Lutherans Ask Forgiveness for 16th-Century Persecutions

Religion News Service reports that the Lutheran World Federation leaders plan to apologize for their predecessors' 16th-century persecution of Anabaptists, religious reformers whose successors include Mennonites and the Amish. "We ask for forgiveness -- from God and from our Mennonite sisters and brothers -- for the harm that our forebears in the sixteenth century committed to Anabaptists," says a statement adopted unanimously on Monday (Oct. 26) by the LWF's council. The apology is now recommended for formal adoption by the highest LWF governing body, its assembly, meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, in July 2010. Anabaptists, whose originally pejorative name means "re-baptizers", stressed the need to baptize Christian believers, including those who had been baptized as infants. They were persecuted as heretics by both Protestants and Catholics, and many of them fled to America.