Crisis of Faith among Anabaptists?

[Ms. Izzie]

As I see it, Anabaptists are facing a much bigger institutional crisis than CAM or Jeriah Mast. Its a crisis of faith, who do we depend on? What are we committed to? Merely maintaining our favourite tribal allegiance or following God and His word with a sincere heart of love for others doing the same. It seems to me this crisis of faith has left many Anabaptist people struggling with unmanageable depravity. The tribe can always protect you from the world around you, but only Christ can save your soul, and only Gods word can direct your faith.

I hope, flyingnorm, that you are ok with me posting this in a new thread. I thought it might make for a good discussion. For those of you who may have missed this in the CAM thread, there is more to the post. You may want to read it.

As for this thread....

Are there others who feel there is a crisis of faith among Anabaptists? What are the signs of crisis to you? Any ideas on how to change things? Can the institutions be reformed?

Our family is reading about Michael Sattler right now. Maybe this is why this paragraph is important to me. Sattler is dealing with a crisis of faith where we are at it in the book. He ends up being willing to change his entire way of life for Truth. I see parallels between the early Anabaptists and where we are at now. The institutions are showing signs of sickness, the vocal minority is being unheard and squashed, sexual depravity is poking its ugly head, people's identity is in the institutions...……

Your turn.

[Ernie]

Are there others who feel there is a crisis of faith among Anabaptists?

Yes. I think there is.
I am not certain that the crisis is worse now than in other generations the last 200 years, but I think it is a crisis.

What are the signs of crisis to you?

The fact that few people are interested in joining Anabaptist churches other than descendants and many descendants are not interested in the church of their parents.

Any ideas on how to change things?

Stop doing the same things and expecting different results.

Can the institutions be reformed?

Possible, but doesn't happen very often.
Here is one example. https://www.equip.org/article/the-world ... orthodoxy/

[Ken]

For previous generations, Anabaptism was very closely linked to pacificm and non-violence which made it a very distinctive religion along with the Quakers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with Civil War, world wars, Korea, and Vietnam which all had mass conscription. And, of course Anabaptists in Europe and Russia faced even starker issues with war and conscription from the Palatinate in the 18th century to Russia in the early 20th.

To be Anabaptist in the past was to clearly identify as a pacifist and advocate for nonviolence and that was perhaps the central organizing principal of the faith, especially in the less than ultra-conservative branches of the church. I expect everyone from traditional Mennonite roots has family stories of fathers, grandfathers and great uncles who were nonviolent resistors during WW2, and who did VS service during WW2 and Korea. In my family we had male family members who suffered greatly for their faith in WW1. And of course there was Martyr's Mirror. I was too young for Vietnam, but during the late 1970s it was a major issue in my church with Carter's reinstatement of draft registration and the uncertainties of the cold war.

These days we have had an all-volunteer military since the early 1970s and as the military continues to shrink in size and become increasingly specialized and high-tech we are at a place in our society where the warrior class is very separate from society and drawn predominantly from the south and inner-city minority populations. Unlike WW2 when there were gold stars in nearly every window, many Anabaptists in northern states don't even have non-Mennonite neighbors with family in the service. It is getting more and more unusual. Here in suburban WA I honestly don't know if I have a single neighbor with a child in the military.

Where does that leave the more mainstream Mennonite groups in terms of self-identity and ability to distinguish themselves from Lutherans and Baptist and other similar protestant denominations? Yes, preachers can argue all manner of theological distinctions as to why Mennonites are different from Lutherans and Baptists. But in terms of the day-to-day life of average congregants there frankly isn't much difference. The same basic social/political issues motivate both. Obviously the plain-dress Mennonites and Amish still stand apart. But today that is mainly a lifestyle choice, not a stark pacifist or stand for nonviolence that sets them apart from the rest of the world. If you surveyed non-Mennonites about what makes the Amish or conservative Mennonites unique I doubt that even 1 in 10 Americans would even identify pacifism or nonviolence as central themes.

I'm not saying that Mennonites no longer believe in pacifism. Just that in a world in which mass conscription and mass military mobilization are fading distant memories, it is no longer a belief that provides much to distinguish Mennonites from anyone else.

[barnhart]

I think Anabaptism is always in crisis because it rejects the things that provide long term stability. The things it rejects are earthy, warm and provide a great deal of physical sustenance, things like militarism, nationalism, democracy, individual rights and materialism, and in place of those earthly comforts the offer of citizenship in an ethereal, heavenly Kingdom and the resources of an unseen King seem pale and don't command the eye.

The current crisis is not so much from hostility, but from an inability of the sheep to believe when other church movements seem to have it all, eternal citizenship and the red meat citizenship and comfort of this world. The more internally compromised we become, by giving in to the demands of earthly citizenship, the more watered down and luke-warm we become and loose attraction to God and to the on-looking world, salt that is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trod underfoot.

The issue of alienation among people who joint Anabaptist movements would simply go away if the movement constantly takes in new adult believers. In many cases this stopped generations ago, so the ability to nurture new life has atrophied. God usually gives new life where to young people who have the energy and vision for it, is it different in the spiritual world. Until a church is prepared to care for new life, I doubt there will be much.

[Ken]

I think Anabaptism is always in crisis because it rejects the things that provide long term stability. The things it rejects are earthy, warm and provide a great deal of physical sustenance, things like militarism, nationalism, democracy, individual rights and materialism, and in place of those earthly comforts the offer of citizenship in an ethereal, heavenly Kingdom and the resources of an unseen King seem pale and don't command the eye.

The current crisis is not so much from hostility, but from an inability of the sheep to believe when other church movements seem to have it all, eternal citizenship and the red meat citizenship and comfort of this world. The more internally compromised we become, by giving in to the demands of earthly citizenship, the more watered down and luke-warm we become and loose attraction to God and to the on-looking world, salt that is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trod underfoot.

The issue of alienation among people who joint Anabaptist movements would simply go away if the movement constantly takes in new adult believers. In many cases this stopped generations ago, so the ability to nurture new life has atrophied. God usually gives new life where to young people who have the energy and vision for it, is it different in the spiritual world. Until a church is prepared to care for new life, I doubt there will be much.

I don't know if I agree that Anabaptism is always in crisis. For centuries, Anabaptism did just fine following the two kingdom approach in which Anabaptists created intentional communities (mainly rural) and thrived by mainly turning their backs on the outside world except for business transactions. I think that is becoming increasingly difficult in the modern world in which the agricultural economy is rapidly changing. The percentage of Americans working in agriculture and the total number of farms has been on a steady decline over the past century:



And the percentage of farm workers who are itinerant employees vs family is also changing. Farm labor is increasingly something done by migrant workers on large farms and decreasingly something done by families on family-owned farms



What this means is that it is increasingly difficult to create an intentional rural community compared to 50 or 100 years ago. The economic trends are all in the wrong direction. Not impossible, Amish and other groups are still doing it. And there are members here who are doing it. But it is remarkably more difficult today than say in the 1880s when Mennonites could move to a place like Kansas in the thousands with little more than the clothes on their backs and build farms and communities in a largely agrarian economy with cheap abundant land. Those communities that still exist are largely legacy communities founded centuries ago (Holmes County, Belleville, Lancaster, etc.).

These days in an increasingly urbanized world economy and corporate ag economy it is just much more difficult to build an insular agrarian community. And for different reasons it is difficult to build a separate two-kingdom urban community in a place where people's jobs and careers are going to pull them in all different directions. In urban America you are going to spend most of your life outside church with people who don't share your faith. In a rural community of farms where the church is the center of the community and the area is predominantly Mennonite or Anabaptist, that is not the case.

I think the crisis (to the extent that there is one) today is that the urban/rural divide in this country is pulling the church (and individual families) in two directions just like it is pulling America in two directions. I don't think there is really any real solution.

[barnhart]

... For centuries, Anabaptism did just fine following the two kingdom approach in which Anabaptists created intentional communities (mainly rural) and thrived by mainly turning their backs on the outside world except for business transactions.

I see that as compromise and retreat. The American Anabaptist experience has largely been one of strategic retreat. I don't want to be too hard on them, I don't know that I would have had the courage to differ. In the new world we gave up on speaking to the culture at large in favor of cultural retreat. Even in the early days of colonization we had more salt and light critiques of society such as objections to the system of enslavement and de-humanization of native Americans, but those faded into quiet passivity after a generation or two.

These days in an increasingly urbanized world economy and corporate ag economy it is just much more difficult to build an insular agrarian community. And for different reasons it is difficult to build a separate two-kingdom urban community in a place where people's jobs and careers are going to pull them in all different directions. In urban America you are going to spend most of your life outside church with people who don't share your faith. In a rural community of farms where the church is the center of the community and the area is predominantly Mennonite or Anabaptist, that is not the case.

I think the crisis (to the extent that there is one) today is that the urban/rural divide in this country is pulling the church (and individual families) in two directions just like it is pulling America in two directions. I don't think there is really any real solution.

These are challenges and opportunities, this calls for re-newed vision and new direction. What is lost may be things God doesn't value as much as we do.

[Ken]

... For centuries, Anabaptism did just fine following the two kingdom approach in which Anabaptists created intentional communities (mainly rural) and thrived by mainly turning their backs on the outside world except for business transactions.

I see that as compromise and retreat. The American Anabaptist experience has largely been one of strategic retreat. I don't want to be too hard on them, I don't know that I would have had the courage to differ. In the new world we gave up on speaking to the culture at large in favor of cultural retreat. Even in the early days of colonization we had more salt and light critiques of society such as objections to the system of enslavement and de-humanization of native Americans, but those faded into quiet passivity after a generation or two.

These days in an increasingly urbanized world economy and corporate ag economy it is just much more difficult to build an insular agrarian community. And for different reasons it is difficult to build a separate two-kingdom urban community in a place where people's jobs and careers are going to pull them in all different directions. In urban America you are going to spend most of your life outside church with people who don't share your faith. In a rural community of farms where the church is the center of the community and the area is predominantly Mennonite or Anabaptist, that is not the case.

I think the crisis (to the extent that there is one) today is that the urban/rural divide in this country is pulling the church (and individual families) in two directions just like it is pulling America in two directions. I don't think there is really any real solution.

These are challenges and opportunities, this calls for re-newed vision and new direction. What is lost may be things God doesn't value as much as we do.

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I agree with the compromise and retreat. But the simple fact of the matter is that it is MUCH easier to maintain a theology of two kingdoms when you live a cloistered life in which 95% of your time is spent within your community and the other 5% is spent out at the market or some such where you are still surrounded by many of your own kind. Contrasted to an urban life in which 98% of your time is spent out in the world in a secular job and living in a secular neighborhood with diverse neighbors and only 2% of your time is spent with your peers in church.

I also personally question whether we actually did have "more salt" as you put it in previous centuries. Yes, there are famous examples from history such as the famous 1688 Mennonite and Quaker position paper on slavery. Which has taken outside importance in Mennonite historical lore. But how "salty" was it really for half a dozen Mennonite ministers or elders to write such a document? How much were they really risking? How much was it an internal document to give direction to Mennonites and Quakers and how much was it an attempt to change the outside world? And how much did average congregants and communities actually put themselves out there and take risks to oppose slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries? I honestly don't know. There are also people risking all to do great things around the world today.

Yes, the early church history is full of stories of Anabaptist martyrs. But the 16th and early 17th centuries were a time of enormous religious bloodshed across all of Europe that touched virtually every religious denomination. Eight million people died in the 30 years war during this time period which was largely a world religious war. There was bloody religious persecution in France, Spain, England, and even the American colonies during this time. I don't know how uniquely "salty" the early Anabaptists were compared to any other religious groups like say the Huguenots in France that were being slaughtered by the Catholic Inquisition during that same time period. For example, thousands of Huguenots were killed in France by Catholics during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 which was contemporaneous with the persecution of early Anabaptists.

We can have tunnel vision when it comes to our own history. I don't know how exceptional the early Anabaptists were compared to any other similar community of faith. Times have changed. But were were we really better in the past? I honestly don't know. But history can often be viewed with rose colored glasses in which only the most seminal events are remembered and not so much the ordinary lives of ordinary people.

[Josh]

Early Hutterites were typically tailors.

In light of the fact America was unable to make enough face masks from January to March, I would say perhaps Anabaptists could indeed have valuable services to offer society at large other than farming and food.

Like, you know, sewing life saving PPE.

The world doesn’t need Anabaptists to be specialising in professions pushing buttons on computers figuring out how much profit can be extracted from a merger between two hospitals, but that’s where the world has been going. Meanwhile, we are about to have major problems growing and processing and slaughtering enough food to eat.

[Franklin]

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I agree with the compromise and retreat. But the simple fact of the matter is that it is MUCH easier to maintain a theology of two kingdoms when you live a cloistered life in which 95% of your time is spent within your community and the other 5% is spent out at the market or some such where you are still surrounded by many of your own kind. Contrasted to an urban life in which 98% of your time is spent out in the world in a secular job and living in a secular neighborhood with diverse neighbors and only 2% of your time is spent with your peers in church.

Hasidic Jews manage to do it. This movie explains how they do it:



But Christians have a big problem because they believe that they are required to love everyone. Members of modern culture are completely unlovable, so you can only safely love them at a safe distance. So Mennonites must either stop loving these people or they must continue to completely withdraw and love them at a safe distance.

[Ken]

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I agree with the compromise and retreat. But the simple fact of the matter is that it is MUCH easier to maintain a theology of two kingdoms when you live a cloistered life in which 95% of your time is spent within your community and the other 5% is spent out at the market or some such where you are still surrounded by many of your own kind. Contrasted to an urban life in which 98% of your time is spent out in the world in a secular job and living in a secular neighborhood with diverse neighbors and only 2% of your time is spent with your peers in church.

Hasidic Jews manage to do it. This movie explains how they do it:



But Christians have a big problem because they believe that they are required to love everyone. Members of modern culture are completely unlovable, so you can only safely love them at a safe distance. So Mennonites must either stop loving these people or they must continue to completely withdraw and love them at a safe distance.

Hasidic Jews also have about 1000 years of practice as they have been ghettoized by European societies for century upon century and excluded from must of mainstream European life and economy. What may be intentional now in 21st Century New York was forced upon them for hundreds of years in Europe.

As for members of modern culture being "unloveable?" Is that what you think Jesus would say? One might argue that such an attitude is exactly why there is apparently a crisis of faith in the Anabaptist community.