: Episode nine. Yeah, this season. So specifically, yeah, we'll be doing our patented cult or just weird. I context binge. And I'll be talking about the history of the Amish and their various neighbors, fellow twigs on the tree of christian taxonomy. Or as we mentioned before, shards. Not shards. Shards.

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Kayla: Shards. With a D. Shards.

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Chris: With a D. If you're an established listener of this show, or you've been listening at least since episode nine of this third season, you will probably already know why we selected the Amish as a show topic. If you haven't listened to that episode entitled the Blue Curtains, then you might benefit from taking a pause here and going back, because it will be referenced a couple of times. But it's also. I wouldn't say it's mandatory. You can totally listen to this episode independently. The topic of that episode was Lizzie Hirschberger's story and Molly Maeve Egan's telling of it, the latter of whom we interviewed for it on that episode. The story, which was about Lizzie's upbringing in the Amish, the Schwarzenegger Amish community, and her abuse at the hands of some of its members.

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Chris: But the story and the interview were both excellent, very important, and very interesting. So afterward, Kayla and I discussed and we decided that it was definitely worth doing the whole context thing and learning and sharing more about the community in which Lizzie's story occurred. Alrighty then. So since Lizzie's story occurred around the turn of the 21st century.

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Kayla: Ugh. Don't say that. That's a horrible way of putting it.

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Chris: Sorry, a mere. Well, I wanted to say turn of the 12th, 21st century because she's in, I think, believe in her forties, and these events occurred, like, sort of like, over this, right over the course of her life. So I wasn't sure if I said, like, late 19 hundreds. Okay. No matter how you say it sounds. We sound really old.

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Kayla: The kids say late 19 hundreds.

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Chris: I don't like that.

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Kayla: It's what it's gotta be. It's what it's gotta be.

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Chris: Just let me say turn of the 21st century. Anyway, and this is culture. Just weird. That means we need to go back. Let's see. Carry the one. Oh, yeah. Back to the first century BC.

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Kayla: Fuck, yeah.

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Chris: So a shade over 2000 years ago is all that's required for us to do. Context perfect. It's child's play for us, right? Like, come on, that's not even. That's not even a 10th. As far back as the lost lemurian continent. So, like, it's basically yesterday to someone like Romtha.

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Kayla: Come on.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: We should probably interview her for this episode.

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Chris: I don't think so.

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Kayla: Them. They.

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Chris: I don't know. I think Ramtha is a him.

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Kayla: Ramtha's a he. Jay Z knight's a she.

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Chris: I believe so. I don't know. I don't know. Well, yeah. Well, we'll ask her. Him anyway. Yes, we are talking sometime around a few decades before. Zero ad. And a few decades of after. Now, based on the fact that we're talking about religion today and the timeframe we're talking about here. Cough, cough. Zero ad. Kayla, can you guess the guy I'm about to mention?

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Kayla: Pope John Paul II.

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Chris: No, that's way off.

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Kayla: Rasputin.

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Chris: Nope, still way off. Gilgamesh. Give me a real guess. Zero ad, talking about religion. D. Baptism. You're talking about a d. At some point, you have to give me a real. At some point. What would we do if we just do this for, like, an extra, like, half hour? You just, like, gave me, like, random guesses.

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Kayla: You're finna talk about Jesus Christ.

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Chris: That is. Wait, no, actually, no, that is still wrong. No, still wrong.

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Kayla: Jesus. Not Christ.

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Chris: Close, though. Very close. Mary, I actually want to briefly talk about, essentially, the beta version of Jesus.

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Kayla: What?

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Chris: The hydrox to Jesus is Oreo.

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Kayla: What, there was a hydrox Jesus?

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Chris: Absolutely. Well, actually, to be fair, hydrox was. Well, no, that's a good idea. Hydrox was first. So this is. And hydrox was first. But everybody loves. Oh, my God. That's the perfect analogy. I didn't even realize.

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Kayla: I didn't know that.

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Chris: It's the perfect analogy. Hydrox is first. But everybody loves Oreo anyway. The hydrox in this case is John the Baptist.

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Kayla: Oh, okay. Yes, I know. I've heard of him.

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Chris: You have heard of this man? Yeah, he's famous. I mean, he's a very important religious figure.

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Kayla: So he baptized Mister Jesus.

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Chris: He did. We will get to that. John the Baptist is known for a lot of things, and he's considered a saint in most christian denominations that do the whole saint thing. And the biggies there are, like, Roman Catholics do the same thing. I think Eastern Orthodox does as well. So he's the patron saint of just, like, a ton of shit. Like, too much to cover. There's, like, a whole laundry list of things. But I think you can probably take a wild stab at what he's best known for. Actually, you already said what? Yeah, he's. He's sort of kinda the originator of specifically the christian concept of baptism.

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Kayla: So it's just one day some guy came. Came up and was like, I'm gonna do this.

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Chris: Yeah, he just. He came along with, like, a super soaker and was like, pew. Here's some water from the river Jordan. Pew, pew. Kayla's gonna have some of this one day.

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Kayla: I wonder what it was like to live in a time where you could have an original idea. Well, and it probably wasn't even an original idea.

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Chris: Yeah, so, right.

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Kayla: Oh, no.

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Chris: So we'll get to that right now. I said sorta kind to the originator because as you might imagine from the nature of this information, it's a bit of a fuzzy fact to say that this guy, like, definitely originated it himself.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Chris: Religious initiation rituals, of course, are absolutely ubiquitous.

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Kayla: Tale as old as time.

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Chris: And cleansing is a pretty popular religious motif. Water cleansing. So much so that it gets its own name, ablution, which is the act of ritual washing. Pretty much every major religion has some form of it. Christianity, of course, has baptism, but they also have like a ton of other stuff. They're kind of obsessed with ritual. Washington, there's foot washing, ritual handwashing, anointments and more. Islam has. And please forgive me if I'm getting any of this wrong or mispronouncing. I ablution myself of any wrongdoing by saying I'm not a religious scholar. But Islam has three acts called wudu, which is a daily wash. That's w u d u g h u s, lithe bathing, ablution, and tyamum. T a y a m m u m a. Waterless ablution. And so I'm stealing this directly from Wikipedia.

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Chris: Again, in Judaism, ritual washing or ablution takes two main forms. Tevila, which is a full body immersion in something called a mikveh and netilat yadayim. Again, I'm sorry if I'm like, butchering.

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Kayla: This Hebrew is great.

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Chris: Thank you. I appreciate that. And that's the washing of the hands with a cup. Shintoism, which is popular in Japan, has what's called misogi, a ritual washing of the entire body. Buddhists have ablution. Hindus have ablution. You've probably heard of ritual washing in the holy Ganges river, but they have other stuff too. Like basically everyone has a blushing.

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Kayla: Wicca has it, paganism has it.

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Chris: I didn't know that. But that does not.

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Kayla: Witchcraft has in a little bit.

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Chris: Yeah. I mean, is any of that a surprise, really? Washing oneself is, first of all, it's like a very, like, basic act. And it's probably also like a pretty pro survival thing to reinforce in a culture. I imagine that, like any religion, this is me speculating now, again, not a religious scholar, but I imagine that any religion that doesn't reinforce that behavior probably finds itself with fewer followers over time than religions that do reinforce that behavior. Right. And on top of that, the act of washing typically has, you know, positive effects on your nervous system. The ritual of the morning, or depending on who you are, evening shower is powerful in its own right.

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Kayla: Forgetting shower this morning, I feel so much better.

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Chris: Yeah, exactly. That's my next line, is it can make you feel better even if you weren't physically dirty. I mean, how many times do we see in film even some character committing or being involved in some act that just, like, stains their soul and then washing their hands or taking a shower after?

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Kayla: Literally wrote that into my last script.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: I was like, ooh, bloody shower scene.

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Chris: Yeah, exactly.

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Kayla: The blood washes off.

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Chris: It's a trope now because it's. No, that's okay. Like, it's just. It speaks to us in a certain way. It's like the physical washing feels also like an emotional, spiritual nervous system washing. And, I mean, didn't Pontius pilot wash his hands?

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Kayla: Oh, Pontius.

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Chris: After condemning Jesus to death, don't we even say, I wash my hands of this as an idiom? Meaning I absolve myself of any guilt or relation to this act. So, yeah, going all the way back to John the Baptist. That's why I think it's hard to, like, definitively say, yeah, this guy invented christian baptism because ablution of which baptism is a subtype is so ubiquitous.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Chris: What he's credited for, though, are a few things. One, he was an important itinerant prophet in his own right. I wasn't kidding when I called him the beta version of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Luke, he and Jesus were actually even related.

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Kayla: What?

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Chris: Although the Bible does not specify how exactly.

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Kayla: Wait, through Mary or through God?

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Chris: The Bible does not specify how exactly. Good question. Which through Joseph.

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Kayla: I don't know if that counts in the wedding.

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Chris: Is he sitting on the God side or the Mary side? Yeah, of the. Of Nazareth side of Nazareth or the Christ side?

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Kayla: The Christ side and the Nazarene side.

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Chris: But, yeah, John the Baptist was basically like a Jesus that didn't quite get over that messianic comp and go viral the way Jesus did. But he did have his own devoted following at the time. And scholars think that Jesus actually picked up a bunch of John followers when he got into the family business of profiting around. Christians and Muslims both have a place for John the Baptist in their pantheon of important prophets. And, in fact, there's still a religious group today known as the Mandeans. I believe is how it's pronounced. M a n d a e a n S. Mandeans whose chief prophet. Chief prophet is still John the Baptist.

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Kayla: Whoa.

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Chris: They're a pretty interesting group, who, according to Wikipedia, quote, are an ethno religious group native to the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia who are followers of mandaism. They were possibly the earliest to practice baptism and the last surviving gnostics from antiquity.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Chris: End quote.

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Kayla: Wait, are they still around?

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Chris: Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. They're still around. Yeah. Okay. So that's the first thing about John the Baptist. He's a very important prophet in his own right. And in his time he was basically proto Jesus. Secondly, according to christian theology, although this sounds a bit like a retcon to me, but whatever, according to christian theology, John the Baptist prophesied the coming of an even greater prophet than himself, who would of course be Jesus himself. Which brings me to the third thing. He baptized Jesus and you already mentioned that. But yeah, this may be sort of like the ur baptism of christian faiths, but as I mentioned earlier, it comes from a milieu of existing religious ablution. Again, I'm going to quote from Wikipedia. The practice of baptism emerged from jewish ritualistic practices during the second Temple period.

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Chris: And the second Temple period is sort of like 400, 500 years bc to like just after I think like roughly Jesus death, like, you know, decades ad. So the practice of baptism emerged from the jewish ritualistic practices during the second Temple period out of which figures such as John the Baptist emerged, end quote. So you have this period where ritualistic washing is an important part of that era of jewish religious tradition. That era produced itinerant prophets such as John the Baptist. And you can probably trace some of the popularity of why there were so many messianic prophets in that era to some of the persecution that jewish folks were facing in that part of the world from the Seleucids and then the Romans.

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Chris: And then John the Baptist happened to baptize his cousin that went on to be the charismatic leader of a new religious movement that would eventually cover the globe, taking its baptism practices with it. So did John the Baptist invent baptism for christians? Like, he didn't really invent it. He was just like sort of like the first guy. And I think it was like, it just like, it was sort of like one of those like chaotic, like he lucked out things because there was like, just that was a practice that was happening at that time in the jewish faith.

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Kayla: If he had baptized his other cousin Beezus, it wouldn't have worked out.

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Chris: If Bon the Baptist baptized Beezus and Beezus was the guy that ended up becoming the charismatic leader of the free world, then we'd be talking about him instead.

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Kayla: Isn't that the plot of life of Brian?

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Chris: That's, like, almost literally the plot of.

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Kayla: Life of Brian, yeah.

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Chris: All right, so any thoughts so far about baptism, early baptism, or even how you feel about your own participation in this millennia old ritual? And I mean millennia old in its current form, certainly ablution is much older than that.

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Kayla: Oh, yeah. That was also a dope. Part of participating in baptism was just, like, connecting to a millennia old practice. It was cool to be like, oh, a bunch of people have done this. I mean, it's like anytime you participate in some sort of ritual, I mean, even, like, when I'm cooking, I get like that, where it's like, man, we've been doing this for such a long time, and it's cool to participate. Like, that's a. That's a spiritual experience in and of itself.

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Chris: Yeah, I agree. All right, let's fast forward a bit and look out the window of our time machine at the scenery before we stop and get out in a specific time period. If you're wondering where the word baptism comes from, it comes from the hellenistic greek word baptismos.

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Kayla: Oh, shocking.

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Chris: I know, I know. It's hard to see the relation there, which means this is even more shocking ritual. Washington.

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Kayla: Wow. Real creative. We get.

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Chris: I know. And that word, of course, travels to us through time and space via Latin and then via the Catholicism usage of Latin to English as the word baptism. The etymological roots of baptismos are actually even older than that and apparently have, like, proto indo european language roots, which end up meaning, like, to dip or to even to overwhelm. So it's like this really sort of like, understandably, not surprisingly, ancient etymological root. Because washing. Right?

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Kayla: Because washing.

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Chris: The vast majority of Christians practice some form of baptism, with notable exceptions being the Quakers. Woohoo. Go, Quakers. I went to Penn, whose mascot is the Quaker and the Salvation army. Yes, they are a religion. No, they don't baptize. No, we don't have time to talk about them. So those are a few little fun factoids about baptism. Here's my penultimate fun factoid about it. People aren't the only things to get baptized.

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Kayla: What else can you baptize?

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Chris: Objects can get baptized, too.

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Kayla: What?

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Like what?

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Chris: Hold on, stick. Hold on. Hold on, stick. Yeah. I baptize a stick in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you're thinking, what the hell? Which sounds like you are. Then consider the synonym for baptism that usually gets used in the case of objects christening. So when I said that maybe you have thought of the christening of boats and ships.

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Kayla: Oh, I thought immediately. Christening is another word for baptism.

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Chris: Yeah, it is.

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Kayla: But yeah, boats.

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Chris: Yeah, boats get baptized. That's right. Where you do the whole breaking the champagne bottle and whatnot. In some cases, such as like, the crusades, which is where this practice allegedly began, where christian priests would, like, bless ships that the crusaders were on to have a safe journey.

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Kayla: The crusaders were going on a cruise ship.

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Chris: Oh, that's where the word cruise came from. Definitely quote us on that, please. So, yeah, but that's where the practice began. But in some cases, a priest will sprinkle holy water onto the ship. So I wasn't able to discern whether this was considered like, a quote unquote, actual baptism or whether this was just a case where it's like, it's a similar process. So we borrow the word, it's about blessing something. It's not like, it's not like it's getting the Queen Mary into heaven or whatever. I'm pretty sure it's not that.

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Kayla: Did the Titanic go to heaven? That's all I want to know.

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Chris: Of course the Titanic went to heaven, and it's running, swimming, excuse me, around the rainbow bridge for boats. And everything's nice, but ships aren't the only thing. According to Wikipedia, church bells also get christened. What? The name baptism of bells has been given to the blessing of musical, especially church bells, at least in France since the 11th century. It is derived from the washing of the bell with holy water by the bishop before he anoints it with essentially his holy oil. A fuming censer is then placed under the bella, and the bishop prays that these sacraments of the church may, at the sound of the bell, put demons to flight, protect from storms, and call the faithful to prayer. End quote. That's pretty badass, right?

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Kayla: That's pretty badass.

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Chris: It's like enchanting the bell.

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Kayla: Anoint this bell with some oil and be like, get out of here, demons. Come on, my friends.

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Chris: Yeah. Like, I'm, like, imagining, like, there's some, like, glowing rune that appears on the side of the bell.

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Kayla: There's gotta be a glowing room.

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Chris: And finally, in Cornwall, in England, they baptize dolls.

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Kayla: Okay, that's a horror movie. I'm sorry. Sorry. No offense. That is how a horror movie begins. Like Annabelle. Like who?

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Chris: Dolls.

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Kayla: What dolls? Any doll. Cabbage patch kids or like, what?

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Chris: I'm not clear on what types of dolls, but in case you weren't already creeped out by dolls. Yeah. There's a whole community that fucking baptizes their. Their dolls. Sorry. Creepy doll owners.

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Kayla: Okay, but when you say dollar 100.

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Chris: Your dolls probably have souls, like a.

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Kayla: Real doll, do you mean those, like.

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Chris: Again, I don't know.

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Kayla: Realistic baby dolls.

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Chris: Still don't know.

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Kayla: Okay. All right.

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Chris: I'll link the article in our show notes that I read about this, but. But fear not. As creepy as it sounds, the tradition in Cornwall is actually kind of nice. It's like this, like, fairy pool, basically, just, like, out in the countryside that they call the well of the little people. Okay. Actually, that's still a pretty creepy name.

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Kayla: Well, little people, I mean, in this context, refers to, like, fairy tale.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah. And they call it dolly dunking. And I guess that's kind of creepy, too. And it's supposed to invoke spirits represented by the dolls to protect the well and sort of like its surroundings. Okay, that's almost not creepy.

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Kayla: I have a lot of problems. Got a lot of problems.

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Chris: Kind of not creepy.

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Kayla: So what happens if you don't baptize your doll? Like, it has a spirit? Dolls have. So you're admitting, Kayla, that dolls are alive? Toy story is. That's what makes this creepy toy story confirmed.

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Chris: Listen, I would love to tell you more about Dolly dunking. The problem is a. There's actually not that much information about it, because it's, like, just people in Cornwall. It's, like, literally, it's, like, ten people. It's a tiny village, and I'm already talking about, like, history of all religions. So, like, I need to kind of, like, calm down. But, yeah, I thought, you know, I think it's cool. I kind of love it, and I very much would like to visit Cornwall now and check it out. But if you want to do it, if you want to go ahead and baptize a doll and you find yourself in Cornwall, it does seem to only happen on Good Friday, so plan accordingly.

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Chris: The final factor, what I want to bring up about baptism is that, well, it's been 2000 years since John dunked on Jesus, and let's just say that's given a lot of time for us to argue over the proper and valid way to do it. Before we get out of our time machine in the year of our Lord 1436 Ad, Kayla, I just want to ask you again, just sort of, like, to reiterate, how do you feel about the fact that you were baptized as a fully sentient, fully brain developed, fully experienced adult, versus if you had been baptized as a dumbass little baby who had no idea what was going on.

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Kayla: Look, I think if I had been baptized as a baby, whatever that religion was, would feel more cultural rather than, like, spiritually significant. And, you know, does give me the. Would have given me the option then to further explore that spiritual tradition or not. And having been baptized as an adult, I don't know, I largely pursued baptism as a spiritual symbol as opposed to, let's open up this whole can of worms on this religion. It very much felt like a choice that I was consenting to, and I think it felt spiritually meaningful rather than, you know, culturally significant. Whereas I think from my understanding of folks that were baptized as kids, the folks that I know, there's more of that cultural aspect to it.

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Chris: Right. Yeah. I mean, it also depends on how you feel about the supernatural and how you feel about God and the actual things that the Bible is saying. I think for me, it's. I have a similar sort of. Although I was baptized as a child, I think, yeah, for me, it's more cultural. But if you take the religious value of it, like, at face value, what Catholics and other infant baptizers would say is that you are essentially saving this child from original sin. So specifically in Catholicism, you're washing away the original sin that Adam and Eve did, their whole thing. And even though there's still a tendency to sin after that because you got to keep him in the church, you can't just completely wash it away.

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Chris: But it's more about the, like, hey, like, a child should be innocent, but it's totally not because of original sin. But, you know, who can make them innocent is us. So they see it as sort of like, this holy seal that is sort of, like, placed on the soul, and you can't, like, unseal it or put a different seal on it later. So that's sort of how it's viewed religiously.

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Kayla: I have some quibbles with that.

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Chris: Quibbles and quabbles. Yeah, well, but that's why they don't. Yeah, but that's why they don't. For them, it's not about consent. Right. Because it's not. It's not like. It's not about, like, a willingness. It's not about a covenant with God.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Which is what it is about with adult baptism. People that believe in adult baptism or what's called believers baptism. For them, it's about entering into a willing covenant with God. And. And you have to have your free will and your consent and all that life experience in order to do that because it's about that. But again, for infant baptizers, it's not about that. It's about the sort of, like, magical seal to ward off original sin. So it's like they both think the other is sort of, like, wrong and invalid form of baptism, but they're both very different reasons, which, well, I think I'll get back to.

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Kayla: Kind of feels like maybe both should be a thing. Like if you're. If you're following a spirit, a religious tradition, it kind of feels like maybe you should have the baby one. Make sure that, like. Yeah, that pesky old sin is washed off. And then also an adult case. Yeah, well, yeah, an adult version of it. And I know that there's, you know, confirmation in the catholic church when you're, you know, a young teenager or an old child.

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Chris: Yeah. That's how Catholicism has their cake and eats it, too. Is the baptism is like the magic seal.

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Kayla: Adult.

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Chris: And then the confirmation is the, like, I am confirming that this is definitely what I want. Consent, covenant with goddess. But you're right. When you do confirmation, you're like a young teen with an undeveloped brain and only a small smidge of life experience.

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Kayla: I just think in some ways, adult confirmation is probably more spiritually significant for that person.

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Chris: I agree. And I think that adult slash believer baptism people would probably agree with you as well.

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Kayla: But that isn't to say that people who have gone through confirmation as a child don't have that covenant with God. I think it's just like, if this is the way it happened and it worked out for you, that's awesome and cool. And also, there's other ways of doing things, and that's okay. Just kind of, it's like there's a time and place. Like, there's a. There's a place and an option and a time for all of this. Like, maybe figure out what works best for you.

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Chris: Yeah. There's also a little fun, little factoid here. The catholic church recognizes three forms of baptism. Oh, there's sort of. I forgot what the regular kind is called, but that's where it's like, hey, you can get the water and whatever. There's also what's called baptism by desire, which means that you intend to get baptized, but then between the time where you intend it and then it actually happens, something goes wrong. Basically, you die. And then it's considered that because you wanted to be baptized, you are then actually baptized.

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Kayla: By the church.

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Chris: And then there's baptism by blood, which is my favorite because the name. But baptism by blood is basically so that they can say that all of the early christian martyrs that died with before, like, the whole baptism thing was, like, set in stone.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: They're like, oh, yeah, actually, they were baptized because they gave up their lives for Christendom.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Chris: Anyway, all that is to say, it's an interesting conflict, right? And by interesting, actually, I mean violent sometimes.

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Kayla: So, wait, people are really fighting? Because some people are, like, baptized babies.

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Chris: People are fighting.

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Kayla: Baptized adults.

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Chris: People are obsessed.

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Kayla: You guys.

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Chris: People are unhappy.

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Kayla: Come on. I mean, I get it, but come on.

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Chris: All right, so we're stopping our time machine now in 1436, which is just in time for us to step out and either high five or backhand, depending on your preference. Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. Honestly, we should probably do both just to be safe. Probably backhand a man, high five him. But the printing press, as any historian will tell you, was important.

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: The historical significance and importance of the printing press cannot be overstated. Really, there's enough significance to it for me to just slather all over multiple multi hour podcast episodes. But since this is just the lightning round version, the printing press was a technological innovation and disruption in mass media the likes the world had never seen. In fact, the world had maybe never even seen mass media at all before, because before the printing press, books had to be hand copied. Books were thus extremely rare, extremely valuable, extremely hard to come by. So, you know, those. Actually, here's a little anecdote. You know those chains in that they sometimes see in, like, old timey, like, medieval books. Maybe you don't remember this, but in Game of Thrones, there was, like, a yemenite mega library.

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Chris: I forget where it was, but there was, like, chains on the bookshelves. Do you remember?

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Kayla: Oh, no.

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Chris: So it was actually depicted a little bit incorrectly. The chains aren't just there for, like, decoration to hold the books in there. Actually, there used to be chains, but they were, like, attached to individual books.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Chris: And there was, like, you know, a lock on the chain. So, like, for you to be able to get the book out, you had to, like. It was just hard. Hard to steal books because books were, like, mad valuable back then.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Chris: They were the nfts of their day.

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Kayla: Kayla, you could right click.

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Chris: Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Well, you couldn't right click copy until Johannes Gutenberg came along, inventing the right click save of his day.

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Kayla: So he was a troll.

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Chris: So he was definitely a troll, but yeah. So at this time, bibles and the information contained within them could easily be monopolized by the catholic clergy. It's hard for us to understand today what it must have been like before the printing press because of just how many words we consume every single day. With literacy rates in the developed world, and, like, the high 90 percentile. But before the printing press, reading was just, like, not a common path to knowledge and information. And as important as religion was to medieval life, spiritually, yes, but also communally, politically, culturally, controlling that information faucet gave you wide power and control over people's lives. And with an iron fisted monopoly on religious power. And control means, well, the same thing it usually means with you don't exactly need to produce the best product for your customers.

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Chris: And in the late medieval period, well, the Catholic Church is not putting out the best religious product to its customers, to say the least. Again, this is by itself a vast topic, but by the time Mister Gutenberg invents the printing press, the Catholic Church has produced a laundry list of abuses as tall as the day is long.

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Kayla: It wasn't a great time.

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Chris: Monetary corruption, violence, political machinations, sex abuses, more corruption. There was the papacy in exile in Avignon, France, for, like, 70 years. Popes were going to war. Taking mistresses and concubines. No, with, like, with other political leaders.

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Kayla: I want popes going to war at each other.

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Chris: I mean, there were cases where there were multiple popes that was, like, disputed.

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Kayla: Oh, man.

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Chris: Yeah, there was a thing where it's like, I'm the pope. No, I'm the real pope. Well, I'm the true pope of God, and you're not the true pope. I'm the true pope of God.

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Kayla: Oh, boy.

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Chris: Anyway, so, yeah, they were taking mistresses and concubines and the list goes on. So this wasn't completely ignored. This wasn't like, c'est la vie. Like, it wasn't quite that bad. Despite Catholicism's religious monopoly in western Europe, there were efforts at reform that I won't go into, but they occurred starting around 1470. So now we're like 35 years after the invention of the printing press here, roughly that times, that time period, there were groups that went by the names of, like, the lollards, brethren of common life and the Hussites. You don't have to remember those names. I didn't really know who they were before I read that. The important part is kind of like, the implications. So while they largely failed at creating lasting reform from within, they did pave the road for reform that would take place later and more powerfully, the Protestant Reformation.

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Chris: Perhaps in 1470, again, only 35 years after the invention of the printing press, they were still kind of lacking easy access to that key tool that enabled their more successful and sometimes more radical successors. You see, the printing press transformed book learning from something only elites could afford into something more or less everyone could afford. Suddenly you don't need a catholic priest to interpret the Bible for you. Suddenly you can do your own research.

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Kayla: Oh, God.

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Chris: Sorry. And people did. So, like today's mass media revolution, influencers emerged to help gather like minded folk and act as interpreters of religious texts in their own right. Only now, of course, it was outside the monopoly of the Catholic Church. One of these influencers, who was widely credited with kicking off the Protestant Reformation in the year of our Lord 1517 with his famous 95 theses, despite, by the way, an original intent of just wanting to reform Catholicism from within, not sparking revolution in creating Lutheranism. Well, was a german man named Martin Luther. So with the full benefit of hindsight, it's hard not to see how his 95 theses wouldn't spark that kind of revolution.

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Kayla: It was kind of coming whether.

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Chris: Well, yeah, a, it was coming, and.

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Kayla: B, like, trends and forces versus.

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Chris: Right, so there's trends and forces in hindsight. But then what I'm also saying is that, like, if you actually read the 95 theses, it's like, are you sure you weren't trying, like, because the.

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Kayla: Do this but completely different and call it the same thing.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: It doesn't really work like that.

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Chris: Right. So, like, the two basic pillars that they all revolve around is the first is that christian salvation is only achievable by faith, not works. And to this day, that is a key pillar differentiator between Catholicism and Protestantism. And Protestantism. And the second, and probably more importantly, at least to the historical narrative we're weaving today, is that the Bible, not the church, is the central religious authority. So again, it's like, it's kind of hard to imagine. Like, I'm like, are you sure you're saying the church is not the authority? Like the thing that people have accessed and you're not trying to. I don't know, Mandy.

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Kayla: It's so interesting, though, because, like me, as a total outside observer, I'm like, the first one, I'm like, good work, sounds good. And the second one, I'm like, the Bible being the authority sounds good.

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Chris: One of the things that's so interesting about western religion is that it's like, there's so many reasons to root for and also hate both sides.

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Kayla: Yeah. You're talking about in the catholic protestant divide.

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Chris: Yeah. Like. Like, you want to be like, oh, man, these Protestants are crazy. Oh, man.

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Kayla: But also, they're the underdogs.

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Chris: Catholics are horrible.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: Yeah. Like, oh, man, they're nut jobs, but, oh, man, they're the revolutionary. Yeah. Underdogs that are, like, for the people. I mean, even. Even the pilgrims, like, even puritans that come over here. You're, like, to America, right? You're like, oh, yeah, religious persecution. Escape the religious persecution. Ra ra. You know, underground.

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Kayla: Do a more intense version of it.

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Chris: Right, exactly. And so it's like. It's just. It feels like all the time with, like, every single faction in this mess, it's like, yeah, wait, no, but, yeah, no, actually, let's look at your opponent. Yeah, your opponent deserves. Well, actually, they're better in this way. Like, it's just. It's really. It's a mess. So, yeah, it's hard to imagine that second principle about the Bible being the central authority without the existence of the printing press. And it's hard to imagine the reformation happening without that underlying principle of read your own Bible, which is kind of another way of saying, no need to listen to your pope or priest and.

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Kayla: Do your own research.

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Chris: And do your own research. Now, there are a bunch of folks who follow in Martin Luther's footsteps, either directly or more of, like, I'm doing similar stuff for similar reasons at a similar time. So you might have heard of, like, John Calvin, of course. Of Calvin and Hobbes. Yep. Or I can't pronounce his first names. Wingly. His first name is hold Huldrick. Okay, yeah, whatever. But his last name is Wingly, which is, like, an awesome last name. He was another famous reformer in Switzerland. There's, like, a whole branch of the reformation, though, referred to as the radical reformation. And this is where you get guys like Thomas Muntzer, John of Leiden, Jan Mathis, Menno, Simons, and Jacob Amon.

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Kayla: All names that I know.

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Chris: All names you'll totally, absolutely know. Well, no, but they're not household names necessarily, but maybe by the end of this episode, you'll know who they are. So, yeah, we'll get back to a few of these folks, but the radical reformation is basically reformers and believers that were like, hey, Lutherans, Anglicans, you guys, you're not going far enough. You are repeating some of the same mistakes of the Catholic Church. You're getting too involved in politics too entrenched in worldly affairs, you're becoming corrupt yourselves. And on top of that, we really disagree with you about this whole baptism thing. In fact, they're so characterized by that last part that they're labeled Anabaptists, meaning baptized again, because, well, that's what they do. Now. To be clear, Anabaptists and radical reformation are not like, they're a Venn diagram that is very close but not 100% overlapped.

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Chris: But yes, anabaptist means baptized again, and the proper and spiritually valid way to baptize becomes a very important line of battle in this clash of religions.

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Kayla: Interesting.

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Chris: Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox, and others, they all baptize infants because they believe that baptism is a salve for more abstract things, as we mentioned, such as the healing or washing away of original sin. Again, according to Catholics and most Christians, thanks to Adam and Eve eating the apple, were all born with original sin. We are sinners right smack out of the womb, having done nothing at all and not even having a choice in the matter. In the catholic way of thinking, baptism relieves a person of this burden and allows them to be initiated into the church. There's also sort of like a global entry card. So, like, depending on which church you were baptized in, other churches may recognize that baptism and say, like, yeah, you're good to go, that's cool.

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Chris: So Catholics, for example, recognize lutheran and eastern and anglican baptisms and more, I believe. But that's because they, again, they have similar views on what baptism is for, why you do it and when you do it. The Anabaptists and later Baptists. By later Baptists, I mean, there are other groups later that are called Baptists. Not that the Anabaptists turn into Baptists. That is absolutely not what happens. There's a lot of confusion about that. That's not what happens. But they do share the belief that baptism, again, is more of a covenant with God and must be undertaken voluntarily. And in fact, it's referred to as believers baptism. Thus, infant baptisms are invalid. Believers baptism, more or less, of course, implies adult baptism.

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Chris: And so during the radical reformation, many of these reformers were baptized a second time, believing their catholic infant baptism to be spiritually invalid. The name anabaptist. Anabaptist means one who baptizes. Again, notably, this is what their persecutors initially called them, and the name stuck. But it's their persecutors. Who would have thought their second baptisms were like baptisms again, because the Anabaptists themselves would have actually said that their real baptism was their second one.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: They wouldn't have said, I'm being baptized again. They would have said, well, when I got baptized as a child, that wasn't actually even a real baptism. So I'm not being baptized again. I'm being baptized for real for the first time as an adult.

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Kayla: Got it.

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Chris: And yeah, I say persecutors because they were heavily persecuted both by entrenched catholic interests and also, bye. Freshly entrenched protestant interests.

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Kayla: Interesting.

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Chris: My limited historical understanding here is that there was also a little bit of a chicken and egg effect that went on with radical reformation persecution. So, yes, there was your standard, like, you aren't like us, so you must die persecution. But also radical reformers had some pretty wildly insane ideas, at least for the time around. Things like universal equality that would have been extremely unappealing to powers that be.

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Kayla: So you get pesky powers that be.

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Chris: Pesky powers the man. So you get that nice little feedback effect where you use your printing press to distribute some pretty radical leaflets. Then you get thrown into a deep, dark tower of London, sort of like torture cell. But then that gives more fire to the reformers to say, baptism by blood. Look, we're, look, we're being persecuted. I told you these guys were bad. Which invites an even heavier hand from authorities. And so on and so on. So you get a little bit of a feedback effect going. So to recap, in 1436, we got the printing press. Prior to that, over the last several hundred years, the Catholic Church has had a religious monopoly in western Europe, which led to corruption and abuse. Because of that monopoly, Martin Luther in 1517 says, hey, fellow Catholics, let's get better.

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Chris: And also, the Bible is the final word on Christianity, not the church. And also, btw, faith not works. K by then, whoopsie doodle, you get Lutheranism. Now, maybe that's a spark that starts a fire, or maybe other fires were getting going. Anyway. Certainly Henry VIII needed to cheat on all his wives, so he had to found a new religion.

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Kayla: He had to do that.

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Chris: But either way, before you know it, you have a full blown Protestant Reformation, one subsection of which is called the radical Reformation, that believes other Protestants aren't going far enough. And we need to get back to, like, real grassroots Christianity, which, by the way, means you got to get baptized as a believing adult, not an infant.

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Kayla: Question for you. Yes, this episode is about the Amish.

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Chris: We're getting there. We're getting there. We're almost there. We had to start 2000 years ago. Give me a break. Are you with me so far on the sort of the recap of the reformation?

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: Okay. Anyway, hilarity, by which I mean conflict ensues.

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Kayla: I don't think that's hilarious.

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Chris: All right, here is where I tell you to stop listening to this episode, because we love telling people to stop listening to our podcast. We just love it.

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Kayla: Stop and go listen to something else.

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Chris: Yeah, well, that's what I'm gonna say, actually. Go listen to something else. And don't worry, I will give you the very rudimentary, stripped down version of this story here in a minute. But if you want the full, detailed, play by play on the story, you should go listen to one of my favorite all time episodes of, you guessed it, hardcore history.

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Kayla: Oh, God.

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Chris: The episode is called Prophets of Doom. Sadly, I think it's old enough now that it's not streaming anymore, so you have to, like, go buy it individually on his website. But it is well worth the $2.99. And it's, like, probably even worth figuring out the weirdest, annoying way that he monetizes his old episodes. That being said, if you want the very stripped down version of the Munster rebellion of 1534, keep listening. Starting in 1532, following a widespread peasant revolt in what we moderns would call Germany, several influential men in the city of Munster. And that's like. I believe it's pronounced Munster. Right, Munster.

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Kayla: I think it's moonster.

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01:05:38,470 --> 01:05:51,302
Chris: So several influential men in this city got the idea to set up a theocracy. The two big players that got things going here were a lutheran minister named Bernard Rothman and his rich friend Bernard Kipperdoling.

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Kayla: Two Bernards.

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Chris: Two Bernards. One Rothman, one kipper doling. I just. I love the Kipper doling name. I could keep saying it over and over. Now, this guy Rothman, this. This lutheran minister, he fucking hates Catholics. Hates them. So he starts writing pamphlets, and with his friend Kipper Doling, bankrolling the whole project, they print them en masse for distribution. Remember our friend, the printing press?

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Kayla: I do.

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Chris: Well, Rothman and Kipper Doling make good use of this technology. It was just standard anti Catholic screed for a while, but before long, it turned to some, like, really dangerous ideas that were much more in line with radical reformation anabaptists than they were with his own Lutheranism, namely things like total wealth redistribution. Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah. A man after your own heart.

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Kayla: I'm like, I'm listening. I'm interested. I know he's a leftist.

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Chris: He would have a home on twitter, for sure.

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Kayla: I don't hate Catholics, though.

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01:06:49,370 --> 01:06:51,810
Chris: Well, in 1532, maybe you should.

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01:06:51,850 --> 01:06:52,630
Kayla: Yeah, actually.

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01:06:52,930 --> 01:07:01,738
Chris: Anyway, so this Rothman guys pamphlets start getting a lot of poor peasant migrants from across Germany who liked this whole redistribution of wealth tune that he's singing.

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Kayla: That's how you do it. You agitate, you organize.

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Chris: He was very good at this. And since that tune is again also sort of in line with anabaptism, that's kind of like the sword of the flavor of migrants that are flowing into Munster. By February of 1534, there are enough Anabaptists in Munster that Rothman and his allies are basically shoe ins for the magisterial elections held there. Bernard Kipperdoling, the rich guy who bankrolled the pamphleteering, is installed as mayor. And most of the other lutheran magistrates who were up for election are also defeated by allies of Bernard Rothman, which was kind of a surprise to them because up until then, they assumed Rothman, who was a lutheran minister after all, albeit with some wacky ideas about wealth redistribution, was ultimately on their side. Because after all, they, like, they both hated Catholics together. Right? They're Lutheransen.

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01:07:52,030 --> 01:08:17,960
Chris: So we have Kipper Doling, who is now mayor, and we have Rothman, who himself is preaching some very anabaptist style teachings. And people start to take notice. People like Jan Mathis, who I mentioned earlier, and John of Leiden, who I mentioned earlier. John of Leiden actually had a different name, but this is what his followers called him. By the way, side note here. Jan Mathis, for what it's worth, was from Harlem, okay? Not the one in Manhattan.

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Kayla: No, he wasn't.

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01:08:20,264 --> 01:08:24,064
Chris: He was, in fact, he was from Harlem, but the Harlem with two a's.

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01:08:24,152 --> 01:08:25,520
Kayla: Oh, ha. Harlem.

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01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:41,904
Chris: Harlem. Yeah. So Manhattan was originally a dutch settlement before becoming part of the 13 colonies. And the village of Harlem, one a in New Amsterdam, which was what Manhattan was before it was Manhattan, was named after the city of Harlem back in the Netherlands.

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Kayla: Damn. Harlem.

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01:08:43,944 --> 01:08:45,939
Chris: Harlem versus Harlem. So he was from.

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01:08:47,590 --> 01:08:48,470
Kayla: It's Harlem.

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Chris: I know it's Harlem, but two way Harlem. Anyway, I digress. It doesn't matter where the Jan Mathis was from, other than it's a fun factoid that there's also Haarlem in the Netherlands. So John of Leiden and Jan Mathis were both anabaptist preachers and leaders in Germany and the Low Countries. And they both got word of what was going on in Munster, that there was this Lutheran who's preaching some very anabaptist flavored sermons, and he and his allies controlled the city, so they took their followers and went there to join forces with Rothman in sort of like anabaptist style Avengers team up.

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Kayla: Cool.

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Chris: So at this point, Munster was like this, like anabaptist Mecca, like a ground zero for the movement. And in fact, Jan Mathis called it the New Jerusalem at this time. And then things started to get pretty fucking nuts. Oh no, first things first. This is not, it's not nuts yet. Actually, I probably should have said this in like a sentence or two later, but first things first. Rothman did end up deciding to go full anabaptist when Jan Mathis arrived. Apparently the very day he arrived into Munster, he started doing adult baptisms.

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Kayla: Oh shit.

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01:09:53,412 --> 01:10:35,750
Chris: Or re baptisms depending on who you ask. Rothman was re baptized that day and thousands more adult baptisms soon followed. I imagine the environment was like a bit of a fruit frenzy, probably because it felt like one of those like, wow, we're doing a utopia city thing like nobody's ever done before, right? Like you always hear people say like, radical utopia. Yeah, with Rajneesh Purim, with Buddha Field, with those biosphere guys. I mean, like every single time you get a group of like idealist, like minded reformers or spiritually aligned folks together in a community building project, you basically hear the exact same sort of like, we're trying a crazy way of living together that nobody's ever tried before, but like, it's actually just like a town.

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Chris: So anyway, these guys were like that too, and they were super stoked about not just like, oh, we have this awesome like headquarters now, but also spreading their beliefs to other areas, gaining more territory for Anabaptists from this foothold they had in Munster. Then of course there is the orgiastic destruction of religious artifacts and art.

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Kayla: Oh God.

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Chris: In Munsters, cathedrals and monasteries, pretty common sort of stuff. It's called iconoclasm. Supplanting religions have liked doing this sort of thing dating back to the dawn of civilization.

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Kayla: Don't they know that they need to preserve their history?

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Chris: No, that's the whole thing.

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01:11:13,964 --> 01:11:14,884
Kayla: Put it in a museum.

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01:11:14,972 --> 01:11:16,908
Chris: The history is powerful. It must be destroyed.

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01:11:16,964 --> 01:11:18,236
Kayla: It belongs in a museum.

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Chris: I know. And then of course there was the shared property proclamation.

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01:11:22,428 --> 01:11:23,764
Kayla: I'm down with that one, actually.

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01:11:23,812 --> 01:11:32,262
Chris: First came the forest property redistribution of people emigrating into the city. These immigrants property was taken and distributed amongst the poor.

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01:11:32,406 --> 01:11:33,542
Kayla: Okay.

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01:11:33,726 --> 01:12:03,300
Chris: And following that, the leadership of the city proclaimed that all citizens property was to be held in common. And I assume that there was like an exception for this like, for leadership, like, there always is for this stuff. But that's just an assumption. I didn't read anything about that. This particular strain of munsterian anabaptism was also becoming millennialist, which is an adjective describing the more apocalyptic flavors of Christianity. The whole thing about, like, there will be an end times and then a golden age, yada, yada.

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01:12:03,600 --> 01:12:04,896
Kayla: This is getting real crazy.

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01:12:04,968 --> 01:12:20,638
Chris: These are the types of folks, for example, that think the left behind book series is more prediction than fiction. And also, we've talked about in the show before, there's some distinct flavor of this in Qanon's belief, the storm is sort of their version of the apocalypse, and then they all believe that there's gonna be, like, this.

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01:12:20,704 --> 01:12:21,554
Kayla: The great awakening.

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01:12:21,602 --> 01:12:36,642
Chris: Great awakening, yeah. A golden age to follow. Anyway, it wasn't but two months, February to April of 1534, before the city faced a siege. And said siege was from the third faction that hasn't popped up in the story till just now.

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01:12:36,706 --> 01:12:37,122
Kayla: What?

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01:12:37,226 --> 01:12:38,138
Chris: The Catholics are back.

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01:12:38,194 --> 01:12:38,826
Kayla: Oh.

440
01:12:38,978 --> 01:12:41,578
Chris: So prior to the anabaptist seizure of Munster, it was.

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01:12:41,594 --> 01:12:43,874
Kayla: Wait, catholic soldiers rolled up to the gates?

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01:12:44,002 --> 01:12:44,666
Chris: Actually, yes.

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01:12:44,738 --> 01:12:45,710
Kayla: Holy shit.

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01:12:47,260 --> 01:13:20,670
Chris: Munster was sort of like a joint lutheran. I think a lot of places in Germany were like this, where there's lutheran factions and catholic factions, because this is the time of the Holy Roman Empire. So you still have catholic loyalists, but then you have this protestant lutheran strongholds. So it's this very sort of mixed thing. And then that just so happened in Munster, you have this third destabilizing faction of the Anabaptists come in, and you could also say that, I don't know, like, the lutheran and catholic hatred for each other was a bit of what allowed the Anabaptists to take power in Munster.

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Kayla: Right, right.

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01:13:21,750 --> 01:13:31,878
Chris: Anyway, when they did take power, they forcibly expelled this guy named Franz von Waldeck. His name isn't really important, but his title is pretty cool. He was the prince bishop of Munster.

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01:13:31,934 --> 01:13:32,630
Kayla: Ooh.

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01:13:32,790 --> 01:13:48,468
Chris: Which was like this, like, havezes religious. Havezes political role that I don't fully understand, but I I guess that, like, that mixing of religion and politics is one of the things that Anabaptists monster Anabaptists and otherwise were rebelling against. So I kind of get that.

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Kayla: Right, right.

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01:13:49,652 --> 01:14:13,368
Chris: So this prince bishop dude, Franz, was like, all right, playtime's over. I'm coming with an army to siege your city. And unfortunately for the Munster rebels, they had lots of followers, but they didn't really have a military, so they didn't really have any way to oppose the siege, they just kind of sat out there and, I mean, they didn't, like, attack through the walls yet, but they had all the time. And a lot of times what you're doing with a siege is just trying to starve people.

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Kayla: Right, right.

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01:14:14,680 --> 01:14:20,080
Chris: So the Munster rebels didn't have a military, but they did have nutcases, though. Like Yan Mathis.

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01:14:20,120 --> 01:14:20,864
Kayla: Just as good.

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Chris: Yeah. So this, if you remember Jan Mathis, one of the main anabaptist preacher guys that comes into town after the mayor is elected in February. So on Easter Sunday in April, he's like, I'm gonna pretty much single handedly take down this army. So he went not quite single handedly. He went up against this army with just himself and twelve followers. And I don't know the numbers on the prince bishop's side, but I do know that this would make him very, very outnumbered. Yeah, but no matter. Mister Mathis proclaimed that he was a second Gideon, who was a famous biblical warrior, if you're not sure who that is. And God's judgment would strike down the prince bishop and his army.

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01:15:02,154 --> 01:15:02,938
Kayla: Okay.

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01:15:03,114 --> 01:15:17,002
Chris: Unfortunately for Jan, no such thing happened, and the sieging army easily wiped out his band, captured him, put his head on a pike, and nailed his family jewels to the city gate.

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01:15:17,066 --> 01:15:17,994
Kayla: Oh, geez.

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01:15:18,162 --> 01:15:19,390
Chris: Yikes, guys.

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01:15:19,730 --> 01:15:20,338
Kayla: God.

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01:15:20,434 --> 01:15:29,170
Chris: Yikes. Yeah, just when you're like, oh, this crazy person, you're rooting for the catholics, like, take out this crazy wacko, and then like a second later you're like, well, they did what?

461
01:15:29,250 --> 01:15:31,238
Kayla: Oh, God. No one's good here.

462
01:15:31,294 --> 01:15:35,970
Chris: No one's good. Everyone is bad. Anyway, at this point, everything calms down.

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01:15:36,390 --> 01:15:37,730
Kayla: Did it?

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01:15:38,390 --> 01:15:41,902
Chris: Just kidding. You know how these things tend to go down.

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01:15:42,046 --> 01:15:43,134
Kayla: I do not.

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01:15:43,182 --> 01:16:16,598
Chris: Comfortable. And slowly down. More like down in burning flames. After Mathis death, our other friend, John of Leiden was named his religious and political successor, basically taking over the reins of the whole operation. Probably named as such because he claimed to be receiving visions from God, that he was supposed to be the successor. So success he did. And you know how these leaders get. Super humble and normal, right? So John of Leiden was like, hey, first of all, I'm the direct successor to King David from the Bible. I don't know if you guys knew that.

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01:16:16,654 --> 01:16:17,374
Kayla: Okay?

468
01:16:17,502 --> 01:16:33,886
Chris: Like the King David that killed Goliath when he was a twink. Second of all, I have absolute power now in the city. I'm basically your holy dictator. Third of all, go ahead and deck me out in all kinds of royal fashions and accoutrements, like really gussing me up so I really look royal.

469
01:16:33,958 --> 01:16:34,846
Kayla: Come on.

470
01:16:35,038 --> 01:16:41,250
Chris: Fourth of all, this is no longer munster, by the way. It's the new Zion. And fifth, it's time for polygamy.

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01:16:41,830 --> 01:16:42,846
Kayla: Okay.

472
01:16:43,038 --> 01:16:46,854
Chris: I mean, you knew it was coming, right? Next time, eventually, there's polygamy with this stuff.

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01:16:46,902 --> 01:16:47,810
Kayla: Oh, man.

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01:16:48,110 --> 01:17:04,972
Chris: To be fair to God, Emperor John, there was a. Apparently a three to one female to male ratio in the city at this time, and I'm not sure what the reason for that was, but to be fair to everyone else, when I say time for polygamy, what I meant was John of Leiden made polygamy compulsory.

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01:17:05,116 --> 01:17:05,880
Kayla: Oh.

476
01:17:06,220 --> 01:17:07,756
Chris: You had to participate.

477
01:17:07,868 --> 01:17:09,996
Kayla: Okay, that feels wrong.

478
01:17:10,148 --> 01:17:13,524
Chris: It's not great. He himself took 16 wives.

479
01:17:13,572 --> 01:17:14,468
Kayla: That's too many.

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01:17:14,604 --> 01:17:20,708
Chris: And there's even an account which is disputed. It's a disputed account that he even beheaded someone for refusing to marry him.

481
01:17:20,804 --> 01:17:22,212
Kayla: Well, he shouldn't do that.

482
01:17:22,316 --> 01:17:25,764
Chris: After all, it was against the law to not participate. It was compulsory.

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01:17:25,852 --> 01:17:27,150
Kayla: Goddesse.

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01:17:27,640 --> 01:18:01,884
Chris: Anyway, I hate to break the bad news, but this doesn't end with, like, a zany charge and people's genitals on the door the way it did for Jan Mathis. Basically, everyone not named Jon of Leiden was starving in Munster, or, sorry, New Jerusalem, or, sorry, Zion. I don't know. It gets confusing. I actually, at this point, I don't even know where the original Bernard Rothman guy has gone. But anyway, the commoner moonsterites were all starving, thanks to the. Largely to the prince bishop's siege of the town, which lasted from April of 1534, when it started all the way to June of the following year.

485
01:18:01,932 --> 01:18:02,640
Kayla: Jeez.

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01:18:03,140 --> 01:18:14,364
Chris: With resistance waning, the catholic forces retook the city that June and captured John of Leiden and two of his conspirators, one of which was our friend Bernard Kipperdoling. That guy that.

487
01:18:14,452 --> 01:18:15,084
Kayla: The bankroller?

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01:18:15,132 --> 01:18:28,382
Chris: Yeah, the bankroller of the pamphlets who was elected mayor the previous February. These three were promptly tortured and executed, and their bodies were stuffed into cages and hung from the steeple of the Munster church of St. Lambert's.

489
01:18:28,446 --> 01:18:29,278
Kayla: You guys.

490
01:18:29,454 --> 01:18:36,806
Chris: And if you ever find yourself visiting Munster while the bones of these fellows have long since been removed, the cages still hang there today.

491
01:18:36,918 --> 01:18:38,542
Kayla: Shit. I want to go to Munster now.

492
01:18:38,606 --> 01:18:48,082
Chris: I know. And that's the story of the Munster rebellion. So there I lived out my fantasy of doing a Dan Carlin in person.

493
01:18:48,106 --> 01:18:48,962
Kayla: Did a Dan Carlin.

494
01:18:49,026 --> 01:18:50,058
Chris: I did a Dan Carlin.

495
01:18:50,114 --> 01:18:51,010
Kayla: Dan Carland.

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01:18:51,170 --> 01:19:15,450
Chris: Seriously, though, go listen to prophets of doom. His research is infinitely better than mine, and so is his storytelling. But, like, once I knew I was doing a culture, just weird episode about anabaptist group, I was like, oh yeah. Oh, I get to talk about the Munster rebellion. Fuck yeah. Anyway, that brings us back to the Amish, who at this point in history don't exist yet. And you asked about them earlier. So what's the deal?

497
01:19:15,530 --> 01:19:16,676
Kayla: Yeah, what is the deal?

498
01:19:16,858 --> 01:19:20,552
Chris: Are they like direct descendants of these guys or what's going on here?

499
01:19:20,576 --> 01:19:21,900
Kayla: What is going on here?

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01:19:22,720 --> 01:19:45,546
Chris: Well, not really, but sort of. I'll explain. The aftermath of the Munster rebellion is a sort of a prime example of that, like, persecution. Chicken and egg thing I mentioned earlier. Right? Like the rebellion sent shockwaves across Europe and heavy crackdown on Anabaptists from religious and secular authorities alike. Ratcheted way up.

501
01:19:45,618 --> 01:19:46,274
Kayla: Oh, jeez.

502
01:19:46,362 --> 01:20:12,804
Chris: Because those authorities were so terrified of another Munster. And this level of persecution continued all the way up to and past the turn of the next century, which, if you're keeping track, that means past 1600 and well on towards the set. Even the 17 hundreds. At the same time, other Anabaptists themselves tried to genuinely distance themselves from the violent millenarist. I believe that's how you pronounce that millenarist.

503
01:20:12,892 --> 01:20:13,692
Kayla: I never know.

504
01:20:13,756 --> 01:20:38,580
Chris: Millenarian insurrection in Munster that bore the anabaptist name. An entire different genealogy, if you will, of anabaptism was developed around this time, sort of in, like in response to the events at Munster, a genealogy that abhorred and eschewed violence. And the most important religious leader in this movement was a man by the name Menno Simonse.

505
01:20:39,110 --> 01:20:42,650
Kayla: I know where we're going. What's his name again?

506
01:20:43,030 --> 01:21:35,230
Chris: Like a lot of other reformation figures, he started his religious career as a catholic priest and then became a reformer, in this case, anabaptist reformer. And even more importantly, he wasn't just a reformer of catholic ways, but once he became anabaptist, he was a reformer of those ways as well, believing the violence in Munster to be antithetical to scripture. Here's a quote on his importance from Menno. Simons influence on anabaptism in the Low Countries was so great that baptist historian William Estep suggested that their history be divided into three, before Menno, under Menno, and after Menno. Menno is especially significant because of his coming to the anabaptist movement in the north in its most troublesome days and helping not only sustain it, but also to establish it as a viable radical reformation movement. End quote.

507
01:21:35,970 --> 01:22:00,088
Chris: It was because of Simons and his teachings that the version of anabaptism that was able to survive and to some degree flourish, was fundamentally oriented towards peace and nonviolence. Again, sort of in response to this event at Munster, and due to that importance, this genealogy of Anabaptism bears his name to this day. Mennonites are named after Menno Simons.

508
01:22:00,144 --> 01:22:02,096
Kayla: There you go, Mennonites.

509
01:22:02,248 --> 01:22:21,840
Chris: Boom, baby. So we're almost there now. Almost there, almost there. So let's skip a ton of history and fast forward to the year 1693. Anabaptism by now is relatively established as a protestant sect, and a group of them in Switzerland, known as the Swiss Brethren, have themselves a schism.

510
01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:22,712
Kayla: Oh.

511
01:22:22,776 --> 01:23:06,156
Chris: I know, it's my favorite. A disagreement between two leaders of the movement, Jacob Aman and Hans Reichst, led to the splitting of the swiss brethren into two factions. One side of the split switched their name over to Mennonites, presumably because they too were down with like Menno Simon's whole peaceful anabaptism shtick. I think that's why they switched their name to that. Don't quote me on that because I didn't dig into that super deeply. But the other side of the split started being referred to derisively by their disagreeing brethren, the guys under Hans Rice. The guys just decided to call themselves Mennonites. And so they were derisively calling the other group after their leader, Jacob Aman, the Amish.

512
01:23:06,268 --> 01:23:12,640
Kayla: Mmm. And here we are. Let's go. Let's do the episode on the Amish.

513
01:23:13,260 --> 01:23:19,414
Chris: No, this was the episode. Oh man. So we landed that plane. What's our time at the.

514
01:23:19,452 --> 01:23:22,010
Kayla: We are at right now? We are at an hour and 38 minutes.

515
01:23:22,050 --> 01:23:28,618
Chris: Okay, so it took us an hour and 38 minutes to get through like 2000 years of religious history. And the entire reference, I mean, that's pretty cool.

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01:23:28,634 --> 01:23:31,150
Kayla: You did a pretty good job. Yeah, come on, you did great.

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01:23:32,410 --> 01:23:45,562
Chris: All right, so the last bit of today's story, and we are actually doing another episode on this to talk about the current day Amish. But this was the patented CoJW binge on context that we like to dinner.

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01:23:45,586 --> 01:23:50,630
Kayla: You gotta have the context before the content. You have to eat your meal before you can have your.

519
01:23:51,260 --> 01:24:42,514
Chris: But the last bit of today's story is simply that as a result of the legacy of persecution faced by Anabaptists, at first for religious differences, then for preaching equality ideals dangerous to entrenched power, and then finally for confirming everybody's fears with the citywide insane asylum rebellion at Munster. All of that created a legacy of persecution that followed Anabaptists of all stripes, mennonite, Amish and otherwise. It followed them around Europe anyway, so they were like, f this we out. I hear Pennsylvania is nice and there's all kinds of religious freedom over there as long as you're white Christians like us, but there's all kinds of that type of religious freedom over there. So, yeah, you get these migrations of folks over to the Americas. And in case you were wondering, that's where the Amish come from.

520
01:24:42,642 --> 01:24:47,820
Kayla: I was wondering. I was wondering about that. I actually had no idea how they got here.

521
01:24:47,940 --> 01:24:54,244
Chris: Any thoughts? Kayla, do you feel any differently about your own baptism after that whole big long tale?

522
01:24:54,372 --> 01:24:54,948
Kayla: No.

523
01:24:55,084 --> 01:24:57,044
Chris: No? Okay. All right.

524
01:24:57,132 --> 01:24:59,200
Kayla: I mean, I still feel good about it.

525
01:25:00,380 --> 01:25:08,588
Chris: Does it make you feel like you have any different, like, relationship to, like, the history and narrative of western civilization?

526
01:25:08,684 --> 01:25:16,900
Kayla: All I know is that I don't want to be aligned with any of these people. So don't take my adult baptism as. I don't know what the word is.

527
01:25:17,480 --> 01:25:18,824
Chris: Support. I don't know.

528
01:25:18,912 --> 01:25:24,700
Kayla: Don't take my adult baptism as me throwing in my lot with any of you.

529
01:25:25,840 --> 01:25:32,416
Chris: Yeah. Like we mentioned earlier, it can be hard, man, to, like, to pick a side because.

530
01:25:32,448 --> 01:25:33,176
Kayla: Just don't pick sides.

531
01:25:33,208 --> 01:25:51,702
Chris: Just don't pick sides. Cause they all kind of are like, one side is like, yeah, we got the inquisition. We're gonna torture you and kill you and be corrupt as fuck. And then the other side is like, we're gonna be insane. Like, forced polygamy and, like, seizing people's possessions. And I am God, emperor of Munster now. So it's like, either way, it's bad.

532
01:25:51,766 --> 01:25:54,530
Kayla: I support not supporting either of you.

533
01:25:55,350 --> 01:26:16,890
Chris: Anyway, next time on call to just weird. We will get into the american Amish and other plain people and talk about their community and culture present day. And then, of course, we'll do our gimmick with the criteria wherever. I expect, we'll spend some extra time talking about the whole, is it niche within society criterion. Maybe some extra time on the ritual criterion as well.

534
01:26:17,670 --> 01:26:31,750
Kayla: I think it'll because we're evaluating a, not just a religion, but like, a religious lifestyle. And it's a very, like, you know, can be a very intense religious lifestyle. It might. It might take us a little finessing a little.

535
01:26:31,910 --> 01:27:19,972
Chris: And as we have discovered from today's episode, the Amish, we might consider them niche now, which we'll talk about again this next episode. But Anabaptists have always been sort of niche. They've always been like. And certainly at the time, certainly in the 15 hundreds. Non Anabaptists probably would have called them a cult, right? They probably would have. They almost certainly would have called the Munster Anabaptists a cult, right? I might call them a cult. So again, it kind of harkens back to the whole, like, new religious movement. At what point do we stop calling that a cult? At which point do we start calling its own full fledged religion? Now, anabaptism has been around for like 500 years, and they have plenty of followers, so I think that crosses the line into club religion. But it's gray. It's fuzzy.

536
01:27:20,076 --> 01:27:21,640
Kayla: Who knows who's a fuzzy gray area?

537
01:27:22,700 --> 01:28:18,484
Chris: My sources for this episode included Wikipedia, of course, Encyclopedia Britannica, Oxford Research, Encyclopedia pewform.org, comma, ideaexchange dot uackron.edu quora. Sorry, I just. I wanted to know the difference between Baptists and Anabaptists, and they had some good answers there, if you're curious. We mentioned Baptists before. They both share the core tenet of believers, baptism. So adult baptism. But they have very different, like, groups, locations, dates of origin, like their origin story. Like, they come from very different places. And functionally modern society. Baptists tend to integrate into society, whereas Anabaptists tend more towards like, the plain culture. My other sources include cornishbirdblog.com. I had to go there to read up on the Dolly dunking thing, and of course, good old Dan Carlin's hardcore history episode, Prophets of Doom.

538
01:28:18,652 --> 01:28:23,788
Chris: I suppose you could also count our reading of behind blue curtains as sort of like sunk cost research for this episode as well.

539
01:28:23,844 --> 01:28:24,848
Kayla: Yeah, I think that makes sense.

540
01:28:24,924 --> 01:28:33,144
Chris: We did that for the other episode. It counts for research for this one. And that is it for my sources as well as for my historical narrative.

541
01:28:33,272 --> 01:29:03,770
Kayla: I am very excited to dive into the episode two weeks from now to eat my dessert for all of this delicious context. Because having, like, context is my dessert. Yeah, that's true. Having all this context is extremely helpful. It does give me information about my baptism, as well as your baptism, as well as other people's, as well as like. I always knew that there was conflict between Catholics and Protestants, but I didn't know how deep that rabbit hole goes.

542
01:29:03,890 --> 01:29:18,378
Chris: And there was also conflict between Protestants and other Protestants, right? So, yeah, once you get that sharding with a d, people that are have differing religious opinions, they can be pretty upset at each other.

543
01:29:18,434 --> 01:29:20,234
Kayla: It gets crazy. Calm down, everybody.

544
01:29:20,322 --> 01:29:28,064
Chris: So anyway, yeah, I'm looking forward to next episode, and I'll say this, I'm hoping there'll be a nice surprise for us for that one.

545
01:29:28,112 --> 01:29:30,448
Kayla: So I like a good surprise.

546
01:29:30,584 --> 01:29:34,416
Chris: Hopefully that'll keep you. Keep your ears peeled, folks.

547
01:29:34,488 --> 01:29:35,300
Kayla: Okay.

548
01:29:36,160 --> 01:29:54,310
Chris: And that is it for me for this episode. So, you know, don't like, don't subscribe. Just listen and enjoy. But if you want to go subscribe to our Patreon, I suppose that's fine because business money. Patreon.com culturejustweird but seriously, just enjoy the show. That's my call to action for everyone.

549
01:29:55,410 --> 01:29:56,306
Kayla: I'm Kayla.

550
01:29:56,378 --> 01:30:02,202
Chris: And I'm Chris. And this has been cult or just new religious movement.

551
01:30:02,266 --> 01:30:03,850
Kayla: New religious movement or just weird.

552
01:30:03,890 --> 01:30:04,490
Chris: Or just weird.