In Zurich’s city-state, as in the rest of the Christian world, every newborn child was baptized and considered a member of the church. As a result, church and society were identical. The church was simply everybody’s church. In the New Testament, however, the church was a fellowship of the few, a company of true believers committed to live and die for their Lord. That is the kind of church Grebel and Manz wanted in Zurich, a church free from the state, composed of true disciples. The baptism of believers was merely the most striking feature of this new kind of church. Zwingli, however, would
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