“The Naked Anabaptist” Core Conviction #5

Today’s look at The Naked Anabaptist brings us to the fifth of seven core convictions. Murray’s fifth core conviction is worded thusly: “Churches are called to be committed communities of discipleship and mission, places of friendship, mutual accountability, and multivoiced worship. As we eat together, sharing bread and wine, we sustain hope as we seek God’s kingdom together. We are committed to nurturing and developing such churches, in which young and old are valued, leadership is consultative, roles are related to gifts rather than gender, and baptism is for believers.”[1] Once again, there is a lot going on in this core conviction, so I want to take a little time to look at some different parts of it more closely.

An integral part of this conviction is that church is a community where believers gather to disciple one another and to work together in mission. From the Anabaptist perspective, church is not something that is limited to an hour or so of worship once a week. Church is community, living together, working together, and serving God together. It requires us to truly know each other and to know God.

Another important part of this statement comes at the very end when Murray states “baptism is for believers.” This has been a central aspect of Anabaptism from the very beginning, and contributed to the very name of the movement. The earliest Anabaptists became convinced that infant baptism was not a valid form of baptism, and so came to the conclusion that they needed to be baptized as adults. Their opponents latched onto this, and claimed that they were being re-baptized, which is the original meaning of the word anabaptism. While our denomination has softened its view on infant baptism for those coming into the denomination from the outside, this understanding that baptism is for believers only still plays an important role in our denomination life.[2]

Murray describes the church as a place where gifts determine the roles that persons play in the church, and not gender. While our local congregation does very well with this, our denomination as a whole continues to struggle with this issue. Events earlier this year at Annual Conference highlight our continued difficulties with the role of women in leadership within the denomination. Ideally, the church should hand out roles based upon gifts and abilities regardless of gender. Realistically, we still have a ways to go with this.

As I look around our congregation in the brief time that I have been here, it is clear that we strive to live up to much that is contained in this core conviction. We are, in a very profound way, a community that supports each other in difficult times and in the good times. We value each member of the congregation, and seek to find ways to get everyone involved in roles that match up with their gifts, abilities, and callings. As we continue to journey together, may we continue to always seek to build each other up, that we may live into the life God calls us to lead.

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[1] Stuart Murray, The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith, Scottdale, PA: Herald Press 2010, 180.

[2] Up to the mid-twentieth century, the CoB required persons joining the church who had been baptized as infants to be baptized anew.

"The Naked Anabaptist" Core Conviction #4

Today, I am returning to my discussion of Stuart Murray’s book The Naked Anabaptist. For today’s post, I will be focusing on Murray’s fourth core conviction of Anabaptism. He states “The frequent association of the church with status, wealth, and force is inappropriate for followers of Jesus and damages our witness. We are committee to vulnerability and to exploring ways of being good news to the poor, powerless, and persecuted, aware that such discipleship may attract opposition, resulting in suffering and sometimes ultimately martyrdom.”[1]

In Luke 4:14-30, Jesus gives a summary of his call, reaching back to the words of the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” (Luke 4:18-19 NRSV). With this as the basis for his ministry, Jesus spends a large chunk of his ministry by tending to the needs of the poor, the hungry, the homeless.

Throughout the era of Christendom, which was the focus of my last post, the church found itself in positions of great power. And in so doing, it often failed to live up to the call of Jesus. This core conviction of Anabaptism recalls these words of Jesus, and reinforces their centrality to the mission of the church. Instead of focusing on power and status, our calling as the church is to serve the poor, the powerless, and the persecuted.

The Church of the Brethren has, at times, lived into this calling. Brethren Volunteer Service has many opportunities to serve the least among us.

Our congregation has opportunities for us to live into this calling of Jesus. Later today, members of our congregation will be participating in a ministry in Roanoke geared towards helping some of the least among us.

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[1] Stuart Murray, The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith, Scottdale, PA: Herald Press 2010, 179.

Weekly update

I will be resuming the series on The Naked Anabaptist next week. In place of that, I am offering some links to stories reflecting on the tenth anniversary of September 11.

The Huffington Post has a number of articles on this subject on its religion page, including stories from an interfaith perspective, and several from 9/11 chaplains.

Sojourners also has posted a number of articles.

This is not intended as an all-inclusive list, but simply an attempt to give some links to a religious perspective on the tenth anniversary.

"The Naked Anabaptist" Core Conviction #3

As we continue on our journey through The Naked Anabaptist, we come to the third core conviction that Murray discusses. The discussion of this core conviction will likely take a bit longer than the ones that have preceded it, as it is a bit more complex. The first two core convictions both revolved, in some way, around the centrality of Jesus for Anabaptist thinking. The third core conviction looks at the issues surrounding the idea of Christendom, marking a shift towards a different part of the Anabaptist understanding of Christianity.

Murray states the third core conviction in this manner: “Western culture is slowly emerging from the Christendom era when church and state jointly presided over a society in which almost all were assumed to be Christian. Whatever its positive contributions on values and institutions, Christendom seriously distorted the gospel, marginalized Jesus, and has left the churches ill-equipped for mission in a post-Christendom culture. As we reflect on this, we are committed to learning from the experience and perspectives of movements such as Anabaptism that rejected standard Christendom assumptions and pursued alternative ways of thinking and behaving.”[1]

There is clearly a lot going on in this statement, so I’d like to break it down a bit to explain it a little more. Christendom is a period of Christianity that generally is said to have begun with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in 312 CE. Up to this point in the history of Christianity, the movement existed almost entirely on the margins of the Roman Empire. However, this made a dramatic shift during the reign of Constantine, when Christianity became the official state religion of the empire. At that point, the entirety of the population was assumed to be Christian, unless there was a specific reason otherwise (for example, Jews were not automatically considered Christians). Rather than a persecuted minority, the church came to play a central role in the nation-state. A blend of church and state began, and, in time, it often became difficult to distinguish between the two.

From the earliest part of the Radical Reformation, Anabaptists found this mixture of church and state to be troubling. The insistence on believer’s baptism was, at least in part, a rejection of the ideas of Christendom. Within Christendom, all citizens were understood to be Christians, whilst Anabaptists insisted that only those who choose to be Christians, and are baptized as believers, are truly Christian.

As a group that descends from the early Anabaptists, the Church of the Brethren has had its own critiques of Christendom. There are numerous stories of Brethren who have opposed the idea that church and state are one and the same, as Christendom often teaches. The earliest Brethren knew that their decision to be baptized in the Schwarzenau River would be an act that rejected not only the role of the institutional church, but also that of the government.

I have written on the subject of the role of the government in relation to the church here, which I would urge everyone to read.

I’ll stop here this week, as this is already getting to be quite long. I may continue this discussion next week, as there is certainly more that could be said on this subject.

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[1] Stuart Murray, The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith, Scottdale, PA: Herald Press 2010, 178.