Peter Riedemann: a confession written in captivity

Peter Riedemann was an Anabaptist minister and missionary whose life included repeated imprisonment. At the age of twenty-three he wrote a confession in an Austrian castle tower; that work is now published in English as Love Is Like Fire. His writing connected faith in Christ with believers’ baptism, nonviolence, sharing, and the restoration of New Testament church life.

The Hutterite history remembers him as the author of the Rechenschaft, or Confession of Faith, among the missionaries who carried the message beyond their communities despite capture and suffering. Riedemann spent about nine years of his life in prison. He died in 1556 at a Hutterian community in Slovakia. His place on the timeline points to both the written teaching and the costly witness that sustained the brotherhood.