Jeffrey C. Long

I was recently asked by a friend for a description of the Mennonite church, which I am a member of. My answer was fairly succinct, so I thought it might be useful to post it here. I also included comments on consciencious objection to war, which is my position along with the Mennonite Church. I welcome questions and comments.

Daren,

…the dime-store novel history is that during the reformation there were more reformers then just luther and calvin. there was also erasmus trying to make changes inside of the catholic church rather then attempting reform by leaving catholicism. another group felt that luther, calvin and zwingli and others like them weren’t going far enough. historically, this group is called the radical reformers.

baptism became an issue for them in two different ways. the first, as you mentioned, they believed that it was an adult decision, rather then sacrament of the church at birth. the second, was the connection between church membership and state. the church and state were one, and both luther, calvin and zwingli kept this. so, being baptized as an adult was not only heretical to the established church and reforming movements, it was symbolically perceived as a revocation of your citizenship in the city-state, and thus traitorous. simultaneously, the radical reformers, or anabaptists as they were called, meaning re-baptizers, saw the sermon on the mount as the defining scripture in the bible, and thus felt that it was wrong for a christian to use violence to accomplish something. thus, they wouldn’t fight on behalf of their country, or city-state against the muslims who were attacking at this time. again this was considered traitorous and so they were executed for their faith. but they died showing the love of Jesus to their captors. there is a book that they wrote detailing this martyrdom called “The Martyr’s Mirror.” an online version is here http://www.homecomers.org/mirror/contents.htm

the article you read must have been fairly conservative. the Mennonite denomination that i am part of is filled with member congregations that are as far in the spectrum as liberals who would support gay marriages, to conservative congregations that wouldn’t allow a woman to wear pants, and every point in between. though i do not support the liberal’s standing in the body of christ, i liked this degree of variety in the denomination which differs from the cookie-cutter shape of evangelical denominations.

Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and Church of the Brethern are all spiritual, or in many cases biological descendants of the radical reformers. in my case, i’m a spiritual descendant, i.e. i chose to be a mennonite based on a lot of study of their theology not as a result of being born in the church. but more often churches are filled with biological descendants of the movement, i.e. the great-great-great-great grandchildren of the radical reformation. this is often an obstacle to evangelism, because conservative mennonite churches can act more like a sect then a church and fail to believe that evangelism would be successful.

as for the war (are you a veteran…? seems like i remember you being in the service.) american mennonites are all over the map when it comes to patriotic support of wars. many good mennonites were a part of world war II. and in fact, conscientious objection to war can be divisive in some mennonite churches. this was my motivation for writing the article. i believe that peacemaking involves much more then opposition to a war, and that when we are serving people we are administers of God’s peace. and this isn’t divisive… even denominationally. most christians would agree that we should be ministers of God’s peace to the world around us. when we focus on that, then our conscientious objection to war can take the back seat where i believe it should be.

speaking personally, i agree with romans when paul declares that governments are institutions ordained of God to do his work in the world. and as such, i believe they may use the sword to accomplish their task, whether it is fighting a war, or exercising capital punishment. but i don’t believe that governments are Christian. as a peacemaking christian, though, i believe it is important to testify to peacemaking alternatives to war. and i couldn’t go to war and use violence against an enemy for this country. and i believe that it is following the cross of Jesus to be martyred for a principled refusal to do violence to another person. however, i’ve not been tested by the fire so i don’t know how well my convictions would hold up if i was put to the test.

politically speaking, i feel that the bush administration has been very misguided in the war against iraq. i did not feel that way about the war in afghanistan. i could see the hand of God in that. but not Iraq. so my opposition to the war in Iraq is political, not spiritual. and it is a testimony to the culture that is breeded by violence, case-in-point, the prison scandals coming from iraq right now. violence begets violence. the bush administration has grabbed the tail of a tiger, and when you grab the tail of a tiger the only thing you can do is not let go. i abhor the rhetoric of the bush administration about “freedom” in iraq because a tribal muslim country is going to wind up becoming an islamic state once the power of hussein was removed. and there is no way to fight an enemy that is willing to blow themselves up for their cause.