Anabaptist Perspectives and liberalism

[barnhart]

I don’t know. I don’t agree with everything Anabaptist perspective shares, but I do think they’re sincere and I do appreciate some of their talks on history and on Christianity and politics because I at least hear it as a call to being non-political, and the vast majority of plain people I’ve seen that get drawn into politics in our circles are being drawn towards the Christian right. Doesn’t mean the left is a better ditch to get into, but the right seems to be the most popular among CA’s.

I think one reason that ditch is more attractive is both groups share a vision for society bound more by culture, custom and identity and less influenced by rights and philosophy.

[mike]

Two examples:

- Wellspring has made a policy against attention professional sports games. Several in my parents generation found their level of fascination with following sports to be harmful, so they set a different trajectory for my generation. I and my peers are mostly ignorant of what's going on in the NFL, etc..

That's good to hear, although it's simultaneously shocking to hear that there would need to be a rule about that at all. I can't imagine ever having a serious discussion about that in our own circles; sort of like how my denomination has never actually made a rule against owning or watching a TV; it is simply an expectation that every member knows better than to go buy a TV and hook it up and start watching it.

- Dress has adapted to the institutions we patronize. For example, the church doesn't require cape dresses or a certain color or style of headcovering for the women, but my peers and younger mostly wear cape dresses and a more limited range of headcoverings and operate comfortably at institutions, missions, etc. with more strict dress policy than my parents' and their peers established when they started the church.

Adapting to institutions you patronise doesn't seem like it's setting a higher standard; if anything, it reveals one as a chameleon who will do whatever is necessary to gain influence and credibility in order to influence other institutions. I consider this a questionable thing. In my denomination, we don't dress up special for other people in terms of Anabaptist plain clothes. We were consistently the same clothes in the same settings; we don't try to pretend to be something we are not.

I suppose I could repeat my shock at finding out teachers who seemed quite plainly dressed when at school could later be spotted over the summer in what can be charitably described as extremely worldly attire. This is the reality of how the silliness of dressing up in a cape dress and a kapp to attend an institution is.

Again, I'm not trying to be argumentative or dismissive of you. I am, however, trying to reconcile some of the quite negative things I have heard about AP from the very constituencies you think you are trying to reach (unless you're only trying to reach people more worldly than you are, in which case I would commend your efforts there, as that would be a brand-new thing for moderate-conservative Anabaptists to be trying to do). Overall, most of the "Anabaptist" world has united against the influence of people who are very skilled at social-media marketing who put together high production quality podcasts and video series.

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