Position · 1525

Believer's Baptism

The view that baptism should be given only to those who personally confess faith in Christ, so infants are not baptised.

In Zurich in 1525, radical followers of Huldrych Zwingli baptised one another as adults, which began the Anabaptist movement. Menno Simons later gave it lasting shape. In 1609 John Smyth, an English Separatist in Amsterdam, adopted the same view, which led to the Baptist churches. Baptists came to practise baptism by full immersion. Holders of the view usually treat baptism as an act of obedience and witness rather than a means of grace.