An Anabaptist Ethos – Part 2

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anabaptist, congregationalism, John Calvin, Kingdom of God, Martin Luther, Michael Sattler, non-resistance, Reformation

In Part One I sought to emphasize that at the heart of what set groups referred to as Anabaptists apart from both Protestants and Catholics was their desire for a complete separation between the church and the state. This has gotten denominations that hold to an Anabaptist interpretation labeled as “separatists” or “radicals.” The latter refers in particular to the Anabaptist effort toward a literal New Testament application of Scripture to church organization and practice (ecclesiology in theological terms). Others historically have also sought this to varying degrees. The more congregationally-minded Puritans come to mind, as do the Plymouth Brethren who made a very commendable effort toward implementing apostolic church patterns.

The Anabaptists were unique in the sense they didn’t consider themselves reformers. Technically, the Reformation as a historical movement began by seeking reform of the Roman Catholic Church. When it became clear this wasn’t going to happen, recognized Reformation vanguards such as Luther, Calvin and Zwingli began their own churches outside of and in defiance to the Pope’s authority. In an effort to rid the church of extra-Scriptural Roman additions and practices, their cry was “Sola Scriptura,” or “Scripture alone.” These “Protestants” were protesting against Roman Catholicism—reformers seeking to reform the Catholic Church. In contrast, however, the Anabaptists had no desire to reform Catholicism. They considered the Roman church a false church and as such were only interested in a complete and irrevocable break from her.

The Anabaptist perception was that the the Roman Catholic Church had drastically departed from biblical teaching as a result of its alliances with earthly governments. Though I’m speaking in generalizations, most separatists would view the year 313 AD as the crucial turning point. This is when Constantine officially endorsed Christianity. Christianity in effect became a state religion, thus begetting the term Christendom. A generally held theory is that this point in time represents the “fall of the church.” Now it could legitimately be argued that the early so-called church fathers like Tertullian, Clement and Origen had already themselves done a good bit of departing from New Testament principles. But they all lived in a time period before Constantine’s decree when Christianity was still experiencing a fair amount of persecution at the hands of the state.

From the reign of Constantine onward, the church/state alliance grew progressively stronger. By and large, the kings during the Middle Ages bowed to the bidding of the Popes. The masses, primarily peasants, were illiterate. And until Gutenberg’s printing press followed eventually by the availability of translations of the Bible into common languages, Bibles were rare and outrageously expensive anyhow. The Church, with its power-base in Rome, not only “interpreted” the Bible for the masses, but continually added to the Bible’s teachings. The result was the Roman Catholic Church grew into what many considered a religious monstrosity, irretrievably having departed from biblical Christianity.

A primary tenant of Anabaptism, therefore, was that the kingdom of God is separate and distinct from the kingdoms of the world. This distinction must be maintained or the state will inevitably and negatively influence the church. This idea wasn’t an attempt to promote rebellion against the state. On the contrary, history shows that Christians who’ve attempted to apply the Scriptures to their lives have consistently been the most law-abiding and respectful citizens of any state. The purpose of emphasizing the reality of the kingdom of God was both a reflection of the Anabaptist understanding of Scripture and an attempt to maintain purity within the church.

One thing about a state church is that everyone is a member. Within the church there is no distinction between those living a moral life consistent with the Bible’s teachings and those who are not. This rightly bothered Martin Luther, even though he was the de facto leader of the German state church (i.e., the Lutheran church). He admired the Anabaptists’ ability to maintain a high degree of moral purity within their fellowships. Unfortunately, however, this didn’t keep him from eventually turning against them because of what he considered their excessive resistance to church-state influence and their “extreme positions.” John Calvin too faced the problem in Geneva of how to insure Christian ideals among the populace. He ended drafting a lengthy list of do’s and don’ts for the entire citizenry to follow, accompanied by stiff penalties for their infractions—penalties to be enforced, of course, by the civil authorities.

The Anabaptists, on the contrary, desired that those who cast their lot with them to voluntarily choose the path of obedience, without coercion from either the church or the state. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me…” Jesus gave people a choice. And in Anabaptist thinking, a personal choice is exactly what has to occur in order for the church to be retain its biblical legitimacy. Hence they placed great emphasis on discipleship—that is, following in the footsteps of Christ by obeying His teachings. So another distinguishing tenant of Anabaptism was the individual’s pursuit of holiness as a lifestyle.

But here’s the rub. How do you maintain church purity? Is obedience even enforceable? The Roman Catholic Church’s solution was often to burn their opponents at the stake, chop their heads off, or simply drown them. But this usually had little to do with how a person was behaving as much as with what he was teaching or with whom he was associating. I don’t think I need to go into any detail as to why this approach to dealing with dissent is not appropriate. It’s certainly not Biblical.

Sadly, Protestants have been guilty of similar practices. Michael Sattler, a leader among the Anabaptist Swiss Brethren, was put to death with the approval of Ulrich Zwingli, the leader of the Protestant reformation in Zurich. And John Calvin infamously supported the Geneva civil authorities’ execution of Michael Servetus for his heretical views on the Trinity. I don’t say all this to pick on Protestant reformers. Many certainly earn our respect, both for their courage and teachings. But I don’t feel we can dismiss their actions lightly, especially when they condemned Rome for what they turned around and did themselves; namely, persecuting those with whom they disagreed.

How then did the Anabaptists handle church discipline? They rejected the use of the sword on any condition, having personally felt its sting. They instead followed the New Testament teaching that directly addresses the way in which an errant brother or sister should be dealt with. That is, the unrepentant member was turned out of the fellowship with the hopes that he would eventually repent and seek restoration with the church. This was definitely an improvement over physically persecuting dissenters and it often proved to be a highly effective means of restoring wayward brethren to the path of obedience.

Thus another tenant of Anabaptism rises to the forefront: God has ordained the state, not the church, to wield the sword. This has all sorts of implications. For one, as noted, the church is not in a position to punish those who break laws of the state. This is the government’s job through the medium of the justice system. The corollary of this is that the church renounces any authority to punish, lethally or otherwise, “heretics.” The church’s authority is spiritual in nature and is exercised within the fellowship of believers who’ve voluntarily chosen to place themselves under the ultimate lordship of Jesus Christ. Believers acknowledge the state’s duty and God-given right to punish criminals. But the church does not seek nor expect the state to collude or interfere with matters that clearly fall out of its jurisdiction.

This view of the church’s role verses that of the state also means that the Anabaptists generally taught it was wrong for a Christian to be in the military or to take part in state-sponsored wars. The Christian, as a man of peace, has no business killing on behalf of the state. This conviction alone was enough to draw the wrath of kings and state churches down upon the brethrens’ heads. The sixteenth-century witnessed regular skirmishes between Christendom and Islam. Because the Anabaptists refused to take any part in these fights, they were often accused of siding with the Muslims. In reality, they took no side but the side of peace. The Christian and state-sponsored war issue is beyond the scope of this post. I simply at this point want to point out the Anabaptists refusal to take up arms was one of their distinguishing features.

Lastly, and this is related to what’s already been said, the Anabaptists were among the original Congregationalists. They believed that each fellowship was an autonomous unit, not under the authority or jurisdiction of any other church or centralized church authority. Scripture alone was the church’s guide and ultimate source of appeal. Jesus Christ was the head, and the Holy Spirit was present in each fellowship to lead the brethren into all truth. So not only was a state/church distinction maintained, but an insistence upon local church autonomy was as well.

In summary, some primary features of Anabaptism are:

– Maintaining clear distinctions between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world.

– The pursuit of holiness through consistent obedience to the Bible’s teachings.

– The refusal to take up the sword.

– The autonomous nature of the local church, or fellowship.

Admittedly, this is not an exhaustive list. Rather it represents what I  perceive as main components of Anabaptist thinking. Also, I acknowledge this post has been a somewhat technical, but I feel necessary if one is to begin to gain an understanding of Anabaptist history and convictions. In Part Three I hope to discuss more speculatively the implications of these beliefs, both for the individual and for society as a whole.

Dry Season Reminiscents

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beekeeping, grafting, homesteading, manure for fertilizer, Thomas Hardy

The thing about farming is that you need rain. The thing about Africa is that rain isn’t always forthcoming. This year the rains didn’t arrive in our little cove when they were supposed to. So our homesteading efforts have obviously suffered the effects—particularly the agricultural aspect. Hence, like the seed I’ve sown that’s waiting on reluctant showers, this section of my blog has lain dormant.

We haven’t been stagnant, however. Livestock still had to be fed. The combined manure of goats, sheep, rabbits and chickens had to be shoveled and piled to fester for future fertilizer. Honey had to be harvested and young trees still struggling to take root had to be consistently watered. I’ve done some experimenting with sprouting avocado seeds both in cups of soil and hydroponically. And I tried grafting some local mango saplings with a hybrid strain we planted several years ago. The outcome of this is yet to be determined. But by the looks of it so far, I might not have gotten the timing just right as my grafts don’t seem to be taking.

                                    Local Beekeeping

Trial and error, waste and renew, plan and scrap those plans, plant and watch your neighbors’ pigs demolish your cassava crop. Well, I didn’t really watch them, per say, since they came and did their misdeeds in the pre-dawn hours or in the evening when I was bathing. I hesitate to “shoot, shovel and shut up,” seeing as that could have a long-term negative impact on our ministry to the local population (i.e. – the pigs’ owners). Instead, it’s been a matter of turning the other cheek while attempting to get reimbursed. Like my mango grafts, I’m not too confident about the final outcome.

At any rate, it’s all part of the wonderfully convoluted journey in homesteading. I can physically see the changes that have occurred in the last five years and, if I reflect on it, we do tend to do a lot more right now than we did at the beginning. It’s been well worth the effort, the hard work, the sweat, the chapped hands, and the proverbial tears. But if you’re looking to get into farming or homesteading because it seems like a “back to nature,” Thomas Hardy novel sort of ideal, I’d urge you to reconsider. Our forbearers who knew what they were doing didn’t live in idealisms, at least not in their minds. They lived real rough and tumble lives of labor, the likes of which I’ll probably never experience.

But if you’re ready to claim a patch of dirt, roll up your sleeves, toil in the heat, still maybe not get enough rain, and possibly experience pigs eat the only crop you’ve got left from last year, go for it! The rewards surely compensate for the all the effort: the contentment of knowing exactly what went into the soil that grew your food, a life lived close to the earth and in harmony with nature’s rhythms, and the satisfaction of an honest day’s work, just to name a few.

And if the odds still seem to be stacked against you, you can always turn to the owls you rescued for a little sympathy…

The Highjacking of Liberalism

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classical liberal, education, Great Books, liberal arts, Mortimer Adler, tyranny

I recently re-read Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book, subtitled “The Art of Getting a Liberal Education.” Originally published in 1940, Adler bemoans the demise of the liberal arts in American colleges. He credits this phenomenon largely to the neglect of requiring students to read what he refers to as the “great books.” The result, in his opinion, is not only an intellectual loss for society, but even worse, he foresees the eventual loss of individual freedom. Only free minds can foster free societies.

If Adler was discouraged at what American colleges were producing then, what would he think about the quality of education today? 

There was one statement in the book that struck me as particularly insightful, if not prophetic, for its current relevance. In a speech entitled, “Liberalism and Liberal Education,” Adler comments:

I tried to show how false liberalism is the enemy of liberal education, and why a truly liberal education is needed in this country to correct the confusions of this widely prevalent false liberalism. By false liberalism, I mean the sort which confuses authority with tyranny and discipline with regimentation. It exists wherever men think everything is just a matter of opinion. This is suicidal doctrine. It ultimately reduces itself to the position that only might makes right. The liberal who frees himself from reason, rather than through it, surrenders to the only other arbiter in human affairs—force…

These words so penetrate into the marrow of a primary problem today, not only in higher education but in society as a whole, that I feel they are worth some unpacking to really get at the essence of what Adler posits.

He distinguishes between true and false liberalism. A liberal education was traditionally understood to be an education that liberates the mind. That is, one studied the great writings of the great thinkers of the past so as to learn to first of all think properly. The assumption was that if one could clearly use his faculties of reason, he could think for himself. The educated man frees his mind from ignorance and can accurately evaluate what’s before him, separating conjecture from fact, propaganda from truth.

If true liberalism frees the mind, false liberalism enslaves it. It does so by hindering one’s ability to properly reason. Adler’s second point builds on this, addressing what has now become known as relativism. This doctrine ultimately teaches there are no mental or moral absolutes. Adler correctly points out that if there is no intellectual or ethical benchmark, then everything becomes nothing more than a matter of opinion. He calls this “suicidal.”

How so? Relativism is suicidal because it it gives feet to the philosophical notion “might makes right.” It doesn’t matter what the truth actually is. All that matters is what the majority deems preferable (democracy) or what the leader decrees compulsory (tyranny). When well-formulated and time-tested legal precedents are ridiculed and ignored, when the rule of law is no longer relevant, and when no one seems to know the difference, the masses will follow whatever is put before them. The reality today is fewer and fewer individuals possess the proper tools of mental evaluation.

Modern liberalism tends to promote the idea that everyone’s opinion is right, regardless. Though this might sound ideal, the fact is everyone can’t be right. Someone has to be wrong. (This would be an example of logical thinking). It might hurt someone’s feelings to be told they’re wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are. Liberalism used to mean exercising free thought so as to come to reasoned conclusions. It meant there was indeed such a thing as a right position and it was the responsibility of an informed citizen to arrive at it. Now, modern liberalism has brought us to a place where all that matters is the individual’s “right” to not only have an opinion, but to insist that his opinion must be accepted as legitimate.

Adler’s next and slightly more subtle point is that there is a crucial difference between discipline and regimentation. True liberalism calls for a disciplined mind. The only path to free and informed thinking is the path of discipline. A liberal education is not bestowed; it is earned. In contrast, modern education promotes regimented learning. You learn facts and figures, and then you recite them in the form of a test. If you offer the “right” answers (according to what your teacher wants to hear), and do this consistently, you eventually receive a passing grade.

A degree no longer signifies the individual can think according to the traditional definition of the word. It doesn’t mean one can solve problems. It doesn’t mean one can arrive at his own conclusions. And, it certainly doesn’t mean the one who possesses an “education” is poised to stand on the shoulders of history’s intellectual giants. He might not even know their names, much less what they taught!

Finally, what strikes me most forcefully about Adler’s penetrative statement is that he does not hesitate to draw the correlation between false liberalism and tyranny. To the extent that classical liberalism gives way to its fallacious counterpart, liberty begins its inevitable slide into totalitarianism.