Christendom was basically like the church was the structure of society, when you were baptized as an infant and written in the books that was like social security today. The anabaptists weren’t just so radical because they opposed theology, but because they protested the fundamental structure of how society was organized.

Also religion back then was like entertainment as well, people actually loved going to see preachers and they’d talk about them in the same way we talk about shows or movies now. It had that function in the society as sort of a language for discussing fundamental truths and life experience that people loved engaging in. They didn’t have a notion of a political or national identity, but they had a soul and all the stuff to do with that.