The review and your words humble my heart. My favorite line is, “Maybe he’s spent too much time with us gays, actually - at his talk, some of his off-handed remarks about gay/Christian interactions were so straight-to-the-heart my partner and I spent half the time shaking with laughter, while all the sweet presumably straight Mennonites around us only smiled or mildly chuckled in a bit of vague confusion.” That compliment honestly means more to me than 99% of anything that is ever said about me!

Also, as with most cases when people comment on a post by someone who does “get the tension” or someone who lives in it each day, the sad part for me is the default conversation about sin and defined lines there-within. Sin is the same, and first thing each community fights about regarding homosexuality, thinking that one day they’ll systemically convince the other they are right and the other is wrong. That paradigm does nothing than tear us further apart.

I’m going to sound cheesy for a second, but we truly need to Elevate the Conversation otherwise I gaurentee you nothing will ever change and the culture war will deliniate itself further and further apart from Christ and onto all these other socially constructed things that we (both communities) have turned to for validation - and they don’t validate anything except our ineptitude for knowledge of Kingdom priorities.

Thanks again for your thoughts and I look forward to being in it with you!

All of this is alien to me.

So, whatever YAR believes, whatever vague “consensus” it comes to, would be appriciated by myself and, I assume, others who lurk here.

What do radical anabaptists believe about the Bible?

My sense is that we’ll have a hard time on consensus with THAT one even, considering that some see radical anabaptism as a jettisoning of creedal Christianity and a return to the radical (from radix meaning “root”) message of Jesus as shown in Scripture, presupposing that Scripture is if not inerrant, than at least authoritative.

However, I know there are folks on this blog who see the Bible as neither inerrant nor authoritative…hence the difficulty that might arise.

I, however, don’t really consider myself radical - and I’m barely anabaptist - so I’m probably not the best guide.

I don’t think YAR is the kind of community that is likely come up with some sort of consensus as to our view on anything, let alone what constitutes sin. What we do have is lots and lots of discussions. Rather then setting out any kind of doctrine, here’s a list of some of the conversations we’ve had over the years:

• Proposition Hate
• Mennonite Narratives on Heterosexual Privilege
• Tired
• Kill the Indian, Save the Man
• Complexity of Divisive Topics in Church
• “the homosexual lifestyle” – a rhetoric of bigotry
• the queer radical Mennonite conundrum

Perhaps some specifics?

I doubt Andrew Marin reads this website.

You’ll find many at YAR disagree with you that the Bible is clear about sin or what constitutes sin. Or that alleged clarity in the Bible should be directly applied to us today.