Celebrating 500 Years of Anabaptism

“The Martyrdom of Felix Manz” was the title of a blog post I made in January 2013. In that post, I noted that on January 21, 1525, “a group of people met in the house where Felix lived with his mother, and they formed a new faith fellowship” based on baptism after an open confession of faith in Jesus.

Today and in the weeks/months ahead, the 500^th anniversary of that January 21^st gathering is being widely celebrated by Anabaptists around the world. 

Anabaptist World Inc. is a “journalistic ministry serving the global Anabaptist movement.” Danielle Klotz, the Executive Director of that ministry, calls this month’s edition of that magazine a “special issue for a big milestone.” And indeed, a 500^th anniversary is a big milestone.*¹  

The combined membership of all Anabaptist churches comprises a very small percentage of Christians worldwide. According to the centerfold of the publication just mentioned, the “approximate number of baptized Anabaptist church members around the world is 2.13 million.”

Only 22 countries have more than 10,000 Anabaptist church members, and surprisingly, Ethiopia is the country with the most, nearly 515,000. The U.S. is next, with 456,000. It can be argued, though, that Anabaptists have had influence through the centuries that outstrip their relatively small membership.

Anabaptists are “the most radical reformers” in Protestant Christianity. The quoted words are the title of a major article in the above-mentioned magazine. The author, Anabaptist scholar Valerie G. Rempel, avers, “Appealing to scripture alone, Anabaptists broke with tradition to follow Jesus literally.”

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with the ideas and activities of Martin Luther in Germany. In 1518, soon after becoming the priest of Grossmünster, the prestigious church in Zürich (Switzerland), Ulrich Zwingli began a similar reformation of the Roman Catholic Church there.

Both of those reformation movements, however, preserved the basic rituals of the Catholic Church. The sacrament of infant baptism was deemed especially important. But the Jesus-followers who met in sight of Grossmünster Church on 1/21/1525 could find no biblical support for such baptism.

Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel were young men who agreed with Zwingli’s reformation activities, but they thought his work was too slow. So, rejecting infant baptism (which they denied as being true baptism), the small group gathered in Manz’s home performed and accepted “believer’s baptism.”

Their “radical” reformation put them at odds with both the religious and civic leaders in Zürich —and they were soon considered heretics by both the church and the state. Manz was executed by drowning on January 5, 1527, and in the following years, thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned or killed.^*2

From the beginning the Anabaptists emphasized discipleship. They believed that following Jesus meant living according to his teachings as found in the Gospels.*³ Jesus’ command, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43) was taken literally. To kill in the name of Jesus was unthinkable.

There are many differences among Anabaptists today. Progressive Mennonite churches, such as the one I am a member of, are far different from the various conservative Mennonite groups and the Amish. But from the beginning until the present, pacifism has been a core belief of all types of Anabaptists.

As I wrote in a blog post in 2012 (see here), “I decided while still in high school that pacifism is the position I should espouse because of being a follower of Christ.” So, I was long a “closet Anabaptist” until joining Rainbow Mennonite Church in July 2012.

The Southern Baptist Convention (that I was closely related to for nearly 50 years) as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (that I was later a part of for over 10 years) agree with the Anabaptists on believer’s baptism, and until SBC’s swing toward fundamentalism, on the separation of church and state.

But neither of those Baptist groups endorses pacifism, and the former especially has traditionally emphasized the New Testament writings of the Apostle Paul (and the “Roman road”) even more than the four Gospels. They tended to proclaim the Gospel about Jesus more than the message of Jesus.

Currently, 500 years after its beginning, the Anabaptist understanding of the Christian faith is still badly needed—and maybe more so in the U.S. now than ever because of the growing emphasis on Christian nationalism in this country.  

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*¹ Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is one of the nine members of Anabaptist World’s Board of Directors. She is a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church, where June and I are also members.

*² The name “Anabaptist,” meaning “re-baptizer,” was initially used in derision of the first participants in the “radical reformation” which began in 1525. For more detailed information (and a couple of pictures) about the beginning of Anabaptism, I highly recommend “Five Centuries of the Radical Reformation” (see here), the Jan. 16 Substack post by Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor.

Also, John Longhurst, an Anabaptist journalist who since 2003 has been the faith page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (the oldest newspaper in Western Canada), is the author of the informative Jan. 18 column, “2025 marks the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.”

*³ Although Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran, his best-known book, known in English translation as The Cost of Discipleship, was first published in German (1n 1937) under the title Nachfolge, which literally means “following.” Since its publication in English translation in 1948, it has been highly appraised by Anabaptists as well as by many in other Christian denominations.

 

 

What Does the Rainbow Signify?

A rainbow is a fairly rare natural phenomenon that brings delight to anyone fortunate enough to see one. After the Great Flood, according to Genesis 9:13, God said to Noah and his sons, “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth (NIV).”  

The Rainbow Flag

Presently, perhaps the primary use of the rainbow emblem is with regard to LGBTQ people. The rainbow flag was created in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker. Upon Baker's death in 2017, a California state senator remarked that Baker (b. 1951 in Kansas) “helped define the modern LGBT movement.”

In June 2015, the White House was illuminated in the rainbow flag colors to commemorate the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states, following the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision.

The rainbow flag is now seen around the globe as a positive representation of the LGBTQ community.

The Rainbow Coalition

Earlier, the rainbow was used in a different manner. In April 1969, Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party founded an antiracist, anticlass movement called the Rainbow Coalition.

That original Rainbow Coalition was a multicultural political organization that included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (poor whites), and the Young Lords (Hispanics), and an alliance of major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change.

Hampton (b. 1948) was assassinated in December 1969—and that is the climax of Judas and the Black Messiah, the 2021 American biographical crime drama film about the betrayal of Hampton by an FBI informant.

Many years later, in Nov. 1983, Jesse Jackson launched his campaign for the 1984 presidential election, claiming to be fighting for the rights of a “Rainbow Coalition” of Americans—including Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans; men and women; straight and LGBTQ.

The Rainbow Division

As many of you know, for ten years now my wife and I have been members of Rainbow Mennonite Church (RMC) in Kansas City, Kansas, (KCKS). Before we attended there for the first time in 2011, I sent an email to the pastor, asking, among other things, about the name.

We had heard that RMC was a church that welcomed and affirmed LGBTQ people, so we wondered if the church’s name was related to that stance. It turned out that there was no connection.

RMC is now located on Southwest Boulevard, but the church’s first location was on Rainbow Boulevard, a KCKS roadway that was renamed that in 1919 in honor of the 42^nd U.S. Infantry Division.

That 42^nd Division was formed 105 years ago, in August 1917, at the beginning of U.S. engagement in the First World War. It was created by combining military units from 26 states and D.C.

Douglas MacArthur said that such an organization stretches “over the whole country like a rainbow.” As a result, the 42^nd came to be known as the Rainbow Division.

Several of those who served in the 42^nd Division were from the small city of Rosedale (which was annexed by KCKS in 1922). Rosedale welcomed local veterans home from the war with rainbow colored bunting, and then Hudson Road, a major street in Rosedale, was renamed Rainbow Boulevard.

In 1957 a Mennonite church was organized in Rosedale. When it merged with another Mennonite congregation in 1964, the name was changed to Rainbow Boulevard Mennonite Church. Then when the church moved to its present location in 1969, “Boulevard” was dropped from its name.

Mennonites have mostly refused to serve in the military, and during WWI many conscientious objectors were harshly treated and some were jailed. Thus, it is somewhat ironic that our church’s name comes from the “Rainbow Division,” the 42^nd U.S. Infantry Division.

Nevertheless, we members at RMC are proud of our name and the larger meaning of what “rainbow” signifies.

And most of us believe that “The moral arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice.” Maybe that moral arc, which is shaped like a rainbow, is also colored like a rainbow and is, indeed, bending toward justice and equality for all the diverse people represented by the colors of the rainbow.

The Sand Creek Massacre, a National Disgrace

Earlier this month I wrote about sometimes feeling embarrassed to identify as a Christian. But I am embarrassed not only because of things some Christian leaders do in the present but also because of what some have done in the past. The Sand Creek Massacre is one sad example.  

The Bare Facts

There are background events that I don’t have the space to elucidate here, but here are the bare facts of the Sand Creek Massacre, which occurred 155 years ago yesterday, on November 29, 1864.

The Third Colorado Cavalry commanded by Colonel John Chivington attacked a settlement of Cheyenne/Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek, about 175 miles southeast of Denver. At Chivington’s insistence, they murdered around 200 Native Americans, most of them women and children.

Prior to the massacre, Chivington reportedly said, “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”

This was all done with the approval of Colorado Governor John Evans, who was also the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Colorado.

The Embarrassing Facts

John Milton Chivington was born in 1821 into an Ohio farm family. In 1844 he was ordained as a Methodist minister, serving in that capacity in Illinois, Missouri, and then assisting in a Methodist missionary expedition to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas in 1853. (The church I now attend is in Wyandotte County.)

Gov. Evans was also a Methodist. He had joined with other Methodists in 1850 to found Northwestern University in Illinois. Then two years after becoming governor of Colorado in 1862, he and Chivington founded Colorado Seminary, which later became the University of Denver.

The Sand Creek Massacre has, indeed, been an embarrassment for the United Methodist Church, and five years ago they sought repentance for that national disgrace (see here).

There were two Cavalrymen with the Third Regiment, Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer, who refused to join in the massacre and testified against Chivington—and Soule was shot in the back and killed in April 1865 because of his testimony against Chivington.

It is also embarrassing to us Christians that in contrast to Evans and Chivington, Soule was described as a “healthy skeptic” rather than a religious believer.

Repenting of the Facts

This past Sunday Sarah Neher, the Director of Faith Formation and Youth Ministries at Rainbow Mennonite Church, preached on “Deconstructing Thanksgiving.” It was a bold, fitting sermon for the Sunday before the national holiday and for the last week of National American Indian Heritage Month (here is a link to more about that).

Sarah said in her sermon,

This simple narrative [of the traditional Thanksgiving] sets the story like a fairytale. Casting Colonization as beneficial for everyone and that it was relatively peaceful. When in reality over the centuries since Europeans invaded Indigenous land, Natives have experienced genocide, the theft of their lands, and the attempted extinction of their culture.

Yes, the Sand Creek Massacre was simply the continuation of the “whites’” treatment of Native Americans from the beginning—starting with the Pequot War of 1636~38 and the Mystic Massacre of May 1637.

It was the continuation of words about “the merciless Indian Savages” included in the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

Perhaps rather than observing the day after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday,” those of us in the dominant culture should rather observe the days following Thanksgiving as Repentance Weekend for the way our ancestors treated the Native Americans.

That treatment has, indeed, been a national disgrace.

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For Further Information

Here is the link to an article about the 21st annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run/Walk, currently in progress.

“Who is the Savage” is an excellent 14-minute video about Black Kettle, the “peace chief” head of the Sand Creek Native Americans in 1864.

And here is the link to a Rocky Mountain PBS documentary on the Sand Creek Massacre.

What Belongs to Caesar?

Since July 1, Thinking Friend Cindy Molini has been pastor of the United Christian and Presbyterian Church in Lawson, Mo., which is about 25 miles northeast of where I live in Liberty. In response to her kind invitation, I have the privilege of preaching in her absence this Sunday (Oct. 22). 

A Trick Question for Jesus 

As I never did as a pastor but have often done over the past 10-12 years, I chose my text for Sunday’s sermon from the lectionary, deciding to use Matthew 22:15-22, the Gospel reading. In response to a trick question, that passage contains Jesus’ well-known words: 

Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. (CEB)

Those who were seeking to trap Jesus in order to silence him and his movement asked him: “Does the Law allow people to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (Doesn’t this mean that the strict Jewish people wanted to follow the Torah much the same way that strict Muslims want to follow Sharīʿah?)

Answering either in the affirmative or in the negative would ignite explosive opposition. The Jews would have strongly disapproved of Jesus sanctioning the payment of the Roman taxes; the Romans would have condemned non-payment of those taxes.

So, Jesus asked for a coin that was used for paying the taxes, noted the image (Greek: eikon) on the coin, and then made the oft-quoted statement about rendering to Caesar what belongs to him and to God what belongs to God. 

A Tricky Situation for Pacifists 

Last night (Oct. 19) the symposium titled “Remembering Muted Voices: A Symposium on Resistance and Conscientious Objection in WWI” opened at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. (You can learn more about that event here.)

One feature at this symposium is the premier of traveling exhibit “Voices of Conscience: Peace Witness in the Great War,” developed by Kauffman Museum, affiliated with Bethel College in Kansas. 

(That exhibit will be at Rainbow Mennonite Church from Oct. 24-29; if you are or will be in the Kansas City area during that time, you are cordially invited to go see it.)

What do pacifists do when their country goes to war and able-bodied young men are expected to fight for their country? It is a tricky situation, one with no solution without censure. 

Some follow the expectations, or demands, of their country and become soldiers—often to the disappointment of or embarrassment to their pacifist families and/or churches. 

Others follow the teaching of their church—the historic “peace churches” are the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) that began in the 1740s and the descendants of the Swiss Anabaptists (mainly the Mennonite Church and the Church of the Brethren) dating back to 1525—and refuse military service.

The latter are the “conscientious objectors,” many of whom suffered greatly—some to death--during World War I, although most were treated with more civility in World War II and afterward.

So, What Belongs to Caesar? 

While they may not all articulate it in this way, most of those who are, or who support, conscientious objectors are also inclined to support the government (“Caesar”) by paying taxes, although some few are war-tax opponents. Nevertheless, most believe that human beings are created in the “image” of God and thus belong exclusively to God, not to Caesar.

Those who belong to God must follow the teachings of Jesus, which contain no sanction to kill. Since they believe that all people bear the image of God, there can be no justification for killing other people—even in war. 

Caesar may legitimately claim our coins, but never our allegiance and obedience to God in whose image we are made.

Honoring COs

Although largely unknown, May 15 each year is observed by some people/groups as International Conscientious Objection Day (CO Day). So, this past Monday was a day honoring those who have resisted and those who continue to resist war.

THE ANABAPTIST TRADITION

The oldest consistent emphasis upon pacifism, non-violence, and non-participation in war is in the Anabaptist tradition, which started with the “Swiss Brethren” of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525.

That tradition has been carried on mostly by the Mennonites, the followers of Menno Simons. He was a Dutch priest who was re-baptized and left the Catholic Church in 1536. Even a few years earlier Jakob Hutter became the leader of a smaller group that came to be known as the Hutterites.

In the late 1600s, Jakob Amman led a conservative breakaway from the main Anabaptist communities in Europe, and his followers came to be known as the Amish.

One primary commonality among these three groups was/is their pacifism and resistance to violence, based on their commitment to love of enemies as Jesus commanded. Through the years adherents in all three groups have known the story of Dirk Willems, who was imprisoned in the Netherlands for his Anabaptist beliefs.

During that winter, Willems was able to escape—but his absence was soon discovered and he was quickly chased by a guard. Willems ran across the frozen moat, but his heavier pursuer broke through the ice. Willems turned back and saved the man’s life—but then was re-captured. On May 16, 1569, he was burned at the stake. 

THE PEACE CHURCH TRADITION

Even though there was a long history of pacifism among Anabaptist Christians, there was no provision for conscientious objectors during World War I. As a result, two Hutterites who were committed to absolute pacifism became martyrs in 1918. (If you don’t know their tragic story, or would like to review it, click here to see my 11/30/14 blog article about them.)

Since 1935, three church groups have been termed historic peace churches. Those three are the Mennonites (including the Amish), the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Church of the Brethren. During World War II, and since, members of those churches have been able to register as conscientious objectors and to be exempted from direct involvement in wartime violence.

It has not been so easy for people who were not members of a historic peace church or who objected only to a specific war—such as the war in Vietnam. (For more about this matter, see here for Thinking Friend Tom Nowlin’s lengthy and informative comments on my May 10 blog article.)

CARRYING ON THE CO TRADITION

Conscientious objectors (COs) have been active in countries other than the U.S. In fact, Peace Pledge Union (see here), a secular British group, and War Resisters International (click here) are leaders in the observance of International Conscientious Objectors Day.

This CO declaration appears on the latter’s website:

War is a crime against humanity. I am therefore determined not to support any kind of war, and to strive for the removal of all causes of war.

That is the sentiment behind the CO tradition—and it will continue to be emphasized this year.

On October 19-22, 2017, there will be a symposium on resistance and conscientious objection during WWI at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. The theme is “Remembering Muted Voices: Conscience, Dissent, Resistance and Civil Liberties in World War I Through Today.” (For more information, click here.)

My church (Rainbow Mennonite Church) is supporting that symposium and will be displaying in our fellowship hall some of the materials from the symposium for a few days following its completion.

Maybe the Amish are Right (but Probably Not)

Mrs. Kikuko Fukuoka (June’s and my good friend from Fukuoka, Japan, whom I wrote about here four years ago) came to visit us again this month. I can’t remember why, but on her first evening here we talked some about the Amish.

What my Amish friend said

Fukuoka-san had never seen an Amish person and was interested in learning more about them. So the next day we drove up to the Jamesport (Mo.) area where I had gone in September. Among other things, we were able to talk briefly with Melvin Yutzy, my new Amish friend whom I wrote about on Sept. 30.

During our brief chat on Nov. 4, I asked Melvin about whether he and the other Amish in his community were going to vote on the following Tuesday. He quickly replied that he and all the Amish he knows have never voted and didn’t intend to this year.

(I had seen articles this fall about Amish voting—and voting Republican; for example, see this. But another article I saw said that perhaps only 10% to 15% of them do vote.) 

Anabaptist roots

There have been many Anabaptists through the years—and the Amish are clearly rooted in Anabaptism—who have taken a negative view toward not only voting but toward any active involvement in politics. At the beginning they even held that a Christian should not become a “magistrate.”

Unlike the Lutherans or the Reformed Church from which they separated, Anabaptists largely rejected Luther’s two kingdoms doctrine and opted for identifying wholly with the Kingdom of God and living as fully as possible by the values of that Kingdom—which notably included peace and justice.

Maybe the early Anabaptists and most of the current Amish are right: maybe we who are followers of Jesus Christ should be living in and working for the Kingdom of God rather than becoming involved in the “kingdoms” of the secular world.

Jesus, after all, called his followers to be salt, not the whole bowl of porridge.

When the followers of Jesus were a small minority, perhaps that was the optimal stance. But things changed. Christians came to make up a larger and larger segment of society. Of course, that led to what the Anabaptists have often called the Constintinian fall of the Church.

Accordingly, the 16^th century Anabaptists refused to entangle themselves in political affairs in the same way the first followers of Jesus did.

Neo-Anabaptism

More than six years ago I posted an article about Arthur G. Gish, a former Amish man (and then a member of the Church of the Brethren) who was the author of The New Left and Christian Radicalism (1970). That was one of the most influential books I read in the 1970s—or maybe have read in my lifetime.

In his seminal book, Gish writes about his Anabaptist forefathers with great appreciation—but then talks about the definite need now for those in that tradition to become more intentionally involved in the larger society. And that has, indeed, increasingly happened over the last 45 years.

Quite some time ago I started, but sadly never finished, writing an article about Neo-Anabaptism. Such is what Gish was advocating, for what I thought were legitimate reasons.

Rainbow Mennonite Church (in Kansas City, Kan.), the progressive church I belong to now, is a good example of a Neo-Anabaptist church, and I am happy to be a part of it.

So while I briefly wondered last week whether perhaps Melvin and his Amish friends are right about not voting, I have decided (again) that no, most probably they aren’t.

Celebrating FOR’s 100th Anniversary

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this week in New York City.

FOR was launched as the result of a pact made by two Christians in August 1914, at the outset of the First World War. The two men, an English Quaker and a German Lutheran, had just arrived for a conference of Christian pacifists when hostilities broke out. 

Needing to return home immediately, as they were parting on a platform of the railway station in Cologne, Germany, they made this pledge to each other: “We are one in Christ and can never be at war.”

What a difference it would have made in world history if all the Christians in Europe had made that same pledge!

In late December of that year the Englishman, Henry Hodgkin, organized a conference in Cambridge at which 130 Christians of various denominations joined in the founding of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in England.

About a year later, in November 1915, FOR was begun in the United States by sixty-eight pacifists, including Jane Addams, the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, about whom I wrote a few weeks ago.

Another of the organizers in the U.S. was Congregationalist minister A.J. Muste, who later became a Quaker and who served as executive secretary (now titled executive director) of FOR from 1940 to 1953.

One of Muste’s most cited statements is, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
John Swomley served from 1953 to 1960 as FOR’s next executive secretary. In 1960 Swomley became a professor of social ethics at St. Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City, where he taught until his retirement in 1984.

During those years he was the leader of the local branch of FOR, and in 1976-77 when we were back from Japan for a year and living in Liberty, I attended a few FOR meetings in Kansas City and became acquainted with Swomley and gained a greater appreciation for FOR.

Since 2013 the Executive Director of FOR-USA has been Kristin Stoneking, an ordained United Methodist Church minister. 

(Kristin’s father, John Stoneking, was once pastor of Rosedale United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Kansas; the same church building is now the home of Rainbow Mennonite Church where June and I are members.)

From 3 p.m. to 9:30 on Saturday there will be activities at Riverside Church in New York celebrating the 100th anniversary of FOR-USA.

The 75th anniversary in 1990 was also celebrated at Riverside Church with an interfaith service. (Adherents of non-Christian religions have been active participants in FOR for many years.)
Ten years ago, Paul R. Dekar, a seminary professor, authored Creating the Beloved Community: A Journey with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

In Part I, Dekar describes six ways FOR challenges “the nexus of evil,” including “challenging the making of enemies.”

Dekar writes that FOR members “have sought to see so-called enemies as potential friends.” That statement reminded me of the well-known story about President Lincoln.

During the Civil War, Lincoln was criticized for speaking of benevolent treatment for the Southern rebels. The critic chided Lincoln, reminding him that there was a war going on, that the Confederates were the enemy and so they should be destroyed.

Lincoln’s wise response: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
FOR has not succeeded in bringing about reconciliation among all people. There is much yet to do. Still, the world is doubtlessly much better off because of FOR’s meritorious work over the past 100 years.

Happy Birthday, FOR—and best wishes for your next 100 years.

A Shout Out for CPT

Although I have long been opposed to war and am a strong advocate of peacemaking, for some reason I have not known much about Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) until fairly recently. But they are a significant group that deserves recognition and support.

On Palm Sunday, Sarah Thompson was the guest preacher at Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, Kansas. Sarah has been the Executive Director of Christian Peacemaker Teams since January 2014. She is an impressive person, and she gave an impressive sermon.

Sarah was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and in 2006 graduated summa cum laude from Spelman College in Atlanta. (That is the historic predominantly African-American college for women from which Mariam Wright Edelman and Alice Walker graduated.) Then in 2010 she earned the M.Div. degree from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.

“Christian Peacemaker Teams” was founded in Chicago in 1986. It grew out of the challenge presented by Canadian-born theologian Ron Sider at the 1984 Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, France. He criticized Mennonites and others in the peace churches for limiting their peace witness mainly to just being conscientious objectors.

Sider challenged the Mennonites to be ready “to risk injury and death in nonviolent opposition to the injustice our societies foster.” That call to active peacemaking sparked study groups in Anabaptist churches all over North America and gave rise to the formation of Christian Peacemaker Teams.

(Sider tells about his 1984 challenge and the subsequent work of CPT in his 2015 book “Nonviolent Action: What Christian Ethics Demands but Most Christians Have Never Really Tried.”)

Originally sponsored by the two major North American Mennonite denominations and the Church of the Brethren, CPT has become increasingly ecumenical and now receives support from Friends (Quakers) and from other Christian groups, such as the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.

CPT has operated in Iraq since October 2002. They teamed up with Voices in the Wilderness (now known as Voices for Creative Nonviolence) to form the Iraq Peace Team (IPT). Among other things, the IPT formed “human shields” to help protect Iraqi civilians when Baghdad began to be attacked by the U.S.

In November 2005 four CPT activists were captured in Baghdad, leading to what came to be known as the Christian Peacemaker hostage crisis. In spite of CPT’s opposition, three of them were rescued by a military operation in March 2006. The fourth hostage was not so fortunate.

Tom Fox (1951–2006), an American Quaker peace activist, was one of the CPT members captured—and subsequently killed. Upon Fox’s death, the CPT released a statement of condolences—and also asked that people not “vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done.”

In keeping with the core beliefs of CPT, Fox himself said, “We reject violence to punish anyone. . . . We forgive those who consider us their enemies.”

On their current website, CPT explains what they are about:

Partnering with nonviolent movements around the world, CPT seeks to embody an inclusive, ecumenical and diverse community of God’s love. We believe we can transform war and occupation, our own lives, and the wider Christian world through the nonviolent power of God’s truth, partnership with local peacemakers, [and] bold action.

CPT says that they place teams at the invitation of local peacemaking communities that are confronting situations of lethal conflict. Those teams seek to follow God’s Spirit as they “work through local peacemakers who risk injury and death by waging nonviolent direct action to confront systems of violence and oppression.”

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an organization certainly worthy of our respect, prayers, and financial support.

The Beloved Community

First coined in the early days of the 20^th century by the philosopher/theologian Josiah Royce, “The Beloved Community” is a term that was popularized and invested with a deeper meaning by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The website of the King Center gives a two-page explanation of “the beloved community” as envisioned by Dr. King. Foremost in his thinking for creating such a community were the characteristics of brotherhood and sisterhood, nonviolence, and justice.

To a significant degree, those of us who are a part of Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, Kansas, experience the joys of being in a beloved community. As an Anabaptist church, RMC regularly emphasizes the characteristics just mentioned.

Although King was a Baptist pastor, his emphasis on nonviolence is especially much more in harmony with the Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups than with most of the Baptist churches in the U.S. And one of King’s closest colleagues was the Mennonite scholar Vincent Harding, who passed away last May at the age of 82.

The goal of RMC is to accept all people “regardless of race, ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, age, economic or other life circumstances” (words from RMC’s homepage). The picture below, which shows those who served Communion at RMC this past Sunday, is one small expression of what that looks like.

As a rule, the Communion service is led by the pastor assisted by the worship leader for the day, who last Sunday was Carmen, and the deacon in charge of preparations, who happened to be me. In the picture Pastor Ruth Harder is handing the cup to Amy, who was helping serve Communion for the first time.

There are six deacons at RMC, always three women and three men, and they rotate being in charge of Communion preparation. Being in charge includes enlisting three other servers. In addition to Amy, I had asked Fred, an older African-American man June and I sit next to almost every Sunday, and Emma, a high school student who was baptized last year, to help serve. Because of the snow that morning, Fred didn’t make it, so Dave substituted for him.

At RMC there is no “qualification” for being a Communion server other than being a part of the “beloved community.” In the Baptist churches I had been part of in the States, the Lord’s Supper was always, as far as I can remember, served by the deacons—who except for the last Baptist church I was a member of were always white men.

It was in Japan that I first experienced women serving as deacons and serving Communion. And then for years and years at the Fukuoka International Church that June and I help start and which I served as (part-time) pastor for 24 years, there were no deacons. So the servers for the Lord’s Supper were more like those at RMC—except there were usually only two beside the presiding pastor.

By “the beloved community,” King meant more than local church congregations. But local congregations are a good place to start. If our churches don’t find ways to transcend race, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, age, and economic differences, how can we possibly expect to see the emergence of the beloved community in the larger society?

Note

This coming Wednesday, January 14, is the regular monthly meeting of Vital Conversations at the Mid-Continent Public Library in Gladstone (Mo.). The discussion topic will be “The Beloved Community” and several local African-American guests are expected to be present for the meeting, which begins at 1 p.m. Visitors are cordially welcome.