Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei
How G-d rules the world!

10 May 2010

Mennonites, Pacifism, and Patriarchy

One of the reasons I decided to join the Mennonite Church was its emphasis on peaceableness.  More than the Evangelical Friends Church which I grew up in who focus on traditional evangelism which relies more on apologetics than action, the Mennonites have created many programs, books, curriculum, and everyday opportunities for its members to actively engage in peaceable and nonviolent activity.  Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Conciliation Services, International Conciliation Services, and Christian Peacemaker Teams, to name the major arms of Mennonite peacemaking, can be found all over the world working to disseminate violence, oppression, and injustice in a variety of ways.  I thank G-d for this, and in no way do I want this to end.  Nevertheless, I am dissatisfied with it, and here is why.

When I first learned about the early Anabaptists, they mystified me.  At the time, and still currently, I believed strongly that Christians need external identifying markers which display whose kingdom they belong to.  Logically, these markers would be simple dress, plain living, loving attitude toward all people, operational practices of forgiveness, and dissension toward the state.  The Anabaptists fit this mold perfectly, and the Mennonites are the direct descendants of the Anabaptists.  Naturally, for reasons that just the above, I joined them.  I partook in their practice of adult baptism.  In two days I leave to work with Christian Peacemaker Teams, and I have applied to work as a pastor in the Mennonite Church.  I have become a decent Mennonite in my own estimation, yet the baggage that comes with committing oneself to the Church (and it is the reason why I believe people need to be in Church) is the onus of responsibility for those within the Church.  Thus, for example, whether we like it or not, the Catholic priest scandal effects us, and we are responsible for them.  I am responsible for the Mennonite Church.  This is the problem I see.

The early Anabaptists were killed in droves.  Their martyrdom resulted from the incendiary practices I mentioned above.  They lived in the middle of Christendom where "everyone" was a Christian, yet they claimed with reckless abandon that Christian faith could not be so oppressive, violent, and extravagant.  Following G-d meant forgiveness, peace, and simplicity.  Moreover, it meant G-d and G-d alone is the ruler of the world.  Therefore, in there system of princes, barons, and Holy Roman Emperors, only G-d's rule mattered.  Essentially, Anabaptists declared the state illegitimate, and since the state does not bear the sword for nothing, they were massacred.  Since they believed G-d ruled the whole world, G-d loved even those who put the Anabaptists to death.  Their commitment to nonviolence spawned from their belief in G-d's overarching sovereignty and love.  This came along with simple living, distinctive dress, and many other practices which now seem all but forgotten by all descendants of the Anabaptists except the Amish.  In short, the Mennonite practice of peaceableness was salvaged from Anabaptism and elevated into our consciousness as the distinctive Mennonite and Christian practice.

Why has pacifism become the defining belief of Mennonites?  Why is our insistence on believer's baptism, simple living, radical dissension toward the state, and forgiveness no longer causing the waves they once did?  These are the questions of a somewhat dissatisfied Mennonite who joined the Mennonite Church expecting one thing and finding another.  I am going to attempt to answer the first as a way toward the other.

When the Anabaptists suffered massive amounts of persecution under the hand of German princes and other feudal lords, they became more and more sectarian as they became persecuted out of society.  They kept to themselves and lived in simple ways upon the land.  They earned the nickname "The Quiet in the Land".  They worshiped and lived without much interaction or association with the outside world they found to be sinful and corrupt.  In the early 20th century, with the advent of World War I leading World War II, the question of patriotism and commitment to a government deeply entrenched in conflict was at the tip of everyone's tongue.  Mennonites, who dared not pledge their allegiance to a flag or recite the national anthem, became a scourge in the eyes of the war-driven nation.  The draft ripped "The Quiet in the Land" from their homes and coerced them into serving in various capacities.  Suddenly, the Mennonites were no longer able to keep quiet and to themselves.  Engagement with the violent infant empire became necessary.

Many men returned from their conscripted service changed.  They brought back a new perspective, and the Mennonite emphasis on peaceableness no longer remained under the shackles of inaction.  Pacifism grew into nonviolent direct action against those who oppress others with the sword.  Requisite in this new perspective was a greater interaction with those outside Mennonite circles.  Consequently, Mennonites compromised their own distinctive practices in order to become peacemakers.  The Vietnam War only exacerbated the issue.  As young men faced a draft once more, they came into a head-on collision the possibility of being forced to fight and kill other people in the name of a country attempting to usurp the throne of G-d.  The Mennonite's refusal to do this centralized pacifism as Mennonite distinctiveness.  To be Mennonite meant pacifism. 

The reason Mennonite equaled Christian pacifist did not derive from a holistic Church experience.  It derived from men's fear of being drafted.  In a way, men have been the sole producers of Mennonite belief.  Peacemaking and pacifism came into the forefront from male experience.  Peacemaking is not bad, but we have thus far let it override our original ideals.  I believe if we look closely, it might even infringe on what women would like to see in the Church.  Certainly, many Mennonite women I know affirm peacemaking, but could they in fact have their own experiences to contribute to the discussion that would help us be G-d's people in the world beyond simply peaceable activity?  Perhaps, with a reduced patriarchy we could recuperate some of our original distinctiveness, or perhaps, we could claim new practices rooted out of the controversial belief that G-d is sovereign and loving.  I do not want the end of peacemaking, but I do want the input of female voices.  Up until now, male voices have drowned out all others with a cry for peace.  The cost has been a loss of identity and a confusion as to who peace is made for.  I believe it is possible for us to become the Mennonites, not of old, but of new without forsaking our roots.  Have we forsaken them?  Maybe not yet, but soon, they will be all but forgotten.  I pray we can once again be the persecuted faithful trying to spread G-d's love in the world.  Peace!

07 May 2010

Why Christian Faith and Patriotism/Nationalism Are Incompatible

One day, my father said to me, "In an age in which we possess pictures of the world from space, we know that actual national borders do not exist.  We decided where they are.  So I do not see how one group of people has the right to tell another group of people where they can and cannot live based on borders that are imaginary."  I think about this a lot.  His insight implicated to me the fundamentals of culture and the nation-state.  By reflecting on my father's statement, I hope to show that patriotism cannot coexist with resolute Christian faith.

Nation-states are comprised of people.  They rely on social contracts. In these contracts, people decide which cultural groups will make up the nation-state.  After the borders of the nation-state are drawn, people from within those borders erect a system of rules under which everyone within those borders must abide by.  If these rules are not followed, the people who created the system, or their inheritors, will coerce the people to abide by them.  This coercion may be a police force or an army.  Of course, this means there must be some level of agreement on what must be punished and what must be accepted.  People then decide whether on what is allowed.  Whatever is decided makes up the code for identifying the nation-state.  A nation-state is the laws enforced upon people within certain (imaginary) boundaries.

Who creates these boundaries?  A person of meager living with few possessions and little influence will have both little need of creating boundaries and little power to do so.  Only those who have much will require the safety net of a nation-state and the security it promises.  Not only that, those with substantial means are the only ones viable to provide the resources necessary to build a system of government.  Thus, all governments develop by the elite and for the elite.  Patriotism becomes the way into maintaining the wealthy and their power.

By convincing people to believe that the legal code within the imaginary boundaries that encapsulate their living space is the most supreme and just legal code, the wealthy elite who created the nation-state grasp the loyalty of all those within the imaginary borders.  Hence, those who have little need of the nation-state become its most loyal subjects.  Why?  Because if they resist the new order, if they say no to the financially powerful, they will be coerced into complicity, for the ones at the top of the heap rely on those at the bottom to give popular support to the nation-state's system of protection.  The truth of all this became painfully obvious in the First World War.  In it, almost an entire generation of men in Europe died in a massive attempt to maintain the sovereignty of people over the imaginary borders they ruled. 

The nation-state serves to protect the interests of those who possess the resources to govern it.  Its make-up derives from pretend borders decided by those strong enough to enforce such borders.  How then is patriotism incompatible with patriotism or nationalism?

Christianity affirms G-d as the ruler of the entire earth.  Moreover, Jesus, the ruler of this earth, suffered a disgraceful death and a triumphant resurrection.  This is the good news: G-d presides and no one else.  Borders, therefore, have no meaning.  G-d's king did not establish national boundaries but obliterated them (Acts 10).  Paul understood this quite well, and he became notorious for preaching it unabashedly.  If G-d's presiding authority extends beyond imaginary boundaries (since they do not in fact exist upon the earth), those who live under the presidency of Jesus cannot, in good conscience, claim loyalty to something as pretend as nation-state borders.  Furthermore, Christians do not believe that Jesus presides over those who have faith in him; Jesus presides over everything whether they like it or not.  We all are residents in G-d's nation-state; some just want to believe they belong to a different one.  If we begin to affirm this, we will understand a little better Jesus' call to love our enemies.  How could we kill another citizen?  What needs to begin in Christianity is an abandonment of any type of ethnocentrism and the promulgation of true globalization (see this link http://www.newleftreview.org/A2368).  Perhaps then we will finally see what peace, reconciliation, and the healing of the nations (Revelation 22.2) is all about.