On the wintry evening of January 21, 1525, as a group of religious resisters gathered in a home in Canton Zurich, Georg Blaurock decided to commit himself to the path that he and his friends had been discussing for some time, the idea that baptism ought to be a choice instead of something done to infants, automatically making the child a member of the state church. Blaurock turned to his friend Conrad Grebel and asked him to baptize him, and the circle proceeded to baptize each friend in turn.

This wasn’t just a spiritual whim. The act of baptizing adults was a statement that they no longer saw their allegiance to the church, which was an arm of the state. They knew that to take this bold step would make them enemies of the state, and being discovered could mean imprisonment, exile, or torture and death. But they went ahead, following the dictates of their consciences.

May we today be as willing to resist Christian Empire and follow our consciences over unjust and harmful laws.