What a great story. I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed out loud when reading a comment on YAR.

Shortly after 9/11 happened, a Mormon co-worker discovered the Mennonites and Quakers are pacifists. So, he felt the need to stand in my office door taunting me. He said, “So, I could punch you right in the face and you couldn’t do anything about it?”

I told him that 1) I could have him fired for creating a hostile work enviroment, 2) I only believe it is unconditionally wrong for Christian to deliberately kill another human being. If we are truly created in the image of God, and we deliberately kill another human, haven’t we struck out at the very image of God? However, I could kick his butt all day long as long as I didn’t kill him. He said he thought I was kidding. I said, “I think you should try me.” He didn’t bother me anymore after that.

Jason

Jason

I appreciate your observations and questions about the future of Anabaptism. I welcome these “new Anabaptists” — I hope they will infuse the “passive-aggressive” Mennonites with new energy and vitality. I don’t think Mennonites are the same group we were twenty years ago – the largest Mennonite denomination in the world is not in North America, but the Pentecostal-influenced Ethiopian church. What it means to be “Mennonite” or “Anabaptist” is changing and I think many of us who are “ethnically Mennonite” are unprepared for these shifts.

I am about as “ethnic Mennonite” as they come. My father was Amish until age 5 when his parents left for the Conservative Mennonites and both of my parents grew up wearing plain dress. I have mixed feelings about my own heritage – on the one hand I feel proud of where I come from, on the other, I carry significant cultural baggage from a sectarian group that has often not lived up to the ideals it professed.

I have a number of responses on why I feel that the non-violent Anabaptist stuff is so complicated among those of us who are ethnically Mennonite. As a historically sectarian, ethnic group, we are a complicated landscape (minefield?) for someone to navigate through.

There’s a broad range and diversity among self-identified Anabaptist groups and people. I remember the shock of one of my Methodist seminary friends when they realized that some Mennonites supported George Bush and the Iraq War. Neither John Howard Yoder or MCUSA represent the experience and beliefs of all Mennonites or Anabaptists.

There’s a difference between inherited tradition and chosen tradition. You chose Anabaptism; I was born into it. You write that one of the things that attracted you was the emphasis on non-conformity. My own family history has been marked by the trauma of this non-conformity, because while Mennonite communities sought non-conformity with the World, the community themselves were intense systems of conformity.

For example, the ban (i.e. “shunning”) was developed by the Anabaptists as an alternative to violence – it was better than violence to maintain the community’s boundaries. However, throughout Anabaptist history, the ban has often been cause relational rifts and brokenness. When my grandparents left the Amish, my grandmother’s side of the family refused to talk to my grandparents anymore. There is something about that experience that I think was incredibly traumatic to my father’s family.

The kind of activist-pacifism Yoder describes is relatively new to Mennonites. Prior to WWII, Swiss-German US Mennonites embraced a concept called “non-resistant pacifism.” They sought to emulate Christ, who did not resist his crucifixion, yet at the same time recognized that the State had the right to use force in order to maintain order. Since the political order has to use violence, Christians should not participate in that order – they should neither vote nor serve in the military.

After WWII, “mainline Mennonites” (i.e. General Conference and old Mennonite Church) became more politically involved due to a new service ethic that had emerged out of the Alternative Service experience. At some point, many Mennonites felt it was not enough to simply “feed the poor” but also to ask why the “poor were poor.” These kinds of questions are political in nature and led to greater political involvement. Yoder both influenced and was a sign of this shift.

What’s interesting that even though conservative Mennonite groups (like Conservative Mennonite Conference and the Biblical Mennonite Alliance) claim to embody traditional Mennonite beliefs, they typically do not practice non-resistant pacifism either. I feel it’s one thing to recognize that the State needs to use violence, it’s another to support that violence. Since 9/11, I have seen my conservative relatives enthusiastically support both the Bush administration and the Iraq War.

There was an interesting article published about a year ago in the Brotherhood Beacon (the denominational magazine of the CMC) that asked “Is CMC Losing Its Peace Theology?” The article interviewed two of my second cousins — we are descendants of a Bender family that helped found the Greenwood Mennonite School in Delaware during the 1920’s after Mennonite children were kicked out of the public school system for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The article notes an ambiguity towards pacifism among my relatives and cites cultural pressures and outside influence as the cause.

Thanks again for your comments. I think that it’s important for those of us who are ethnically Mennonite to no longer be the sole gatekeepers of the Anabaptist tradition. Please continue to talk to us, we do need to hear what you have to say.