Between Evangelical and Episcopalian

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Because Randall Balmer traces his personal journey from Evangelical to Episcopalian, I must explore the odd position Wesleyan Methodism holds between those two poles. On the one hand, John and Charles Wesley were both priests in the Church of England. They never left but rather often defended their place (and the place of Methodism) in the Church of England. John Wesley organized religious societies, which were already used in the Church of England. He did introduce some features that were different from other Anglican religious societies, but he saw Methodism as operating within the Church of England rather than in competition with it.

 

On the other hand John Wesley was part of the “evangelical” revival. What he hoped for was that Christians in England would be awakened by the Holy Spirit to “true religion,” which he explains in one sermon as “right tempers towards God and man” also stated as “gratitude to our Creator” and “benevolence to our fellow creatures” (in “The Unity of the Divine Being”). He could use the word “evangelical” (in “The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption”) to describe the spiritual state of those who have been born of God, that is, aware of God’s forgiveness which opens a new way of being in the world (knowing God’s love and so able to do God’s will in love). This is not the “evangelicalism” Randall knew in his youth, and the Methodism that followed after Wesley, especially in North America, contributed to the features he highlights in his own past.

 

I once served on the Anglican-Methodist International Commission for Unity in Mission (AMICUM) and an Episcopalian historian spoke with us about the history of Episcopalians and Methodists in North America. He pointed out how the War for Independence left many Christians in the former colonies cut off from ecclesial life because of no longer having connection to the Church of England. From this situation came both the Methodist churches and the Episcopal Church. After having failed to find a bishop who would ordain Methodists, John Wesley took the extraordinary step of ordaining preachers himself (he felt justified in this action both because of the emergency situation and because he believed there was precedent in the early church for presbyters to ordain other presbyters–his brother Charles felt differently about the extraordinary step John took). Those who became Episcopalians finally found a bishop willing to ordain on their behalf. This early difference in responding to this situation may indicate something about the priorities each tradition has in following Jesus. Methodists felt urgency in the need to spread scriptural holiness (and indeed this need had already led to irregular practices in England such as field preaching and using lay preachers). Perhaps those who became Episcopalian felt a greater need for maintaining proper liturgy and sacraments.

 

This willingness of Methodism to innovate with an eye toward what works in the culture must have set the stage for the evangelicalism Randall left behind for Episcopalian liturgy and sacramentalism. However, as historian Richard Heitzenrater has pointed out, John Wesley conceived the church that Methodism needed to become in North America after the model of the Church of England. He sent to the former colonists a modified version (24 articles, some with editing) of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and a Sunday Service (modeled on the Book of Common Prayer). They already had many of Wesley’s own sermons as patterns for preaching (similar to the Book of Homilies). Despite Wesley’s own intended model, the newly forming Methodist Episcopal Church was far enough in distance from Wesley (also he was near the end of his life) and it existed in circumstances so different from England that it developed more in “conversation” with the other churches in North America than it did under his guidance.

 

Methodism did not arise in England because of matters of doctrine but rather as a revival movement. The splits that eventually took place within Methodism in North America were not typically over specifically theological questions but rather over matters of race, lay participation, and slavery (of course all these issues matter theologically, but official doctrine as stated in the Articles of Religion was not under debate). Methodists have not been known as a church that cared much about doctrine. Even among Methodists John Wesley was not thought of much as being a theologian but rather for his evangelistic and organizational skills. What we shared as Wesleyan Methodists was emphasis on a living faith rooted in personal experience of Jesus Christ, so following Jesus involved having that personal experience. When I was growing up in The Methodist Church any “logic chopping” I knew arose in connection with understanding what kind of personal experience was a valid experience of being born of God rather than from a desire to have tidy theological categories.

 

In recent years, the United Methodist Church has taken steps to reclaim the sacramental heritage that Wesley tried to bequeath. We have adopted official statements on baptism and Eucharist. These statements have been especially helpful in ecumenical dialogue with other churches (and I have referenced the World Methodist Council work in dialogue with the Catholic Church on Eucharist in my response to Christina Wassell). Worship practices, though, vary a great deal from one congregation to another.

 

It also should be said that in recent years, those who identify as “evangelicals” within Methodism have been inclined in the direction that Randall describes. This group also claims to be more “Wesleyan” and “traditional.” I could not, though, characterize all Wesleyan Methodism as “evangelical” in the sense Randall uses it. In fact my own United Methodist Church is facing a possible split primarily over LGBTQ+ issues, but behind that topic lie differences in how to understand the Bible, the role of doctrine, etc. So it may be that a more clearly “evangelical” form of Methodism as Randall understands it will emerge.

Engaging the Episcopalians

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For three months in my last year as a ministry student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I (and my wife Jeanie) undertook an inquirer’s class at the downtown Episcopal church. It was a fateful crossroads for us. If we had left the Southern Baptists and joined the Episcopalians at that point, my professional life, and our personal faith, would have taken a dramatically different turn. I shows the already profound disillusionment that we felt with Southern Baptists that we would even consider this move at the very end of my Baptist seminary experience.

We were impressed by the winsome spirit of the primary priest who led us through the class. We, like my dear friend Randall Balmer, really liked the tradition, liturgy, beauty, worship, and sacramentalism of the Episcopal Way. We also are Anglophiles and wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of our lives in a vicarious British experience along with lots of lovely stained glass. And this church had a cat that just wandered the building and came into whatever meeting she chose. Baptists don’t do cats in church.

As it was, we took a different path. I stayed with the Baptists, eventually migrating to the moderate/liberal Baptists. Jeanie eventually crossed the Tiber and became Roman Catholic. And, as I have revealed in these posts already, in recent years I have reconnected with my own Roman Catholic roots as well.

Our experience inquiring about Episcopalianism, including visiting numerous Episcopal and Anglican churches in the US and UK, remains very positive. We do still deeply enjoy the tradition, liturgy, beauty, worship, sacramentalism, and whiff of old England whenever we step into an Episcopal or Anglican church. The Prayer Book, in all of its various editions, is so majestic, and we drew on it heavily for our own morning and evening prayerbook which we first published in 2012.

Randall Balmer says little about how Episcopalians follow Jesus, and I think that is interesting. My surmise is that a great deal of “latitude” is indeed offered to Episcopalians when it comes to doctrine and ethics. Direction, and boundaries, are set primarily related to liturgy and worship, not related to theology and ethics. There is an Episcopalian sensibility, aesthetic, and liturgy, more than there is a shared theology, ethic, or vision of discipleship.

For those who have been bombarded, not to say abused, by various preachers’ and theologians’ declared theologies, ethics, and boundaries, Episcopalianism must be a wonderful refuge. But I have often wondered whether there is enough shared substance for the discipleship journey. Certainly it has become apparent that the Episcopal sensibility has not been enough to spare this tradition the same left/right divisions, not to mention actual church splits, that many of the rest of us have suffered. I have not failed to notice the right-leaning Anglican churches that have sprung out of or in competition with the more progressive Episcopal churches. It’s a long way from the progressive All Saints’ Episcopal in Pasadena to the conservative Anglicans I have encountered in Australia, for example.

I have also been struck by the lack of a very well-developed Anglican or Episcopal tradition in my field, Christian Ethics. I can only think of a few ethicists who have highlighted their Anglican/Episcopal identity or sought to write within it. My overall observation has been that when a religious tradition lacks its own clear theological/ethical identity, it is susceptible to being hijacked by others who are more clear.

One final word: I do note that many, many, many #exvangelicals have taken the road to Canterbury. Whether decades ago, or today, evangelical exiles often find their way to Anglican or Episcopal churches. I want to commend this tradition for its hospitality to so many sojourners, exiles, and aliens. There is something more than a bit biblical about that.

 

Finding Common Ground

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For many Pietists, I’m sure that Anglicanism inspires the same sorts of reservations that I noted in earlier responses to other Christian traditions that emphasize sacramental worship within the structure of an episcopate. It’s the rare Pietist, for example, who would see a short homily (or a longer sermon) as “merely a stop on the way to the Eucharist, the culmination of the liturgy.”

But in ways expected and not, Randall Balmer’s essay resonated more strongly with me than any other preceding it.

First, his recollections took me back to some of the most meaningful worship experiences in my own memory. Every other January for several years, I led a three-week travel course on the history of World War I, always starting with a long stay in London to help orient us to the world of 1914. At least, that’s what I told students. Personally, I loved starting those journeys in that way because it let me attend Choral Eucharist at St Paul’s, Evensong at Westminster Abbey, and the Epiphany Carols service at St Martin-in-the-Fields. To borrow Randall’s words… in each of those Anglican churches I found that “[e]ven the space itself told me that something important transpired there; I wasn’t sure at the time what it was, but it seemed sacred to me and very much unlike the cavernous and (yes, I’ll say it) soulless spaces all too typical of evangelicalism.”

(If I reach back farther in my memory, I find myself in St Luke’s, Kew, a Church of England parish near the Public Record Office, where I did part of my dissertation research. There were many fewer people — and no tourists — that Sunday morning, and the space was more modest. But the music still evoked the Anglican commitment to join the psalmist in “worship[ping] the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” And the “cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, the reverence of the liturgy” felt more spiritually satisfying in St Luke’s smaller sanctuary than when I strained to make out those same words as they reverberated around St Paul’s and Westminster.)

I don’t know that most Pietists would feel so moved by that kind of worship. As one of Randall’s fellow historians, I understand the appeal of wanting to “try something old instead.” But for all of their own traditionalism, we Pietists have long been tempted to equate renewal with innovation.

But whatever the differences in the form of worship, it’s the emphasis on Christian practice and experience over Christian doctrine that most connects the Anglican way of following Jesus with my own. What Randall calls the “obsession with doctrinal precisionism” hasn’t quite led me out of evangelicalism, but it has made me drink more deeply from the Pietist springs that sourced evangelical revivals in which Protestants transcended differing beliefs to live out a common commitment to evangelism and social reform. “This deemphasis of theology exposes us to the charge of latitudinarianism,” acknowledges Randall of Anglicanism, “a criticism that is not entirely unfounded.” And the same has been said of Pietism (here too, not always unfairly). But it doesn’t change my conviction that it’s far more important to seek together after Jesus Christ as people of faith and doubt: inhabitants of what Randall aptly calls an “enchanted universe,” whose mysteries a primarily intellectual faith “cannot begin to understand, much less explain.”

Finally, Pietists should recognize something familiar in Anglicanism’s emphasis on “what holds us together as followers of Jesus.” We might disagree on what can hold together our faltering attempts at Christian unity — a Pietist post on that subject is going to say more about the Bible than the Book of Common Prayer, much as I do love the cadences of the latter. But it’s that commitment to “find common ground,”  to seek a via media around the Reformation’s most destructive dead ends, that Pietists can certainly celebrate in Anglicanism.

I’m too far along the Halle Road to join fellow evangelicals and post-evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. But spiritually, if not geographically or historically, I think both paths lead Christians to some of the same places.

From the Sawdust Trail to the Canterbury Trail

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One of the earliest memories I have of my pre-teen years is being invited by a devout Baptist friend to attend a week-long revival with his family. The meetings throughout the week were held in a large tent, filled with folding chairs, and the ground was covered with sawdust. As I recall, we attended a Saturday evening session. I don’t remember a great deal about the evangelist’s message, but I do recall two specific things he said: first, early in his rather fiery sermon he asked the question: “Do you know for sure if you were to die tonight that you will go to heaven?” I had not reflected much on that heavy question but concluded that perhaps I should. Second, as his message drew to a close, and just before he delivered the altar call to invite people to come forward and “give their lives to Christ,” I remember him lifting his arms and hands high above his head and shouting out, “There’s power in the blood! There’s power in the blood!” While I remember being touched by his declaration, at that early age I certainly had no idea what he meant. He was absolutely right, of course. People of all walks of life—are in desperate need of the sanctifying power that issues from the spilt blood of Jesus Christ.  That was my first intense engagement with Evangelicalism.

Over the years, I have deeply appreciated the work Randall Balmer has done on Evangelicalism. Reading a number of his books has assisted me immeasurably in the  twenty-year “Mormon-Evangelical Dialogue” of which I have been a part. In particular, I have been especially appreciative of Balmer’s treatments of the historical roots and development of 21st-century Evangelicalism, including its movement into the political realm. Almost twenty years ago, I invited Randall to visit Brigham Young University and conduct some workshops on Evangelicalism with many of the BYU Religion faculty, which was amazingly helpful and well received. When we know but little of another religious denomination or movement—its history, development, and doctrinal teachings—it’s easy to misunderstand and even misrepresent what people of that faith believe and how they live out their faith. Since I hate it when people choose to misrepresent my own faith, I have tried my best to speak honestly and respectfully of persons of other faiths.

Reading Randall’s book Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father’s Faith (Brazos, 2001) some years ago was extremely valuable in my coming to better understand and appreciate much of the world in which I was brought up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Beloved friends, cousins, uncles, and aunts worked tenaciously to “save” me and my family. While there was certainly love between all of us, there was also a quiet tension whenever God, Christ, and Religion were the topics of conversation. In Growing Pains Randall shares a piece of his soul when he wrote that “throughout my life, my perception of God was very much tied to my childish perception of my father—distant and austere, disapproving and abandoning. Psychologists call this conditional love.”

Now having read Balmer’s “Respectful Conversation” piece, I was reminded of what he had written in his book about his life after doctoral studies and his later appointment with Barnard College at Columbia: “[S]omething, somewhere, went wrong, although I tried to ignore it for a long time. Why did my life seem empty, despite all my achievements? Why did I find going to church such utter drudgery? Why was my Bible gathering dust on the bookshelf? Why did God—this same God I had celebrated for years in Sunday school as ‘closer than a brother’—why did that God seem so remote and distant? What happened to the triumphant Christian life that I was supposed to experience, moving from victory to victory until I tasted sweet union with Jesus?” (pp. 18-19.)

At the bottom of page 1 (2nd paragraph) of Randall’s essay, he shared the following: “Despite my appreciation for the religious formation of my childhood, I began to yearn for something deeper.” He than adds “two explanations for my spiritual pilgrimage”: (1) the “aesthetic development of my childhood,” which I take to mean the spiritual depth to be found in liturgy and a deeper focus on the sacraments; and (2) a resistance to the inclination/temptation within the Evangelical tradition to repeatedly “try something new.” As a historian who has dealt almost always with the past, however, Randall “wanted to respond, ‘No, let’s try something old instead.’”

I can really identify with this last comment. There’s something special about having a long religious past, such as in Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, both of which claim to reach to the beginnings of the early Christian movement. I have especially felt this in the last twenty years or so as I have spent more concentrated time and energy studying the writings of the Early Church Fathers, those who were so much closer to the time of Jesus and his apostles.

As a Latter-day Saint, my past only goes back to 1830, although as a Restorationist or Christian Primitivist movement we make the following claim: “We declare that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized on April 6, 1830, is Christ’s New Testament Church restored. This Church is anchored in the perfect life of its chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ, and in His infinite Atonement and literal Resurrection.” (“The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World,” April 5, 2020.)

On page 2 (paragraph 4) Randy speaks of his love for the Book of Common Prayer, the “reverence of the liturgy, the soaring descants of the Anglican musical tradition and prayers that do not include the phrase, ‘Lord, we jus’ wanna.’” While I have some appreciation for his sentiments here, I am less enthusiastic about set prayers. I would be interested in knowing how young Episcopalians or interested investigators respond to the liturgy and prayers of the Church. Second, how do Anglicans avoid falling into the spiritual trap of “using vain repetitions” (King James Version) or “[heaping] up empty phrases” (New Revised Standard Version) in the use of set and established prayers (Matthew 6:7)? Third, I would be interested in better understanding how in using a set liturgy and prayers members of the church can enjoy the kind of spiritual spontaneity so prevalent in the first century Church.

On pages 3-4 (paragraphs 5-8), Professor Balmer emphasizes that Anglicans focus much less on doctrine than other traditions: “[A]lthough Anglicanism has its share of good theologians as well as the Thirty-Nine Articles, doctrine does not lie at the core of Anglican or Episcopal identity. . . . The focus of Anglican identity is worship and sacraments and liturgy, especially as encoded in the Book of Common Prayer. That is what holds us together as followers of Jesus. Anglicans and Episcopalians can—and do—disagree on many things, but we find common ground in the Prayer Book.”

I can understand where Randall is coming from. Evangelicalism, the world he came from, seems almost to believe that salvation comes only by correct theology. I have taken my share of hits and denunciations from Evangelicals and been told scores of times that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cannot, simply cannot, be a Christian Church, because of its false theology—such as our rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity and our belief in modern prophets and latter-day revelation. That is, salvation comes by correct theology. I have often asked my beloved Evangelical associates, somewhat in jest: “How much bad theology do you think the blood of Jesus Christ can cover?”

On the other hand, my Church focuses a great deal on doctrine. One of our senior Church leaders made a statement that has basically become an article of faith: “True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior. Preoccupation with unworthy behavior can lead to unworthy behavior. That is why we stress so forcefully the study of the doctrines of the gospel.” (Boyd K. Packer, October 1986 general conference.) In fact, most of our doctrine grows out of our history.

I am very grateful for Professor Randall Balmer’s essay, and, more particularly, I am appreciative of his willingness to share with us candidly a piece of his heart—his journey from the sawdust trail to the Canterbury Trail. It is a fascinating story, one that has heightened my appreciation for Anglicanism and motivated me to read and search for a deeper understanding.

The Joys of Being Found by Jesus in Liturgy and Heritage: A Lutheran – Episcopal Celebration

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     Randall Balmer’s compelling story of finding Jesus in the cadences of the historic liturgy and the Presence of Christ in the Church’s Sacramental life was a sweet song in my Lutheran ears.  How wonderful to be worshipping the same way Christians have for 1500 or more years, to be worshipping with all the faithful who have walked this earth and are yet to come.  In worshipping like they have/will, we worship with them.  I feel the presence of this vast communion of saints (even the presence of my deceased forebears and yet to be born great-great grandchildren) every time I pray the Kyrie with the priest and the congregation, sing The Gloria Excelsis, receive the Eucharist after participating in The Great Thanksgiving. I ask Dr. Balmer along with our Catholic and Eastern Orthodox group members if they do not experience this rich fellowship too.  And best of all Jesus is there, just as He has been among Christians in worship far longer than the Western liturgy and the Liturgy of John Chrysostom have been in use.  No need to find and follow Jesus.  He comes to us and follows us!  (Note how I am finding justification by grace through faith in describing these experiences.)    

     Our churches have already recognized that we are kin.  It is why The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have declared full communion, so that Balmer and I can swap pulpits and serve in each other’s congregations with the full blessing of our Bishops. I see some other ways in which the Episcopal and Lutheran traditions follow (or get found by) Jesus in similar ways, and so I suggest a few to which Professor Balmer might respond in order to see if I am on the right track in understanding his heritage.          

     Balmer and I are both part of catholic traditions, by which I mean not just our liturgical heritage but catholic in the sense of universal, that we can embrace the whole diversity of the Christian heritage.  I’ve been pointing this out in Lutheranism, and maybe we don’t need to educate our learned colleagues about the diversity of the Anglican heritage.  But it does no harm to state the obvious, that there is room in the Anglican heritage for Anglo-Catholics like Dr. Blamer and prominent “low-church” Anglican Evangelicals like John Stott.  Certainly the heirs of Calvin and Wesley can find a home in your heritage, right, just as they and a few more of our friends along with Catholics and the Eastern tradition can find their views expressed in the Lutheran heritage.   

      Dr. Balmer, am I correct about these understandings of the catholic nature of your heritage?  They open doors for your considering the viability of other commitments which are precious to me and my Lutheran tradition.  Let’s start with the observation by Balmer that he refuses “to allow the canons of Enlightenment Rationalism serve as the final arbiter of truth.”   The Lutheran in me is in the “Amen Corner” on that one.  Such sentiments link with Luther’s Theology of the Cross and the claim that reason is the devil’s whore (Luther Works, Vol.52, p.196; Vol.40, pp.174-175).  In the Heidelberg Disputation (19) he once claimed “That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible…”   Are Blamer and my heritage (and I also think the Eastern Orthodox heritage) not on the same path here?  Such sentiments fit our shared liturgical sensibilities.  The liturgy is filled with all sorts of mysteries (Christ actually present in bread and wine, in our songs and all-too-human words), and they get us in touch with the mysteries of the faith.              

     The other issue which is always critical for Lutherans is the role of justification by grace alone in following Jesus.  As I’ve previously noted it is the central doctrine for Lutheranism. (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, IV.2-3; Luther’s Works, Vol.26, p.106).  This is certainly part of the Anglican theological heritage.  Thus we again find points of contact in following Jesus.  Indeed, Art.11 of The Thirty-Nine Articles even speaks of such a teaching as “a most wholesome and comforting doctrine.”  That seems pretty close to calling it the central doctrine of faith.  I’m at home.  Am I right to feel that way? 

     The only remaining sticky-wicket is whether there is place in Episcopal thinking and living the faith for the Lutheran commitment to freedom from the Law, spontaneity, and a Situational Ethic (Galatians 3:13; 5:1; Ephesians 2:10; Luther’s Works, Vol.31, 333-377).  How pervasive in the Anglican heritage is its debt to Reformed thinking and pre-Augustinian theological modes?  My worries come from how these roots seem to give no place for spontaneity and freedom and also from Art.35 of The Thirty-Nine Articles is effectively an endorsement of the Third Use of the Law, mandating that the Commandments must always guide our following Jesus.  Or is this just a statement that having concrete guidance on the issues discussed by some of the homilies is advisable?  As a historian, could Professor Balmer give us insight into the historical intentions of this Article and on whether Art.14 could be used legitimately to allow space for the Lutheran claim that you can never measure good works?  Given the Lutheran openness at times to the Commandments offering guidance in following Jesus, I see nothing in the Anglican heritage to preclude welcoming Episcopalians in a Lutheran setting as kin.  But is there a place for the Lutheran emphasis on freedom and spontaneity in Anglican circles (esp. as we celebrate the liturgy together)?                                

 

Following Jesus along the Canterbury Trail

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I have two semi-flippant responses when people ask me how I, reared as an evangelical, became an Episcopalian and, in 2006, an Episcopal priest. My father was a pastor for forty years in the Evangelical Free Church; I honor both his ministry and his memory, and on the whole I’m grateful for my upbringing within the evangelical subculture, if for no other reason than it helped to form my character by giving me something to push against. The Episcopal Church, however, couldn’t be farther removed from my childhood experience of faith; the first time I saw a cleric in a purple shirt, for example, I thought it was simply bad taste. Evangelicalism is part of my DNA, and much of my scholarship over the past several decades has sought to acquaint evangelicals with their own laudable history of concern for those on the margins and thereby summon evangelicals back from their errant ways: the Faustian bargain they made with the far-right reaches of the Republican Party beginning in 1980. (You can judge for yourself how successful I’ve been in those efforts!)


Despite my appreciation for the religious formation of my childhood, I began to yearn for something deeper, which brings me to the two explanations for my spiritual pilgrimage. Becoming an Episcopalian, I say, was a reaction to the aesthetic deprivation of my childhood. That’s a bit of an overstatement, but it also contains an element of truth. The second explanation is that I grew weary of the evangelical cult of novelty, where the directive every week was, “Let’s try something new!” This penchant for innovation has undeniably fueled the growth of evangelicalism throughout American history; evangelicals know almost instinctively how to speak the idiom of the culture, whether it be the open-air preaching of George Whitefield and other itinerants during the Great Awakening, the circuit riders and the colporteurs of the nineteenth century, the urban revivalists of the twentieth century or the suburban megachurches of recent vintage.

As a historian, however, I wanted to respond, “No, let’s try something old instead.” Add to all that a sprinkling of Anglophilia (I initially intended to study British history in graduate school), by the time I wandered into Trinity Church, in Princeton, New Jersey, I felt as though I had come home. I loved the music, and the liturgy suggested a connectedness to the past, to the “communion of the saints.” Even the space itself told me that something important transpired there; I wasn’t sure at the time what it was, but it seemed sacred to me and very much unlike the cavernous and (yes, I’ll say it) soulless spaces all too typical of evangelicalism.

I love the cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, the reverence of the liturgy, the soaring descants of the Anglican musical tradition and prayers that typically do not include the phrase, “Lord, we jus’ wanna.” I’ve come to regard the Episcopal Church, along with museums, symphonies and the natural world, as one of the few remaining repositories of beauty in this life.

And, most important, a focus on the sacraments, especially Holy Communion. As a priest, I intentionally keep my sermons short because the homily is merely a stop on the way to the Eucharist, the culmination of the liturgy. I don’t want in any way to detract from the “main event,” the real presence of Jesus in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.

I’m well aware of the fact that, six paragraphs into this discursus, I’ve yet to talk explicitly about theology in the Anglican tradition. The quick explanation is that I’m a historian, not a theologian. But the larger reason is that, although Anglicanism has its share of good theologians as well as the Thirty-nine Articles, doctrine does not lie at the core of Anglican or Episcopal identity (the Anglican Church in the United States reconfigured itself as the Episcopal Church in 1789, following the American Revolution, though it remains part of the worldwide Anglican Communion).

The focus of Anglican identity is worship and sacraments and liturgy, especially as encoded in the Book of Common Prayer. That is what holds us together as followers of Jesus. Anglicans and Episcopalians can—and do—disagree on many things, but we find common ground in the Prayer Book. The Episcopal Church is by no means perfect; all institutions are human constructs, and they are remarkably poor vessels for piety. But this is my venue for following Jesus.

This deemphasis of theology exposes us to the charge of latitudinarianism, a criticism that is not entirely unfounded. But a focus on liturgy and the mysteries of the sacraments also shields us from what I will call the cult of Enlightenment Rationalism, especially the logic choppers who slice and dice and reduce the faith into tidy theological categories. The obsession with doctrinal precisionism, such as what I encountered at my evangelical seminary, is one of the factors that pointed me beyond evangelicalism and, eventually, to the Episcopal Church. My seminary professors had it all figured out, with fancy apologetic schemes and answers to every theological contingency. But where is the mystery of faith?

I’ve come to see that doubt is not the antithesis of faith; it is an essential component of faith. Besides, if we’ve got it all figured out, what need is there for faith? My favorite passage in the New Testament is the anguished cry from the father of a young child. “Lord, I believe,” he tells Jesus, “help my unbelief!”

I am drawn to the Episcopal Church in part because I refuse to allow the canons of Enlightenment Rationalism serve as the final arbiter of truth. I elect to live in an enchanted universe where there are forces at play that I cannot begin to understand, much less explain—not least of which is the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

In describing my religious pilgrimage, I’m well aware that I come off as something of a cliché—an evangelical kid who trots off to college, acquires some education and decides that he must leave behind the faith of his childhood. It’s a phenomenon that one of my mentors, Mark Noll, long ago characterized as “Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail.” For many of these evangelical pilgrims, the next steps along the pathway are Roman Catholicism and then Eastern Orthodoxy.

At the risk of sounding defensive, I don’t believe I fit that cliché, at least not entirely. First, I have not totally given up on evangelicalism (though I’ve been sorely tempted many times in recent years, most acutely following the 2016 election).

Second, although I’ve been encouraged to do so by people ranging from my wife to the bishop who ordained me, Jeffrey Steenson, one of my oldest friends who himself decamped to Rome, I don’t think I could ever “swim the Tiber” to Roman Catholicism. The issue for me is what I take to be a flawed interpretation of Matthew 16, where Jesus declares that his church would be built upon Peter, “the rock.” Rather than pointing to the primacy of Peter (who may or may not have been the first bishop of Rome), this passage, I believe, is one of the few attempts at humor—or irony at least—in the New Testament. Peter, as we know, was anything but solid. He was dithering and spineless, insisting that he would never disavow Jesus but caving to pressure from a young girl. And when Peter tried to walk on the Sea of Galilee, he took his eyes off Jesus and sank beneath the waves—like a rock.

Far from designating Peter as first among equals, let alone justifying papal infallibility, the beauty of this passage lies in the fact that Jesus was willing to entrust the church, his entire earthly legacy, to flawed human beings like Peter—and, by extension, to flawed beings like you and me. I mean no disrespect to my Roman Catholic friends, and I find much to admire about Roman Catholicism, but papal infallibility is a bridge too far—even one constructed over the Tiber.

For that reason, I’ll be content to follow Jesus along the Canterbury Trail.

Grateful to Respondents for Bringing Bones to Life

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Summaries, as I found when delineating five values in “Amid Complexities, Five Things Many Anabaptist-Mennonites Emphasize,” leave unsettling numbers of things unsaid. So I’m grateful for conversation partners’ responses; repeatedly you brought to life precisely the “bones” of those stripped-down values. Let me respond appreciatively in the order in which you each posted.

Robert Millet, there are variations in how we view and practice baptism, but yes to highlighting mature awareness of baptism’s meaning: “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. . . .”

You also wondered about “a Mennonite perspective toward holy scripture—that it is ‘without error in the original writings in all that they affirm.'” Some Mennonites do hold this view, which raises complexities you point to, including what we do about Scripture’s reliability without access to the original documents. I’d expect it’s no accident that the 1995 Confession of Faith affirmed by my Mennonite Church USA denomination speaks instead of a “fully reliable and trustworthy” Bible. This is my view.

Although I’d balance your “‘holy envy’ in how these Christians live out their faith” with awareness of Anabaptist-Mennonite shadows, your thoughts on war and the love and forgiveness the Amish exemplify are heartwarming.

Farris Blount III, you movingly put flesh on dry bones of my post. You observe that “Black churches have often been subjected to violence and forced to fight back just to survive. I wonder how we might consider the Anabaptist dedication to peace in light of the experiences of a Black Church tradition that is partially defined by the violence it has endured.”

On the one hand, 1500s Anabaptist-Mennonites had to discern how to live peace as other Christians drowned and burned them. On the other hand, and here I see a crucial difference, they didn’t face centuries of systemic racism and attendant violence. As you observe, “love and nonviolence were hallmarks of Black congregations and pastors who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. To them, Jesus was love and nonviolence enfleshed and a model for how the Black Church could advocate for changes in discriminatory policies and practices.” You rightly underscore that

the Black Church has often had to contend with real violence that has harmed its members. White “Christians” would don the Ku Klux Klan uniform and terrorize African Americans, burning their churches and lynching Black Americans for no apparent reason other than hatred. The American enslavement of Black people was predicated on violence; Black slaves were raped, tortured, beaten, and killed all in the name of maintaining control of a system that saw them as the nonhuman other, often at the hands of self-professed Christian slaveowners. . . .

I’m reminded that Anabaptists have pondered how to establish a “community hermeneutic” in which Scripture, the Holy Spirit, the teachings of Jesus, and given contexts form crucibles within which communities discern what God is saying in this place and time. Your concerns delineate key factors in Black communities of discernment which in turn inform any of us. I want to honor your insightful naming of “the complicated relationship that Black communities have with violence” and the validity of such a question as “how can we expect someone to remain committed to nonviolence when history demonstrates that the most violent, often in the name of God, have been the most successful and prosperous?”

Sarah Lancaster, thank you for articulating United Methodist and Anabaptist-Mennonite points of overlap and occasional differences. When I was dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, the second-most important student cohort was UM. To help maintain our approval to teach UM students, it was my job to report to the UM University Senate how EMS connected with the “Social Principles.” If I were still dean, I’d look for ways to quote from your insights.

Christopher Geerz, you understandably wish I had said more about Pietistism and Anabaptism. I hinted at this in describing a pastor hungry for the living presence of Christ in a book he was reviewing, but much remains unexplored. Thanks for your critical yet affirming overview of the Anabaptist-Pietist dialectic and ways you see Dale Brown offering a path forward.

David Gushee, I resonate with your sadness regarding a “dizzying array of schisms and divisions” and their causes. I also would see little reason to challenge your Baptist affirmation of a “near-total convergence”!

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, you help us all simultaneously see areas of commonality and difference between the Reformed tradition and Anabaptism. Thank you for highlighting our mutual values and ways Reformed and Lutheran traditions have wrestled with persecution of Anabaptists.

You wonder if christocentrism sets the Hebrew Scriptures aside. “Isn’t a deeper engagement with the whole Word of God required?” Here is a downside of brief expression of values. I was raised in a “what Jesus teaches trumps everything else” context. However, once exposed to more scholarly biblical studies, I came see that all of Scriptures are to be engaged. Yes to your complexifications here.

Randall Balmer, your affirmations of “those countercultural Anabaptists” are welcome. And you rightly note this “underselling”:

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. . . . 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.

Mark Ellingsen, you pose great questions about whether Lutheran dialectical thought can be an appropriate gospel witness. You highlight the appeal to you and yours of a counter-cultural witness. And you persist in having fun by “confounding the world for Jesus’ sake.” Then you wrap up with this captivating question:

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.

I may fail my tradition by not delving into all the “legalities” adequately. But Mark, as one who has in prior responses highlighted Anabaptist-Mennonite struggles with faithfulness-turned-schismatic-legalism, whatever it takes, we need to have this fun!

Christina Wassell, valuable comments on baptism in Roman Catholic perspective: “Because Christ spoke so clearly on the need to be baptized as a part of the normal path of salvation (making room here for Baptism by desire or by blood) Holy Mother Church flings out her arms with this sacrament, in a sense, and accepts Christian Baptism broadly.” You mention Catholic acceptance of various forms of baptism versus the “believers church” approach you experienced when told at age nine “that now that I was old enough to choose faith for myself, it was best that I be baptized again.”

I won’t respond systematically to your excellent questions, including whether sin can erase the mark of baptism or Anabaptism can honor the baptism of your age-nine self. But the possibility of falling away from Christ is present in my tradition; that’s why at nine myself I was terrified I’d fall from Jesus into damnation. I draw comfort from the it’s-not-all-on-you Catholic extension of grace.

Your youthful baptism: By age eight my own daughter wanted to mark following Jesus with baptism. Not ideal from a classic Anabaptist perspective. But there was genuine hunger. Her pastor’s conclusion: She’d mature in understanding the import of her decision, but her clarity of conviction must be honored. After age-appropriate tutoring in the meaning of following Jesus, he baptized her. She follows on.

David Ford, you cite this 1995 Mennonite confession article: “We believe that God has created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and that God preserves and renews what has been made.  All creation has its source outside itself and belongs to the Creator.  The world has been created good because God is good and provides all that is needed for life.” You say that

this tremendously positive, Creation-affirming statement could well be the basis upon which Anabaptists and Mennonites might develop a sacramental understanding of the material world and all of Creation—a view that would be in accord with the sacramental understanding of all of the material realm that the Orthodox Church has always held from the very beginning.

You open my tradition to me in ways I hadn’t thought of!

J. Terry Todd, your hints at possible responses to your questions anticipate how I might answer. I concur: at least potentially for Mennonites resistance is witness. Another example: Herald Press has issued many editions of the More with Less Cookbook, by Doris Janzen. Long before climate change hit headlines, Janzen taught millions about eating that resists harming the planet.

I responded more fully on your post to your wondering about “spiritual and emotional violence at work among these peacemakers.” But I resonate, hence why most of my postings reference Mennonite shadows. I also resonate with your seeing overlaps between Mennonite and Pentecostal shadows and your take on schismatic splitting.

Mennonites: Resistance as Witness?

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When Mennonites, Amish and other Anabaptists are considered in historical perspective, they are classified as radical reformers, a family of dissidents whose relentless criticisms of both church and state shaped an ekklesia that looked nothing like the late medieval Latin church, nor the developing alternatives offered by Lutheran or Reformed Protestants.  It was this Anabaptist understanding of the church as a gathering of believers that in part drove the rejection of infant baptism.  Infant baptism was no true baptism, since churches along New Testament models are composed of those who make a conscious commitment to follow Christ, even if that meant martyrdom by fire or death by drowning, the mocking mode of execution favored by Zurich authorities in the 1520s. 

If sixteenth-century Protestants and Catholics could agree on one thing, it was their hatred (and fear?) of these “heretics,” the Anabaptists. This radical challenge to state power (and to the power of state churches) was dangerous in 16th century Europe, and remains at least potentially dangerous to the principalities and powers of our own day.  (And I mean dangerous in the productive sense of resistance.)

How have elements of radical Mennonite spiritual DNA influenced the call to follow Jesus among today’s Mennonites?  Dr. King tells us something about that witness, leaving me curious to learn more.  Of the five core values that Michael identifies, two seem especially related to the radical resistance of this tradition:  God’s kingdom or realm comes first; and, as King puts it, “Anabaptist-Mennonites are committed to love and nonviolence.”  In a world that valorizes violence and warfare (spiritual and otherwise), Anabaptist-Mennonite peacemaking witness offers a powerful countercultural pathway by which to follow Jesus. Dr. King provides, by way of example, the work of the Mennonite Central Committee, a service organization that acts for “relief, development, and peace in the name of Christ,” as its website declares.  There is nothing more radical and countercultural, as Michael King reminds us, than to live the values expressed in Jesus’ teachings within the Sermon on the Mount, an aspiration for many, including these Young Anabaptist Radicals, who claim the term as part of their identity and mission. Or another case:  the abolition curriculum drawn up by a young generation of progressive Mennonites who, in the wake of police attacks against black and brown people, began to wonder about the structures of state violence and what Anabaptists might have to say about it.  

There is an irony here, at least to my outsider’s eye. Anabaptist-Mennonite traditions have taken on different and even competing institutional forms, to the point that the peacemakers seem to be engaged in intramural warfare with each other.  While I don’t know if the theological and cultural tensions within Anabaptist traditions have extended to physical violence, there seems at least to be spiritual and emotional violence at work among these peacemakers.  Dr. King gives a contemporary example of Mennonite schisms over matters of (homo)sexuality — an all-too-common battlefront in contemporary Christian traditions, but once again, especially ironic within a tradition of outsiders whose adherents have suffered so much at the hands of state power. 

[By the way, why are the discourses around (homo)sexuality so prominent not only in this intramural fighting among Anabaptists and Mennonites, but also among nearly every Christian group, and not only in U.S. contexts?  What are the theologies and values underpinning these skirmishes? To what degree are these sustained and intractable battles inhibiting the church’s witness of God’s love and justice in the world?] 

I readily discovered parallels between Anabaptists, as King described his tribe, and early Pentecostalism, arising as a hydra-headed reform movement in the early twentieth century. Some forms of early Pentecostalism challenged state power with their insistence that followers of Jesus ultimately owed allegiance to God’s coming reign, not to worldly powers, not even to so-called “Christian nations.” In our own day, some Pentecostals continue these countercultural affronts to state power as well as to the consumerist regimes of late capitalism, while others cozy up to dictators, baptize their lust for power, and preach a prosperity Gospel that is the antithesis of Jesus’s teachings, at least through my lens.  Most Pentecostals share an understanding of the church as gathered out of this world, and they also practice believer’s baptism. So, there are similar ecclesiologies and, perhaps, even similar baptismal theologies.

Finally and less productively, as with some Anabaptists and Mennonites, the call to be set apart from the world exacerbates dualistic tendencies always there within Christian traditions but especially so within Pentecostalism. This sets the children of light against the children of the Devil, where Satan’s hand (I would argue) is mistaken for the slash-and-burn of a relentlessly overbearing secularity.   

As this Respectful Conversations project unfolds, I’m struck by the ways in which tendencies to splinter seem to have accelerated in this era of lightning-fast digital communications.  Sometimes I wonder if it makes sense any longer to speak of these traditions as coherent entities with shared theological orientations, histories, and systems of value.  To recall an argument made way back in 1988 by the Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow in The Restructuring of American Religion, a reshuffling of values, politics, and priorities have made denominational identities in the U.S. less powerful, and affinity group interests spread across denominational lines more prominent.  This tendency that Wuthnow noted then has seemed only to accelerate.

In terms of our project, does this mean that a “progressive” Mennonite has more in common with a left-leaning Presbyterian than with a Mennonite with wildly divergent political views, theological orientations, and spiritual values? Is our search for ways of following Jesus within respective Christian traditions helped or hobbled by the frank realities of internal divisions?  Within too many forms of Christian thought and practice, including Anabaptists and among my own beloved Pentecostals, the call to follow Jesus is so often drowned out in the seemingly endless flood of intramural bickering and posturing.  Lord, help us!

Promptings towards a Sacramental Worldview

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Thank you very much, Dr. King, for your efforts to bring some order of understanding to what seems to be the very complicated and divided landscape of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement in America.  Your providing the link to the 24-point statement of belief given in the 1995 Mennonite Confession of Faith was very helpful.

I’m especially interested in its fifth point:

We believe that God has created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and that God preserves and renews what has been made.  All creation has its source outside itself and belongs to the Creator.  The world has been created good because God is good and provides all that is needed for life.

In my opinion, it would seem that this tremendously positive, Creation-affirming statement could well be the basis upon which Anabaptists and Mennonites might develop a sacramental understanding of the material world and all of Creation—a view that would be in accord with the sacramental understanding of all of the material realm that the Orthodox Church has always held from the very beginning.  This is the foundational understanding that because the material realm was created by the Good God Who Loves Mankind, and because He Himself repeatedly called it “good” according to the Genesis account, it thereby has the capacity to convey spiritual reality and power.

The Orthodox understanding is that all of Creation is somehow undergirded by, and even penetrated, to some extent, with divine grace.  The renowned Orthodox theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his seminal work, For the Life of the World, uses the phrase “the natural sacramentality of the world” to convey this understanding.

This view is reflected in the Old Testament understanding of holy places—such as when the Lord says to Moses as he stands near the Burning Bush, “Take the sandals off your feet, for the ground you are standing on is holy” (Ex. 3:5).  This understanding of holy places is later extended and expanded when the Lord commands Moses to construct the Tabernacle as a special place for the Lord to dwell in and to meet with His people—and later still, with David and Solomon building the Temple—and with the Shekinah Glory (the Holy Spirit) filling these holy spaces, and with the most sacred, inner part of the Tabernacle and the Temple being called the “Holy of Holies.”

Perhaps the most dramatic instance in the Old Testament of a portion of the material realm conveying spiritual power is when the bones of the Prophet Elijah bring a dead man back to life (2 Kings 13:21).  We see such power again in the New Testament, when Christ uses spittle and dirt to make mud to heal the blind man’s eyes (John 9:6); and when Peter’s shadow, and handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched Paul’s skin, accomplish physical healings, as reported in the Book of Acts (5:15 and 19:12).

The sacramental worldview also is very much reflected in Christ’s words about the bread and the wine in the Eucharist, as He declares these material elements to be indeed His body and blood, which the Orthodox understand to be accomplished by the Holy Spirit in some very mysterious way (far beyond all possible human description or understanding; hence Orthodoxy does not accept the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, which attempts to explain this mystery using philosophical categories).

With Christians having this sacramental worldview from the very beginning, it’s no wonder that Baptism has always been understood as a powerful bestowal and conveyance of divine grace into the one being baptized.  For we understand that the water and oil that are used in Baptism and Chrismation, being already penetrated with grace and therefore being latently holy, become further suffused with grace/spiritual power when they are prayed over and the Holy Spirit is besought to sanctify them.

And with this understanding of the very real sanctifying and vivifying power of the water and oil used in Baptism and Chrismation, it’s no wonder that we would not want to deny our children, and even our infants, the benefits of receiving this spiritual power from their earliest days.  This also explains why the Orthodox (and Eastern Rite Catholics) commune baptized/chrismated infants and very young children at the Eucharistic chalice (that the Roman Church, except for those celebrating an Eastern rite, have not maintained this ancient traditional practice would seem to be a significant loss, from the Orthodox vantage point).

And if it’s remarked that the babies and young children don’t have any understanding of what’s happening to them as they receive these sacramental ministrations, we would reply, “Does anyone really fully understand what’s happening?  And what about mentally challenged persons—would we deny them the sacraments because they don’t have the rational capacity to understand them?”

Of course, the full expectation undergirding the practice of infant Baptism is that as they are brought up and nurtured and instructed in the communal life of the Church, these baptized, chrismated, and Eucharistically-communing children will gradually, more and more, personally appropriate this grace conscientiously, and will increasingly exert their own will in conjunction with the grace that they’ve been receiving sacramentally all along—grace which has been giving them such a wonderful “head start” in the Christian life.

Thank you again, Dr. King, for your words.  May mine be helpful to you.

 

 

Jesus, Love, & Nonviolence in the Black Church Tradition

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Dr. King’s reflection on what it means to follow Jesus from an Anabaptist perspective resonated with me as the values he articulated are helpful as I consider the Black Church tradition. More specifically, Value 1 encourages me to think about the centrality of Jesus in Black churches and where these institutions might be falling short in their adherence to our Savior. However, I am struggling to reconcile Value 4 with the historical trajectory of the Black Church. While I believe in a commitment to love and nonviolence, Black churches have often been subjected to violence and forced to fight back just to survive. I wonder how we might consider the Anabaptist dedication to peace in light of the experiences of a Black Church tradition that is partially defined by the violence it has endured.

Value 1 in Anabaptist understandings has strong resonance in the Black Church tradition. Dr. King’s claim that “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” is reflected in the ways that Black congregations give Jesus primacy in the worship experience and beyond. Hymns are sung that speak to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and how belief in Him can transform lives. Most prayers are concluded with “in Jesus’ name, Amen,” an indication that by praying in Jesus’ name, He acts as an intercessor between humanity and God. In the Black Church tradition, it is common to end the preaching moment with a retelling of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Dr. King’ statement about the prioritization of Jesus as seen in the New Testament can be identified in the Black Church tradition. Everything starts and ends with Jesus in most Black congregations.

With such a strong emphasis on Jesus, I struggle then to reconcile the ways that some Black churches engage on various issues, particularly when their perspective does not align with New Testament teachings about Jesus. There are those in the Black Church tradition that give more weight to the words of Paul than that of Jesus. In my reading of the New Testament, Jesus offers words of women subjugation to men, yet there are many self-professed Jesus followers who lean heavily into the words of Paul as justification for their belief that women should be subservient. In fact, if we look at the gospels closely, Jesus praises women for their faith and appears to them first following His resurrection. Jesus emphasizes the need for community care and concern for the least of these, and yet there are various Black congregations who ascribe to an individualism that consistently prioritizes the self over the other. Jesus reiterates time and time again in New Testament teachings that to follow Him would require sacrifices, but there are Black ecclesial spaces that suggest we do not have to give up much to be followers of Jesus.

To be sure, these concerns are not only experienced in the Black Church; there are multiple denominations and congregations from varied backgrounds who struggle to live into Jesus’ Way as articulated in the New Testament. Furthermore, I understand that certain theological teachings may have been coping mechanisms to help Black Christians navigate an anti-Black world. (For instance, could it be that some Black churches stressed the importance of the individual to help Black Americans see their dignity and worth when very few would?)   However, Dr. King’s work reminds me that if we in Black church spaces are going to call ourselves Jesus-followers, we must make decisions and live according to what we see in the New Testament primarily. There very well may be something useful or helpful in Paul’s writings. Paul, in fact, has helped many a Black church figure out how to structure the organization and facilitate the work of the church. However, we call ourselves Christians and not “Paulinians,” indicating that we are chiefly followers of Christ. Dr. King’s statement that the Way of Jesus should get priority is a strong reminder that we in the Black Church tradition should always be analyzing our actions and perspectives through the lens of Jesus.

While Dr. King’s first value encouraged me to think more deeply about some of the contradictions within the Black Church tradition, I wrestled with how to process his fourth value in light of the violence and harm enacted on Black churches and communities. On the one hand, love and nonviolence were hallmarks of Black congregations and pastors who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. To them, Jesus was love and nonviolence enfleshed and a model for how the Black Church could advocate for changes in discriminatory policies and practices. Love and nonviolence were, and still are for many Black churches, emblematic of what it means to be a Christian. If Jesus, who was God made flesh, could die on a cross and forgive those who put Him there, how can we call ourselves followers of Jesus and not at least strive to embody this ethic?

On the other hand, the Black Church has often had to contend with real violence that has harmed its members. White “Christians” would don the Ku Klux Klan uniform and terrorize African Americans, burning their churches and lynching Black Americans for no apparent reason other than hatred. The American enslavement of Black people was predicated on violence; Black slaves were raped, tortured, beaten, and killed all in the name of maintaining control of a system that saw them as the nonhuman other, often at the hands of self-professed Christian slaveowners. Even today, there are “Christians” at every level of government and industry enacting policies meant to strip African Americans of economic and social opportunities. It makes sense then why Christians like Nat Turner felt there were no other options than to retaliate with violence in the face of violence. How can we expect someone to respond with nonviolence when all he has experienced is violence and oppression? Furthermore, how can we expect someone to remain committed to nonviolence when history demonstrates that the most violent, often in the name of God, have been the most successful and prosperous?

Again, I believe strongly in the Anabaptist value of love and nonviolence. I consider myself a Christian minister that tries to preach, teach, and live this ethic. But Dr. King’s reflection has reiterated to me the importance of context when we discuss what it means to follow Jesus. We may share similar beliefs about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but our specific experiences in the world can impact how that belief manifests itself in our day-to-day lives. The Black Church tradition most certainly has a nonviolent ethos that run through its core. However, I would be disingenuous if I did not name the complicated relationship that Black communities have with violence. Even to this day, Black congregations must ask themselves: how do we remain peaceful and model the restrain of our Savior when it appears that very few, if any, offer us that same peace and restraint?