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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
In June 1924, Christian Neff, president of the Conference of South German Mennonites, sent an invitation to “all of the major Mennonite bodies around the world,” to participate in a world conference that would commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first Anabaptist rebaptisms. The meeting was to be held in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland. Whether or not the one hundred or so attendees at the June 1925 conference thought of themselves as pilgrims, the combination of the date and the locations defined this gathering in a way that at least subconsciously reflected the idea of pilgrimage. As both early and contemporary Christians have been fascinated with and have desired to visit places associated with biblical characters, and especially with Jesus, descendants of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists who planned the 1925 gathering were clearly reflecting on the importance of place to their faith. If they had not, they could have held the meeting solely in Basel, which met their need for a centrally located and easily accessible city to European Mennonites. Instead, they added Zurich, the place of the first Anabaptist rebaptisms in January 1525 and one of the earliest sites of Anabaptist martyrdom, to their meeting schedule.
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