Young Anabaptist Radicals

Meta (YAR)

Posts about the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog.

YAR moves to closed author registration

After over 9 months of an open registration system for authors here on the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog, last week I had the first spammer bots sign up for accounts. The names, qwyghxh and lgbletw are familiar to me from other sites I’ve run and likely herald the beginning of a long stream of bots attempting to get by our spam prevention software by signing up as users.

So it is with some reluctance that I’ve made the decision, in consultation with other YAR founders, to move to a closed sign up system for those who wish to write posts on the blog. We currently have 97 users signed up to the site, 41 of whom have contributed at least one post. Now that we’ve built up a critical mass, we can begin to focus a bit more on identifying our vision as a blog and who we want to be.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we can’t have new members. It just means that new members will need to be manually added by a YAR administrator. So if you’d like to write a post for YAR (or know someone who should), email admin@young.anabaptistradicals.org
and explain a bit about why you’re interested.

June 13, 2007 Meta (YAR) Read more >

Young (White) Anabaptists Radicals?

Debbie Says:

How many young adults of color are authors on this blog??? Think about it. This should be called YWAR – Young White Anabaptists Radicals.

There are some, though you might not know it from the pseudonyms, and I’m sure it isn’t representative.

There’s also a good post on a related topic from Skylark earlier called How do we get the straight white men to shut up?. Here is another place to talk about it:

June 12, 2007 Meta (YAR), Race Read more >

results from the age poll

Well, this poll has been up long enough. It is time for a change. So, I’m posting the results for posterity and I’ll put up a new one when I’m done. The poll was up for about a month and a half and received 86 responses – here they are.

YAR or OAR? How old are you? (don’t worry, all are welcome, we’re just curious).

18   3 3%
18-23  25 29%
24-29 27

 31%
30-35 8 9%
36-45 12 14%
46-55 

 8 9%
56-65   2 2%
> 65  1

 1%

For some background on this poll and others, you might check here and here.

May 30, 2007 Blog, Fun, Meta (YAR), Poll Read more >

Radical Anabaptism and Radical Biblical Exegesis

I have much appreciation for the energy, honesty, courage and openess to address anabaptism past, presence and future. A question on “radical” Anabaptism has not been raised though — or raised sufficiently enough. For this takes much courage and honest. In all actuality, it takes the greatest amount possible — because it will hurt, and for some, it will be excruciating. Because if we desire to be “radical” we must address a radical understanding of the Bible. We must get at the root (‘radix’) of what the Bible is. This is scary stuff! As Anabaptists we must be radical about the nature and character of the Bible. Every issue, every question, every statement that is being talked about here on the Radical Anabaptist blog is rooted (‘radix’) in the Bible. The scriptures are the foundation for all of this. Thus, we must get to the root (‘radix’) of the Bible itself. We cannot stay our hand, we must — for truth’s sake — (for God is spirit and truth ) take the scalpel and dig deep. (more…)

May 28, 2007 Church, Faith, God, Meta (YAR), The Bible, Theology Read more >

Standards for Guiding YAR Blog Together

I have been meaning to work on this for a while and finally got inspired.

Some things to think about before you get yer posting and commenting on.

This blog is moderated to keep spam out but we’re not in the habit of deleting comments or blocking dissent. There are, however, certain behaviors that are rude and annoying and others that aren’t. The line isn’t always clear and we all cross it occasionally. If you feel someone has crossed a line or have questions, feel free to contact one of the moderators (Tim, Eric, or Katie). You are also welcome to politely challenge behaviors yourself, as you feel led.

(more…)

April 24, 2007 Blog, Community, Meta (YAR) Read more >

R?

There has been some concern about the Y in our name being exclusive to aging Anabaptist Radicals. Of course, all three of the letters are meant to narrow down the target contributers. Interesting to me is the breakdown of how much we care about each letter. According to an earlier poll, we care most about the A, quite a bit less about the R, and almost not at all about the Y.

There’s a lot of talk on here about being Anabaptist. As that is what differentiates us from all the other young radical blogs out there, I won’t act too surprised. But I am a little surprised. The R seems fairly central to why this blog exists. Or am I wrong? As a founder, I know that was a main reason for starting it – a forum for radicals among the Anabaptists. The Y and A were more descriptive of ourselves and our context (we were all young Anabaptists) than purpose in my mind.

What about that R? Does it matter to you? Are you radical? What makes you radical? Would you join a YAM for moderates or a YAC for conservatives? Do you care?

April 23, 2007 Blog, Meta (YAR) Read more >

agism?

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

April 13, 2007 Meta (YAR), Young Folks Read more >

Celebrating YAR’s 3 Month anniversary

Three Months by TimIts been three months since Eric kicked things off here. Since then we’ve had 64 posts and 126 comments. For those of you who like statistics, that’s an average of 1 post every 1.4 days and and 1.4 comments every day. How’s that for serendipity?

We’ve had 40 people sign up as users on the blog and 14 of you have gotten around to writing a post (you can see who you are under Harlequin/Zealots label on the right hand sidebar). We look forward to hearing from the other 26 of you! Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help you along.

We’ve attracted the attention of a few other bloggers out there. Our most consistent links have been from Hootsbuddy’s Place: (more…)

December 2, 2006 Anniversary, Meta (YAR) Read more >

New blog features

Last night I installed some new features for the YAR blog to improve your reading and writing experience.

The main new feature is the new “Related YAR posts” section at the bottom of every post, just before comments. It shows three posts that the computer guesses are similar in content to the article you are viewing. Now that we have 54 posts in the archives and counting, this is one way to introduce new visitors to older content they might not have seen. (more…)

November 15, 2006 Meta (YAR) Read more >

YAR Madlib – Calling the church to go pee pee.

There isn’t actually a YAR Madlib in this post, because I haven’t taken the time to write one, but I think it’s a fantastic idea and someone should. I would love to see the results of our middle-school selves filling in YAR-post blanks with various middle-school crudities, and giggling our little heads off. Yes, that’s a potty joke in the title of my post. Yes, I’m immature.

I have a friend who is becoming a novice member of Reba Place. People do that. And Reba place is radical, right? Emerging church and all that? I mean, it is in Chicago, and has an intentional community attached to it. They are also still fighting over women in leadership – let alone LGBT rights or couples holding hands before marriage. And that’s not something new – that’s all fairly well rooted in Anabaptist tradition.

I can’t really pick on Reba, as I don’t know the details well at all, but sometimes the earnestly ‘Anabaptist’ church scares me as much as the fundamentalist/evangelical. And what really does define the Anabaptist tradition? Is it really a peace-making stance, or is it mainly an obsession with perfection, passive-aggression and boundary-drawing? Our defining issues in history have been buttons, mustaches, pianos, women, divorce, and queers. Keeping the church clean for Jesus. Go us.
(more…)

November 11, 2006 Church, Meta (YAR), Polemics, Tradition Read more >