Day 07 - Zurich: Lindenhof, Grossmunster Cathedral, Felix Manz Memorial, Grotto of Baeretswil

Today was a great day in Zurich. This morning, Pastor Justin walked us through a bit of an overview of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. The term "Anabaptist" means "Re-Baptizer." These were the men and women who believed baptism should only be done after someone was old enough to be able to understand and profess their faith in Jesus Christ (aka "credobaptism"). While this belief and practice is fairly common within many evangelical denominations today, in this time it was a radical, non-mainstream view. And as a result, the Anabaptists became greatly persecuted within their own reformed movement. In light of this, many of them had to flee and go underground (some, literally!). So we had the opportunity to hike into a forest, up in the Swiss hillside, to see for ourselves the Tauferhöhle (“Secret Anabaptist Hideout”). It's literally a grotto, or cave, where the Anabaptists would gather for church. It was a really powerful moment for us all to be in the cave, singing and praying together, while considering the lengths the persecuted church had to go to, just to worship without threat of persecution.

After visiting the Tauferhöhle, we descended back down the hillside into the heart of the city of Zurich. This is the home of Ulrich Zwingli, the man responsible for sparking much of the Swiss Reformation. We visited the Grossmunster church where Zwingli pastored. It was here that he became one of the first Reformers to begin preaching expositorily through the New Testament, verse by verse (starting with the Gospel of Matthew), rather than just reading through the Catholic lectionary, as his predecessors did. This provided his congregation the opportunity to see & hear for themselves, the doctrines of Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus, & Soli Deo Gloria. 

We also saw the dark side of these reformers, such as the memorial of Felix Manz; the anabaptist who was drowned in the Limmat river, in the shadow of Zwingli's church. There we reinforced the idea that even in the midst of a reformation, there is still always more reforming that needs to be done. 

Tonight we finish up our last night in Zurich, and then tomorrow we're off to the Trachselwald Castle in the old town of Bern.