The Anabaptist-Mennonite Traditions: Inculcating and Implementing the Sermon on the Mount

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I found Dr. Michael King’s essay on the Anabaptist-Mennonite traditions to be fascinating. I have known very little about these faith traditions in the past, and so I was delighted to be able to learn more.

The concept of “rebaptism” was of particular interest to me as a Latter-day Saint. From the time of the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, baptism has always been by immersion, since we are persuaded that this particular ordinance or sacrament is symbolic of the crucified Savior being buried and then rising from the tomb some three days later (Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 2:12). The Church’s founder, Joseph Smith, wrote the following in an 1842 letter to members of the Church: “Herein is glory and honor, and immortality and eternal life—The ordinance of baptism by water, to be immersed therein in order to answer to the likeness of the resurrection of the dead, that one principle might accord with the other; to be immersed in the water and come forth out of the water is in the likeness of the resurrection of the dead in coming forth out of their graves. . . . Consequently, the baptismal font was instituted as a similitude of the grave, and was commanded to be in a place underneath where the living are wont to assemble, to show forth the living and the dead, and that all things may have their likeness, and that they may accord one with another.”

Latter-day Saints are also emphatic about who should be baptized—namely, only those who are accountable and mature enough to understand why they are being baptized and why the ordinance is performed in the specific manner in which it is. We comply with the following instructions given in 1831: “Inasmuch as parents have children in Zion [the Church community], or in any of her stakes [basically the equivalent of a diocese] which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents. . . . And their children shall be baptized for the remission of their sins when eight years old, and receive the laying on of the hands.” The laying on of the hands takes place following the water baptism. Hands are laid upon the head of the initiate and words like the following are spoken: “John Henry Brown, by the authority of the priesthood which we hold, we lay our hands upon your head, confirm you a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and say unto you, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’” The reception of the Spirit in this way is referred to as the “baptism by fire,” referring to the cleansing, sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.

When a member of my Church has been guilty of very serious sin and even excommunicated from the faith, he or she can return and regain their membership through a period of genuine repentance and forgiveness, followed by baptism. This would be an example of a rebaptism. Also, when the Mormon pioneers crossed the plains and arrived in the Great Basin, what is now the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young, the senior leader of the Church, encouraged the Latter-day Saints to be rebaptized as an evidence of their re-commitment to the beliefs and practices of the faith, perhaps like a married couple might renew their vows after ten years of marriage. We no longer re-baptize people in this manner.

On page 4 of Dr. King’s paper, he describes a Mennonite perspective toward holy scripture—that it is “without error in the original writings in all that they affirm.” This sounds to me to be very similar or even identical to what a number of Evangelical colleagues have expressed to me over the last thirty years. I think I understand what is intended here but have questions about this particular view of scripture. Because there are tens of thousands of scribal errors on the ancient manuscripts that occurred during the centuries-long transmission of Biblical texts, it would be extremely difficult to suggest that the current Bible, as we now have it, is inerrant or without flaw. Consequently, many religious traditions have chosen to adapt their concept of inerrancy by expressing their view that it was the original manuscripts or autographs that were without error. I might be able to live with that, if we only had the original manuscripts within our possession, which we do not. If I understand properly, the earliest complete manuscripts of the New Testament date to the second and third centuries AD.

I’m thinking of a devoted Christian who is struggling with his conviction regarding the truth and validity of the New Testament accounts of Jesus and his Apostles. To say to such a person that he can have complete confidence in the Bible, since we believe that the original manuscripts were flawless, will not be very comforting. He is probably far more concerned about the Bible that he possesses now, be it the King James Version, the New International Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the Revised English Bible, or the English Standard Version. I would be interested in Michael’s response to my question here. By the way, I love the Bible with all my heart and fully believe that it contains the word of God. I am simply interested in the concept of inerrancy mentioned in Dr. King’s paper.

I was extremely interested in the five values of the Anabaptist-Mennonite traditions. Value number 4 regarding love and non-violence are deeply moving to me. One of the Presidents of our Church, David O. McKay (1873-1970, the leader during my boyhood) spoke the following at the April 1942 general conference: “War is basically selfish. Its roots feed in the soil of envy, hatred, desire for domination. Its fruit, therefore, is always bitter. They who cultivate and propagate it spread death and destruction and are enemies of the human race. . . . War impels you to hate your enemies. The Prince of Peace says, love your enemies. War says, curse them that curse you. The Prince of Peace says, pray for them that curse you. War says, injure and kill them that hate you. The Lord says, do good to them that hate you. We see that war is incompatible with Christ’s teachings. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of peace. War is its antithesis and produces hate.”

Now, I don’t know many Latter-day Saints who are pacifists or who entered the military as conscientious objectors, though I am certain there would be some. I am neither a pacifist nor a conscientious objector, but a number of my friends served in the Vietnam War. Some of them have bodies that are maimed and spirits that are broken. One friend in particular comes to mind. I had not seen him for several years but was able to become reacquainted at a reunion. We talked about our previous decades, and my friend indicated that he had served in Vietnam. In an act of genuine interest and concern, I unfortunately asked the wrong question: “What was that like?” For well over an hour my boyhood chum wept uncontrollably as he recounted the horrors of war, especially that particular conflict. A few of my buddies came home from Vietnam but never really returned. Others of my friends lost their lives.

Finally, I have been deeply moved by the Amish devotion to the Savior’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and their Christlike demonstrations of love and forgiveness that I have observed or about which I have learned. My soul was especially stirred by the reaction of a group of Amish people to the vicious murders of five of their children, perpetrated by a crazed killer in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania in October of 2006. I read the book Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy [2007] and saw a docudrama on the horrid acts and the aftermath. The Amish made a merciful and magnanimous decision to forgive Charles Carl Roberts IV, when a huge percentage of the population of our nation would surely have demanded that justice be allowed to take its full course. I realized then how lacking in my own Christianity I was, for I couldn’t conceive of me being able to do as they did.

Reading Michael King’s essay has been very worthwhile—both informative and motivational, particularly to learn more about the Anabaptist-Mennonite faiths. I confess a bit of what the late New Testament scholar and Lutheran Bishop, Krister Stendahl, called “holy envy” in how these Christians live out their faith. What an example to the rest of us!

A Near-Total Convergence: Baptist Responds to Anabaptist

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Michael King’s post found striking resonance with my understanding of discipleship as a Baptist.

These resonances include 1) a resolute focus on Jesus, with the Sermon on the Mount functioning as the locus classicus in defining the Way of Jesus. Closely related is 2) the emphasis on the kingdom or reign of God as the apocalyptic-ethical narrative frame of Jesus’ message. This is the transformation of the world from a kingdom of rebellion against God to a place where God’s will is “done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Christians are defined as those who are committed not just to belief in Jesus but to practicing his Way, which includes 3) love and nonviolence. This Way can only be followed by those conscious of its obligations and personally committed to them, thus 4) the necessity of a believers’ church. Finally, if the mission of Jesus was the kingdom of God, and the kingdom is the wholistic transformation of the world, then 5) the church’s mission can only be wholistic.

I also note with sadness the first part of King’s essay, in which he lists a dizzying array of schisms and divisions, as well as what I believe to be the deleterious effects of the modern Evangelical behemoth, which distorts the polity of distinctive Christian communities that would be healthier if the Evangelical power brokers were simply ignored.

 

The Anabaptist-Pietist Dialectic

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One of my jobs at Bethel University is to help coordinate and teach Christianity and Western Culture, a one-semester general education course that takes first-year students on a sprint through over 2,500 years of history. There’s a lot to cover — we also help introduce the disciplines of philosophy and theology — so I remember being astonished that first time through the program to realize that it dedicated an entire lecture each semester to the origins of the Anabaptist tradition.

Even with its recent growth in Africa, the largest contemporary Anabaptist group, the Mennonites, accounts for maybe one in a thousand of the world’s Christians. So it may seem disproportionate to devote that much of a sprawling church history survey to telling part of the Anabaptist story. But that lecture has become one of my favorites to teach: a reminder that Christians — as Martin Luther King Jr. said of the Early Church — can be “small in number… big in commitment.”

So while I wish that Michael King had left himself more space in which to flesh out his five Anabaptist-Mennonite values, reading his summaries of those emphases reminded me again how the peaceful descendants of the Radical Reformation discomfit my too-comfortable understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.

At times, it was easy to read King’s essay and understand why there’s often been overlap between the Anabaptist and Pietist traditions. Both understand Christianity not as the result of cultural assumption, social expectation, or familial inheritance, but of “[making] an adult decision to follow Jesus.” But Pietists are more likely to frame that decision in terms of an individual conversion, rather than a commitment to collective discipleship, a costly way of life practiced within a community that (for better and worse) holds its members accountable to a baptism that was “important enough to die for when Christendom entities ordered them to stop.”

So it’s no surprise that some Mennonite scholars have been dismissive of pietistic Christianity. In his landmark summation of “The Anabaptist Vision” in 1943, Harold Bender sounded like a Pietist in critiquing any Christianity that “made regeneration, holiness and love primarily a matter of intellect, of doctrinal belief… rather than one of the transformation of life.” But he accused Pietists of mistaking the church for “a resource group for individual piety,” rather than “a brotherhood of love in which the fullness of the Christian life ideal is to be expressed.”

Even sharper criticism came a few years later from Bender’s colleague Robert Friedmann, who dismissed Pietism as a kind of “quiet conventicle-Christianity which is primarily concerned with the inner experience of salvation and only secondarily with the expression of love toward the brotherhood, and not at all in a radical world transformation.” In his 1949 study of Mennonite Piety through the Centuries, Friemann lamented how Pietism’s influence sometimes led to Anabaptists “cultivating the inwardness of the Word of God in a more static manner and thus not conflicting with the surrounding world.”

Revisionist Mennonite historians like Cornelius Dyck, Theron Gladbach, and John Roth have largely rejected Friedmann’s characterization of Pietism. And the history of groups like the Brethren in Christ and Mennonite Brethren (formed by Pietist revivals among Mennonites in, respectively, 18th century Pennsylvania and 19th century Russia) suggests how Anabaptist churches are as likely as any other to fall into the “dead orthodoxy” that tends to awaken Pietist instincts for inner experience and personal conversion.

But this Pietist still hears enough truth in critiques like Bender’s and Friedmann’s to feel like King’s essay posed convicting questions:

  • Do Pietists truly put God’s kingdom first? I fear that we tend to interpret the Sermon on the Mount in spiritual terms, as a promise of the world to come rather than a revolutionary charter for how to live in this world as citizens of God’s upside-down kingdom..
  • Do we truly love all of our neighbors as ourselves, even to the point of dying at our enemies’ hands rather than killing them? I also teach courses on both world wars, and make a point of talking about Mennonites and other Anabaptists who conscientiously objected to participation in conflicts that other Christians were quick to deem just and righteous. Indeed, this fall I’ll have our Christianity and Western Culture students read from a Mennonite statement issued amid the gathering clouds of what became World War II. “As followers of Christ the Prince of Peace,” wrote its authors in 1937, “we believe His Gospel to be a Gospel of Peace, requiring us as His disciples to be at peace with all men, to live a life of love and good will, even toward our enemies, and to renounce the use of force and violence in all forms as contrary to the Spirit of our Master.”
  • Are we truly committed to what King calls “wholistic mission”? My pietistic home denomination affirms “the whole mission of the church,” but I suspect that most Evangelical Covenanters and other Pietists have found it easier to evangelize victims of “injustice, racism, poverty, hunger, [and] nakedness” than to strive, whatever the personal cost, to transform such a world by peacefully, steadfastly resisting its evils.

I don’t have good answers to those questions. I’ve never quite been persuaded that the Anabaptist way of following Jesus is the right one, but it always leaves me feeling like my own way is to follow the path of compromise and safety.

The closest I can come to resolving that tension is when I heed the advice of the Brethren scholar Dale Brown, who helped revive American interest in Pietism in the 1970s and 1980s. (Brethren denominations like Brown’s descend from Alexander Mack, a Radical Pietist in early 18th century Germany who adopted Anabaptist views on baptism and the church. His followers began to emigrate to Pennsylvania in 1719.)

“It is not accurate,” Brown said at Elizabethtown College in 1990, “to infer that the Anabaptists were without a message of salvation and that Pietists were not interested in discipleship. But we can discern a major tension between these streams by highlighting divergent emphases. Pietists generally have proclaimed the good news of what Jesus can do for you. Anabaptists have given more emphasis on being faithful to Jesus…. Pietist rhetoric calls us to be heaven bound; whereas Anabaptist admonitions would have us attempt to play heaven on this dirty earth.” But he thought that the tension could also be understood as a dialectic, working together to lead Christians to a fuller, more complex understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in this world.

I’ll have more to say about Brown’s “dialectic” in my own essay next spring. But let me close by quoting one of his examples:

The Anabaptist-Pietist dialectic calls people to make a personal commitment to Jesus Christ but to maintain clarity, that when they do, they are not relating to one who invites them to be in the garden alone; rather the call is to join brothers and sisters in participating in Christ’s redeeming activity in the world. For salvation becomes personal only through personal responses to the social dimensions of the faith, which includes God, neighbor, and the rest of God’s good creation.

Can Lutheran Dialectical Thinking and Living Counter-Culturally be Considered an Appropriate Gospel Witness by Anabaptists?

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      What led me to fall in love with God, Christian faith, and the church of my youth was the awareness that ours is a faith for rebels, for people who are committed to living counter-culturally – going against the grain of what society expects.  My high-school years in Pennsylvania led me to sense that Mennonites and the Amish were counter-cultural rebels too, indeed perhaps more rebellious than my Lutheran Christian way of life.  Reading Michael King’s thoughtful and helpful analysis of the Anabaptist-Mennonite heritage (so neat to learn of the diversity within that heritage) has strengthened these perceptions of my youth, and I hope Dr. King will correct and amend any false impressions I have been carrying around in ignorance about his heritage.   

     Among the common values he has sketched include a staunch Anabaptist/Mennonite  Christocentrism, the prioritizing of the things of God, a commitment to love and nonviolence, as well as a wholistic sense of mission.  America does not expect this from its religiously inclined citizens.  Faith and Jesus need to be understood in light of an American worldview, politics and economic well-being trump spirituality, love and nonviolence need to take a backseat to patriotism, and spirituality is a private affair.  The counter-culturalism I sense in Dr. King’s comments is so appealing to me, and I think, for reasons I’ll make clear shortly, for a lot of Lutherans.  This is an essay to learn whether we can embrace each other in the fun of confounding the world for Jesus’ sake.   

     I come out of a heritage which at its best aims to confound the ways of the world and the “truths” of society’s latest versions of reason.  Martin Luther’s famed Theology of the Cross which he evolved for The Heidelberg Disputation is the premiere example of this approach, what Neo-Orthodox analysts have called a “dialectical” approach to theology and life (Luther’s Works, Vol.31, pp.39-70; Heidelberg Disputation, #20-#21).  Reason and faith cannot be integrated, he says.  Reason is the devil’s whore (Luther Works, Vol.52, p.196; Vol.40, pp.174-175). 

     This is not a dialectic like Hegel posits – two contrasting items moving towards a synthesis.  Rather, Luther’s dialectical thinking entails that both elements of contrasting poles of the contrasts he posits have truth and validity, but they may not be combined, must be kept distinct, and Christians live in that tension.   Thus Law and Gospel must exist in dialectical tension (Luther Works, Vol.26, p.115).  Likewise, the Christian is simultaneously saint and sinner, 100% of each (Luther Works, Vol.30, p.69; Luther Works, Vol.69, p.101).  Most pertinent to our dialogue is the Two-Kingdom Ethic, which places Christians in both the realm of the state and of the Church, but his/her real home is not with society (Luther’s Works, Vol.45, pp.81-129).   Socially and politically this cashes out to entail that while as sinners Christians may participate in government, even bear arms in just wars, this in not who they really are as saints.  In Christ, their real selves are people who join Mennonites in desiring communities of love and peace, only forced to bear arms themselves to preserve peace in our imperfect world (Luther’s Works, Vol.45, pp.91-92).        

     My question to the Anabaptist-Mennonite family is whether these commitments are sufficiently akin to yours that we might be considered spiritual kin in holding them.  To be sure, the Lutheran Church has not always liveD7 out this commitments, most glaringly evident in engagements with Anabaptists  and indeed with the adoption of the State Church system in Europe.  I don’t want to let American Lutherans off the hook.  I have already noted the growing strand of Liberal Protestant piety in my branch of the Lutheranism (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), a segment of the membership and leadership which would embody Lutheranism in the mode of 21st-century Cultural Christianity.  But on the other hand, when Lutheranism has not been watered down by cultural influences it has been a tradition which  clearly embodies something like the counter-culturalism of Mennonite faith along with the kind of commitment to wholistic ministries Anabaptist-Mennonites aim to achieve.  For American Lutheranism sponsors more social service organizations (hospitals, nursing homes, children’s homes, etc.) in the States than any other Protestant denominational family.  For all our differences, then, don’t we really have a lot in common?  In exploring these commonalities further I close with three questions which would be crucial to Lutherans in determining if we can have fun together following Jesus.   

     First and foremost for Lutherans is the question of Justification By Grace Through Faith.  If Mennonites today can stand by their historic Confessions like The Waterland Confession (XX) and A Short Confession of Faith (21) regarding Justification, then from a Lutheran side we are and remain truly brothers and sisters.                   

     One point left out of the five values of Mennonites noted by Dr. King was an observation he had raised with me regarding the importance of Christian formation by the community in his tradition.   My personal correspondence with him addressed possibilities for convergence with Lutheranism on this point and so I share it here more publically.  My observation  was that one of my Lutheran teachers at Yale was George Lindbeck, who in dialogue thinkers like Stanley Hauerwas (whose indebtedness to Mennonites is well known), argued that the Church forms Christians like a culture or Mother (The Nature of Doctrine).  This fits Luther’s idea of the Church as our Mother, who raises us (Luther’s Works, Vol.51, p.166).  And so my point is that as long as the upbringing the Mennonite Church provides is not legalistic, if Mother Church also gives us “wings to fly,” is the kind of Mom who tells us to follow our dreams as long as they’re good, decent, and serve God’s purposes (that’s what Lutherans mean by following Augustine’s dictum of “act as you desire as long as you are acting with love’ [Enchiridion, 22,21]), then the Lutheran in me says let’s talk Christian nurture together.  If the Lutheran Church raises its “kids” with this Augustinian attitude, is that a legitimate Mennonite approach too, even Mennonites characteristically don’t do it quite the same way?  And if so, what could we do together to get our constituents talking and enjoying together the fun of the life of faith?                            

      Finally in connection with the understanding of the Church in following Jesus, there is one other value offered by Dr. King that I want to pursue, the Anabaptist-Mennonite vision of a believers’ church.  I need to clarify whether a Mennonite congregation would even consider a sinful sleaze like me as a member (for counter-cultural Christian though I try to be, I am still the same selfish, concupiscent being I’ve always been) and whether I would have to renounce my baptism in order to join.  If we can get around these issues, Mennonites and Lutherans could have a lot of fun following Jesus together.                     

 

Not Quite So Simple…Or is it?

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Response to Michael King, Anabaptist Tradition
By Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, Reformed Tradition

“Not Quite So Simple…Or is it?”

A Reformed response to the ways that the Anabaptist tradition tries to faithfully follow Jesus should begin with confession. The history of our relationship is blighted with deadly sin.

When I was in the process of seeking ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America, I went through examinations by my classis, which is the local body of pastors and elders in our polity holding the power of ordination. At one point I was asked if I have any reservations about the Confessions of our denomination (The Heidelberg Confession, The Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dordt; the Belhar Confession was added later). I replied, “Well I don’t believe in drowning Anabaptists.”

I was referring the lamentable history between these two traditions, centered in conflicts over baptism and the place of the church in relationship to the state. An infamous incident took place on January 7, 1527, in Zurich. Young believers were meeting for biblical study and reflection, including a 29-year-old leader, Frederick Manz. They concluded that infant baptism was nowhere to be found in the Bible. Rather, baptism should be practiced in response to a whole-hearted decision to be a believer in Jesus Christ, as an adult. So, they “re-baptized” one another.

Ulrich Zwingli and the Zurich city council, fully controlled by the Reformed community, were outraged. Those they called “anabaptists” were persecuted, and Manz was taken out in a boat in the Limmat River in Zurich, with hands tied, and thrown into the icy water to drown. Persecution of Anabaptists by Reformed and Lutheran authorities followed in Europe, spilling much blood.

Even five centuries later, any Reformed critique of Anabaptist ways of following Jesus should begin by remembering this deadly history and offering a word of confession. As an aside, in 2010, the Lutheran World Federation formally asked forgiveness from the Mennonite World Conference for Lutheran acts of deadly persecution in the 16th Century. It was a powerful, moving gesture not yet replicated in a similar fashion globally by the Reformed community.

Turning to today’s dialogue between these two traditions, what are the contemporary places of agreement and disagreement? Michael King has served us well in identifying five central values which characterize the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition, despite its considerable diversity. It’s a useful framework for comparisons with the Reformed tradition. I’ll respond accordingly.

Value 1: The starting point for Anabaptist-Mennonite understandings of God, the church, and all life is the New Testament and the Jesus Christ revealed in it.

Those in the Reformed tradition would welcome the Christocentric emphasis found here. Yet, they would be cautious. Does this suggest purposeful inattention to the whole of the biblical witness? Are the Hebrew Scriptures simply set aside when there’s a possible contradiction to the New Testament? Isn’t a deeper engagement with the whole Word of God required?

Yet, the Anabaptist’s tradition of ethics, and the ways in which the life of Jesus serves as a simple, radical, instructive example of how we should live can deeply enrich the Reformed practice of discipleship. In practice, those shaped by the Reformed tradition can slip into easy patterns of accommodation with culture and government, explaining away the direct imperatives of Jesus’ words and life in response to wealth, status, and power.

Value 2: God’s kingdom or realm comes first

It’s hard to imagine any disagreement from the Reformed tradition here, in principle. Yet, the radical quality of what the Anabaptist tradition means by this is often not understood. History, of course, has shaped the responses of both traditions. The Reformed tradition took root in places where the government was controlled, and conformed, hopefully, to Reformed views. In centuries since then, Reformed voices have focused on how government, and other spheres of public life can be shaped and structured according to Christian values.

The Anabaptist tradition arose in historical situations of persecution by civil authorities. Allegiance to God’s kingdom translated readily into disobedience to earthly kingdoms. In the centuries since, this tradition has stressed the primacy of drawing clear lines of distinction between our loyalty to Christ in concrete areas of public life and the requirements of the state. In an era when Christendom has crumbled, the Anabaptist model of the church as a radical alterative community has much to teach the wider church.

Value 3: An Anabaptist-Mennonite church is a believers church

At the heart of the original controversy between the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions, this difference remains unambiguous. For the Reformed tradition, the emphasis is on the covenant community and the nature of God’s promises. This is divorced today, of course, from the understandings of Christendom which essentially made baptism the portal to earthly citizenship in a nation, violating Anabaptist understandings so severely.

The Reformed tradition believes that the gathered community of God’s people, in the church, has the responsibility and the gift to extend God’s promises of grace to those brought into its life by birth. God chooses them before they, in response, learn to choose God. The Anabaptist firm adherence to baptism as a response to belief continues as a clear mark of distinction, but without the ramifications of mutual rejection, recrimination, and even violence that so stained our histories.

Value 4: Anabaptist-Mennonites are committed to love and nonviolence.

The Anabaptist witness here has a prophetic role to give to the wider church, including the Reformed tradition. Calvin’s concern for civil order and theological correctness, and the actions of his followers led at times to violence and the death of “heretics.” And one can’t easily dismiss the ways in which expressions of Reformed theology—however misconstrued—became a moral bulwark for the repression and violence of regimes against their opponents, such as the support for apartheid in South Africa. Further, I’ll never forget visiting one of the “slave castles” on the coast of Ghana, where those captured were imprisoned below awaiting slave ships, while one story above Dutch Reformed Christians gathered to sing Psalms expressing their love for God.

More than the classic debate between pacifism and the just war theory is involved in this value. Michael King mentions the role of Mennonites today in conflict transformation. Non-violent approaches to conflict resolution urgently need to be applied in today’s world. There is expansive common ground for those from all those traditions represented in this dialogue to work with the Anabaptist tradition in promoting creative alternatives to violence.

Value 5: Anabaptist-Mennonites embrace wholistic mission.

This value is met with a whole-hearted embrace by the Reformed tradition and beyond. Further, as is typical of the Anabaptist tradition, they practice what they preach. I’ve been privileged to see first-hand the outstanding work of the Mennonite Central Committee in many parts of the world. Often, they lead by example.

To summarize, the Anabaptist tradition tries to faithfully follow Jesus by simply following Jesus. Other traditions, including my own, spend considerable theological energy trying to explain why it’s not quite so simple. Those following the Anabaptist tradition demonstrate how, at times, it is that simple.

Shared Values, Different Expressions

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As someone who lives in Ohio, I am very grateful for the description of complexities in the Anabaptist heritage. I am also very grateful for the clear values expressed by Michael King. Wesleyan Methodists can find much to affirm in those values even though I also see some differences.

 

Value 1: Like Anabaptists, Methodists look to how Jesus is revealed in the New Testament as the foundation for Christian faith. John Wesley himself preached thirteen sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, and these thirteen were among the forty-four sermons (called standard sermons) Wesley chose from his writings to guide Methodist preachers. Wesley considered himself a “man of one book” even though he was widely read. He had taught Greek New Testament at Oxford, so he also translated and annotated the New Testament to share his learning with unlearned Methodists. The selected Sermons and the Notes Upon the New Testament established the core standard for how Methodist preachers should understand Jesus as revealed in the New Testament.

 

Value 2: Methodism arose within the Church of England, closely tied to the State with the monarch as Supreme Governor, a situation that fits King’s description of Christendom. As a priest in an established church, Wesley did not raise the kinds of questions Anabaptists did about “citizenship” allegiances. He tended to think of the kingdom of God as righteousness, peace, and joy attained by faith (“The Way to the Kingdom”). Even though this view stresses internal rather than social effects, for Wesley keeping focus on attaining this “kingdom” did allow for some critical assessment of social norms in England (for instance, the use of money).

 

Wesley recognized how Christian faith could be taken for granted in an established church. Methodism was a renewal movement in this context, intending to call people to deeper faith so they could be better Christians. Wesley did not challenge infant baptism, but he recognized that baptism alone did not guarantee growth in Christ. The “methods” of Methodism were intended to call people to follow Jesus more closely and seriously. As Methodism became a church apart from the Church of England, it has mostly retained infant baptism, but it sees the ongoing cultivation of spiritual life with Christ to be the obligation of the Church into which infants are baptized. We see infant baptism as a sign of God’s prevenient grace, that is, God working in our lives before we are able to make any decision. We are called and empowered by God’s work to respond.

 

Value 3: Even though it stresses response, The Wesleyan theology that undergirds Methodism is not simply based on human decision. Wesley describes faith in “The Scripture Way of Salvation” as light and sight, as evidence and conviction. This compound description shows how God works with us: God shines light so we are able to see, God shows evidence of love so we may trust in it. Whatever decision we may make to follow Jesus is supported and empowered by God’s grace. Wesleyan Methodism does take human response very seriously. We do not retain infant baptism as a simple and final step of making someone Christian, but rather as a sign of grace into which we are called to live. Part of what we see in that sign is that, like infants, no one truly and fully grasps the meaning and cost of following Jesus until they actually follow. Early Methodists faced ridicule more than actual threat of death, and I can see how the Anabaptist tradition has ample reason and example to take conscious decision seriously.

 

Value 4: I will speak about nonviolence mostly from the perspective of a United Methodist because UM documents show the complexity of the issue for a church that has not made the issue as central as Anabaptists have. The United Methodist Church (UMC) has a clear statement in its Social Principles that “war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Jesus Christ.” There is a clear rejection of preemptive strikes and a call to peaceful resolutions of differences However, many Methodists have served honorably in the military (some as chaplains). Other Methodists have exercised conscientious objection. The UMC has recognized that its members have made different choices. Resolutions passed by the UMC address both a concern for safety standards for personnel involved in nuclear operations as well as criticism of looking for military solutions to social problems (such as the drug crisis). Military service has not been forbidden, nor has it been stigmatized. In fact it is often honored. The contradiction between following Jesus and (at least potentially) killing other people may not be seriously considered by many members. I am grateful to the Anabaptists for being a witness to call us to consider this contradiction more seriously.

 

Value 5: The concern for souls and bodies in wholistic mission is something we share. Wesley organized the early societies so they could care for each other’s bodily needs (collecting money from members that could provide assistance to other members who were in need) as well as spiritual needs. He also collected tested home remedies for illness and accident and published them affordably in his Primitive Physic. Methodist health and relief services are many. Churches and conferences also mobilize quickly to provide aid in local emergencies. We value the “connection” among our churches, so there is good communication and working together to get aid where it needs to be.

Those Countercultural Anabaptists

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I open with thanks to Michael King for reminding us of the virtues of the Anabaptist tradition. It is indeed a movement with a colorful and distinguished history, populated as it is with remarkable individuals, many of whom suffered for their convictions.

Because this tradition takes its cues from the Sermon on the Mount, the most glorious and challenging passage in the entire Bible, Anabaptists are countercultural – because not many people in our world turn the other cheek or believe that the meek will inherit the earth or that peacemakers are blessed. Indeed, a countercultural ethic is baked into the Anabaptist tradition.

This is certainly the case for the defining doctrine of the Anabaptist movement, adult (or believer’s) baptism. Anabaptists seized on the central tenet of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura, and in effect turned it against him. Where in the New Testament, Anabaptists asked, do we find precedent for the baptism of infants? Well, nowhere, unless you construe the baptism of the Philippian jailer – “and all his family” – in Acts 16 to signal the baptism of children.

That interpretive move set the Anabaptists (the term means “to baptize again”) from the remainder of the Protestant movement, which meant that Anabaptists were considered outcasts, even outlaws, by both Protestants and Catholics in the sixteenth century. It also places the Anabaptists (as well as Baptists generally) at odds with the Nicene Creed, the only ecumenical creed in Christendom, which affirms Christian belief in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

Mr. King mentions the importance of pacifism, but I’m afraid he undersells the point. Yes, Anabaptists faced persecution and public opprobrium during World War I and the Vietnam War, but that persecution has a much longer history, reaching back to the sixteenth century. Hutterites, to take one example, fled to Russia and then to North America (especially Montana, the Dakotas and the Prairie Provinces) to escape military conscription, and Anabaptists faced double taxation, distraint of goods and vigilante violence because of their refusal to participate in eighteenth-century military conflicts, the Seven Years’ War and the Revolutionary War.

If you believe, as I do, that faith functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power, the Anabaptists provide a worthy example. Jesus himself was countercultural, and Christians everywhere would do well to emulate the countercultural Anabaptists.

Amid Complexities, Five Things Many Anabaptist-Mennonites Emphasize

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Yes, I will summarize five Anabaptist-Mennonite emphases. But I don’t dare try before addressing complexities of doing so when so many groups stress so many different things.

We can link some Anabaptist-Mennonitisms back to Swiss Anabaptism. Even as approaches to Anabaptist origins and contemporary implications vary (as historians contest whether “polygenesis,” “monogenesis,” or some blend best explains Anabaptist beginnings), noteworthy was the 1525 Zurich move by leaders such as Conrad Grebel and George Blaurock to rebaptize each other. They and others called for rebaptizing adults committed to a “believers church” and by 1527 produced the Schleitheim Confession summarizing early Swiss Anabaptist beliefs. They also contributed to a believers church shadow: if only believers belong in the church and are to rightly live Jesus’ teachings, there is potential for endless schism over who is the true believer.

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Today, among many Anabaptist-Mennonite groups, some include the name Anabaptist, some Mennonite, some neither. Yet they are broadly part of Mennonitism, whether in North America or worldwide. Mennonites gained their name as disciples of the 1500s former Roman Catholic priest, the Frisian (Netherlands) Menno Simons. Other Anabaptist groups, such as Church of the Brethren, Brethren in Christ, Hutterites may have varying links to Mennonites but involve different branchings-out of Anabaptism.

Then there are the Amish.  Though they diverged in the 1600s, their roots are Swiss Anabaptist. The Amish are part of my family lineage some generations back. Despite their split from branches of Anabaptism with which I’m most connected, their plain and simple living commitments make their own contributions. The Amish have sometimes intertwined with Mennonite streams as wings of Mennonites and Amish have migrated back and forth. Thus for example someone like my aunt Evelyn King Mumaw could tell of how, after her family was put out of its Mennonite wing, they attended Conestoga Amish Mennonite Church.

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The point is not the details but that one could go on and on about who believed what, belonged to whom when and for how long, evicted one group or joined another. As addressed in my response to Orthodoxy, long unfolding Anabaptist-Mennonite diversification seems only to have gathered momentum in Mennonite Church USA, to which I belong. This has led to MC USA losing nearly half of its members since its formation in 2002. Despite the goal—heal divisions and merge two prior denominations—MC USA faces continuing challenges, and the merger split off MC Canada from what had been a binational church.

As touched on in my response to David Ford on Orthodoxy, a significant though not only factor heightening tensions has involved LGBTQIA-related decisions. I once pastored a congregation the denomination later excommunicated when it was perceived to have moved too far toward inclusion; I was saddened when delegates of another congregation I was then pastoring voted for eviction. In 2015 I was an MC USA seminary dean when the university to which it belonged navigated both internal divisions and the wider denominational tumult in moving toward a more inclusive hiring policy. In 2015 and beyond, many congregations and some conferences—regional and/or affiliative clusters of congregations into which MC USA is subdivided—shifted loyalties to different entities or left MC USA entirely.

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So what do Mennonites believe amid ongoing wrestlings? Key is the 1995 Mennonite Confession of Faith in Mennonite Perspective and its summary of 24 principles MC USA formally affirms. But what of Anabaptist-Mennonite streams that have left MC USA or in some cases never joined?

For example, CMC, formerly Conservative Mennonite Conference, now labeling itself an “evangelical Anabaptist denomination with headquarters in Irwin, Ohio,” offers alternative statements of faith on theology and practice.

LMC—“A fellowship of Anabaptist churches,” formerly Lancaster Mennonite Conference—was until recently largest of MC USA’s conferences. Now LMC states commitment to the 1995 COF but doesn’t mention in summarizing Anabaptist-Mennonite history its departure from the denomination of which it was once such a large part.

Acronyms such as CMC or LMC in place of Mennonite matter. They signal preference to emphasize evangelical and/or Anabaptist over Mennonite components.

Evana Network emerged amid 2015 MC USA controversies. Evana (abbreviating “evangelical Anabaptist” theology), speaks of embracing the 1995 COF but also various confessions of the Mennonite Brethren (yet another denomination) and CMC even as it asks members to commit to requirements as “defined in our covenant” and expects congregations to belong to a Congregational Covenant.

Statements Evana embraces vary in emphasis and details. For example, the 1995 COF speaks of a “fully reliable and trustworthy” Bible even as CMC affirms Scripture as “without error in the original writings in all that they affirm.” Evident here a century later are ongoing effects of Fundamentalist/Modernist controversies.

Then one could ponder Anabaptists emphasizing a Jesus manifested in social and communal ethics versus Jesus as personal savior. In The Absent Christ: A Theology of the Empty Tomb (Cascadia, 2020), Justin Heinzekehr describes a God “mediated to the world in and through material relations.” Reviewing in Brethren in Christ History and Life (Aug. 2021), pastor Zachary Speidel says that for Heinzekehr, Christ’s absence makes space for the sacred “to be inseparably bound up in ethical relationships with . . .  others.” But Seidel underscores Jesus’ presence: “When I speak of ‘Jesus,’ I speak of my Savior, my Lord, my Friend, and my Shepherd.”

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When I was pastor into 2008 at Spring Mount Mennonite Church, we faced such larger dynamics but also complexities in our immediate setting. To remain viable, given the congregation’s dwindling to 35-some participants, we needed to welcome persons from diverse backgrounds. Pointing in microcosm to increasing diversity of Anabaptist-Mennonitism, often growing most quickly in cultures and settings beyond North America or within the U.S. beyond earlier ethnic and racial enclaves, eventually about half the congregation came from diverse settings. These ranged from Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations to “Nones” sometimes having no prior faith commitments.

What beliefs might we hold in common? After 11 years of wrestling with this, I preached in my final months sermons summarizing five values Anabaptist-Mennonites often emphasize while still embracing many affirmations of other Christian traditions:

The first involves “No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11).  That introduces value 1: The starting point for Anabaptist-Mennonite understandings of God, the church, and all life is the New Testament and the Jesus Christ revealed in it. If we find understandings in Scripture, church, world, or our lives that conflict with New Testament teachings about Jesus’ Way, we give Jesus priority.

This is why the Sermon on the Mount is key to daily living. Jesus repeats, again and again, “You have heard that it was said. . . . But I say to you. . . .” Here Jesus reshapes the lives of followers—including Anabaptists—by teaching radical understandings of how God works and what God expects of us.

Value 2: God’s kingdom or realm comes first. This Anabaptist-Mennonite teaching has 1500s roots. Back then church and state often intertwined in what is sometimes called Christendom. Being baptized as a baby into your state church made you Christian. As radicals reforming the Reformers, the Anabaptists concluded Jesus taught that infant baptism doesn’t make you Christian. Rather, to be Christian is to make an adult decision to follow Jesus.

When you decide to follow, you become a citizen of God’s nation. You put God’s realm first. If your earthly nation, society, community, or even church asks you to violate the teachings of Christ and ways of God, you obey God .

Value 3: An Anabaptist-Mennonite church is a believers church. A believers church is made up not of people born into it but who have consciously decided to follow Jesus.

That decision is momentous. Only those who grasp the meaning and cost of following Jesus should be baptized, Anabaptists claimed. This was how Anabaptists, meaning “rebaptizers” as their enemies named them, came to see adult baptism as important enough to die for when Christendom entities ordered them to stop

Though as evident above this can catalyze division, the dream is that you and your co-believers will form alternative accountability structures helping you discern Jesus’ Way and find wisdom and courage to live it.

Value 4: Anabaptist-Mennonites are committed to love and nonviolence. We believe this because Jesus taught and modeled it, even dying on the cross and forgiving those who put him there. This means together cultivating a personal lifestyle of loving enemies and forgiving those who hurt or offend us. This has generated Mennonite contributions to conflict transformation. It means we can’t in good conscience follow Jesus and kill other people. So in theory (not always in practice) we don’t participate in war even if the alternative is prison, as Mennonites faced in World War I, or conscientious objection, as I registered for during the Vietnam War.

Value 5: Anabaptist-Mennonites embrace wholistic mission. We share Christ’s love with souls and bodies. The saving news of the gospel must be shared. And Jesus wants the bodies of God’s children, of those blind, captive, oppressed as he put it in Luke 4 and the “least of these” as he named them in Matthew 25, to be cherished. This means caring when injustice, racism, poverty, hunger, nakedness befall any of God’s children or creation itself and has led to such service organizations as Mennonite Disaster Service and Mennonite Central Committee.

These five values are neither exhaustive nor speak for all Anabaptist-Mennonites. Many treasures and shadows, or ways Anabaptism might correct other traditions or be corrected, await other venues (and are touched on in responses to Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Lutheranism). Yet I hope I’ve hinted at our complex, sometimes tormented, sometimes spine-tingling history and beliefs.

Is Spontaneity and Freedom from the Law a Legitimate Option in the Church Catholic?

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IS SPONTANEITY AND FREEDOM FROM THE LAW A LEGITIMATE OPTION IN THE CHURCH CATHOLIC?  

      I really appreciated the dialogue with all my partners (the new friends I’m making), and my  personal responses to each which you can read will indicate in more depth my appreciation and thoughts about your insightful reflections.  I am struck by how two elements of the Lutheran heritage seem to be met with appreciation – either the Sacramental heritage or the Lutheran Confessional stress on freedom, spontaneity, along with joy. Of course none of my  denominational partners can fully sign on to the freedom from the Law theme, and the reservations raised are not surprises.  Their hesitation about such themes is nothing new to a Lutheran like me who travels in ecumenical circles.  But in the traditions of Lutheran (maybe Norwegian) stubbornness, I want to raise the question of my original contribution in a more pointed way, as I am still not sure I got a direct answer from all of my partners: If I were invited to preach in your churches (assuming it was an official and legitimate invitation), could I preach on freedom from the Law (in the Lutheran Confessional sense), on the spontaneity of good works, even suggest to the congregation that they might sin bravely for our Lord and sometimes need to break the Law for the sake of love?  To be sure, those themes are not characteristic of any denomination except mine.  But are these characteristically Lutheran themes still deemed legitimately Christian enough to be espoused and validly taught in your communities.  Lutheranism’s catholicity, I’ve tried to point out to date, is able to embrace all the themes precious to my partners (in some cases through its Pietisitc and in other cases through its Confessional strands, allowing for this sort of reconciled diversity).  Lutheranism is big enough for most things your tradition might teach (I’ll point out to you in the months ahead how Lutherans can even get along with those who don’t teach the Sacraments like us).  How big (how catholic) is your tradition’s tent?   

     If we are all big tents, how do we reconcile the diversity, and make sense of it?  I was moved by the responses of most everyone, suggesting that the reason your tradition could not unequivocally embrace Lutheran spontaneity and freedom was related either to differences in personal traits of our founders or to a sense that more realism or skepticism about the complexities of life, its seriousness, needs to be taken into account.  These are exciting insights for me.  If we conceded that all our various ways of following Jesus have some Biblical authorization, could it be that our denominational differences in following Jesus relate to the fact that some of us are or want to become more serious, more organized, more methodical, more activist, and gravitate to those Biblical themes which provide concrete guidance, while others (like Lutherans) love the Biblical themes stressing freedom and spontaneity because such themes are a little more comforting to those who are guilt-ridden or who want to be more care-free, fun-loving, and go with the flow?    Extended families and communities (maybe even the Church) need both types of people and should be sensitive in ministering to both groups.   

     We so beautifully balance out each other.  For all their pessimism about human nature (its sinfulness), Lutherans have this naïve confidence that God’s grace changes lives without any help.  And while the rest of the Christian world (Reformed and some Baptist friends possibly excluded) cannot fully buy the Augustinian pessimism about human nature like Lutherans do, the majority of us Christians are more realistic about what grace can accomplish on its own without the aid of the Law.  Our pessimism/realism and optimism/naiveté balance out each other in different ways.  Realists and optimists need each other in order to thrive.       

      Have you heard of the old adage of how you can tell the difference between a Lutheran pastor and other clergy in town?  Most clergy (in the days before the 60s) had to purchase their alcohol anonymously or with great care.  While the Lutheran Pastor could buy all the alcohol he/she wanted and even tell people in town about it.  Could our denominational differences be as simple as different ways of appropriating Biblical themes for different personality types (or at least for different people with different visions of what kind of people the world needs followers of Jesus to be)?  I am reminded here of Luther’s comments about the two kinds of Word of God – what applies to me and my situation and what does not (Luther’s Works, Vol.35, p.170).  The key to our dialogue might be as simple as understanding our dialogue partner to be applying a Biblical theme (a Word of God) which does not apply to some of the rest of us, but recognizing that that theme is still legitimate Word of God.  Can you buy that, colleagues, when it comes to freedom from the Law, sinning bravely, a situational ethic?   

      How can this appreciation of Biblical diversity all fit together?  Maybe we can solve it together.  I’m taken by the potential that Quantum Physics offers.  In order to explain the paradox of how an electron can be both wave and particle (a logical contradiction) Werner Heisenberg developed the concept of Complementarity, which he thought applicable to religious matters as well (Physics and Philosophy, pp.135, P.S.23).  Like waves and particles, could there be such Complementrity between the favorite Lutheran themes and those most precious to your tradition?  We might have fun exploring those questions together.  Already I’ve got a couple of partners who tell me they are ready to explore having fun with me and my Lutheran heritage.  To them I suggest, we start making plans regarding how to try to concretize these prospects at the denominational level.  And all of your collective comments indicate areas in which there is convergence between each of our heritages.  Maybe with more of the individual dialogue I hope to have with each o  f you we can have fun identifying other possible topics for more conversations, other candidates for Complementarity.                                                    

                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Relevance & Significance Of The Sources Used When Following Jesus

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When reading the reflection on what it means to follow Jesus from the Lutheran framework, I was struck by the range of different sources used in the tradition to construct a life that models Jesus’ own. Through a combination of scripture, the Sacraments, the liturgy, and the communion of all saints, Lutherans develop an understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. Those in the Black Church tradition often utilize a similar varied approach, recognizing that to walk the path of Jesus requires insights and perspectives from both past and present as we remain faithful to the call of Jesus over our lives. However, I am wrestling with Dr. Ellingsen’s note that that for many Lutherans, insights gained through speaking in tongues “do not outweigh Biblical authority and the experience of the gift of tongues is not privileged over other spiritual gifts.” I believe there is some divergence within the Black Church tradition on this point, as the experiences of many African-American Christians has almost necessitated that other sources are, at times, more prominent than scripture when following Jesus.

Dr. Ellingsen’s point about the multiple resources that Lutherans utilize to maintain and strengthen their commitment to following Jesus resonated with me, as I see similar parallels in the Black Church tradition. The Sacraments and liturgy are, among Black Christians, opportunities for us to come together and process how God wants us to be in fellowship with one another and then act in the world. Preaching and Bible study are tools meant to enhance the life of the believer, clarifying how God wants to use us for God’s glory. Dr. Ellingsen’s post made clear that Lutherans do not have one primary lens through which they make sense of their faith. Rather, scripture, spiritual gifts, and the other tools listed above are all utilized by Lutherans in their journey to follow Jesus, which is also the case for many in the Black Church tradition.

What was new from Dr. Ellingsen’s reflection is the idea of joy that “permeates all the activities Lutherans identify with following Jesus, Bible study, prayer, and evangelism.” He writes an insightful note that connects scientific explanation with theological analysis to illustrate that for Lutherans, spiritual exercises produce joy in the believer. That joy (which Dr. Ellingsen mentions is connected to good-feeling brain chemicals such as dopamine) also provides the energy required to act in any given moment for Lutheranism “reminds the faithful that every moment can be a moment in which the Kingdom of God is realized.” This perspective challenged me because it highlighted that following Jesus is not simply adherence to a set of practices but the manner and mood in which those practices are carried out. His comments reminded me of that passage of scripture I heard so much growing up about giving – we ought to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, “for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). It is not simply enough to give, read scripture, or pray as we attempt to follow Jesus. We must likewise do so with joy because we recognize that in following Jesus, we are working to establish God’s reign and rule on Earth one step at a time. And it is that joy that gives us the fuel to keep going when the vicissitudes of life seem too much to bear.

I struggled, however, with this Lutheran view of joy because for so many in the Black Church tradition, life’s struggles make it difficult to have joy. I do not mean to say that only Black Christians deal with tough times that bring more sadness, frustration, and despair than happiness, peace, and elation. But the specific mix of racism and discrimination, manifested in unequal policies, economic and social inequalities, and the threat of violence, all weigh heavy on the African-American experience. It is true that Black Americans, and Black Christians in particular, have found ways to experience joy amid so much pain; one only has to look at the worship experience of Black churches throughout the centuries to see how Black congregations embody joy in preaching, singing, worshiping, and praying. However, this reality does not change the fact that for countless African-Americans, it is hard to facilitate the joy that seems so integral to the Lutheran tradition. Therefore, I wrestle with (and will continue to do so) this question: How can the Black Church tradition create spaces for Black Christians to experience joy in their efforts to follow Jesus when so much of what we experience seems intent on stealing that joy away from us?

This conversation around joy echoes a second place where I wrestled with Dr. Ellingsen’s reflection – his conversation around speaking in tongues. In his post, Dr. Ellingsen makes it clear that although an increasing number of American Lutherans are embracing the validity of speaking in tongues as a means of following Jesus, insights gained from such speech do not outweigh Biblical authority. In other words, if one receives a revelation when speaking in tongues, it appears that said revelation would be invalidated if it could not be reconciled with scripture. The Bible, if I am understanding Dr. Ellingsen correctly, takes precedence above all else for Lutherans who are working to follow Jesus.

However, for many in the Black Church tradition, the Bible (or Scripture) has been used to demonize us, to the point where we question if it is worth it to even follow Jesus. Scripture was used as justification to enslave, beat, kill, and violate Africans and African-Americans. Literal sections of the Bible were ripped out or excluded when read to slaves (such as the Exodus narrative) to fortify the system of servitude and bondage that dehumanized African-Americans for years. The Bible, for many Americans, was a resource that legitimized segregation and other economic and social policies that disproportionally impacted African-Americans even after the institutionalized end of slavery. To this day, the Bible is used to discriminate against African-Americans and other minoritized communities. How then is the Bible supposed to take primacy over the other experiences of African-American Christians when its use has been the source of so much harm?

This question is particularly pertinent when we consider the significance of the oral tradition in the Black Church tradition. When Black Americans were enslaved and forbidden from learning to read or write, it was their voices that carried them to freedom, narrated their histories, and maintained familial relations. Many songs that are now considered staples of the Black Church tradition started out as Negro spirituals which Black slaves sung to themselves and others to strengthen and sustain them during what appeared to be a never-ending darkness. It is no wonder that call-and-response is such an integral part of the worship experience in countless churches in the Black Church tradition; our voice is our most powerful instrument when people and institutions have tried for so long to stifle, if not outright eliminate it.

How then do we reconcile the Lutheran perspective of Biblical authority with the very real significance of the oral tradition (including speaking in tongues) in many Black Church traditions? I realize that not all Black Church communities give oral modes of communication equal prominence. Some echo Dr. Ellingsen’s words and see the Bible as the final and ultimate guide on what it means to follow Jesus, giving it more prominence than any other practice or tool. I also realize that Dr. Ellingsen is speaking about only one segment of the Lutheran population (he notes that his comments about speaking in tongues and Biblical authority are about American Lutherans). However, Dr. Ellingsen is encouraging me to ask deeper questions about the connection between the Bible and following Jesus in the Black Church tradition because if we are going to follow Jesus, I believe the Bible must have a role. The question then becomes: what role does that look like for Black Christian communities?