Young Anabaptist Radicals

Young Anabaptist Radicals

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Who is our enemy?

This morning a friend sent me a link to an insightful article by Glenn Kessler in today’s Washington post. Kessler focuses on the underlying doublespeak behind the way Bush uses the terms “free”, “moderate” and “terrorist”. While we’re all used to Bush’s buzz words, this article sharply tears away the veil to reveal just how untrue the president’s words are.

Yet Kessler doesn’t resort to to black and white truisms that mirror those of Bush. Instead, he lets the gray areas speak for themselves. First he points out that, despite Bush’s claim that “free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies — and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance”:

In the two of the most liberal and diverse societies in the Middle East — Lebanon and the Palestinian territories — events have undercut Bush’s argument in the past year. Hezbollah has gained power and strength in Lebanon, partly at the ballot box. Meanwhile, Palestinians ousted the Fatah party — which wants to pursue peace with Israel — from the legislature in favor of Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction and is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department.

He also points out that the countries Bush describes as “moderate” such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia rank about the same as Cuba and Burma on the Freedom House rating scale (see links above for their respective ratings).

As Christians, this question of who is our enemy has a special importance because these are the people Jesus calls us to love. (more…)

January 24, 2007 Current Events, International Relations, Nonviolence, Polemics, Politics, Power, Theology Read more >

Introducing the Anabaptist Network

In his post on January 20th, Benjamin Anderson asked for ways we could act on the ideas and values discussed on this blog. Here’s one suggestion: the Anabaptist Network.

In the last few months, I’ve posted some information about a developing networking project aimed at helping Mennonite young adults (a generally transient group) to better connect with each other and with the broader church. We’re starting with a group on Facebook (yes, Facebook) and exploring the idea of a web site, as well. If you have a Facebook page, come find us, and if you don’t, just know that you no longer need an email address with “.edu” in it to sign up for Facebook. We have no idea where it will go, but the project is building on the frustration of talking so much about issues within the church without any tangible ways to address those frustrations. We’re trying.

January 22, 2007 Church, Community, Young Folks Read more >

Hospitality

Christian hospitality is not simply good manners, it is an entire way of encountering strangers: receiving them as Christ, as St Benedict says. It takes a peculiar imagination, of course, to hear a knock on the door and know it to be Christ–an imagination rooted in prayer, in a person who knows the hospitality of the God who welcomes truly, even up into his own trinitarian life. So Christian hospitality, as mutual reverence, has a profound contemplative dimension. (Which is also why, for St Benedict, guests cannot linger indefinitely. There must be space for silence.) And Christian hospitality does not require a home or a table or an abundance of food, since it is primarily an open invitation to enter into life together.

January 21, 2007 History, Theology, Tradition Read more >

What’s Next?

I really enjoy YAR. There are great discussions about great things here, they are intriguing and they make us think. But what’s next. Do we just continue to talk about these things and hope that some day our churches and our communities will change? Or do we do something. I would love it if we could start discussions about practical ways in which we can do these things we have discussed. But of course, not stop there implement these things in our churches and communities and then report back on YAR how God is working. In this way we can honor our heritage as radical Anabaptists and continue to reform the church in the 21st century.

January 20, 2007 Change, Church, Community, Tradition, Young Folks Read more >

Mimesis in Violence

One thing I have been studying recently is the nature of violence to be mimetic, which refers to the human propensity to immitate others, espeically if we’re in a society permeated by certain types of actions or beliefs.

With regards to violence in our society, mimesis works most commonly by making violence contagious. The belief in violence and force is immitated from the halls of Congress to the street corner, from the abortion clinic to the execution chamber. It spreads like a disease up and down, infecting every echelon of society. The result is that people in our culture grow up socialized to believe in the effectiveness of violence, as well as having faith in individualism, greed, and upward mobility– even if it means stepping on others in the process.

For instance, we have politicians who advocate war against adversaries in so many circumstances. Force, for them, is a primary way of getting things done. But then those same politicians grope for answers when dealing with the murder rate or the prevalence of school shootings. The usual suspects are mentioned: Marilyn Manson, violent video games, the like. It seems to rarely, if ever, occur to these national leaders that maybe their own actions have something to do with it all.

That is a central reason why, I believe, our society has such a problem with violence on so many levels. We immitate it without even trying to. We believe in it wholeheartedly. So if we ever want to lower our murder or abortion rate, we must take a holistic look at our violence problem in this society; we cannot tackle one problem as if it were isolated.

Luckily for those of us who are Christians, there is something else that purports to be contagious: the Kingdom of God and its ethics. Jesus spoke of His Kingdom as yeast or as a mustard seed, which both start small but subtly permeate everything. So we need not fear the violence in our society, and realize that Jesus has something that is much more powerful. All we need is faith to believe it will work.

January 18, 2007 International Relations, Nonviolence, Politics Read more >

Jerry Jenkins

My intention in joining YAR was not to use the rest of you members as my moral sounding board for difficult questions that I am dealing with in my life, but this is what two of my three posts have turned out to be. I’ll try to make my next post more heady and intellectual, but I think you should enjoy the predicament that I will lay out here.

As my first biographical entry said, I am a youth pastor in a Mennonite church. Being a staff member I get to sit in on the elders (the power-players of the church) meetings and occasionally throw my two cents into the discussion. In our last meeting, we had a decision to make, that was somewhat exciting and completely uncomfortable. This is what we had to work with: There is a member of our church (who happens to be my dad) that owns a large Christian giftware manufacturing business that distributes product nationally and globally. Every March this man has a “Dealer’s Conference” where he invites every retailer who sells his product to come and see the manufacturing plant, buy more of his product, see the local Amish population, and overall does his best to express his gratitude and keep his customers happy. A big part of this conference is bringing in a big name speaker to inspire those who come to the conference and the speech is given in our church. This year, the speaker coming to give the inspirational message is Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the Left Behind series. (more…)

January 16, 2007 Church, Media, Theology Read more >

living tribute

I learned of Martin Luther King, the hero of the Civil Rights Movement, in school.
I learned of Martin Luther King, the peacemaker, at church.

In both cases I learned about King as an icon. He was like an angel-man, superhuman. King became a real person when I moved to Atlanta.

It was a fall from a pedestal of sorts, when I learned about all of the trials, the fractures, the tribulations, the anguish, and the arguments that went on behind the scenes of the marches and the committee meetings. To listen to lectures by the veterans of the movement, (Former Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. Joseph Lowery, R. D. Abernathy, Rev. James Orange) all still involved, but some bitter, some who have appropriated the movement…whew! I learned about the hundreds of sidelined and under-recognized women who laid the groundwork for so many of the church meetings, boycotts, and potlucks (Septima Clark, Montgomery Women’s Council, Ella Baker, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson). Most of all, when I saw the struggle of his immediate family to know how to live out the legacy of the father they lost when they were young children, it all became so tangible. (more…)

January 15, 2007 Biographical, Change, Church, Current Events, History, International Relations, LGBTQ, Nonviolence, Politics, Power, Race, Tradition, Young Folks Read more >

generic anabaptism and postmodernism

I’ve been reading DreamSeeker Magazine for a few years now, and was struck by two articles in the most recent issue. DreamSeeker is published and edited by Michael A. King, of Telford, Pennsylvania (he’s also the pastor of Spring Mount Mennonite Church). The mission statement says DreamSeeker is “dedicated to publishing ‘voices from the soul,’ meaning writers aching to share passionate and personal dreams of how the void has been or could be shaped into a new creation.” It features predominately Mennonite voices, but stretches the definition of such.

The first article, found here, is entitled “At the End of Ethnic Mennonite Life” and is by Michael King himself. It touches on the cultural expressions of Mennonite faith versus the spiritual practices and the tension sometimes inherent in that.

The second article is entitled “Cultural Agoraphobia: Why Young Postmodern Mennonites Struggle to Follow or Lead,” by David Landis. He writes of the incredible number of options available to young adults and how quickly it can overwhelm, saying “The trick to countering this paralysis is to name the power we have in a way that allows us to trust ourselves and others as leaders. Although this seems like an obvious statement, it’s one I have seen Mennonites and sometimes other Christians hesitant to embrace. Postmodern culture’s default setting seems to be doing a good job at encouraging engagement, but it doesn’t seem to be naturally promoting empowerment.”

January 13, 2007 Change, Church, Young Folks Read more >

Dissent

For the most part, I think Avery Dulles is right to say that “dissent [in the church] should neither be glorified or vilified.” Dissent in the 21st century is not only permitted, it is often even required as a sign of truthfulness. Of course, that’s not entirely incorrect. To dissent, in part, is to signify that there is road left to travel, that we have not finally arrived in understanding or practice. Those who compel us towards growth in understanding, towards a more faithful discipleship, always bear something of a critical edge—they take notice of those places where we have fallen short, they push us beyond our insufficiencies. But dissent in the 21st century West is also celebrated, totalized, in a way that negates its opposite: trust. Or maybe it’s the reverse: dissent in the 21st century West is impossible, because there is a refusal to recognize that anything could rightly claim authority—there is nothing from which to dissent. The result of glorifying dissent, on this end of things, is an indomitable arrogance, where nothing is worth preserving and my critical edge is automatically the critical edge of truth.

Yet I wonder if Dulles has forgotten the central place of the prophets as faithful dissenters in the Old Testament canon. At least it disturbs me somewhat to hear Dulles reduce Jesus’ prophetic role to “authoritative instruction.” Instruction is certainly there, but for Jesus and the prophets before him, prophetic instruction is always instruction over against. That is, prophecy always involves judgment, and not just of individuals but (even primarily) of establishments and habits. And what is dissent if not this critical judgment of establishments and habits? Need we not maintain what Dulles forgets, a positive account of the indispensability of dissent, if we are to walk with the prophets even today?

Update: Tim Nafziger has made an important comment below, calling me out on the unnamed and narrow scope I had in mind while writing this. Ambivalence towards dissent from violent regimes or structures is but a damnable apathy towards evil, Tim is absolutely right, and I did not mean to suggest otherwise. This post has in mind dissent within the church, and in a particularly American context.

January 8, 2007 Church Read more >

Radical like surfers or revolutionaries?

This week I read this post over on Adventure Faith about YAR and was inspired to rewrite the YAR “about us” page. In his post, blogger Mike Barret suggests that radical Anabaptists is about as incongruous as radical librarians. I realized that we’re operating with different definitions of what radical means. Mike is about to publish a new book entitled “The Danger Habit”. I was curious about what “radical” means for him, so I read the first chapter that he’s posted on-line. In it, Mike describes his experience as a surfer, skateboarder and Christian. But it isn’t just another “Whoa, Dude, God is cool” book. Mike describes the experiences of being diagnosed with ADHD and realizing that his lifestyle wasn’t always compatible with being a dad. At the same time, he came to see risk-seeking behavior as a gift from God:

And God needs some of us to be change makers, not routine sustainers, to live dangerously, not just enjoy reading about it, to pioneer new ways of thinking and living because the old ways are tired and boring.

(more…)

January 6, 2007 Politics, Theology Read more >

NEW Year

It’s January 2, so I’d like to write an entry for the NEW year.

Growing up, I learned that “the blood of Jesus washed me white as snow” (It confused me, since I’m bi-racial…but that’s another blog entry). Anyhow, there was emphasis put on the fact that an acceptance of Jesus “made you NEW, CLEAN,” You were born again (Like Peter, I was the kid in Sunday School who asked the anatomy question, but I get it now). Today, I recognize that I still cling to this concept and feeling state because I remember that I did feel NEW and different when I accepted Jesus.

I thrive in NEW situations, but sometimes begin to trip up as the NEW situations become routine. Sometimes I feel sad or angry at my inability to maintain the special NEWness feeling. At these times I turn to the meaning of faith to get me through, but I crave the NEWness again. That is partially why I love the coming of the NEW year and New Year’s Day so much. (more…)

January 2, 2007 Change, Church, Current Events, Poetry, Theology, Tradition, Young Folks Read more >