Some
Thoughts on Anabaptist Non-violence and the Inclusive Compassion of
Christ
I am becoming
more and more Anabaptist in my sense of non-violence and resistance to
Empire. The Anabaptist movement had an understanding of itself as
rooted in Christ’s non-violence, holding a prophetic stance to all the
structures and norms of culture. I am preaching more often as a
Christian Pacifist who sees the resurrection as the non-violent Christ
raised up; as Rene Girard has it, the de-mythologizing of the "civilization of mimetic violence."
(Girard, Truth or Weak Faith.
Dialogue about Christianity and Relativism) Our experience of
the crucified one, the one victimized by the violence of Empire, and
risen amongst us is itself a challenge to the proclamation of the
victory of mimetic violence.
The Anabaptists were those of the radical wing of the reformation who
along with their belief in adult baptism, held that the Christian must
stand against the violence of the “civil” order of Wester's followers,
and resisted the governing structures of the place where they lived,
often creating their own structures based upon the ways of Christ. The Amish,
Hutterites, Old Believers, Mennonites, and Apostolic Christian Church,
to mention just some of the contemporary expressions of this movement,
still resist the norms of surrounding cultures and follow the
non-violent, communitarian path of Christ. The history of Western
Civilization, marked as it often has been by violence and hierarchical
structure, is not one that Anabaptists see as their own. They
counter this view with their idea that the Christian community is
established upon the compassionate and self-giving love of Christ.
There are theological and sociological problems with Anabaptist
theology. The line they draw between the community of faith and
government, and their refusal to engage in dialogue outside the
boundaries of their particular faith community have created problems
within the Anabaptist movement. But the strength of community and
the clarity around issues of violence and non-violence are features
that seem deeply congruent with the Gospel.
It is my contention that Western Civilization, as we now have it, must
be radically challenged by the work of God's love in Christ. The
normative structures of our society do not carry the virtues of the
Gospel, but rather are marked by the values of wealth and power.
Further, the destruction of local communities and their autonomy
by large transnational corporate structures runs counter to the
immediacy of the Incarnation known in community. The resulting
dislocation and loss of bonds of compassion is a major problem.
The Anabaptist movement understood that a locally known but universally
significant community of the resurrection was the most faithful
expression of God's purpose. The problem with
these localized cells of compassion is that they can become closed to
the outside world, both intellectual and spiritually. This
representation of the Church can be understood as a closed community of
the saved who withdraw from an evil world in order to make certain of
their salvation. Outside the specific community of the faithful,
the world is filled with evil and corruption. Nothing can be
gained by listening to those of other faiths or denominations, and
engagement with the world must be minimal.
Accepting the limitations of Anabaptist theology in this regard is not
to say that only Anabaptists have these problems. Calvin, Luther,
Wesley and other reformers often made negative judgments regarding
those of other faiths and theological views. They and their
movements often acted upon these judgments by destroying the other in
religious wars, in heresy trials and executions. The Anabaptists,
for the most part, because of their Spirituality of Non-violence, did
not slaughter those they regarded as outside the community of
believers. However, the very real lines drawn between the Inner
world of the saved and the outer world of the damned, meant a rigid
boundary and a lack of interest in any form of real dialogue with the
“others.”
Theologically the idea of a “centre” that is sanctified and an outer
world that is damned has and does pose real problems. The idea
that the natural world is corrupt, a sign of the Fall, has meant that
the impulse to destroy and uproot human communities from the natural
world has found support in Christian understandings. The positive
resistance to evil in the world inspired by the prophetic tradition
within Christianity has too often taken the shape of denying goodness
in the natural and human world. It has meant a separation of
human society from the natural world and from those other humans who
are irredeemable because they are not “Christian” or not part of one’s
particular strand of Christianity. The prophetic resistance to
evil—the “Sacred Discontent” with the world as it is—has given impetus
to a deep and hopeful social criticism, but when dis-incarnated, it has become a destructive
force that counsels the destruction of all that is not directly from or
of use to the community of the saved.
Lynn White, in his ground breaking work on the Christian roots of the
ecological crisis, named this “Sacred Discontent” as an “activist
character” that understood the natural world as merely a resource for
human exploitation. (Lynn Townsend White, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis",
Science: 1967) He argued that the idea of the world as a mere
resource for exploitation, having little intrinsic worth beyond its use
for humans, was founded on the Christian Doctrine of the Fall.
This, coupled with the idea that humanity should have absolute dominion
over the earth, created the possibility for a use of machinery and
technology that could destroy that earth at such a rate as to endanger
the eco-systems upon which human life depends.
The Anabaptist movement shares this theological assumption with nearly
all of the Western Church: creation has no worth beyond its use,
and has no qualities of value other than as used by human beings.
However, it is not a view that is necessary to Christian Theology, and
there are many theologians, Christian thinkers and Followers who have
not shared these views. From Jesus through Francis and Julian to
Matthew Fox, the Christian view has also seen Creation as a “blessing
and filled with Sacred presence.” God is the very breath of
Creation itself. John Cobb and Charles Birch, for example, in
their co-authored book of theology and biology The Liberation of Life, argued that
God might be said to be “Life” with a capital “L,” as known in all
creatures. (John Cobb and Charles Birch, The Liberation of Life; Cambridge:
University Press, 1981), passim).
So much in the gospel speaks in resistance to "globalized" violence,
whether against the natural or human world. This can
involve even the idea of exporting particular cultural forms like
"liberal democracy" or "the global Market
Place" (rather
than the more radical democracy of the gospel that calls for a refusal
to privilege wealth or power). Incarnation of the resurrection
means local worlds of meaning where we encounter the risen Christ not in "general," but in particular
faces and forms. This implies that the “common good’ is the
expression of a democratic culture that has concern for the well- being
of both human and non-human parts of a particular community. The particular gives
the universal, certainly, but in the inter-relating of particular
Incarnations of the risen Christ within the whole cosmic dance of
creation, always locally known (again, this is what Incarnation
means). The problem with my Anabaptist leanings is the way in
which I can exclude certain members of the community where I reside by
believing they are outside of God’s concern because they are not part
of the community of the elect—the saved, the politically correct, or
the “Human”. The wideness of God’s love is narrowed by my own
concern to be a part of an “in” group.
One of the mistakes I have made in my own thinking has been in my
attempt to make universal things that are culturally, socially and
ecologically specific to the community in which I live. One of
the ways I need to transcend my Anabaptist thinking is in extending the
non-violent work of eco-justice in a way that does not globalize
schemes for salvation that may make sense in one location and with one
community but may not make sense in another. Taking the
Incarnation seriously means taking each particular human community,
culture and even religion seriously, as perhaps providing an
Incarnation of the risen Christ within its own experience. To
attempt to globalize my own understanding of salvation can easily be an
expression of Imperial ambition and violence, left or right. It
is time we encountered the risen Christ in our places, these specific ones,
this specific landscape. Empire is equally the force of those
combinations of modern theology, science, technology and politics that
try to control all places from a single centre. The prophetic
tradition of my Anabaptist tendency must be critical of my tendencies
to imagine my theology or my culture has the solution for all
others. Modesty about our thinking and our theology does not mean
we do not think critically or share possible solutions to problems, but
it does mean that we must be open to learn and change by learnings from
other communities. Christ wears the face of the other as well as
the face that is familiar to us. We must come home to our own
inclusive communities, and encounter that particular stranger at our
door as Christ raised up.
The sermons I have preached in the last four weeks have tried to
approach some of the above in many different ways. I have tried
to suggest that bad theology that argues we are created “morally
corrupt” in fact leads to a corruption of
our sense of self as capable of doing good. I have suggested that
when we know our own being, when we know know the mystery of who we are
as a gift given, we are freed to offer ourselves as a gift to
others. I have suggested that the “centres’ we construct for
ourselves often perish and leave us feeling there is no meaning.
The remedy, as I see it, is neither to deny the pain in losing these
centres, nor to cling to their remains. Rather, it is to live
beyond these centres towards the hope of an all inclusive and
compassionate God who offers yet more possible centres of meaning that
do not exclude past centres, but include them into richer and deeper
possibilities. The harmony of harmonies that is the aim of God
transcends but includes, is incarnate in all particulars, but is beyond
all particularity.
My Anabaptist sentiments come at a time when I sense that more and more
we are living in a culture that is attempting to destroy all local
communities and all sense of human solidarity in a “global
marketplace”. Further, it is a time when so much of what we do is
based upon an assumption that the natural world is merely a resource to
be exploited. This has brought all of humanity to the brink of
catastrophe. I feel that the non-violence at the heart of
Anabaptist theology and its “counter-cultural” views that are prophetic
and yet seek the creation of a “counter-cultural” community based on
“gospel” virtues are of critical importance in our time of “market
driven” economics and ecological destruction. Hope is found, I
think, in a Gospel that has both the critical eye of this tradition and
the inclusive heart of Christ. We need a community of critical
thinking and of compassionate hearts. That is living in the Way
that is truth and brings Life.