The Neo-Anabaptist Temptation

Some years ago Robert Benne wrote an essay in First Things called "The Neo-Augustinian Temptation," which he describes as a movement "committed to the construction of an independent and distinct churchly culture based upon the full narrative of Israel and the Church as it has been carried through the ages by the Great Tradition."

But in light of Mark Tooley's incisive piece appearing this week at the American Spectator, I think the trend might just as well be dubbed the "Neo-Anabaptist temptation."

As Tooley writes, "Traditional Anabaptists, such as the Mennonites, foreswore military service and public office while not contesting the civil state's responsibilities, including armed force. But the new neo-Anabaptist movement is more aggressive, demanding that all Christians, and society, including the state, bend to pacifism. Traditional separatism has also compromised, with today's many outspoken neo-Anabaptist voices pushing many insistent political demands that invariably align with the secular left and religious left."

As the Benne and Tooley pieces demonstrate, the idea of two cities or two kingdoms is not unique to the Augustinian or Reformation visions of the world order. It's precisely in the details of the relations of these two that the various visions differ.

And as for how the neo-Anabaptists are "engaging" culture, Tooley writes, "Although the neo-Anabaptists sort of subscribe to a tradition that rejects or, at most, passively abides state power, they now demand a greatly expanded and more coercive state commandeering health care, regulating the environment, and punishing wicked industries."

Comments

[Bob Srigley]

Is this another example of the elitist leaders trying to drag the flock where it would not ordinarily be inclined to go? The Mennonites in my area, the Shenandoah valley of VA, may be historically inclined to pacifism, but are very conservative in general. One wishes that they could be persuaded to vote, because the political effect would certainly be salutory.

[John]

I've always felt it odd that the freedoms (and responsibilities) given by the constitution provide the very foundations by which "religious separatist" groups exist.

[David Layman]

I'm Mennonite (born, bred, baptized, married, etc.)

To Mr. Srigley: I suspect the Mennos you are referring to are not affiliated with the "mainstream" "MCUSA" (Mennonite Church USA). There's a huge "nest" of liberals (progressives, both politically and religiously) at Eastern Mennonite University. But you are quite right that "the flock," even within MCUSA, tends to political conservatism.

This is so much so that one more or less official spokesman for standard Mennonite pacifism has called for a temporary "abstinence" from political discussion and politics. Meaning: we (liberals) are losing the fight for "mind-share", so let's stop talking about it (for now!)! I suspect they hope with time, the conservative ignoramuses will die out, change their mind, or slowly stop resisting the heavy-handed leadership of the right- (i.e., left) minded elites.

In one sense, it's an elite phenomena, but the elites do have the schools (EMU (incl. a seminary), Goshen (IN), and the seminary at Elkhart, IN), so I suspect that gradually the "neo-Anabaptist" ideology will infiltrate the minds of the next generation of leaders. The largest and most conservative conference of the MCUSA, Lancaster, had a vote several years ago that rejected women's ordination (by the narrowest of margins). The liberals went ahead and ordained several women. You can guess the rest.

[Daniel Crandall]

This post is news to me, but then I've only met one Anabaptist couple and they were as socially conservative (and the issue of pacifism never came up) as the day is long. The only thing I did get from this otherwise fine couple was a virulent anti-Catholic and (and this was a first) anti-Orthodox bigotry. The man of the house has read deeply in his own tradition but extremely shallowly in anything else, and was very quick to agree, seriously mind you, when I joked about the Catholic Church as the "Whore of Babylon."

The funny thing is that the lady of the house was born and raised in the Ukraine. When I, a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, asked if she was Orthodox, she stared at me in utter shock and vociferously denied any connection with those "Idol worshipers."

So ... there ya go.

[Respectabiggle]

It's odd how these groups eschew violence in defense of the state or self, but are quite content to have the state use violence to collect taxes, punish businesses or control the use of the environment.

[Little Gidding]

The Statist impulse of the contemporary "new-Anabaptists" reminds me--not so much of the pacifist branch of the original Anabaptists (such as the Mennonites), but rather of the other branch, which relied on the Zwickau prophets and peasant uprisings to establish in Munster and elsewhere a fearsome dictatorship of the Elect. If you scratch the surface of today's New Left, you behold the hope for such a revolution. As a result, I, for one, do do not welcome our new Anabaptist overlords.

[Nathanael Snow]

The Neo-Annabaptists have several things right and several things wrong. They are big on Yoder, Hauerwas, and Ellul. That is, pacifism. They learn at the school of classical anarchism, though one wishes they would take the time to read a little Rothbard (if he could be delivered of that gold bug) and some Hayek.
When I engage with them, as I often do at "Jesus Radicals" they are generally for state provision of a greater number of goods which the market already provides efficiently. They tend towards locavorism.
They believe the causal relation between government and corporate corruption runs from the corporation to the state, per Berle and Means and Michael Moore. They fail to grasp the importance of constitutional constraints and elimination of rent seeking opportunities as explained by public choice theory.
They are at their best when focussing on Praxis. It is the peculiar role of the Christian to care for the least of these, and this they embrace very well.