Experiencing the Lenten season in Palestine is unique. It carries with it incredible feelings of closeness and concreteness as one visits sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem — the site where Christians believe Jesus Christ was crucified, buried and resurrected. Yet, those feelings of closeness are easily swallowed up by a sense of separation and forsakenness as one considers the current situation.

In the recently released Kairos Palestine Document, Palestinian Christians take this situation as their starting point in challenging theological interpretations of those “who use the Bible to threaten our existence as Christian and Muslim Palestinians,” trying to “attach a biblical and theological legitimacy to the infringement of our rights.”

Though Easter and its celebration of resurrection and new life defines Christianity, in a place like Palestine the season of Lent always seems more appropriate. Lent is a time of preparation in expectation for Easter. It is a time marked by fasting and other acts of penance with the practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving signifying the pursuit of justice toward God, oneself and one’s neighbour.

With restrictions on movement and the denial of freedom of religion, this sense of Easter celebration delayed and Lenten season prolonged characterises much of life in the ‘Holy Land.’ Indeed, as Palestinians remember more than 40 years of occupation and more than 60 years of Nakba (catastrophe), the ongoing experiences of dispossession and justice delayed are all too real.

Palestinian livelihoods continue to be devastated as more land is being expropriated for the construction of a 430-mile or 700-kilometre barrier that has little to do with security and terrorism, built not on the ‘Green Line’ but instead on Palestinian land. As it cuts deeply into the West Bank, the Wall forms the borders of what some call ‘reservations’, isolated islands of land on roughly 40 to 50 per cent of the West Bank where Palestinians are confined.

Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people. (Luke 2.10)

For Christians, the words from Luke’s gospel hold the core of our faith: that God so loved the world that God came into the world in Christ to be born in our midst to embody hope and new life. During this sombre time of Lent, we look to Jerusalem and wait with eager anticipation for signs of new life.

Yet, even as we wait, do we listen to the voices of the children of Jerusalem today who still wait: for justice, for peace, for basic human rights, for a sign that the world hears them, trapped behind concrete walls and locked into tiny enclaves? When they hear the words of the angels: “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people,” they wonder when this promise might include them, too.

What does it mean for us to proclaim this “good news?”

(see the rest of the article here, if you wish)

This is, firstly, a ‘howdy’ from Southeast Asia – northern Laos (Vientiane), at the moment. Secondly, it is a more direct plug for BikeMovement Asia, recently alluded to indirectly on this site by Hinke, Jason and possibly others. Thirdly, it is a suggestion that BikeMovement – in its attempt to draw out individual and collective stories – is one way to approach the theological/social ‘doing’ that is being reckoned with in conversations here. BikeMovement Asia does a lot of talking too. The same sort of talking/analyzing that happens on this sort of site. But we live the stories as well. I don’t know what it means for you all there, experiencing it all in a sort of ‘second-hand’ way, but I would like to invite you to look more closely at what BikeMovement has done and is doing… We have pictures and journals and other information on our website.

Then there’s a question that has come up for me – maybe the most relevant piece in this context. It’s a question about the global Anabaptist church that comes out of my experience with BikeMovement USA last summer and my experience thus far with BikeMovement Asia. Last summer BikeMovement USA raised over $20,000 for AMIGOS – an organization loosely connected to Mennonite World Conference and deeply concerned about connecting Anabaptist communities around the world. My own personal rhetoric, last summer, about the global church – probably as a result of my close relationship to the AMIGOS vision – was fairly inclusive. I talked, along with others on the trip, about the importance of learning new ways of worship from Anabaptists around the world. I wondered how we could claim to know what ‘Anabaptists’ were, in the contemporary context, when the ‘West’ was severely outnumbered in terms of global Anabaptist churches and baptized members. I, mostly indirectly, challenged mid-western Mennonite farmers to go to Paraguay in 2009 and visit with their Anabaptist brothers and sisters from around the world – I figured it would give them something to think about. Essentially, I was at a place where I understood the US American and Canadian Mennonite churches to be an incomplete part of the global Anabaptist community. And I still think that’s a helpful way to frame the discussion.

But there are other ways. My experiences with the church here in Southeast Asia have forced me to develop a more cynical view of the “global Anabaptist community.” I will put it provocatively. I put it in quotation marks because I’m not sure there is, or ever will be, a “global Anabaptist community.” I think I was naïve, last summer, in thinking about this global church as some entity existing similarly to a relatively local church – sharing money, challenging each other politically, spiritually and theologically – thus the global ‘community.’ I imagined a global Anabaptist church that never ultimately shared the same theologies, worship styles, understanding of church hierarchy, etcetera, but a global church that challenged itself toward valuing its internal differences – even to the point of shaping itself as a whole so that the theologies, worship styles, understandings of church hierarchies, etcetera became similar considering the contexts in which each sub-group existed.

My vision was of an overarching, ‘global,’ Anabaptist Church that would help to diversify and standardize more responsible (ethically, theologically, spiritually, historically) global Anabaptist communities. I wanted to call Anabaptist Christians in Indonesia “brothers and sisters” not only because we both appreciate the profundity of the work of Jesus, but because we also remember the work and theological implications of the 16th century Anabaptism and embody Holy Spirit worship through Cambodian-style ‘enthusiasm of the convert.’

This conversation quickly turns into one about Anabaptist identity. Southeast Asia has frustrated me because Anabaptist/Mennonite means ‘good global repute’ (mostly social repute) and has almost nothing to do with a certain set of convictions or standards about the Reign of God. I was sitting with young Mennonites in Phnom Penh two weeks ago and, besides the remarkable young man who translated the Confession of Faith into Khmer, the ‘Mennonites’ were completely silent on issues that I would associate with Mennonite/Anabaptist. And maybe that’s a key to this thing as well. Maybe there’s not a right way to be Anabaptist in the 21st century, but it seems that there are ways that are different enough that we might consider admitting our differences and just getting together for big MWC ‘reunions’ – where we just eat and drink and talk about Mary – and stop pretending that we have much of anything religious in common.

But, at the same time, I still believe the stuff I was saying last summer. I think Mennonites in the US might be better off if they would dabble in some Cambodian worship styles that would raise their heartbeats a bit. I think the Phnom Penh Mennonite church could learn a lot from some theological history – who were the original Anabaptists, should they care? I think that mid-western Mennonite farmers would understand the Reign of God more fully if they would spend time with Mennonite farmers from South America.

-Part of me wants to draft strict standards defining what a Mennonite/Anabaptist is and isn’t – standards we could use to include and exclude people and shape a ‘true’ global Anabaptist community.

-Part of me wants to let post-modernity redefine the title completely, based on all of our individual stories and experiences – redefine completely, so that I forget to get all caught up in the history of our suffering European ancestors.

Part of me knows that what makes most sense is probably somewhere in between.

Words on the global Anabaptist/Mennonite church…?

In a world run by retaliatory violence, a community near Lancaster PA took a chance on the Reign of God.

That’s history. It’s irrefutable. It’s staggeringly convicting. It’s Anabaptism – lived.

The point is more along these lines: I was unprepared for the test. And there was a time issue as well as a commitment issue. There was a time issue because I work 26 hours a week on top of a full-time course load at school. I work that much, because I’m out of money and the school won’t let me take classes unless I pay it quickly. Now, one of the reasons that I don’t have money is because I don’t have any federal loans. Our government doesn’t want to pay me to go to school because I decided to resist the system that sets our young men up to fight in the military. I remembered this last week too, because I was trying to get a driver’s license. Mine expired because, in Virginia, I can’t renew or obtain one if I don’t register with the Selective Service System (the one that sets our young men up to fight in the military). So, this last summer, I learned what it was like to try to work with a bureaucracy without documentation (I at least got a glimpse, but I even had a passport). I had a really hard time getting a driver’s license without already having one – ironic I thought.

We’re closer to the/(a) point now. I was unprepared for the test – because I am working a lot and time is an issue – because I don’t have enough money for school – because the government (the “democracy”) that we live under doesn’t like my politics. I’m not blaming my bad test grade on the government – or my bad politics, but I think something is interesting here. I’m having a really hard time keeping my grades up, (partly) because (one could say) I’m struggling financially. Now, consider how difficult it is to get a decent job in this country without an education. And now we’re back where we started and my rambling is over. There’s a cycle here that is disturbing – the poor stay poor. Sometime we can talk about how the rich stay rich.

Where are the Christians in all of this? Do Anabaptists, in particular, have anything unique to add to this phenomenon?

I am attempting to discuss a way of living and being – a particular ethic. My deepest hope is that it corresponds as closely as possible with the way of being and living that Jesus asks of us. I’m using theology as a medium to talk about the broader issue of white supremacy that white people continue to enforce (whether consciously or not) in the US (and world) today. So this essay is a theological one in the same way that an essay from George Bush on “a Jesus Ethic” might be a presidential one. Bush could offer an anti-white-supremacist presidential perspective to help us think about our own stories of white-supremacy – presidential, theological, economic, pedagogical, etc.

About the title (and an intro into my thoughts): White supremacy makes me think of the KKK and I really don’t like that organization. Theology makes me think of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich and, on occasion, James Cone (all theologians – two are white and better known). Liberation makes me think of oppressed groups of people empowering themselves toward freedoms. I put them together because they don’t really fit and because, in actuality, this particular combination is exactly what we need to learn to fit together.

In the essay Shaking the Foundation: white supremacy in the theological academy, Robin Hawley Gorsline, writes from the assumption that societal United States is still grossly racist. Specifically, she says that white people are racist – and she calls the racism from whites “white supremacy.” What she means is… well exactly what she says. Don’t ask me to offer any softer or more benevolent interpretation of her words. The systems that dominate the narrative that the United States exists under are racist – and each white person is culpable, both on a personal and societal scale. But how? When I categorize my black friends because of similarities in their communication styles (whether I want to or not and whether I kick myself for it later or not) that is racism. I look over my shoulder to “check thing out” more consistently when a black man is following me in a city at night than I would if it were a white man – that’s racism. When I am thankful, even though I’m not sure I support it politically, that they’ve arrested another bomb-carrying middle-easterner by way of racial profiling, that’s racism. And my silence around all of these hugely important issues in my life is racism. Maybe you’ve matured past all this, but think about it, I bet you can come up with your own examples. We all have prejudices and when our prejudices get mixed up with our power – that’s racism.

White people don’t talk (or even think) about these seemingly tedious issues because we don’t notice them all the time. And this “not having to notice” is what I mean by “our power.” The positions that we hold in society – politically, economically, socially and theologically - are largely privileged ones. And “minorities” then are only allowed to contribute their stories (even if we consider them with the utmost respect) into the larger story of who we are as white US Americans (consider the Native American scholar or the black church – the white teacher just sounds funny). Theological, economic, societal, presidential conversations always start with a white standard – and this is what is signified by the “supremacy” or white supremacy. We run the show. And if we don’t fight against that actively, the show rolls on in the same way it always has. (Black men begin to believe that they can scare me when they see me looking over my shoulder all the time, the story becomes the “middle-easterner” with the bomb – forget the Timothy McVeigh’s – and all black women become aggressive and inaccessible to me.)

Alright. I can tie it all back to the title for you – if you need that sort of finality (there is still a little modernism left in me as well). I am caught up in white-supremacy. I have to admit that. I have to call my socio-political starting point what it is. Any theology that I do is white-supremacist theology – in the same way that James Cone does black (liberation) theology. I can only contribute to unqualified “theology” from my particular white-supremacist standpoint – retrospectively, we might even think of Barth and Tillich in the same way (they were, indeed, white-supremacist theologians). The liberation comes in because I don’t like the way white-supremacy entraps me as a white person. I don’t like not being able to trust guys just because they’re black or brown. So if I were a real theologian, I would want to be included in the chorus of liberation theologians. Not because I have any illusions that I’m being particularly or abnormally oppressed, but because I want my theology to be based partially on anti-oppression work, not the denial of, and collusion in, white supremacy.

So that’s why I chose the title. Now we have to figure out what that theology consists of.

So, that’s why I’m a young Anabaptist radical – cheap right. Later we might define all those terms. For now: engage as you feel drawn or estranged by any part of that title. I’m still trying to figure out if I like young people or Anabaptists or radicals and when I think of them all together, I get real worked-up. But I’m young and occasionally radical and I try to be Anabaptist – so me blogging here sort of makes sense. I come, at least, from an historically Anabaptist church in Harrisonburg, VA. And they used to be radical, Anabaptists, I mean – but probably my church too.

The thing that makes the most sense is that I love the Church, specifically the Mennonite one – well, what I imagine the Church could be and what I catch glimpses of the Church being sometimes. Most of the time, I find myself wishing the Mennonite church was more Anabaptist (we’ll talk about definitions later, I said!) than it is. So I do things like: This summer, I biked across the country with a bunch of folks who imaged the church in some creative (and not so creative) ways (www.bikemovement.org). We are writing and DVDing about our experiences and the stories we heard – and maybe, through lots of conversation and sweet PR moves, we can figure out how to convince people that the Mennonite Church really is struggling in its present form and… I can’t give it all away; we need you to buy the DVD so we can get out of debt.

Here I am then. Tim Showalter. A Bible/Religion and Philosophy major and Women Studies minor at Goshen College, trying to engage some Anabaptists in fruitful conversation. I read theology when I’m not doing schoolwork (which is largely reading theology). I work at a bike shop – because I believe in bicycles. I also work at a small diner – because I believe in spiral fries and reuben sandwiches. I heard once that Michael Sattler’s favorite sandwich was the reuben. Speaking of…remember when his wife left the convent and he left the monastery and they got married? I always liked that – it’s really post-modern and non-committal – yet committal at the same time. Too much bad cinematography.