#11 - Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition:

1527-1660

"Confessions of faith have been an integral dimension of Anabaptist expression. Anabaptists affirmed ancient creedal formulas, especially the Apostle's Creed, and produced their own confessional statements summarizing the essentials of the faith.

The present volume seeks to bring together for the first time a representative collection of confessions produced by Anabaptist groups from 1527 to 1660. Included are confessions from the Swiss Brethren, the Marpeck circle, the Rhinelanders, and various Mennonite communities in the north referred to as Waterlanders, Frisians, Flemish, and High Germans. ... The present collection attends to the earliest phase of Anabaptist and Mennonite confessional writing in Europe, laying bare the foundations that set the stage for later confessional developments. The volume also includes introductions to each of the confessions, bringing into view the specific context out of which each doctrinal statement emerged." - Karl Koop, from the Introduction

The Classics of the Radical Reformation (CRR) series was inaugurated to make available major seminal texts from the Radical Reformation. Karl Koop's Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition is the eleventh volume in the CRR series. It breaks new ground both in its subject matter and the span of time it documents. Perplexingly little attention has been paid by twentieth century academics or church leaders to the Mennonite confessional tradition. Koop's masterful study documents this communal form of theologizing at an opportune time, when interest is rising in the development of Anabaptist thought beyond its first, formative generations. ----John Rempel, from the General Editor's Preface