Anabaptist and Evangelicals

[Ernie]

Ernie I’d be delighted to have you share with those groups, but please implore them to send me some comments! (Would my email address work for them or a physical mailing address?)

Hello everyone, I wrote this article on Hutterites and evangelicals and would be interested to hear your thoughts and feedback:

https://coffeewithkierkgaard.home.blog/ ... -critique/

Here is a quote:

My fundamental worry about evangelicalism is that it is a deeply modern form of religion. It is impossible to imagine evangelicalism outside the context of an American individualist, technological, consumer society. In deep ways, evangelicalism is the carrier of American individualist values and the “homeless self.”

Well done! May I share this article on messaging groups used by Old Orders and Conservative Anabaptists, who do not have online access to things like this?

Yes, email would work. I will send you a PM.

[barnhart]

...it’s better to see it as a response to the breakdown of communal and traditional life that modernity engenders. Under the conditions of “homeless” modernity, evangelicalism creates new, modern forms of community that allow people to be together in modern ways.

I see value in this analysis. In this light Fundamentalism was a defensive last stand but Evangelicalism is rear guard action picking up the pieces after the main event and finding away to put them back together for temporary shelter.

...part of what draws people to evangelicalism is the sense that traditional life no longer works. This could be because, as evangelical converts often say, because the community fails the standards of the gospel. OR, because the “pull” of modern life makes the tradition and the traditional faith just not make sense to young people and they cannot inhabit it like their parents could.

I felt some of this pull as a young adult but it began to fade as I dug into church history and Anabaptist history and realized the disorganized, stale plate I had been handed contained very valuable answers if you knew how to look for them. Not everyone is wired to walk that route.

[joshuabgood]

Evangelicalism also draws because some feel it carries legitimate critiques of their ethnic enclaves/traditional communities and those critiques are validated by their lived experiences. Because of that, I am doubtful whether any intellectual critique of evangelicalism will move those folks.

I say that as one who is very sympathetic to your points. Modernity is a culprit, but so is technology. The invention of the auto, the radio, the TV, the computer, internet, youtube, podcasts, the smart phone, AI, etc etc...also mitigate very strongly against a traditional communities. Perhaps inexorably so. I think we are in the midst of a paradigm shift across the board. What is around the corner I know not...

[Neto]

I really wish I could find the article that I read in Christianity Today back sometime around the mid (perhaps late?) 70's, because reading that gave me the first 'disconnect' with what I thought 'Evangelical' meant. I had *always* understood the word in the sense that Menno Simons used it, so it was somewhat of a shock to realize that I was not really an 'Evangelical". Unfortunately, I cannot recall what parameters the article gave that made me feel that I didn't fit.

I haven't read the article linked to in the opening post, so maybe it DOES mention 'Pietism', but I have often heard this blamed for 'loss of brotherhood / community'. Our small group (at our congregation) has been working our way through the book by John Coblentz, If Anyone Would Follow Me, and in Lesson 8, North American Beginnings, he mentions that it was a Lutheran Pietist who organized the first immigration of Datsch people to the American colony - Penn's Sylvan (later 'Pennsylvania'). The next Chapter is "Awakening Movements", and it has a section on Pietism. (I haven't studied it yet - we will discuss it in our next small group meeting on Sunday evening the 19th.) I have done a search on that man's name, but I could not find anything that answered the question that I had, as to what, if any, influence did he have on those first Amish and Mennonite settlers in "the New World"?

My personal conviction about pietism is that it is the other necessary leg that holds up a living community of faith. In our last small group meeting I likened it to the balance necessary to ride a bicycle. Too much sole 'brotherhood' emphasis and the Christian life become a authoritarian setting where the bishop tells you "Don't worry about your salvation - we are taking care of that for you." (This is exactly what a former Amish member of our group was told by her Amish bishop - word for word.) Too much 'pietistic' emphasis and the Christian life becomes a "Me and Jesus Got Our Own Thing Going" sort of 'lone ranger' approach, where "Nobody can tell me what to do!" There are ditches on both sides of the "narrow Jesus path", and both are deep and dangerous. (And if anyone is wondering, no, I am not the small group leader, or the discussion leader - just one of the members.)

[Bootstrap]

I really wish I could find the article that I read in Christianity Today back sometime around the mid (perhaps late?) 70's, because reading that gave me the first 'disconnect' with what I thought 'Evangelical' meant. I had *always* understood the word in the sense that Menno Simons used it, so it was somewhat of a shock to realize that I was not really an 'Evangelical". Unfortunately, I cannot recall what parameters the article gave that made me feel that I didn't fit.

In Germany, Evangelisch basically means Protestant. In political polls, it primarily refers to voting patterns and a political/religious identity that may not involve actually going to church or knowing anything about the Bible. In Christianity Today, it refers to a movement that broke off from Fundamentalism largely over the clear call to minister to others, not just through evangelism, but by caring for them as people. This same movement was adopted by the Jesus People and their successors in the 1960s and 1970s via groups like the Vineyard.

So it's not a very precise term.

In the intentional community I was part of, many of us thought of ourselves as evangelical. In the very small church I grew up in, where everyone knew everyone by name and also knew their relatives and we all tended a lot to each other's needs and those of our neighbors, we also thought of ourselves as evangelical, but I don't think we were very individualistic at all. There are aspects of theology I think of as evangelical that the article in the OP seems to embrace.

I don't think evangelical needs to be the opposite of community or even tradition. But it depends a lot on what you mean by the term.

[joshuabgood]

Some would argue that Anabaptism itself is foundationally a product of individualism and humanism. The idea that a few students were more able to discern the truth of Christianity than were the ordained church leaders, and then create their own church in Zollikon and ordain and baptize themselves is in a very real way quite individualistic and humanistic, in some interpretations. Products of Erasmus and Luther...

In that construction, it comes as no surprise that their own religious communities are given to fracturing, without any "evangelical" influence...as that Protestant impetus is one and the same.

The above, to my way of thinking does have some credibility.

[cooper]

Some would argue that Anabaptism itself is foundationally a product of individualism and humanism. The idea that a few students were more able to discern the truth of Christianity than were the ordained church leaders, and then create their own church in Zollikon and ordain and baptize themselves is in a very real way quite individualistic and humanistic, in some interpretations. Products of Erasmus and Luther...

In the article this caught my eye

I am worried that evangelicalism will destroy our ‘thick’ communities of mutual aid and self-sacrifice, only to replace them with ‘thin’, voluntary associations between people.

I thought about Stanley Hauerwas' critique of this aspect of Harold Bender's Anabaptist Vision. Voluntary association means something different in 1525 Zurich than 2026 North America.

Stanley Hauerwas wrote,

As I tried to argue in “Whose Church? Which Future? Whither the Anabaptist Vision'” the challenge facing Anabaptists is to discover the implications of living in a world in which they have won.[16] Constantinianism has been defeated. There is no established church for Anabaptists to oppose. Christianity has become voluntary, but the voluntary-ness constituted by modernity makes it impossible to maintain the disciplines necessary to be nonviolent.

[Neto]

I really wish I could find the article that I read in Christianity Today back sometime around the mid (perhaps late?) 70's, because reading that gave me the first 'disconnect' with what I thought 'Evangelical' meant. I had *always* understood the word in the sense that Menno Simons used it, so it was somewhat of a shock to realize that I was not really an 'Evangelical". Unfortunately, I cannot recall what parameters the article gave that made me feel that I didn't fit.

In Germany, Evangelisch basically means Protestant. In political polls, it primarily refers to voting patterns and a political/religious identity that may not involve actually going to church or knowing anything about the Bible. In Christianity Today, it refers to a movement that broke off from Fundamentalism largely over the clear call to minister to others, not just through evangelism, but by caring for them as people. This same movement was adopted by the Jesus People and their successors in the 1960s and 1970s via groups like the Vineyard.

So it's not a very precise term.

In the intentional community I was part of, many of us thought of ourselves as evangelical. In the very small church I grew up in, where everyone knew everyone by name and also knew their relatives and we all tended a lot to each other's needs and those of our neighbors, we also thought of ourselves as evangelical, but I don't think we were very individualistic at all. There are aspects of theology I think of as evangelical that the article in the OP seems to embrace.

I don't think evangelical needs to be the opposite of community or even tradition. But it depends a lot on what you mean by the term.

As I recall, they were using the term as capitalized, so that's why I wrote it that way, as well as putting it between quotation markers. (Kinda' like how people here distinguish between 'Plain' and 'plain'.)

Perhaps it was just that author's particular definition that was used. But I know that it was an article in CT, and it was not defined as they possible do now. (I assume that you somehow checked for the CT definition.) Some time ago I went on the CT archive site, and attempted to find the article, but without knowing the year, author, or the name of the article, it was just not possible. But from my interactions with members of Protestant groups such as Lutherans, I feel certain that, at least during that time frame, Protestants in churches like that would not have identified as Evangelicals. Evangelicals were the 'born againers'. I don't think any groups that practiced infant baptism could have been considered 'Evangelicals'. [AI disagrees. Maybe the distinctions I remember are only applicable in the 'Bible Belt', and from the other perspective, in areas of very traditional Lutheranism, etc.)

[Valerie]

I really wish I could find the article that I read in Christianity Today back sometime around the mid (perhaps late?) 70's, because reading that gave me the first 'disconnect' with what I thought 'Evangelical' meant. I had *always* understood the word in the sense that Menno Simons used it, so it was somewhat of a shock to realize that I was not really an 'Evangelical". Unfortunately, I cannot recall what parameters the article gave that made me feel that I didn't fit.

In Germany, Evangelisch basically means Protestant. In political polls, it primarily refers to voting patterns and a political/religious identity that may not involve actually going to church or knowing anything about the Bible. In Christianity Today, it refers to a movement that broke off from Fundamentalism largely over the clear call to minister to others, not just through evangelism, but by caring for them as people. This same movement was adopted by the Jesus People and their successors in the 1960s and 1970s via groups like the Vineyard.

So it's not a very precise term.

In the intentional community I was part of, many of us thought of ourselves as evangelical. In the very small church I grew up in, where everyone knew everyone by name and also knew their relatives and we all tended a lot to each other's needs and those of our neighbors, we also thought of ourselves as evangelical, but I don't think we were very individualistic at all. There are aspects of theology I think of as evangelical that the article in the OP seems to embrace.

I don't think evangelical needs to be the opposite of community or even tradition. But it depends a lot on what you mean by the term.

As I recall, they were using the term as capitalized, so that's why I wrote it that way, as well as putting it between quotation markers. (Kinda' like how people here distinguish between 'Plain' and 'plain'.)

Perhaps it was just that author's particular definition that was used. But I know that it was an article in CT, and it was not defined as they possible do now. (I assume that you somehow checked for the CT definition.) Some time ago I went on the CT archive site, and attempted to find the article, but without knowing the year, author, or the name of the article, it was just not possible. But from my interactions with members of Protestant groups such as Lutherans, I feel certain that, at least during that time frame, Protestants in churches like that would not have identified as Evangelicals. Evangelicals were the 'born againers'. I don't think any groups that practiced infant baptism could have been considered 'Evangelicals'. [AI disagrees. Maybe the distinctions I remember are only applicable in the 'Bible Belt', and from the other perspective, in areas of very traditional Lutheranism, etc.)

In California (in the 70s)it was the Jesus Movement and they were probably then called Born Againers (my Dad called my sister & I that mocking us) and we distinctly considered ourselves desperate from all other mainline denominations & then also we were calked Evangelicals as we were to spread the Gospel & reach others for Christ. No one I know of k ew about Anabaptists in fact I never heard of Amish until around 1990 then Mennonites later than that. Church history didn’t seem to matter much to the Jesus people most of us didn’t focus on learning Reformation era. We just felt most churches had become somewhat stagnant.

[ohio jones]

But from my interactions with members of Protestant groups such as Lutherans, I feel certain that, at least during that time frame, Protestants in churches like that would not have identified as Evangelicals. Evangelicals were the 'born againers'. I don't think any groups that practiced infant baptism could have been considered 'Evangelicals'

To summarize Bootstrap's point, Lutherans are Evangelical in the historic German sense but not in the modern North American sense.