The Naked Anabaptist

The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith

Stuart Murray

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780836199840
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Denominazioni cristiane

Click here to read the introduction to The Naked Anabaptist.

In churches and kitchens and neighborhood centers across the world, communities of Jesus-followers are crafting a vision of radical service, simple living, and commitment to peace. Many are finding a home in a Christian tradition almost five centuries old: Anabaptism.

Who are the Anabaptists? What do they believe? Where did they come from? What makes them different from other Christians? And can you become an Anabaptist without leaving your own church?

Follow Stuart Murray as he peels back the layers to reveal the core convictions of Anabaptist Christianity, a way of following Jesus that challenges, disturbs, and inspires. Glimpse an alternative to nationalistic, materialistic, individualistic Christian faith. If you are seeking a community of authentic discipleship, heartfelt worship, sacrificial service, and radical peacemaking, consider this your invitation.

This new edition features:

• Voices and stories from North America and the global church.
• Updated and expanded definition and discussion of Christendom.
• Updated resource section.

Free downloadable study guide available here.

1

Uncovering Anabaptists

Anabaptists All Over the Place

“The Anabaptists are back!” announced an American author a few years ago in a book with this title.¹ He was intrigued by growing interest in the Anabaptist tradition in North America, where Mennonite, Hutterite, and Amish communities have long been part of the religious scene. Christians from many other traditions were discovering the practices and convictions of these quiet, often withdrawn communities—and finding them surprisingly relevant in contemporary culture. Something similar seems to have been happening in Britain and Ireland. Anabaptists are becoming visible in a society where, unlike in North America, they were not part of the religious scene until recently.

The Anabaptist Network was launched in 1991 to serve Christians from many churches and denominations in Britain and Ireland who had stumbled across Anabaptism and wanted more resources and opportunities to learn together. During the past twenty or so years, many others have joined the network or have contacted us with comments or questions that have become familiar:

• “I’m so relieved to find others who believe what I do. People in my church think I’m crazy when I go on about these things.”
• “You Anabaptists seem to be popping up all over the place.”
• “What is an Anabaptist?”
• “What do Anabaptists think about …?”
• “Where is the nearest Anabaptist church to me?”

Our first attempt to respond to this interest and answer these questions was a collection of stories, published in 2000 under the title Coming Home: Stories of Anabaptists in Britain and Ireland.² Anabaptism is a story-rich tradition, so presenting the stories of about sixty Christians who identified with the Anabaptist tradition seemed appropriate. These stories recount how the contributors discovered Anabaptism and what attracted them.

The theme of coming home emerged so often in these stories that it became the title of the book. It was not that the Anabaptists were “back”—there had hardly been any Anabaptists in Britain and Ireland for the past four centuries—but that those who discovered Anabaptism experienced this encounter, as I did, as a homecoming. Here were other Christians who shared our convictions about discipleship, community, peace, and mission.

In the past few years Anabaptists have become even more visible—and vocal—in Britain and Ireland. We have continued to organize conferences and study groups in different parts of the country, but there is also now a consortium of a dozen or more Anabaptist-
flavored organizations involved in all kinds of activities, ranging from church planting to training programs, conflict transformation to media work, restorative justice and peacemaking to a political think tank. There is also an emerging network of communities—study groups, emerging churches, and more established congregations—that is drawing on Anabaptist perspectives and learning together. And we have received invitations to contribute an Anabaptist perspective in books and conversations on various subjects, including church and state, the atonement, diaconal ministry, the Alpha course, and the emerging church.

Surprisingly for a tradition routinely accused of being sectarian, interest in Anabaptism today is remarkably ecumenical and boundary crossing. On the Anabaptist Network’s website are stories of Christians from several denominations who have been drawn to Anabaptism. Although many are from evangelical backgrounds, Christians from liberal, charismatic, Reformed, Pentecostal, Catholic, and Anglo-Catholic backgrounds are also represented. This strange ecumenism is worrying to some but deeply attractive to others. Writers from many traditions have spoken warmly of Anabaptism, some suggesting it is a movement whose time has come and a way of being Christian that makes sense in post-Christendom culture.

In some European languages there is no distinction between Christianity and Christendom, but it is vital that we differentiate these terms. Christendom was the way in which the Christian faith was embodied in European culture in the centuries after Constantine made Christianity the imperial religion. It was a historical era, a geographical region, a political arrangement, and an ideology. Within the boundaries of Christendom, almost all were assumed to be Christian and dissent was suppressed. Christendom was a remarkable attempt to Christianize a whole culture, but partnership with the state resulted in collusion with status, wealth, imposition, and violence. This Christendom ideology was exported to other parts of the world, including North America, although it took shape differently in these contexts. Post-Christendom is the culture that emerges as this long era of church history comes to an end and we explore alternative, and perhaps more authentic, ways of being Christians in societies we no longer control.³

We have also noticed that a number of people attending our conferences have had no recent church connection. Indeed, some would not call themselves Christians at all. I had a conversation at one event with an anarchist who was fascinated by the Anabaptist tradition. And one of the stories on the website was written by an ex-atheist ex-Buddhist, who has found through Anabaptism an authentic Christian faith.

So when we hear that Anabaptists are “popping up all over the place” in Britain and Ireland, we understand why some might think this. But the Anabaptist tradition is still a minority voice here. Some of us are happy to be known as Anabaptists, but many others resist this tag and prefer to talk about the positive impact of Anabaptism on their thinking and practice as Catholics, Baptists, or Methodists. A tiny number of local churches identify themselves explicitly as Anabaptist, but several others have embraced Anabaptist values and introduced Anabaptist processes and resources.

So, if Anabaptists are “all over the place,” we are spread pretty thinly in Britain and Ireland, and we are often not that obvious. This may explain the diverse comments and questions we receive from some who are relieved to find us and from others who are surprised we exist. There is more chance now of uncovering Anabaptists, in person or in print, but who are we and what do we believe? The Naked Anabaptist is an attempt to answer these questions.

Bumping into Anabaptists

The first edition of this book highlighted many ways in which persons in Britain and Ireland might have unwittingly bumped into Anabaptists. In North America it is much easier to find institutional expressions of Anabaptism—Mennonite churches, schools, colleges, and other organizations; Amish and Hutterite communities; Brethren in Christ and Church of the Brethren congregations; and many other agencies. But Anabaptists in these communities and institutions are not evenly represented across North America, so it is perhaps not surprising that those who are new to the tradition sometimes encounter it in less institutional ways or through organizations or communities that are not explicitly Anabaptist but have been deeply influenced by this tradition.

You might have heard about the activities of Christian Peacemaker Teams as they deploy groups to “get in the way” and stand in solidarity with oppressed communities in conflict zones. But you may not know that this organization was founded in response to a challenge to go beyond pacifism to costly peacemaking made by Ron Sider at an Anabaptist gathering in 1984. He said:

Over the past 450 years of martyrdom, immigration and missionary proclamation, the God of shalom has been preparing us Anabaptists for a late twentieth-century rendezvous with history…. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way to peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken. We must take up our cross and follow Jesus to Golgotha. We must be prepared to die by the thousands. Those who believed in peace through the sword have not hesitated to die. Proudly, courageously, they gave their lives. Again and again, they sacrificed bright futures to the tragic illusion that one more righteous crusade would bring peace in their time, and they laid down their lives by the millions. Unless we … are ready to start to die by the thousands in dramatic vigorous new exploits for peace and justice, we should sadly confess that we never really meant what we said.⁴

You might have read about the tragic shooting of Amish schoolchildren in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in October 2006—and the startling response of this very traditional Anabaptist community as its members quickly expressed forgiveness toward the gunman and reached out in compassion toward his family. Or you might have been aware of the Amish already if you saw the 1985 film Witness, starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis. But you may have associated this community with buggies and bonnets, not with Anabaptism.

If you participate in what is variously called the “emerging church conversation” or the “missional church conversation,” you are probably aware of Brian McLaren’s writings. His book A Generous Orthodoxy includes Anabaptism as one of the traditions he values.⁵ Elsewhere he writes, “Anabaptists know things that all of us need as we slide or run or crawl or are dragged into the postmodern world.”⁶ He claimed some years ago in an interview that “Emergent represents a rediscovery of the Anabaptist spirit. It’s very hard in other Protestant denominations to find people who take Jesus as teacher deeply seriously, and take Jesus’ teachings and the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ example of nonviolence, seriously.”⁷ Other popular North American writers who have commended Anabaptism include Greg Boyd, Scot McKnight, Brian Zahnd, Shane Claiborne, Bruxy Cavey, and David Fitch.

Greg Boyd’s story has impacted many in North America. The pastor of Woodland Hills, a megachurch in St. Paul, Minnesota, he refused to support the American invasion of Iraq. He ended up preaching a sermon series on the kingdom of God and writing a book called The Myth of a Christian Nation, arguing that the path of military domination is diametrically opposite of Jesus’ way of peace in the kingdom of God.⁸ One thousand members left the church as a result. He has embraced the Anabaptist tradition and is in the process of discerning with his congregation how to connect with an Anabaptist fellowship or denomination. I am grateful to him for writing the foreword to this book.

You might be aware of, or have participated in, events organized by the Missio Alliance, an interdenominational evangelical movement that is “seeking to launch an initiative that offers in-depth theological and practical direction for the many pastors and leaders attempting to navigate the challenges of ministry in a post-
Christianizing era.”⁹ This movement draws gratefully on Anabaptist convictions, and its major conference in September 2013, according to one of its organizers, “provided a space to explore and advance the upsurge of interest there seems to be in Anabaptism in various quarters of North American evangelicalism.”

You might have come across the Mennonite Worker in Minneapolis, an Anabaptist community with some parallels to the longer-established Catholic Worker Communities. Founded in 2004, the community is described on their website as “an urban intentional community and Mennonite congregation that includes residential members and members who live nearby.” Its members are committed to “following Jesus’ way of simplicity (seeking a sustainable life with a healthy relationship to possessions), hospitality (inviting friends and strangers to share life together), prayer (being rooted in life-giving spiritual rhythms), peace (breaking our addiction to power as we get in the way of violence and injustice), and resistance (naming and challenging oppression wherever we find it as we seek to embody an alternative).”¹⁰ Most Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites are located in rural or suburban contexts: this and other expressions of urban Anabaptism present an important challenge to engage with poorer, more diverse, and more marginal communities.

You might have encountered Anabaptism via the MennoNerds website, which notes “the increasing interest in Anabaptist contributions to global Christianity” and summarizes its current vision in this way: “We will be a ‘go to’ place for people to hear what Anabaptist-minded folks have to say about issues of the day, about theological thought, about Biblical interpretation, and about living out life, all from a perspective that has an Anabaptist flavor and feel, but with a recognition and reverence of the wide diversity of race/ethnicity, gender, generation, and theology found in the Anabaptist stream.”¹¹

If you are interested in church history, especially in the Reformation era in Europe during the early sixteenth century, you may have encountered references to the Anabaptists as a “third way” that was neither Catholic nor Protestant. If you studied some time ago, these might have been only passing references or footnotes. If there was more, it might well have been an account of the reign of terror a renegade band of Anabaptists imposed on the city of Münster in the mid-1530s. Most church history textbooks and courses now offer a more balanced treatment of early Anabaptist history, but old caricatures still appear in unexpected places.

If you are interested in theology or ethics, you may have read books or articles by authors such as Stanley Hauerwas, James McClendon, and John Howard Yoder. Hauerwas is an Episcopalian who taught at a Methodist university, McClendon was a Baptist, and Yoder was a Mennonite, but all three drank deeply of the Anabaptist tradition, and their writings reflect this.¹² Alternatively, you might have encountered Anabaptism through the increasing pushback from neo-Calvinist writers concerned about the growing appeal of Anabaptism, such as Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine.¹³

If cooking and hospitality appeal to you more than theology and ethics, you might have encountered Anabaptism without realizing it in various cookbooks, especially the More-with-Less Cookbook by a Mennonite, Doris Janzen Longacre.¹⁴ When we invited people in Britain and Ireland to tell their stories in Coming Home, we asked which books (if any) had introduced them to Anabaptism. The top two were John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus and the More-with-Less Cookbook.

If you are interested in art, you might be aware that Rembrandt painted a portrait of the Mennonite preacher Cornelis Claesz Anslo and his wife and that Rembrandt himself had links with the Mennonites in the seventeenth century. Indeed, some even suspected Rembrandt of being an Anabaptist himself—almost certainly wrongly, although he was undoubtedly sympathetic to the movement.

If you are interested in issues of crimi...