Cathedrals, Castles, and Caves: The Origins of the Anabaptist Faith

by Marcus A. Yoder

Cathedrals, Castles & Caves follows the timeline from Christ to the birth of Anabaptism. Catch a glimpse of why men such as Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel were willing to lay down their lives for a Kingdom that was greater than any earthly empire. Discover the real reason they were such a drastic threat to the social, political, and religious order of the day.

Marcus A. Yoder, with his passion to preserve Anabaptist history, reveals the inception of a movement that changed not only the world in which it began but also our lives today. Writing in layman’s terms, he will take you on a journey from the Early Church to the Reformation. Discover why the weider-tauffer (re-baptizers) felt the need to break away from the established church to follow a path that was paved with persecution and martyrdom.

The pathway of history leads straight to our doorstep; the better we understand the past, the clearer the journey ahead.

228 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Charlie Plett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good history of the Anabaptists from the time of Jesus to 1569.

[John Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll link an interview with the author which gives details about the book that I don’t need to repeat. Overall, I enjoyed the book. Because I’ve taken several church history and historical theology classes and read many books on church history I was a little bored by the first half of the book. But when I started to see it’s value my interest perked up. The value is in seeing church history through the eyes of an Anabaptist who zeros in on events etc that became the soil out of which Anabaptistism grew and in a understanding how and why they believe what they believe. See the interview with the author say more about this in the interview. He doesn’t start talking about Anabaptism and it’s founders until page 100 or so. And he doesn’t focus on the founders, like Menno Simons whom he doesn’t say much about. Rather he mentions figures like Simons only as they are needed to tell the unified story of Anabaptists. Which I think was on purpose. There is no hero worship, like Calvin or Luther are venerated in Reformed circles, because Anabaptists are about community, humility and unity which really comes out when he talks about their time of persecution. If you want to know about the events and movements in the early church history that Anabaptism came out of and was a response to then you’ll like this book.

The book is written on maybe a high school/college level. It is easy reading.

https://amishamerica.com/marcus-a-yod...

[Daniel Allgäuer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this three stars, due to some of the redundancy and lack of concision, but considering the small size, it is a helpful telling of the Anabaptist history, especially for someone previously unfamiliar with Anabaptism.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review

The last half of the book was what I was interested in. How the Anabaptist came into being was my question. It’s interesting that rebaptism was so outlawed in the 1500’s-1600’s. Also Jesus was fully baptized in a river while the anabaptist believe in sprinkling adults. Overall it contained great information.