Finding a New Anabaptist Narrative

In seminary I have spent a lot of time discussing and exploring the whole question of what Anabaptist distinctives mean for today, especially as we Mennonites relate to the broader culture and try to figure out our identity in a post-Christendom era. I have found Stanley Hauerwas to be a helpful thinker for sorting out this issue and speaking to the church’s relationship to culture.

We Mennonites like this dude. He is a feisty pacifist, likes to criticize the Constantinian church and cites Yoder left and right. We like to identify ourselves with him as somebody that gets that the crucial aspect of the church as needing to be different from the status quo and, especially, that whole ‘nonviolence is the hallmark of the Christian life’[1] thing. 

Like us, Hauerwas recognizes that an antiquated problem of the Church is its ready subscription to a Constantinian view of Christianity. So why does he hark time and time again that the story of Christianity should be fundamentally anchored in the story of Jesus and the Gospels? Does that apply to Mennonites? Isn’t that inherently what our distinctives help us out with? Wouldn’t he see for example peace theology as a form of immunization for the church against the dominate culture? In 1995, he writes to the situation Anabaptists find themselves in:

Ironically, the Anabaptists now live in a world which they said they wanted – that is, a world in which no one is forced either by the government or by societal expectations to be Christians – but you, as well as the churches of Christendom you opposed, are ill prepared for such a world. You have won the war, largely for reasons beyond your control, but in winning you have become unintelligible to your selves by making a fetish of those aspects of your lives that seemed so important for the last war. For example, ‘voluntary church membership’ was a prophetic challenge against mainstream Christianity, but once Christendom is gone the call for voluntary commitment cannot help but appear as a legitimation of the secular commitment to autonomy. In a Christendom world it took conviction to be a pagan or an Anabaptist, but given the world in which we are now living it is hard to distinguish pagans from Anabaptists.[2]

Hauerwas is not saying that Anabaptists are somehow pagan; rather he is saying that the onus is now on Anabaptists to distinguish anew their identity and vocation in a post-Christian era. He implies, with his choice of the word “pagan,” that Anabaptists are in need of finding ways to center their convictions again in Christian terms, precisely because Anabaptist distinctives—like the belief in social justice, peacemaking and the rejection of the Christian status quo—have such mainstream appeal. Hauerwas brings up a central issue that I hope to illuminate, namely that we no longer are in the business of distinguishing ourselves from a normative Christian culture, but that we now need to distinguish ourselves from a pagan culture.

For Mennonites we have a unique set of challenges that accompany a post-Christendom shift. In fact, when we are honest, the implications of a changed Christendom present us with the similar sensation of disorientation, dissonance, disruption and disestablishment that is evidently present in the mainline traditions. John Hall Douglas gives a succinct account of the context we face:

The extremity within which the disciple community in North America finds itself today is not only the end of an age, it is also the end of a long and deeply entrenched form of the church. The single most far-reaching ecclesiastical factor conditioning theological reflection in our time is the effective disestablishment of the Christian religion in the Western world by secular, political, and alternative religious forces.[3]

The narrative of the Christian status quo has lost its storyline, and through that so has the Anabaptist point of reference in its own narrative. So in an odd way the church that always saw itself as marginalized is now experiencing a form of disestablishment. By no longer being able to identify ourselves as the subplot over and against the broader narrative of Christianity in the West, Mennonites are also entering a period of disestablishment. What will our distinctive of peace and nonviolence mean in a post-Christendom era? What will our narrative of being the counter-Christendom church mean in the new post-Constantinian chapter of Christianity? 

In the recent publication on the profile of Mennonite Church USA, Conrad Kanagy outlines the current context of the Mennonite church. Among other trends, he reports that there is an overall decline in membership, increased urbanization, cultural assimilation, increasingly aging demographic, less commitment to the Anabaptist identity, and disengagement of young adults. 

He writes as a way to move forward, Mennonites need to address “the disruption that we feel and the chaos we fear, and it means overcoming our tendencies to ‘default’ to our previous understandings of the church under Christendom.”[4] We need to figure out anew the meaning of church today in new ways and ways that acknowledge the continuity Mennonites share with the rest of Christianity. In the wake of a collapsing Christendom, “the world we always wanted” does not give us relief from the task of fundamentally discerning what the meaning and mission of the church is today.

In a post-this, post-that world, Christianity cannot be assumed as normative anymore. I think this is where Hauerwas sums up well what we are facing. He observes that “the challenge facing Anabaptists is to discover the implications of living in a world in which they have won.”[5] In this way, I believe we need to reexamine our Anabaptist identity in light of a new context and envision a new narrative that sustains the church through the process of disestablishment; a narrative that radically situates our distinctives within the particularity of Christian faith. 


Now, I believe Anabaptism will be a tremendous resource for many in our post-this, post-that world, precisely because of distinctives like community, discipleship, and peacemaking. But for for all my Anabaptist/Mennonite homies out there, we need to learn to distinguish ourselves as Christians and move away from the practiced reflex of distinguishing ourselves from Christianity. 

For some more thoughts along these lines, check out my friend's article in the Mennonite Weekly Review.

[1] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), xxiv.
[2] ———, "Whose Church? Which Future?: Whither the Anabaptist Vision?," in In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 73.
[3] Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg ; Fortress Press, 1989), 200-01. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997).
[4] Conrad L. Kanagy, Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2007), 193-94.
[5] Hauerwas, "Confession of a Mennonite Camp Follower," 521.

Early Church History Rant: Part Deux

My friend, Matt Krabill, and I spent about an hour last night rehashing our Early Church History course. We became fairly immersed in the subject, that we about missed out on the fondue meal with a group of friends. As we stood in the kitchen, people kept beckoning us to come and partake of the gooey, cheesy goodness before it disappeared.

This engrossment has become common nature recently. Early Church History has held me in a trance now for the past few weeks. I tend to go off about it whenever I get the chance, which many of my friends can attest to. Since I am running out of people who will humor my fixation, I need to resort to blogging. In continuance of my previous post, here goes rant two on Early Church History...

The main critique I have is not of my professor or of my class that I took. Like I mentioned Yesterday, I felt like I have learned heaps. Part of that learning involves being taught a historical perspective that is fairly normative in its approach. This is the story of how church and Christianity developed in the West and how the West tends to remember that story. That normative approach offers me a conversation partner as I sift out my thoughts on the historical narrative of Christianity.

The main critique I have is that this history is taught with the same absence of consciousness of the culture question that was lacking in what developed into the Christendom understanding of Christianity. Christendom was a cheery place where the Christian faith became equated with society and culture. Of course it is more complex than this, but the fundamental issues remain. The engagement of the gospel in culture ceased to cause tension and a society, with a healthy homogeneity of absolute Christianity, tended to view the need for engagement, or mission, as moot.

Christendom rendered the cultural interaction with Christianity as a neutral encounter, which lead to the perception that truth is also neutrally intelligible apart from culture and contains universal application. This was evident, especially, as Christianity expanded from the West to other parts of the world. As Christianity became firmly grounded in a territorial conceptualization, expansion of the church piggybacked the whim of empire. Christianity became to be understood as universally normative according to the Western experience and perspective, much to the eternal joy of the world’s “unreached” peoples.

A good example of the culture question being being overlooked is the American context. American Christians tend to neglect the way our culture informs our understanding of Christianity. Coupled with the Christendom legacy of Christianity being somehow culturally neutral, American Christians often face a double whammy, in that we assume our cultural narrative is neutral as well. Part of the way we understand that neutrality is that our values are espoused to be universally normative. Think of our civil religion of liberty, freedom and democracy. We see those issues as either disembodied from our culture as universal truths or the other way around, as universal truths embodied in our culture.

Another example of the culture informing the context of church history is the impact of German nationality as the catalyst for the Reformation. I would argue that the Reformation was not absent of political or cultural influence. Of course the theological confrontation was the heart of the issue, but German nationality became a major rallying point behind the emergence of a major change in the church. Rome was exercising dominion, politically and religiously, over the German people. The translation of the Bible into German, Luther's theological challenge to the religious status quo of Rome, the German princes chaffing under foreign rule, all led to the convergence of political, religious, cultural, and social factors uniting against papal authority. The Reformation did not take place in a theological vacuum.

Granted, we all approach history from where we stand. My professor comes out of the reform tradition. For him, the reform becomes the definitive event in the trajectory of Christian history. Therefore, the doctrinal development of the Early Church becomes paramount to the theological clash of the Reformation. For me as an Anabaptist, it is easy to see the course of Christian history resulting in the need for a restoration. This of course informs my historical understanding. However, when we approach history without asking the culture question, I believe it can result in the blindsides of Christendom.

The world is changing and the gospel is becoming couched in cultures all over the world. Today it is absolutely impossible to avoid the cultural question. As the church expands, the integration and re-translation of the gospel is automatically present. There is no ambiguity about culture shaping and informing Christianity today. In fact, in a post-Christian west we are becoming more keenly aware of the non-Western Christian influence on the global church. In a post-Christendom West, we are finally asking the culture question of how the gospel can engage our contexts missionally.

This is my beef. It is apparent to me that no time in Christian history is it somehow removed from the culture question. Church does not take place in a vacuum. There is always the variable of culture.

See, what started with a simple discourse on Early Christian History, turned into a seriously long rant on what is wrong with the world... People like me shouldn't be allowed to blog.

Anabaptist post-counter-Christendom Witness

The challenge to the next Anabaptist generation, missiologically, is redefining relevant witness of the Anabaptist vision. Broadly speaking, the Anabaptist tradition originated from a movement that was fundamentally and radically alternate to the Christendom concept of Christianity. In some sense, Anabaptism and its numerous offshoots, represents a theology and confession that is counter-Christendom in nature and today a perspective and tradition that could be increasingly perceived as a relevant expression of church and faith in a postmodern, post-Christian and post-Christendom context.

For many who are seeking answers to faith, connection with Christ and a sense of community, Anabaptism has provided a relevant theology to connect with. Let me emphasis the point that it is the theology, ecclesiology, high Christology all rooted in a distinct sense of Christian community and counter cultural outlook that is appealing and attractive to those newly exposed to the Anabaptist tradition. Whereas historically, theology and the "radical" confession differed greatly from the surrounding culture, and theology ultimately provided the greatest barrier to mission and engagement. Today, those very aspects, the counter-Christendom church and witness, is what is in its essence attractive. What used to be a barrier is not experienced in the same degree today.

Additionally attractive, Anabaptism is a tradition that is free of much of the baggage of the Christian historical enterprise. However it is a tradition that is bogged down in the legacy of non-missional engagement and a sense of identity based on maintaining stolid distinctiveness in the face of dominant Christianity. Persistence of this mode of non-engagement in our pluralistic, multi-cultural, globalized world raises the question of relevant witness when those outside forces of Christendom do not exist anymore.

The challenge then is not our theology, being Christ centered in our witness or confessing our identity as Christian. No, the challenge is the baggage of having a community that traditionally operates in isolation and tends to be missionally un-engaging. The baggage is our own sense of community and identity, buttressed by ethnicity and tradition that were created in the maintenance mode of the hundreds of years by being the counter-Christendom church amidst the dominant Christian world. This culture of maintenance provides the contemporary Anabaptist community a significant barrier to missional engagement and our perceived relevance to the Christian presence in the world. Why? Because to be separate in a world connected is theologically expressed as non-participation in God's Kingdom. Not actively living out our faith or engaging would be a fundamental missed opportunity for relevant contribution of the Anabaptist vision at our crossroads in history. In a world, where it is nigh impossible to remain aloof or impossible to not tangle with the infringement of modern culture, "separate, but not of the world," needs to be redefined. It can only be tackled if we start moving from maintenance to missional engagement. That means redefining our identity to one rooted in theology not our cultural tradition. So 1) Theology is the vibrant part of our history and tradition that provides us with the means to engage. 2) In a world increasingly becoming more interconnected, non-engagement or not "rubbing shoulders" with world around , imparts a a disconnect between faith with relevancy, especially for Mennonites. Living out the Anabaptist vision in a post-Christendom context beckons Anabaptists to engage in order to keep the Anabaptist vision relevant.