Bordelumians

BORDELUMIANS: A separatistic sect formed at Bordelum, a village of Sleswick, about 1739, under the leadership of a pietistic Saxon theological student named David Bähr. They originally consisted of fifteen or twenty persons, and claimed to be saints who had advanced further than Paul according to Rom. vii, 24. Since they believed that they had received special gifts from God, they decried the Church as the house of the devil, and despised the sacramants. As being pure, to whom all things were pure, they rejected marriage in favor of free love, and instituted a communism of property for their financial support. An edict of Christian VI, issued June 11, 1739, condemned the leaders to imprisonment; those who had led an immoral life were punished according to the laws, and the remainder were admonished. The leaders managed to escape the punishment, however, Bähr, who had seduced a married woman, fleeing to Jena. Expelled from that city, he returned to Holstein, and was imprisoned at Glückstadt. Having become a cripple in consequence of the rough treatment to which he had been subjected in prison, he was released, and died wretchedly, still unconverted, at Bredstädt in 1743. His adherents caused much trouble to the pastor of Bordelum.

Paul Tschackert.

Bibliography: Acta historico-ecclesiastica, vol. v, part 29, p. 653 sqq., and Supplement, pp. 1014 sqq., 20 vols., Weimar, 1734–38, continued in 13 vols., till 1790.