Without Sovereign Guarantee: Reading Schleitheim on the Oath with Giorgio Agamben

This article relates Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of the oath to one
Anabaptist critique of oath swearing, namely the one found in the final article of the 1527 Schleitheim Confession. How might Agamben’s philosophical interpretation shed light on Schleitheim’s instruction to refuse oath swearing? And where might Schleitheim’s formulation challenge Agamben’s argument? Reading Schleitheim in light of Agamben’s formulation, we come to see how the confession’s refusal of oath swearing can be read as a critique of sovereignty and a re-envisioning of certitude and trust in a community without such enforced guarantees. This means oath refusal is far from an afterthought to more central Anabaptist concerns. Indeed, oath refusal can be seen as integral to, perhaps even exemplary of, the attempt to build a community under a sovereignty of a radically different kind.