Fundamentalism-Chester Weaver-Anabaptist Perspectives

[Ms. Izzie]

After you watch this, it'd be interesting to read your thoughts on it.

[HondurasKeiser]

I really like Chester Weaver and there’s much I really like here. I wonder though about his explanation for how theological liberalism crept into the MC. Is really just because we were becoming wealthy, acculturated and thinking like American Protestants? I’m not sure, I don’t have an answer but I’d like to go deeper into that.

[MaxPC]

I think Mr. Weaver is on the right track. In the RCC, we observed changes and movements similar to those he described. If I recall correctly, these echo similar debates in the early church, some of which are addressed by the Apostle Paul.

[DrWojo]

Thank you for posting this. I recently borrowed a book titled Keeping the Trust. It says it’s about Issues Surrounding the Formation of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church. I’m around halfway through reading and I believe when Chester talks in his video/podcast about Brother Bender’s 3rd way it makes more sense (to me) than trying to elevate Fundamentalist Rules over Liberalism. In the book both the Lancaster Conference as well as the EPMC used the term ‘Unity’ and ‘Disruption of Unity’ as some kind of grounds to justify their position.

As I see it the early Anabaptists’ coming out of the State Church shaped their Brotherhood of Believers’ view as well as the Community views they held. As far as them gaining their conviction from fellowship with Christ, when that is done with a group today without written Standards or Discipline the group is declared to be radical and accused of being experienced centered or made out to be holding dangerous views.

[ragpicker]

Thank you for posting this. I recently borrowed a book titled Keeping the Trust. It says it’s about Issues Surrounding the Formation of the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church. I’m around halfway through reading and I believe when Chester talks in his video/podcast about Brother Bender’s 3rd way it makes more sense (to me) than trying to elevate Fundamentalist Rules over Liberalism. In the book both the Lancaster Conference as well as the EPMC used the term ‘Unity’ and ‘Disruption of Unity’ as some kind of grounds to justify their position.

As I see it the early Anabaptists’ coming out of the State Church shaped their Brotherhood of Believers’ view as well as the Community views they held. As far as them gaining their conviction from fellowship with Christ, when that is done with a group today without written Standards or Discipline the group is declared to be radical and accused of being experienced centered or made out to be holding dangerous views.

Read the book. It convinced me more than ever that I want no part of their system.

[QuietObserver]

A 25-minute podcast hardly does justice to the topic. I've heard a lot about the influence of fundamentalism on conservative Mennonites, but I'm still trying to get a better understanding. I thought Chester gave a very concise summary.

I agree with Chester's critique of fundamentalism. But I'm left with a lot of questions. I think fundamentalism addressed a real problem. Anabaptism wasn't formed in a secular zeitgeist. I'm not aware of any Anabaptist apologetics. More tools are needed today besides Early Anabaptism.

[RZehr]

I think his history lesson is accurate.

I hear him talking pretty strongly against rules, but at the same time strongly promoting community and individual brokenness in favor of brotherhood. I’m a bit perplexed because I don’t see how you can realistically separate them. I mean sure, you can avoid writing them down or call them something else, or tinker around the edges. But rules/consensus is a reflection, or a direct outcome of the local church working out real matters for themselves - which I think he promotes.

At the end of the day, you are either going to have a church that honors what each other thinks and believes, or you won’t. If you don’t, you really are no different than the liberalism he is against.

Is he only against conference style, or top down rules? Does he make a distinction between that and a local church coming to agreement within itself? I’m curious.

[Wade]

I got the impression he could be comfortable with some things written down but they have to come from the third way perspective of a Christocentric love faith relationship with Christ that produces a consistent life following Christ that is coupled with loving submission to the brotherhood. A whole package with nothing left out - I think when the gospel is incomplete or my focus is more on my salvation that we become so unbalanced that liberalism and/or rules take over in a form of hidden reactionism instead of a joyful obedience to His word and the leading of His Spirit.
Like he said it can sound dangerous to say it and be easily misunderstood.

[RZehr]

I think you are right. I don’t remember anything specific that he actually said, that I disagreed with. I’m just trying to figure out how to take what he did actually say, and see how they don’t conflict.

[Neto]

Frankly, it was refreshing to hear a "Swiss Brethren" anabaptist who was willing to critique his own people, instead of just casting stones at the Dutch Mennonites (in Dutch, referred to as the baptism-minded). So the impact of Fundamentalism vs liberalism that he outlines here is solely in the American context. I would need to do some separate digging to see how that played out in the colonies, and specifically from the influences which came directly from German visitors to what is now Ukraine. Many of my people, of course, associated with these Old Mennonite people after coming to the Americas, and in that way jumped right in at the period of greatest turbulence in the American Mennonite context. (I'll leave that for now.)

Some thoughts:
Realizing that I was neither "an Evangelical" nor "Fundamentalist" was part of what personally brought me onto the journey that got me where I am. But getting here (judging from the ideas expressed in this video) also largely lead me down a false trail - the way of rules. To be honest here, I have only in the last years realized that I had got off track. (I spent a lot of energy trying to maintain "the guidelines" structure in our congregation - which is here characterized as 'fundamentalism"). This is really odd, because in my initial move toward conservatism, I looked to the Old Mennonite congregation near my home in Oklahoma for the direction I should go. I grew a "Mennonite beard" (cut my afro, kept my hair short, and shaved off the mustache). After about two years of this, I "realized" that this was not helping me in my Christian life/walk. But then a year later I became acquainted for the first time with the Beachy Amish Mennonite group. So there I went again, sort of back to what I had already discovered was spiritually unprofitable - the rules approach to christian life.

Rules to deal with ethics - at about 15:30 or so in the video. Very interesting to see this as fundamentalism;
- As opposed to anabaptism's emphasis on a relationship with the Christ. I want to dig a bit deeper into this, because it seems to me that there is a conflict between talk that almost sounds like "salvation as a group" vs this emphasis on a personal relationship with the living Christ.
[Aside: David Kauffman = fundie. Interestingly, when I found a "Doctrines of the Bible" in a local used book store, I enthusiastically bought it, and was then VERY disappointed to discover that it was a Systematic Theology, something I had completely rejected in my late teen years & early 20's - my time of "anabaptist awakening".]
OK. Back to this idea of "glassen-whatever" as opposed to the individualism of fundamentalism. I came to my convictions largely on my own (with a lot of input from Menno Simons), not at all "in community". (If fact, my only 'community' at that time was my college room-mate, who was 'English' - had never even heard of Mennonite anything before I came along. And I would be remiss if I do not openly admit that we both benefited from some influences that came out of the hippie peace movement.)
So, I'm thinking that what I'll call "Group-Think" makes comprehensive drift possible. There is no room for a "Mennonite prophet" - one who would call the group back to truth. No INDIVIDUAL can bring the group back to faithfulness, because that would violate the "group faith" - the Christian life lived out in community, with the emphasis on "Christ & US" rather than fundamentalism's reported emphasis on "Christ & ME". This seems really contrary to our beginnings, both for me as a Dutch Mennonite ("Russian"), and for those of the Swiss Brethren heritage. It seems like what is being said is that it was OK to do this in the beginning, because then we were in the midst of false Christianity, but then we were suppose to stop it immediately after becoming a faith community. But, as I've quoted some unknown person before, "God has no grandchildren", and I can attest to this fact by looking at the history of my own people (perhaps especially in the colonies). The insistence on having a pure church of true believers seems often out of reach. We either fall into a situation where we have the "remnant" within the false church, or we revert to rules to try to keep it right. But judging from Scripture, neither of these is acceptable. In the first case we make all of the suffering of our people for nothing (they could have just stayed in the State Churches), and in the second we loose the relationship with the Living Christ by attempting to "legislate the new birth", even within the congregation.