Confession by the Deed: Asserting Anabaptist Ecclesiopolitical Performativity
The "propaganda by the deed" is a 19th-century anarchist notion emphasizing the communicative power of action in revealing the non-inevitability of human political organization. In this article, I offer a reading of the 1527 Schleitheim Confession in light of this notion. Schleitheim is si...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Amsterdam University Press
2023
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| In: |
NTT
Year: 2023, Volume: 77, Issue: 4, Pages: 277-287 |
| Further subjects: | B
Oath
B Anabaptism B Michael Sattler B Anarchism B Chantal Mouffe B Political |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The "propaganda by the deed" is a 19th-century anarchist notion emphasizing the communicative power of action in revealing the non-inevitability of human political organization. In this article, I offer a reading of the 1527 Schleitheim Confession in light of this notion. Schleitheim is similarly animated by an assertion of possibility: ecclesial and worldly sovereign order are not inevitable, but can be remade. Schleitheim gives us in detailed rigor techniques by which the ecclesiopolitical community can be shaped. In giving us these practices—including regulations on baptism, church discipline, and the election of leaders, among others—the text seems aware that this new community, too, is not inevitable. This becomes especially apparent in its closing statements, instructing its followers to refuse the swearing of oaths. Instead of such sovereign guarantees, it points toward the lived practice of the community as what we might call the confession by the deed, as a form of life that is never guaranteed, but must be lived, interminably to be restaged and reasserted. |
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| ISSN: | 2590-3268 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: NTT
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5117/NTT2023.4.006.HOOG |