Mrs.Nisly wrote:
Thank you mercysfree and Judas Maccabeus, I think you have some good perspectives.
Intentionality is a part of Anabaptist culture as well. I think Cory Anderson talks a little about this in his paper. As he see it, its part rational, part "folk culture" as he calls it.
I would like to move on from examining and defining Anabaptist culture to discussion of how Anabaptist cultures have dealt with sexual issues in the past.
Some of you are probably noticing I use the term "sexual issues" You can inform me here, but I don't think Sexual Abuse would have been a term used until fairly recently.
Could we have a discussion now about how Anabaptist culture viewed sexual issues historically?
The format of this forum drives me nuts, so I am going to start a new topic.
The Anabaptist Culture is a big umbrella of many churches and communities who share some similar characteristics. Who Are the Plain Anabaptists? What Are the Plain Anabaptists? by Cory Anderson is a sociological document that probably does a pretty good forensic assessment of Plain Anabaptist Culture.
It doesn't give real life examples or anecdotal confirmation of its claims or how it applies to specific situations. But I think it could be a very useful tool to have in mind when examining a particular issue and coming to a particular understanding of it.
I had posted these points before I read the Cory Anderson paper. The points are certainly more simplistic than Cory's careful analysis, but I think they can be useful in the context of discussion.
1. Anabaptist culture is conservative.
What is it conserving?
2. Anabaptist culture is traditional.
What traditions does it value?
3. Anabaptist culture is separatist.
What is it separating from, what are the implications of that separation?
4. Anabaptist culture holds a suffering theology?
What does that mean and how does that affect how they think?
I hope you don't mind, but this copied and pasted from one of my other threads:
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I've been a bit quiet over the weekend here on the boards. Took a few long walks, pondering how I would respond to not only the scandal at hand but all the other crimes and cover-ups that have happened locally where victims were punished and the abuser remains a free man.
I have pages upon pages of random notes. I've harped on this before and I'll say it again: the common church leadership structure needs over-hauled! We need leaders that provide a safe environment for victims no matter how young or old can approach a minister (or their wife) and say they need to talk. We also need leaders who will "do the right thing" when "wrong thing" as happened.
They (victims) need to be believed until proven otherwise. The alleged abuser needs to be considered innocent until proven otherwise. This must be done in confidence and private until such a time that something needs to be made public. Not gossiped, or slandering.
Are we, as a culture, capable of creating such a safe environment? Are we too stuck in out traditions? I could go on. Perhaps I'll post more later.
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Honestly, does our entire church "model" need to be updated? Is the current model out-dated? I have several ideas of much needed "upgrades", but they would rock the culture as it currently stands.
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I self-identify as a conspiracy theorist. My pronouns are told/you/so.
RZehr wrote:Good questions. Since I'm more comfortable going of half cocked, I'll take a quick stab at these instead of sleeping on it like steve.
Mrs.Nisly wrote:1. Anabaptist culture is conservative.
What is it conserving?
Faith
Mrs.Nisly wrote:
2. Anabaptist culture is traditional.
What traditions does it value?
Traditions that have proven at minimum to be compatible with, and ideally useful, in practically living out our faith.
Mrs.Nisly wrote:
3. Anabaptist culture is separatist.
What is it separating from, what are the implications of that separation?
Separation from things that are unholy, or things we believe lead to unholiness.
Mrs.Nisly wrote:
4. Anabaptist culture holds a suffering theology?
What does that mean and how does that affect how they think?
We, unlike most of Christianity, expect to suffer. And so when there is wrongdoing, we do not protect or defend ourselves in the same way other Christians do. We also believe in personal sacrifice for the good of the whole, instead of holding personal liberty and rights in the forefront.
Mrs.Nisly wrote:
These are a few of the things I thought of which defines Anabaptist culture.
Any additional points? any objections or clarifications?
Partially due to our preference for the King James Bible, we do not hold justice in high regard.
In answer to “what,” the plain Anabaptists embody three human dimensions: they
are a religion, an ethnicity, and a social system. The plain Anabaptists are thus an
ethnoreligious society. Each of these domains has been further theorized, but unevenly
and somewhat inconclusively. In describing the plain Anabaptists as a religion, they are a
break-away separatist group attempting reform, fitting therefore to a sect and social
movement, but unfitting to these theories plain Anabaptists are not attempting to reform
the host body, nor are they particularly responsive to host body reforms that align with
their creed. While their separatism may be more akin to counterculturalists, who seek a
more authentic mode of existence, they do not prompt the general disdain from the host
society with which counterculturalists are acquainted. Thus, no religious theory appears
to fit the plain Anabaptists yet aside from religion in general—having belief in the
supernatural. Plain Anabaptists fit the concept of ethnicity well in that they embody a
symbolic, historical, and empathetic shared sense of we-ness. If they are also ethnic
minorities, they are by intention, not imposition, and if they are a transnational group,
they are in their lack of homeland and history of migration. The social system consists of
community level functions that bind the members together organizationally. The social
system is a redemptive community, in that its social organization serves their religiosity
unto an eternal end. The social system is neither erected unthinkingly like a folk society,
nor is it maintained solely through agency and rational choice, but is a mixture of both.
The system is maintained through bounded rationality, where rationalism exists but is
tempered by latent social behaviors and seemingly irrational cultures and contexts.
I added this distinction from Cory's paper between Old Order and Conservative mentality
“Old Order” (marked by inwardness and separation) or “conservative” (marked by outward evangelical orientations but nevertheless retaining some highly visible markers of separatism).
I also made this point and I think it is a good clue to how CA culture theoretically works.
Mrs.Nisly wrote:
4. Anabaptist culture holds a suffering theology.
What does that mean and how does that affect how they think?
What Anderson says here is what I had in mind when I made this my fourth point.
The redemptive community structures a brotherhood permeated with the nature of Christ. Yieldedness to God and the redemptive community is imparted to members, reinforcing the social system, which reinforces in turn members’ spirit of yieldedness. The redemptive community provides a buffer between the individual—who is prone to collective influence—and competing social systems that vie for individual allegiance.The plain Anabaptists view their social system as in conflict with external social systems, with which it attempts to limit linkage. The redemptive community contains a variety of specific social mechanisms, which vary with tradition. They are many and of varying importance, and scholarly attempts to document them are sincere, but often cherry-picked. For the sake of example, here I will cite several social system processes that, one, constitute and reinforce a redemptive community, and two, flesh out the social system component of what plain Anabaptists are. Their social system includes ceremonial events like rites and rituals, rewards and sanctions on social action, informal boundary maintenance behaviors, domains of socialization like family and school, control over technology and/or sources of external information, and nuanced economic structures. Some systemic elements serve both a community and a religious or ethnic function. For example, while clothing is a marker of ethnic and religious identity, as discussed previously, clothing also functions to assign and communicate privileges and roles among members.
I removed the citing for easier reading.
Earlier I mention how in our relationships, some of the things we like best about someone is also where they may have their greatest weakness.
Ok, I think I've moved the cultural background info over.
There is a lot that could be discussed about it and probably added. But I want it here primarily to give us a context for understanding how sexual issues have been historically dealt with.
What I would like to look at, is what are ways Conservative Anabaptists have responded to cultural needs in the past?
This doesn't have to be good or bad. Just information from your memory.
The earliest example I can think of is the Mennonite/Amish Schism of the 1600's. That schism was predicated by a concern for lax spirituality and discipline. I could be wrong, but I am deducting that sexual issues may have been in the package. it seems pretty hard to fathom that when "sin" is addressed historically, it isn't including sexual sin.
Last edited by Mrs.Nisly on Mon Jul 01, 2019 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
North American conservative Anabaptists are also influenced by American culture. But due to our conservatism, particularly in social issues, we are decades behind broader society. We tend to take a wait and see approach, something looking good on paper, might need to be proven a generation or so before we accept it, or "drift". National laws often need to be proven by courts before they have teeth, and are accepted as legitimate. We have to wait and see how a given social position plays out, before we accept it as legitimate. We have not accepted pants for women, but we have for men. Our ladies still wear robe style dresses.
All that to suggest that our understanding of sexual issues, or abuse, may not be actually rooted entirely in the faith based side of our culture, but rather in our American influenced side of our culture. In other words, our stance on these may simply be the same position one would find in American culture decades ago. Now American culture has moved on, and we simply remain about where we (and they) were.
Last edited by RZehr on Mon Jul 01, 2019 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
RZehr wrote:North American conservative Anabaptists are also influenced by American culture. But due to our conservatism, particularly in social issues, we are decades behind broader society. We tend to take a wait and see approach, something looking good on paper, might need to be proven a generation or so before we accept it, or "drift". National laws often need to be proven by courts before they have teeth, and are accepted as legitimate. We have to wait and see how a given social position plays out, before we accept it as legitimate. We have not accepted pants for women, but we have for men. Our ladies still wear robe style dresses.
All that to suggest that our understanding of sexual issues, or abuse, may not be actually rooted entirely in the faith based side of our culture, but rather in our American influenced side of our culture. In other words, our stance on these may simply be the same position one would find in American culture decades ago. Now American culture has moved on, and we simply remain about where we were.
I think you make a good point.
One thing I would like to point out, is that a big part of the current discussion of sexual abuse is the insistence of differentiating between victims and perpetrators.This is a "borrowing" from current culture.
I think typically it would have been referred to as sinning against someone.
I feel it would be good to engage with noted historians (Ruth comes to mind; Chester Weaver is another that comes to mind) and ask them this question.
With that said, the history of Holdemanism is one worth exploring. John Holdeman departed from a congregation between 1859 - 1884 which eventually become Old Order Mennonite. (In 1859, there was just one Mennonite Church in Ohio without Old Order vs. Conservative vs. mainstream divisions.)
J. Holdeman's main sticking points for his departure was his opinions on child-rearing, particularly of adolescents. He felt that there was a casual and lax attitude about sexual immorality amongst young people. His views were probably coloured by his own history and his own personal conversion experience. Holdemanism has been imbued with a culture ever since that sexual immorality, even if kept private and hidden, is a "death sin" that will indeed send someone to hell.
His original church's leadership was not particularly interested in hearing the opinions of a young man in his 20s with his own quite colourful history extolling to them how they should be raising their children. Nonetheless, his movement eventually caught on, for a variety of other reasons.
The best historical text to study this more is The Holdeman People (Heibert 1973). If there is an interest, I can quote from that more.
Some questions I have are:
1. What other Anabaptist divisions have happened because of this? I do not know of any off the top of my head, but it seems hard to believe there haven't been any.
2. One can effectively discern the culture of an Anabaptist group based on the history of why it originally divided; what have been the typical reasons for these divisions?
3. What did the early Anabaptists teach on this topic?
4. Do we even have any history as conservative Anabaptists on this? The conservative Anabaptist movement didn't start until the 1950s. I can't find much published literature on the topic until recent times.
