In December 2019 I was
visiting the Mennonite website for The
Sword and Trumpet and was rather stunned to find that their Spring 2020
colloquy was hosting John Stonestreet of BreakPoint. He was to address the
conservative Mennonite assemblage on issues of media and technology.
I was stunned as
Stonestreet, the protégé of Charles Colson, in many ways represents the
antithesis of what Anabaptism is supposed to be all about. Following in the
footsteps of Abraham Kuyper and Francis Schaeffer, the Colson organisation
promotes an anti-Two Kingdom Dominion theology and Stonestreet who took over
the daily commentaries after Colson's death in 2012, incessantly pitches the
Right-wing view of the world supporting everything from market capitalism to
America's war policies. I was just dumfounded that conservative Mennonites
would be interested in anything he had to say.
But on the other hand
this was in many ways the capstone or culmination of a trend that has more than
once caught my attention over the previous decade.
About ten years ago I
eagerly purchased Christian Attitudes to
War, Peace, and Revolution by John H Yoder. It was published posthumously by
Brazos Press in 2009, edited by Mennonite scholars (Theodore Koontz and Andy
Alexis-Baker) who wished to make Yoder's class materials available to the
public.
I learned a great deal
from the book and it has generated many inquiries, investigations and
reflections and yet in the years since then I have repeatedly returned to the
chapters dealing with Reinhold Niebuhr's interactions with and critiques of the
Anabaptist community in the aftermath of World War II. The Mennonites underwent
a profound shift during the post-war epoch – some Mennonites embracing
theological liberalism and social activism and others becoming more entrenched
in their conservatism and separatist identity.
But as Yoder
demonstrates, it's even more complicated than that. There was a subtle shift in
how separatism was viewed and it has opened some doors to new ways of thinking.
On occasion when we
journey out of the hills we stop at a Mennonite college and visit the bookstore which has a fairly
robust selection of new and used volumes. Perusing the section used for
coursework I was baffled by what I was seeing – among other popular Evangelical
writers, I was finding books by Francis Schaeffer. Why would they be reading
and studying someone that is in every way antithetical to their belief system
and the separatist ethos and ideology they embrace?
For several years I
have also read articles, books and have listened to hours of course lectures
and consumed other media from conservative Mennonite circles. Of course there
is a considerable spectrum within the Mennonite world and while I have attended
a nearby Mennonite USA congregation – and was disappointed, the folks I'm most
curious about are the deliberately conservative types. Somewhat puzzled by the
trends I've noticed in reference to Mennonite interpretations of culture and
even Church History, I have repeatedly returned to the Yoder volume for
guidance – especially after finding Francis Schaeffer in the Mennonite book
store. Yoder sounds a gentle warning it would seem but much has changed since
his death in the late 1990's – and frankly I'm starting to wonder if the
Mennonite world is reaching a tipping point.
The
mainstream-theologically liberal groups are not really my concern. Those factions
have rapidly slipped into apostasy, having taken historical non-resistance and
transformed it into Left-wing activism. In other cases they've openly embraced
feminism and sodomy in some cases openly challenging and disavowing the
authority of the Scriptures. I'm not worried about these groups because they're
already gone.*
No, I'm speaking about
the conservatives – not the conservatives that drive buggies or the 'Black
mini-van' types I see around that in some respects are (to the casual eye)
indistinguishable from the Amish. I've interacted with these folks and most of
them seem to still embrace a general aversion to education and cultural
engagement of any kind – lacking even a basic cultural awareness at times. This
reminds me of my many conversations with the Amish who largely speaking have no
concept of what's happening in the larger world. They've shut it out and don't
even seem to be aware of what's happening – although that too is changing, a
point I will revisit later.
In the Christian Attitudes work, Yoder talks
about how some of the conservative Mennonites reaffirmed their apoliticism in
the aftermath of the war and the Niebuhrian critique but there was a shift and
this I think laid a new groundwork and explains subsequent events leading up to
what I think is a crisis or tipping point.
Apoliticism was
expanded to include an abandonment of
critique – and in some ways a softening of their conscious and active
antithesis. It's almost as if the war meant that nonresistance was not a viable
option for the world and they accepted that framing of the issue. In other
words those who used violence to arrest the evil forces that unleashed the war
were (in some capacity) right and moral.
Similarly pacifism
(which is not the same as non-resistance) endured a withering critique in light
of the events of 1939-1945. These schools of thought were not viewed as viable
options. This criticism coming from the likes of Niebuhr is actually invalid as
he's thinking only in terms of Christianity as a socio-political force and
dealing with questions of ethics for the nation and society – what I often
refer to as a decovenantalised (or universal) understanding of law and ethics.
Niebuhr admitted that Jesus and the apostles taught non-resistance (defeating
his own argument) but that it simply wasn't viable in the real world. A Church
that followed through on these points would be an irrelevant separatist
community. Of course actual Biblically minded Christians would reject his label
of 'irrelevant' – by which he means politically irrelevant. His categories are
wrong-headed, misguided and shaped by the world and the assumed ethics of Babel.
It continues to baffle
me as to why theological conservatives gave Niebuhr and his so-called realist
critique any standing at all. His famous and influential analysis is off-base,
constructed on a flawed assumption and it should have been dismissed out of
hand but Niebuhr's national and ecclesiastical influence was substantial in the
1950's and 1960's and he continues to influence political figures to this day.
With this shift the
Mennonites could retain their non-resistance position but in doing so it was as
if they affirmed the state's violence-oriented projects (of sword and coin) as
right and proper – just not for us.
It was reminiscent of
the monastics within the Christendom framework. Christendom with its knights,
kings, feudal order and crusades are necessary and godly to a point but their
way is not for us. Our way is higher and so while they are legitimate (and
we'll treat them as such) we nevertheless will go off in a corner and live our
better way.
That's a caricature of
medieval monasticism but not entirely inaccurate. The post-war Mennonites came
to a similar position within the post-Enlightenment Protestant milieu. But this
was a shift away from previous forms of separatism and a very different
understanding of antithesis.
This is quite
different from understanding the state's role as something of a necessary evil
in a fallen world, a necessary tool employed by Providence to manage the world
order and (with all its wickedness and slaughter) it's still a better (if
temporary) option than pure anarchy which would result in wanton slaughter and
unrestrained destruction. Medieval dissidents embraced non-resistance but also
categorically and assertively rejected the bestial powers and especially the bestial
Christendom conception – what I repeatedly refer to as the Tower of Babel
crowned with a cross of gold. The powers that be are ordained by God and we
submit to them but we don't endorse them and bless their projects or their
deeds.
The post-war Mennonite
position (as elaborated by Yoder) was to avoid criticising those in power and
to give them 'the benefit of the doubt'.
As Yoder states on
p.301:
"Thus this position, which sees itself as apolitical,
is in fact a very conservative political partisanship in favor of the present
regime and its stated goals."
How is this the case?
Again, one can be nonresistant and yet vigilant and critical when it comes to
the powers that be. Discerning the times requires a level of engagement – not
political engagement per se – but an awareness of what's happening in the
world, and exposing it to the Church and for those who will listen in the wider
world. With the latter, the point is not to topple kingdoms as Christ's Kingdom
is not of this world. Our message is one of warning (Christ is Coming) and it's
a call to repentance in light of that.
For the Church the
message is about how to live and how to maintain an antithesis – to keep one's
self unspotted from the world and to avoid being deceived by it.
The post-war
conservative Mennonite position (again according to Yoder) risked endorsement
of the order and became wholly insulated. Yes, they need to stop the Nazis,
communists and the rest. It's right for them to pursue these policies and fight
their wars. It's not our job to be critical.
This position which
needed to be challenged on a Biblical basis was further obscured and confused
by the opposition within their larger movement which was focused more on
non-violent pacifist activism – a call to become involved with the world –
which (as mentioned previously) eventually led these factions to more or less
align with Left-wing politics, the civil rights movement, calls to alleviate
poverty and other injustices. This shift combined with an embrace of secular
education has led them to the place they are today – apostasy. Both camps had
shifted and both (broadly speaking) were being set up for a fall. The liberals
have already jumped off the precipice and the conservatives – I argue are about
to.
But among the
conservatives, the situation hasn't proven static. They too have embraced
education and in light of changing economics – which requires an ever greater
interaction with the world. Like it or not they've also been all but compelled
to expand their horizons. This too is part of the story of the Amish which
again we will touch on later. Their story is quite different but not unrelated.
Secularisation,
industrialisation and their inescapability have seemingly opened the door to
not only to a wider spectrum of mainstream education among conservatives but it
has also fomented a crisis with regard to work, time, money and meaning. As the
agrarian ethos and its culture is being left behind, the movement is being
forced to think about life in a cash-oriented techno-industrial setting.
And as Yoder also
points out education is changing how even conservative Mennonites think.
Once again, Dominionism,
the idea that the Church is called to transform society and Christianise both
the culture and its institutions is antithetical to historic Anabaptist
ideology. Dominionism is a repudiation of separatism and by definition expands
the concept and definition of the Church to include the wider culture. This
sacralist One Kingdom impulse has manifested itself in various forms throughout
Church History. From Constantine to the Magisterial Reformation, to 19th
century Catholic Social Teaching and Calvinist Kuyperianism, to modern American
Evangelicalism, the doctrine has gone through various permutations and
reiterations. Sometimes it's One Kingdom in Two Aspects with degrees of nuance
but at the end of the day all these modes of thought demand the Christianisation
of society in one form or another.
It was the medieval
dissenters and the Reformation era Anabaptists who consciously rejected this
paradigm as being unbiblical. Other 19th century Restorationist
minded groups also discovered this truth in the New Testament and likewise the
20th century proved brutal – a veritable labyrinth, a harsh
wilderness for those adhering to these doctrines. And as we sit one-fifth of
the way through the 21st century, one finds the old dissenting paths
of non-resistance and Kingdom ethics are overgrown and in danger of
disappearing. I had thought the Anabaptists were at least one group still
walking those paths and tending them as it were – but over the last decade I've
realised this was a false hope.
While liberal
Mennonites have eagerly entered the civil service and pursued political activism,
the conservatives have still avoided the institutions of state – many rejecting
voting, the seeking of office, the courts, the military and the like.**
And yet, the crisis of
secularism combined with the shift in attitude with regard to the world order
has afforded an opportunity for Dominionism to make a slight inroad and I'm
wondering if by 2020 the door hasn't been kicked open. This is the tipping
point I'm talking about.
Deliberate agrarianism
in the 19th and 20th century was an expression of
world-rejection, rejecting the industrial order of the 19th century
and the values it produced. I wonder if some of these lessons were never
properly elaborated and reflected on and as such the lessons from that epoch
have been functionally lost. The industrial era provoked not just a crisis in
terms of technology but in ethics. Industrialisation was turning society on its
head and changed the nature of the social order, the village, the family and
basic economics. The home-cottage-farm economy was destroyed and the urban-cash
economy came to dominate. The Amish in many respects have fallen into
legalistic quibbles on some of these points – focusing on whether you need an
outhouse or whether you flush a toilet with a handle on a conventional tank or
with a bucket. This gnat-straining is to miss the point.
And yet the Mennonites
have for decades been slowly embracing the wider world – through education and
economics. They're aware of the dangers. Their course curricula spend a great
deal of time on these points but I think a case can be made that they've made a
wrong and dangerous turn.
I would contrast them
with say a group like the Jehovah's Witnesses who have still largely rejected
secular education and mainstream relevance and as a consequence are willing to
embrace relative and in some cases real poverty. The Mennonites have instead
embraced a Dominionist ethos of sacred
work. And it's not just hinted at, at this point they're plainly speaking
in those terms – echoing the Lutheran and Calvinist ethos of vocation.
Unlike some Bruderhof
groups I've seen that continue to seek work in a fallen world as a means not an
end and as a consequence view the idea of 'Christian business' as an oxymoron,
the Mennonites have found no little resonance with the Kuyperian-Schaefferian
Dominionist ethos of 'all of life being sacred' – every aspect of the
Christian's life belongs to Christ and is consecrated as such.
It intuitively sounds
correct, all the more in an age when life is seemingly fragmented by
out-of-home workplaces, schooling and the particularisation of social life.
It's a way to bind life together and give it coherence and meaning. This is why
the message has been marketed so powerfully and effectively to the Evangelical
and Confessional worlds as it is not only the Mennonites who are feeling the
crisis. The dissident-pilgrim road taken by groups like the Bruderhof and Jehovah's
Witnesses is for many an unwelcome prospect – all the more in a rich culture
such as our own where such relative poverty means not only frustration and
disappointment but in many cases our affluent mammon-worshipping culture will
identify you as morally deficient. This, many believe harms the Church's
testimony while those who understand the position actually believe relative
poverty enhances it and increases the Church's integrity and the poignancy of
its martyr-warning to the wider world.
The sacred work model
implies that work is part of the regenerating force of the Holy Spirit – even
though there is no Scriptural data to suggest this – that money and our jobs
are part of the Kingdom and the life hereafter. The logical end of this sort of
thinking is expressed by one such as Tim Keller who believes we will have
investment bankers in heaven. Needless to say the Dominionist understanding of
the Kingdom is in diametrical opposition to the separatist Two Kingdom ethos.
This is not just about the Kingdom and eschatology – this is about ethics and
how the Church is to live and function in a fallen world. What are we here for?
To embrace the theology and ethics of dominion is to reject the call to be
pilgrims and sojourners and it results it a rejection of Christ's call to lay
up treasures in heaven.
The realm of the
sacred is the realm of the Word and the Spirit – the things which are part of
the Kingdom of Heaven. If a lost person can run a cash register, saw wood, bake
a cake or compute payroll as well as a Christian can or in some cases even
better than a believer can, then there's nothing particularly sacred about that
task. Being a Christian doesn't give someone an edge because these are not holy
tasks but common ones. And that's okay in this age. They're not sinful but
neither are they holy. As Christians we have a different ethic than the world
does and a different attitude toward time, money, meaning, value and integrity
but that doesn't mean that somehow the board I cut, the form I fill out or the
egg I fry are somehow sacred products. They're not. They're legitimate outcomes
of work and I hopefully use their results for good purposes that can even
indirectly help the Kingdom – I feed my family, give money to the Church or
perhaps give of my time to help a widow repair something in her house. These
are occasions when work is used for a good or for ministry but when I'm making
a profit – that's not ministry, that's not sacred business – that's simply
work. I do it ethically and answer to God as I do in all things but it's not
Kingdom work. It's a means and nothing more. It's not an end and therefore it's
not at the top of my list of priorities. It doesn't define who I am. It's
something I have to do to fulfill my earthly responsibilities (and when I do
it, I do it honestly and work hard) but my calling as a Christian means there
are other things I do with my time and energy that are of far greater, eternal
value.
The Dominionist model
turns work (and consequently money) into an end in and of itself – as if
business and money will be part of the heavenly order of things.
This is where the
principle of prosperity is theologised (long before it reaches the extremes of
the television scammers) and when the accrual of money becomes an expression of
piety. And yet it's not piety, it's a trap that chokes, distracts and generates
passions that lead to evil. The New Testament is quite clear on this.
This is absolutely
critical and this is one of the most important areas that fully demonstrates just
how far Evangelicalism has gone astray and has been seduced by the world.
Sadly the
Dominionist-embracing Mennonites have turned their back on the ancient paths –
the testimony of their fathers and are in the process of not only embracing the
world but in redefining their very identity.
I've been watching this
Dominionist-embracing trajectory at work over the past decade with no small
degree of alarm. It has produced several results which on the one hand are
startling but in other respects were to be expected.
----
*I say this of course
as an outsider. I'm not a Mennonite or even a Baptist but for a variety of
reasons I'm interested in their movement and what's taking place within it. As
far as my Mennonite USA experience it was encouraging to visit a congregation
without the American patriotic-militarist focus or even the assumption of it.
It was refreshing and there were some good conservative folks – not the black
hat and Shenandoah beard types – but there were also some liberals including
the minister who I walked away from wondering if the guy was even a believer. I
was glad to hear that the issue of homosexuality is (perhaps akin to Anglican
circles) finally generating a reaction and some of the Mennonite USA
congregations are starting to move away from the denomination and yet they
seemingly have not fully re-embraced traditionalism. Some have even embraced
the Evangelical 'praise team' approach to worship and in many respects are
starting to blend in with the mainstream Evangelical movement sans the flag
waving emphasis.
** The Mennonite
testimony regarding conscription has not always impressed me. While refusing to
fight they nevertheless (at least during the Vietnam era) were still willing to
serve the military in non-combatant capacities – which I think is terrible and
barely qualifies as any testimony at all. A true and principled adherent of
non-resistance will refuse to support the war effort in any capacity and will
also refuse to wear the uniform of the armed forces or affiliate with them in
any capacity.
I have wrestled with
whether or not my sons should even register with Selective Service. The
question for me was not one of access to college loans or government jobs but
whether it's a lawful command that should be submitted to. In the end I think a
case can be made that you register but then if called (which is only
hypothetical at this point) you refuse to fight or even participate (I hate to
say 'serve') on the basis of principle. At that point you could be granted an
exemption and go fight fires in the West or something on that order, you could
go to jail or you could flee the country. Those are all acceptable alternatives
but being a medic or a truck driver or something for the actual military –
that's not acceptable. I dealt with those ethical questions while participating
in NATO's wars. I wasn't dropping the bombs but I was part of the machine – in
my case literally handling the bombs and I wouldn't want to be part of that
again nor would I want my sons to be.
Of course now with
daughters likely being required to sign up for selective service in the near
future the debate grows even more complicated in some ways. Not that it was
okay or somehow better for sons but I object even more strongly to even 'alternative
service' for Christian young women – fighting fires or whatever. I object to
the feminist assumptions behind the (potentially) mandatory service in any
capacity. The answer is not to lobby and campaign for female exclusion but
rather to pray, bear witness and then deal with whatever providence gives us.
And at that point we may indeed have to utterly refuse. Now whether that
refusal is manifest in a refusal to register or in a refusal to accept any kind
of mandated service after being called – that's an open question.
I do believe flight or
quasi-illegal emigration is a real option for Christians and one encouraged by
Christ both in terms of ideal and example. It's hard to embrace that kind of
thinking when one is entrenched in a world of business, investment, loans, real
estate and the like – mindsets further strengthened by Evangelical appeals to
their contrived concepts of stewardship. When one embraces the simplicity of
the pilgrim life and the 'take it or leave it' ethic when it comes earthly
goods, then walking away isn't that terrible of a prospect.