Radical
Anabaptist
The body at the far end of three axes at once, and the only one on this chart persecuted by every other body on it.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
Schleitheim in 1527 is seven short articles agreed by men in hiding, and it is the most radical document in this section by a distance. Baptism on profession of faith; a ban exercised by the congregation rather than a court; complete separation from the state church and from the sword. Each of those is the far end of an axis on the matrix below, which is what makes this body the useful outlier: it shows that the axes have ends, and that somebody stood at them.
On spirits the tradition is quiet in a way that is itself informative. A body with no priesthood, no diocesan structure and no liturgical books has no mechanism by which a rite of exorcism could be authorised, and none appears.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
Reformed · 1525Baptism, and behind it the question of whether a church may be coextensive with a society. The Zurich radicals held that baptism requires a profession an infant cannot make, and were drowned for it by the city that had just abolished the Mass.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Not established here. Not an exorcism question, and the one that decides the rest. A body holding the gifts ceased with the apostles has no room for a deliverance ministry; a body holding they continue has no reason to license one.
Who may act?
Not established here. The first thing a rite settles, usually in its opening rubric, and the sharpest divide between an office and a gift.
What counts as evidence?
Not established here. Where a tradition decides it is dealing with a spirit rather than an illness, a grief, or nothing at all.
Where is the spirit?
Not established here. All four inherit gospel scenes in which spirits are in people. What each adds beyond that is the largest difference between them.
Whom do the words address?
Not established here. A formal difference a reader can check by counting clauses rather than by weighing tone.
What restraint is written in?
Not established here. Every one of these traditions knows the practice can harm. What each does about that is what popular accounts leave out.
What closes the matter?
Not established here. Whether the encounter ends, and who declares it, separates a rite from an ongoing practice.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.