Home Church Confessions

One can’t understand the history of the home church without understanding the confessions that they wrote to guide their lives. A great many of these have survived,¹ each containing a detailed statement of faith that almost always references the Bible to justify each statement.

Confessions differ from creeds in purpose and format. Creeds are a product of the institution and are intended to exclude those whose faith does not conform to a standard by having the congregation regularly recite them in unison. Confessions however, are incluisive documents that bind the home church fellowship into a common understanding of faith which can be the basis for catechizing candidates for baptism and excommunicating lapsed members.

One of the earliest confessions of the Radical Home churches in the 16th century is called the Schleitheim Confession. The following list highlights some of its features:

1. Baptism. Given to those who have “learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ, and to all those walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and wish to be buried with Him in death, so they may be resurrected with him…” (Rom. 6). Infant baptisms were called “the highest and chief abominations of the Pope.”
2. Discipline. Those who had become members but who later “slip sometimes and fall into error and sin” were to be admonished privately, then in the presence of the whole assembly (Mt. 18:15ff) and then excommunicated if they did not repent.
3. Communion. Only those who had been baptized per article 1 were admitted to the Lord’s table.
4. The World. Members were forbidden to “run with the wicked.” They agreed to shun all Catholic and Protestant church services, as well as drinking houses and civic affairs.
5. Pastors. The office of the pastor would be “to teach, to warn, to discipline, to ban [excommunicate], to lead out in prayer …, to lift up the bread when it is to be broken, and in all things to see to the care of the body of Christ…”
6. The Sword. Members are not to participate in war, nor are they to accept positions in government.
7. The Oath. Members are to let their Yea be yea and their Nay be nay.

Article five of the Schleitheim Confession listed the duties of the pastor, and ended with the words, “But should it happen that through the cross this pastor should be banished or led to the Lord [through martyrdom] another shall be ordained in his place in the same hour so that God’s little flock and people may not be destroyed.” At the rate that these small assemblies were raided. a “pastor” was an ordinary member selected by the group. The author of the Schleitheim Confession, Michael Sattler, would soon suffer his own martyrdom. Captured and brought to trial in Rottenburg on May 17, 1527, just three months after the Confession was adopted. Michael, his wiife Margaretha, and nine others were convicted. They rooted their defense in Scripture, and said that they would gladly recant if their errors could be explained to them from in the Bible. It took only 90 minutes for the judges to offer up their verdict: “Michael Sattler shall be committed to the hangman, who shall take him to the square and there first cut out his tongue, then chain him to a wagon, tear his body twice with hot tongs there and five times more before the gate, then burn his body to powder as an arch-heretic.”

After Sattler and three other men were burned, many attempts were made to persuade Margaretha to recant. Each time she said that she would be true to her Lord. After eight days of this, Margaretha was executed by drowning in the Neckar River.

Even evangelical institutional churches have confessions. often under the heading “What We Believe.” Home fellowships are encouraged to follow suit.

1. W. L. Llumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, Valley Forgfe, Judson Press, Revised Edition (1969), ↩︎