I understand and respect the sentiment expressed by Skylark and Joe, that there is a need for a space where younger voices can be heard. I just entered my own response to the “YAR or OAR” poll in the 46-55 bracket, and I am grateful for the expressions of welcome to participate. I’ll be content, for now, to listen more than to speak, since I have a great deal of curiosity about what YARS are thinking and feeling these days.

First question: are YARs “evangelical”, or not? I suppose that might make them YEARs, and the YEARs in turn might make them OARs, but that’s a separate question.

Many if not most OARs considered themselves throughly “evangelical”. Menno Simons, I think, helped define the term with his statement “True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant, but must feed the hungry, etc..”

Nelson Kraybill (AMBS honcho) who is my age, also embraces the term “evangelical”, but he reports that when he mentioned to a young person (perhaps a YAR?) that he had just attended a “Fellowship of Evangelical Seminary Presidents”, that person “looked at me as though I had been to an island with the bubonic plague.” Do a google on the title “Is Our Future Evangelical” to read the article.

Is the term losing its appeal? Perhaps because it has been “hijacked”? If so, what should our relationship be to it now?

Listening,

-Mfalme

Hello all, I’m new here but uncertain whether or not I am welcome to participate, since my DoB was in 1954. looking at your blog’s title, I see that “anabaptist” and “radical” are things that I might choose to be, but “young” is not, unless it is used in a figurative sense.

At what age does eligibility end, and what happens to your users when they reach that point? I must say that for a group of this type the exclusionary nature of the name seems dissonant with the blog’s overall theme and tone. “Young Anabaptist Radicals” contains just as strong a disinvitation to older folks, as a hypothetical “White Anabaptist Radical” site would for people of color.

-Mfalme