Wilhelm Reublin was the first known person to preach openly against the baptism of infants early in 1524 and practiced what he preached by refusing to baptize infants at the Easter service that spring. Parents who had to delay what to them meant the security of salvation for their newborn children were probably not pleased, even though he would have assured them that salvation did not depend on the application of water. His act of resistance was a break with over a thousand years of tradition. Easter this year is the 500th anniversary of that act of resistance.* A few months later Reublin was imprisoned for this act. It was almost a year later in Zurich that the now more famous incident took place with Conrad Grebel baptizing George Blaurock on January 21, 1525.

Reublin went on to become a pioneering, outspoken early Anabaptist leader. He was an idealist, not afraid to speak and act out when he saw religious and socio-economic injustices. Reublin traveled and ministered widely in Strasbourg, the Alsace, cities and towns in the Pallatinate of southern Germany, in the Black Forest, the Inn Valley of Austria, and east to Moravia. Reublin was influential in setting up the Schleitheim meetings where a historic agreement about church practices was penned in 1527.

In the movie, The Radicals, which features Michael and Margareta Sattler as the heroes of the Schleitheim story, Wilhelm Reublin is depicted as the more militant and outspoken counterfoil to Sattler’s more pious and pacifistic personality. This may have been accurate, and it is also true that in the 1530s Reublin left the Anabaptists and rejoined the Reformers, and perhaps even Catholicism in his dying days. It seems to have paid off literally and also with a long life and a dignified death.

The last half of his life has not left him in a positive light among later generations of Anabaptist. Did Reublin change churches and theology to avoid persecution? Did he sell out on his radical convictions for the sake of money and an easier life? Are we too hard on Reublin? Maybe there is a bit of Wilhelm Rueblin in all of us. How many of us in the modern era have switched churches or denominations to be more in line with our changing convictions? How many of us preachers and teachers have softened our messages to keep a job? How many of us have left a faith community where we did not feel appreciated? How many of us have worked hard to protect a nest egg for retirement?

Be easy on Wilhelm Reublin today and celebrate his courageous act of 500 years ago.

*Note: The Julian calendar, which was in use at the time, marks the 27th of March as the day of Easter in 1524. According to the Gregorian calendar, for use since 1582, it was March 30. 500 years later it is March 31.