Let me say at the outset that I think this book is wrong in its central argument, profoundly wrong.  However, I also think it is instructive, perhaps importantly instructive in a couple of ways.  So, what is its central argument?

As indicated by the title, Martens’ central claim is not subtle.  It is intended to provoke. However, it is also intended to be precise. “To be as clear as possible at this point,” says Martens early in the book, “I argue that Yoder’s distillation amounts to a complex narration of the early Christian church in primarily ethical terms.  Thus, his narration provides an account of the early church’s particularity (a particularity that eventually earns the title of the politics of Jesus), but, as Yoder’s corpus progresses, his narration of the early church’s particularity eventually—and perhaps unwittingly—advocates an ethical or political particularity that becomes so ‘distilled’ that the defining activities of the early church become abstracted into a general and universalizable, not-particularly-Christian ethic: Jesus becomes merely an ethico-political example or paradigm within a form of ethical monotheism (at best) or a for a form of secular sociology (at worst). This, in my judgment, is a heterodox account of the particularity and uniqueness of Jesus Christ.” (pp. 3-4)

Thus what Martens is arguing is that Yoder’s “theology” is finally reducible to ethics or politics.  Martens unfolds his argument in five chapters, roughly in chronological order.  The first chapter sets up Martens’ interpretive schema.  Engaging various texts in chapters two and three, Martens explores the way Yoder discusses discipleship and church in a way that culminates in “the prioritization of politics,” as announced in the title of chapter three.  The following two chapters attempt to establish—through a discussion of Yoder’s work on Jewish-Christian engagement and ecumenism—that in fact his work following The Politics of Jesus most clearly displays the way in which “the prioritization of politics” or social ethics has become centrally defining for Yoder.  Though Martens believes he has shown that this was always Yoder’s tendency, it has become particularly obvious by the late 1970s to the end of Yoder’s life in 1997 that his ethic is not a “particularly-Christian ethic,” but rather a universalizable ethic for everyone.

Martens’ claim about Yoder reducing theology to ethics is not unique.  What is unique is the scope of the argument and the specific way he makes it.

I’ve come to believe that one of Martens’central methodological moves is misleading.  In his opening chapter he implies that it is only because of privileging a certain inner canon of Yoder writings that some of us can claim Yoder is deeply theological.  We have excluded other writings that would challenge our claims.  This is deceptive in at least two ways.  First, serious Yoder scholars do not exclude any of Yoder’s writings.  However, we do respect the fact that Yoder himself intended some of his writings to be more centrally defining than others. But second, and more significantly, Martens is in fact implying through his use of the image of “the prioritization of politics” that Yoder’s best-known work, The Politics of Jesus is quite properly seen as central.  Because really, according to Martens, this book has announced Yoder’s agenda.  However, having suggested that some of us ignore certain important writings by Yoder, Martens can then claim to have given a more honest portrayal of Yoder’s true theological colors.  And then one of his tasks must be to engage in misdirection so that we forget, e.g., that Yoder said in The Politics of Jesus that his convictions stated there were “more radically Nicene and Chalcedonian than other views.”  That he in fact was affirming “what the church has always said about Jesus as Word of the Father, as true God and true Man” and that Yoder’s effort is simply to show that such claims should “be taken more seriously” when it comes to embodying social ethics.

Only those with extensive knowledge of Yoder’s overall corpus can engage Martens’ detailed argument.  Truly to refute his central claims requires a contextualizing of the many quotations from Yoder’s writings over his career that Martens provides, as well as alternative contextualized quotes that would challenge his claims.  I cannot offer such detailed rebuttal here. But, let me provide a small sample. Martens claims that one can see the “primacy of the ethical . . . especially as we turn to Yoder’s articulation of community.”  However, I would suggest that it is particularly Yoder’s view of the Christian community that shows Yoder’s consistency in not reducing theology to ethics over his whole career, which is in fact precisely why many non-Mennonite critics have seen him as sectarian.

In his 1954 essay, “The Anabaptist Dissent” Yoder was arguing against the dominant view regarding “responsibility” joined to an understanding of justification by grace through faith as merely forensic.  In that context Yoder suggested that we ought not to be “optimistic about either the world’s or the Christian’s goodness.”  However, in Christ Christians know “empowering grace,” so that “we may walk in newness of life.”  This is what sets the church apart, claimed Yoder.  He affirmed this again in his provocative 1960 essay, “The Otherness of the Church,” which he reaffirmed in 1994 by including it in the collection, The Royal Priesthood.  Among other things, here Yoder says, “the church’s responsibility to and for the world is first and always to be the church.  The short-circuited means used to ‘Christianize’ ‘responsibly’ the world in some easier way than by the gospel have had the effect of dechristianizing the Occident and demonizing paganism.”  In his book Nevertheless, in both the 1970s and the revision in the 1990s, Yoder distinguished his own understanding of pacifism from the many others described in the book. There he says: “To say that this is the pacifism of the messianic community is to affirm its dependence upon the confession that Jesus is Christ and that Jesus Christ is Lord.”  “Therefore,” says Yoder, “in the person and work of Jesus, in his teachings and his passion, this kind of pacifism finds its rootage, and in his resurrection it finds its enablement.”  In critiques of Reinhold Niebuhr, Constantinianism and H. Richard Niebuhr from the 1950s to the 1990s Yoder would argue that each of these problematic approaches had a distorted view of the church community that denied empowering grace, the power of the Holy Spirit and the regeneration made possible in Christ.

Though I believe Martens is wrong in his central claim, nonetheless there are two reasons why I see the book as helpfully instructive.  First, it helped me to see more clearly the strands within Yoder’s writings that have led some mistakenly to claim that Yoder didn’t believe that true theological convictions mattered that much.  That is to say, he believed that strictly theological matters regarding God, church, Jesus Christ, salvation, etc. are really not that important, except as means to an end; thus they are dispensable means to an end.  Because the true end, really, of Yoder’s central project is a full embracing of progressive politics and peacemaking—in an effort to transform the world over into a religious image of “Democracy Now” (the most progressive political program on NPR).

Second, I have come to agree with Martens that his book is a cautionary tale.  Even more than Martens, James Davison Hunter, in his book To Change the World, in the midst of a caricaturing portrayal of Yoder and Hauerwas, has nonetheless helped me to see how the “politicization” language of neo-Anabaptism can easily become theologically reductionistic.  I have come to believe—especially with influential writers like Yoder—it is not enough merely to signal reminders of what we should believe (e.g. orthodox beliefs about Jesus and the trinity).  We must continually offer theologically rich accounts of discipleship, social ethics and “politics.”  Similarly, Yoder should have listened more carefully to the cautions of his teacher, Karl Barth, about apologetics.  Yoder knew—especially after the popularity of The Politics of Jesus—that many dismissed him for being sectarian.  Perhaps he worked too hard, or without enough theological carefulness, to demonstrate he was not sectarian.  And thus some of his very language for doing apologetics to convince the cultured despisers could be turned against him.

Sometimes it is helpfully clarifying to have a faulty argument that names important issues, such that it elicits careful, thoughtful critiques.  For this book clarifies the elements of Yoder that have been distortingly drawn upon to make arguments that don’t truly fit Yoder’s central project.  Thus I am hopeful that the more thoughtful critiques of Martens’ book will bring some clarity to some false ways of appropriating Yoder.  (In relation to Martens’ basic argument as presented in earlier essays, I attempted to do this in an essay published last fall: “The ‘Ecumenical’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’ Yoder,” The Conrad Grebel Review (Fall 2011): 73-87.  Already, a quite helpful, 38-page review of Martens’ book has been written by Branson Parlor as an e-booklet, The Forest and the Trees [PDF], followed by an exchange between Martens and Parler in the online book review, The Englewood Review of Books.  Branson Parler’s new book, Things Hold Together: John Howard Yoder’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture will also indirectly challenge Martens’ argument.)

A closing thought.  Karl Barth says: “Our contention is, however, that the dogmatics of the Christian Church, and basically the Christian doctrine of God, is ethics.” (CD II/2, 515) Perhaps if we can simply convince those deceptive Barth scholars to quit privileging the Church Dogmatics we could establish that Barth really reduced theology to ethics. It’s just a thought.

(I wrote this a couple of months ago. It will be published in The Mennonite Quarterly Review. When it is published–or when I know it is close to publication–I will remove most of it from here.)

I am in total agreement with what is stated in their brief set of commitments. And then I hope that churches who use this for framing an election day communion will also keep the following cautions in mind:

Will we, in affirming what this effort calls for, imply that issues at stake in this election are really not that important (because the real issues are spiritual)?

Will we imply that the Christian faith is only about something spiritual and personal/private and politics (education, etc.) is really about something else—those matters that are discussed and decided in the public realm? (“It doesn’t matter who you vote for, as long as you vote,” is one of the many ways this sentiment can be expressed.)

Or do we really believe, as John Howard Yoder put it, that “the church’s responsibility to and for the world is first and always to be the church”?

Do we truly believe, to put it differently, that the church is a theo-political polis?

Will we refuse to employ superficial slogans, such as God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat (while continuing to sound very much like we are committed to one of these secular ideologies)?

And will we truly continue to wrestle with the ways in which our souls and lives are corrupted by accepting these worldly divisions—and thus attempt to allow the gospel of Jesus Christ to shape the whole of our existence, as we seek wisdom and discernment to know what it means to embody this gospel faithfully, yearning to live lives of justice, righteousness, compassion, humility and kindness in the midst of our present culture in the U.S.?

I love clever, evocative book titles.  What Would Jesus Deconstruct? is one of my favorites.   A well-chosen title concentrates the mind, it acts like intellectual Velcro—attracting pieces of the book that adhere to the images evoked by the title (while mostly leaving behind those that don’t).   I think the word “Naked” linked with the word “Anabaptist” in this title functions this way for many North American Mennonites.  Animated by the cool breezes flowing from the British Isles, The Naked Anabaptist suggests a breath of fresh air.  No stuffy cape-dress, plain-coat traditionalism here.  No unimaginative Bishops destroying people’s lives through repressive restrictions—all in the name of the Mennonite tradition.  No, this is the good stuff: stripped-down Anabaptism, the essence, “the bare essentials of a radical faith,” as the subtitle has it.  Isn’t that what we want?  More importantly, isn’t that what we need for the 21^st Century?  Here we have Anabaptist values that are universalizable, exportable to other countries, like post-Christendom England, where Murray resides.  This message can travel the globe.

Titles with deep resonance can be either a blessing or a curse.  On the one hand they are memorable.  If truly well-chosen—I think of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism—they can, in a phrase, summarize the thesis and call to mind some of the detailed argument of the book.  On the other hand, resonate titles can also distort, through a squelching of nuance that is intended by the author (and yet precisely because of the Velcro nature of the title is lost).  I fear that, whatever Murray’s intentions, The Naked Anabaptist is distorting in just this way—and not what we need early in the 21^st century, certainly not in the U.S. (or arguably, elsewhere).

I was hesitant to write about this book, not least because I have a lot of respect for Stuart Murray.  He is a wonderful, very gifted Christian man and one of the co-founders of the Anabaptist Network in the United Kingdom.  I worked with him most of our five and a half years in England.  But I knew I had to speak when I saw that a friend of mine had taken as her own a suggestion from the book: “I think I will no longer call myself ‘a Christian,’” she said, but simply “a follower of Jesus.”  What does that mean?  What is it intended to signal? When one links this statement with other highlighted emphases in the book, it seems quite destructive in our present cultural contexts.  In this brief essay I will begin to name what I mean.

Integrated with strong attacks on creeds, the book claims that Anabaptists “have been wary of fixed statements of faith.”  In fact, according to the book, specific normative doctrinal beliefs and moral behaviors do not have that much importance to Anabaptists. The alternative to this, as the book moves along, seems to be a broad openness to a variety of convictions, along with an invitation to ongoing conversation. However, the breadth of openness has some parameters.  For we know that we are to be suspicious and critical of long-established church traditions.  Parameters seem much less clear when linking with “the marginalized” and “dissenters.”

To begin with, the first assertion is false.  The Schleitheim Confession (1527)?  The Dordrecht Confession (1632)?  The Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (1995)?  Anabaptists and Mennonites have valued “fixed statements of faith” from their inception. The duration of the “fixedness” would vary from confession to confession. But they are all external points of reference beyond the moment, beyond the individual and beyond the congregation. Not to mention, that, as Arnold Snyder has said, most all 16^th-century Anabaptists would have affirmed “The Apostle’s Creed.” Menno Simons and most other significant Anabaptist leaders were anything but neutral about doctrinal beliefs and moral practices.  Additionally, the suspicion of long-standing Christian traditions tends specifically to distance us from orthodox, theologically rich, biblically rooted Christianity.  None of this is intended to deny that Anabaptists will find ourselves linked to certain cultural dissenters and those who are on the margins of society; in fact we should be so linked.  However, as we do so, like Jesus and Menno we ought to do so with a clear spiritual and theological identity.  Thus when we proclaim that the Kingdom of God is near, we have some sense, with specifiable details, of what we have in mind with such a proclamation.  We know that it includes repenting, receiving salvation and submitting ourselves to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—which entails certain convictions and moral practices, often named in the Scriptures as trust, faith and faithfulness.

The book also perpetuates the classic divide between Jesus the example and teacher as given in the gospels versus the more “doctrinal” Christ of Paul—one who is vital for our salvation, our justification and worshipped as Lord.  This is a false dichotomy that needs to be and—in the year 2012—can easily be challenged by utilizing some of the best writings on both the gospels and Paul.  But of course the divide—if valid—would help underwrite the emphases named in my previous two paragraphs.  (Parenthetically, it is also worth mentioning that Menno and other significant Anabaptist writers do not privilege the gospels nor treat Paul as less than vital for understanding the Christian faith.)  Add to this the lack of emphasis on sin—except for the need to repent for the sins of Christendom—and the book seems to confirm the classic charge of “Pelagianism” leveled against our tradition (i.e. the belief that our salvation is really in our own hands, that we, in “following Jesus,” do not need the “doctrinal” Christ, the Savior).

The list of seven “core Anabaptist convictions,” provided in the chapter on “the essence of Anabaptism” also underscores what I’ve already been naming.  The first two “convictions” are about Jesus.  But, it seems with deliberation, there is decidedly not a theologically holistic account of what it means for Jesus to be “our example, teacher, friend, redeemer, and Lord.”  In light of the unfolding of the claims in later chapters, it seems that the first affirmation is primarily a strong way of naming Jesus as “the central reference point” for “our faith and lifestyle.”  As reference point Jesus shapes our “engagement with society,” knowing we are to be linked to dissidents and the marginalized.  The second “conviction” affirms a “Jesus-centered approach to the Bible.”  Properly understood, this is certainly correct.  However, as explicated throughout the book, this claim seems mostly to justify muffling or muting much of the rest of the New Testament (outside the gospels), along with the Old Testament.  In the final point we are told that “peace is at the heart of the gospel.”  Integrated into what has already been named what this seems to equal is that peace and social justice will and ought to define who we are and what we become.  But it also suggests we need not—perhaps even should not—allow the rich theological heritage of the church or the full range of the biblical witness to define this gospel of peace. Rather, what is primary is our connectedness to peace and social justice progressivism as well as the marginalized and the cultural dissenters (with all their varied convictions, of course).

So, is there an alternative to this?  Yes.  But before naming that, let me mention one reason why this approach is not what is needed early in this new century in the U.S.  Christian Smith, a sociologist of religion, has conducted the most thorough, careful surveys of the religious beliefs and practices of first teenagers and then “emerging adults” that have ever been done in the U.S. In Soul Searching, Smith and co-author, Melinda Lundquist Denton, summarized surveys conducted with American teenagers.  They condensed their findings into a brief “creed,” which included a practical deism joined to a commitment to be “good, nice and fair,” nestled in the belief that “the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”  They dubbed this set of beliefs “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”  A few years later, Smith conducted a follow-up survey with the same individuals as “emerging adults,” the results of which he summarized along with Patricia Snell in the 2009 book, Souls in Transition. In that volume they announce “the cultural triumph of liberal Protestantism.”  Their findings suggest that “the basic cultural values and sometimes speech modes of liberal Protestantism” were simply assumed by most of their respondents.  What are these cultural values?  They are “individual autonomy, unbounded tolerance, freedom from authorities, the affirmation of pluralism, the centrality of human self-consciousness, the practical value of moral religion, epistemological skepticism, and an instinctive aversion to anything ‘dogmatic’ or committed to particulars.”  What they are suggesting in both books is that these “beliefs” have supplanted the traditional, textured beliefs of particular convictional communities (which for most of those surveyed would be Christian communities).

I would suggest that many of the points summarized by Smith and his co-authors are much more akin to what Murray has affirmed than to anything Menno Simons or most Anabaptists or Mennonites over the last five hundred years would affirm.

And what is an alternative?  It is to acknowledge that there is no such thing as “the naked Anabaptist.”  Anabaptists (plural) always find themselves located in particular Christian communities, with a particular heritage, residing in a particular culture, and living with a particular set of doctrinal and moral convictions.  Undoubtedly Ethiopian Anabaptists look different from British Anabaptists, who look different from North American Mennonites (who have differences among themselves).  Murray not only knows this, he states it explicitly at least in one place.  But I still think the Velcro title has overwhelmed the nuance.  The overriding message is an “essence” or “bare essentials” approach to Anabaptism.  But that approach, though perhaps well-intentioned, is wrong-headed.  Especially when the “essence” approach is joined to a dissing of external Christian authorities beyond the individual “naked anabaptist” (or what is effectively the same, a small “discerning” community which by definition embraces a broad range of convictions).

You see, many Mennonites are replacing substantive, textured Christian convictions with “Anabaptist values” (or distinctives).  And those values—the essence of Anabaptism—then become a substitute for a holistically understood gospel of Jesus Christ.   And then we are no longer evangelists—promoters—of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but rather evangelists for a set of values. Which is something very different.  And don’t get me wrong: nothing that I’ve said is intended to detract from a pronounced commitment to peace (and even pacifism), to social justice (defined biblically, emphatically including caring for the neediest among us) and being appropriately hospitable to strangers, to those who are outside of the household of God.  But it is very different to do these things as an expression, an outworking of the gospel of Jesus Christ embraced in its fullness, acknowledging a reign of God that is external to us and to which we submit in obedience.

If we imagine that we can be “naked Anabaptists” with no need for “fixed statements of faith” external to the self, with little use for normatively named moral and doctrinal convictions, then we can be sure of one thing.  We will in fact live our lives in light of a set of convictions.  The question is: which secular sub-culture will define it (since we are so sure that we don’t need a “fixed statement of faith” drawn from Christian teachings)?  Will “naked” Anabaptists be formed by a culture that is post-Christian (as in England)? Or superficially “Christian” (as in the U.S.)? Or one wedded to peace and social justice progressive segments of the secular subculture? Any one of which adds up to the thin faux Christian identity Smith has named.  How that is Anabaptist, naked or otherwise, I have no idea.

I should add that I intend over the next year to post a number of essays that will deal with questions implied by my reading of this book.  I intend to deal both constructively and critically with a variety of challenges presently facing the Church (Mennonite and otherwise).

I am not going to say more about the book now.  I probably will later.  But for those who want a slight taste of the argument, I will give you a link to an oral lecture I gave in the spring of 2011.  (Feel free to leave comments about the oral lecture here.)

“We believe that God is calling Mennonite Church USA

to develop a culture of high expectation for people who call themselves members of the church.

Each church will provide a welcome

to seekers, skeptics, doubters, or explorers

and invite them to become fully committed disciples of Jesus Christ,

meaningfully engaged in God’s mission in the world.”[1]

Introduction

I love this quote from the “Purposeful Plan” of the Mennonite Church USA.  It names very well why I became an Anabaptist over thirty years ago, got my first Master’s degree at AMBS, became Mennonite and now happily teach at a Mennonite seminary myself.  It also names what I have seen as descriptive of a number of the churches I have been a part of throughout my Christian life, beginning at age 17.  I am always delighted to be a member of a Christian community that holds a vision before us that entails high expectations (while, in the midst of this, offering a broad welcome to potential disciples).  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “[The gospel] is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.” Knowing what this means, in its fullness, requires a lifetime.  But that journey is a part of what constitutes the Christian life.

I know that some regional Mennonite conferences will be discussing “the Purposeful Plan” this summer.[2]  And in fact it is specifically designed to shape our conversations about our identity as a Church over the coming years.  I wanted to offer some reflections on the document for two interconnected reasons.  First, I am called to be a theological teacher within our Church.  And second I have some questions about the document.  In a sentence, my concern is that I don’t think the Purposeful Plan, as a whole, articulates the “high expectations” named in the two wonderful sentences I quoted at the top of this page.

However, before I offer any critiques, let me name two other things.

First, I realize it is difficult to write a document like this.  I assume that the document has already been affirmed by various executives in the denomination.  And then, of course, eventually the hope is that it will be adopted by delegates representing many of the churches that are members of the denomination.  All of this entails pleasing people with various perspectives, alienating as few as possible, all the while generating excitement—a virtually impossible set of tasks.  To put it differently, the document is attempting to articulate central convictions to guide the Church into the future, but in a way that will nurture the unity which everyone desires for the Church.  No small feat.

I applaud the effort.  And there are many particulars within the document that could be, and should be, applauded. For instance, Jesus is front and center.  He is named as both Lord and Savior.  God’s grace and our actions both receive strong affirmations.  Evangelism and commitments to peace and justice are held together as jointly supportive commitments.  There are numerous descriptions and affirmations that acknowledge both changes in our culture and denomination within the last decade or so.  There is due attention given to the varied dimensions of maintaining congregational life while giving a strong call to be missional beyond the walls of church buildings.  These are just some of the emphases that are worthy of affirmation for the attempts to hold forth a holistic vision that will move our Church forward in unity.

The second thing I want to do before offering criticisms is to locate myself biographically so I am not misunderstood.  I became a Christian and a conscientious objector/pacifist during the Vietnam War.  I have been a pastor in several congregations and a child protective services social worker.  For about ten years of my adult life I was a peace and justice activist.  During six of those years I professionally taught about peace and justice in more than 150 different congregations in a broad range of Christian traditions, after having studied peace studies at AMBS.  I am also an expert in the writings of John Howard Yoder.  All of this is to say that peace and social justice concerns have been and are of great importance to me.  At the foundation of my convictions is a commitment to biblical authority that calls me to care about the poor, to do mercy, to affirm various dimensions of social justice—and to embody love for neighbors and enemies.  In fact, why would I not be committed to such things?  For I have seen the kingdom of God come near; I have touched the hem of the garment of my Lord Jesus and experienced his healing, redemptive touch.

So then, what are my criticisms of “the Purposeful Plan”? In general terms I would name my concerns in three brief sentences.  First, despite its claims to the contrary, I don’t think it is adequately biblically holistic.  Second, in its attempt to be unifying it really has not issued a call to “high expectations” in terms of discipleship.  And third, despite its call to avoid “partisan politics,” it has in a certain way articulated a vision that expresses partisan politics.[3]  Perhaps these are three ways of naming the same thing; perhaps not.

Peace & Justice

Let me begin by naming the focus on peace and justice in the document.  The word peace appears many times throughout, which seems appropriate for a peace church.  However, not once is the word “pacifism” nor the phrase “love of enemies” used.[4]  Given my background, I am quite conscious that many (typically liberal) churches have a strong emphasis on peace in official church documents (and not pacifism).  But most of these traditions, unlike ours, do not have teachings and practices regarding love of enemies so clearly in the roots of their traditions, as do we.  I realize the word pacifism is not very popular today (for various and sundry reasons).  However, as a theologian, I have come to realize that one of the things that’s valuable about the word “pacifism” (rather than peace) is that its offensiveness—being willing to die rather than kill—is given its intelligibility in light of the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  (None of this is to suggest that peace is not also about more than this.  It is also of course about active peacemaking, with the manifold dimensions of this calling.)

I realize that in the U. S. we Mennonites are coming to have a high percentage of people within our churches who did not grow up Mennonite; I am after all one of them.  However, I would suggest it is one thing to want to have patience with those who didn’t grow up Mennonite or for other reasons have difficulty with the teaching of pacifism.  It is another to filter the teaching out of a document that is supposed to be developing a “culture of high expectation.”  From my extensive experience with other Christians, I am also aware that when “peace with justice” appears without clarity about loving enemies, it equals: we reserve the right to kill people we deem to have violated our sense of justice.  And besides, either “peace” has some substantive (and offensive) meaning or it is a vague abstraction.  After all, everyone believes in peace (including every U.S. president in my memory).

Justice & Righteousness

At the same time that the word justice appears numerous times in the document, the word righteousness never appears.  I won’t go into the details regarding Greek and Hebrew, the languages for the New and Old Testaments.  But suffice it to say that the very same word translated “justice” in the New Testament can, and often is, translated “righteousness,” and in very many cases in the Old Testament the same thing is true.[5]  It would seem that “justice” and “righteousness” should both be in the Purposeful Plan.  I am well aware that in English the two different words connote different things. The word righteousness connotes right relationships—both with God and with each other.  Since the intention stated near the beginning was to put “God at the center” of the Plan, then it seems peculiarly odd that the language of righteousness is absent.  (Justice, in English, simply doesn’t have the inherent connotation of right relationship to God.) [6]  The language of righteousness has its primary home in the context of a covenantal relationship with God and God’s people.  Though it also denotes how God’s people relate to those outside the covenant.  Because it is defining of right relationships righteousness language is relevant for how we think of social relationships (the realm of justice).[7]  However, unlike the word justice, in English the language of righteousness sometimes denotes what are considered the more personal dimensions of moral behaviors.

Specific Righteousness/Unrighteousness: Only Divisive?

“Human sexuality” (implicitly including sexual morality) in the purposeful plan has been consigned to the hinterland of “divisive issues.” (see lines 662ff.)  But in two ways I think this section is misleading and distorting.  First, sexual morality is thrown together in the opening paragraph of this section with five other issues—as if they were all alike somehow.  But four of the issues are specifically related to governmental policy matters.  For instance, deciding “the role of the federal government” is complex in many ways, including what one means by even posing the issue.  Of course we could discuss “human sexuality” or “same-sex relationships” in relation to government policies.  But—unlike the role of federal government issue—issues of sexuality are issues for all of us in our individual, family and church community lives.  Moreover, the Scriptures speak specifically and frequently to the issue of sexual immorality (and not about the role of the federal government in our lives).  The noun and verb form of the word (porneia) that is translated as sexual immorality (or fornication) appears thirty-one times in the New Testament.  All but six of the twenty-seven New Testament books have something to say about sexual immorality.  Of all the sins listed in the twenty-two different vice lists in the New Testament, sexual immorality is listed most frequently.  It is in fact the only vice to appear in the majority of the lists.

Besides the prominence statistically there is the strength of what is said.  Jesus says that sexual immorality is one of the “evil intentions that emerges from human hearts.” (Mk. 7.21)  The Council in Jerusalem, after serious deliberation, agreed on only a few essentials for all Christians—Jews and Gentiles.  One of them was to refrain from sexual immorality. (Acts 15.28-29)  Ephesians 5.5 is rather representative of what Paul had to say: “nobody who indulges in sexual immorality or impurity can inherit anything of the kingdom of God.”  So, why is this moral teaching optional for Mennonites, unnamed in this document (except as something divisive)?  Someone might say: “yes, but we don’t really know the specific behaviors that are being prohibited by this teaching.”  And I would respond: “Tell me how this is different from peace and justice.”  Once we get beyond platitudes matters become contentious and divisive.  But I thought we were aiming for “high expectations.”  I would have thought Mennonites, of any Christian bodies, would at least have a desire to take Paul seriously when he says not to be conformed to the world in Rom. 12.1-2.  And that would be true regarding sex as well as love of enemies and caring for the poor (to name major issues of key importance in the Scriptures and relevant to all our lives—and when all are held together we avoid partisan politics).

But why would we as Mennonites imagine that sexual immorality is trivial or merely divisive or partisan but peace and justice are centrally defining?  The Scriptures don’t offer such divisions. Neither did Menno Simons.  It’s all related to the discipleship to which we are called.  It is all related to a “culture of high expectation.”  Growing up in a non-Christian home, I became a Christian at age 17 in a non-Mennonite church.  I knew when I turned 18 that I had to register as a conscientious objector because my Lord said I was to love my enemies.  I also knew at age 18 that I was called to celibacy outside of marriage.  I was also beginning to be aware that my vocation should be expressive of my Christian faith, that I could no longer imagine choosing a job mostly because of pleasure or money.  My life was no longer my own; it was to be given, joyfully, in praising and serving my savior, with my whole embodied life.

Of course the only way peace and justice are unifying rather than divisive is if we leave the two words largely abstract—and thus trite.  If peace equals dying by the hands of your enemies rather than killing them, because our Lord said to love our enemies; if loving our enemies means we don’t (willingly) send our children or ourselves to go Iraq or Afghanistan to kill, then “peace” is no longer such a unifying word.  If justice comes to be linked to specific behaviors for or against most anything specific, then, again, it is a divisive not a unifying word.  (Perhaps “righteousness” could have also been dropped into the document—equally undefined and thus trite, but at least appearing to offer balance by signaling a concern about matters of personal morality and linking the concerns to a right relationship to God.)

I won’t say as much about money, but I could.  Maybe it is too much to think that a unifying document cannot do more than center on banal words like stewardship, which is hardly a concept in the New Testament.  Rather, Jesus’ call in relation to money is about the rich not being able to enter the kingdom of heaven.  It is about not being able to serve two masters or love money and God.  It is about every last one of us, more than anything else, being called to be servants of Jesus, knowing that that is always our first vocation, while discerning together with brothers and sisters how that relates to putting food on the table and a roof over our heads.[8]

Sin, Salvation & Being Missional

There is of course much talk about witnessing, of being missional within the document.  There is also an occasional use of the word salvation.  However, never does the word sin appear.  And there is no indication that sin is a very present reality in the world—and that from its captivity people need to repent or be saved or redeemed.  Thus being missional or evangelizing doesn’t appear to need these realities to be named. Now, let me be clear, I could say much about the superficial ways in which the language of sin (or the word “saved”) has too often been used.  And partly because of these bad habits we often avoid the language today.  However, I would argue we make a serious mistake if we do avoid it altogether (and I’m relatively sure the Scriptures and the Anabaptist tradition are on my side).  Sin has multiple and complex dimensions.  It is personal and social (and/or structural).  It is acts and attitudes.  It is done by us and to us.  It is both a general condition—Sin (with a capital “S”) or brokenness—and very specific acts.  It is a power to which we are enslaved and, in Christ, from which we are freed.  We need a supple, rich language of sin; but we do need it!  Moreover, without it, “welcoming strangers into the midst of community” (line 272) can simply equal a cheap-grace kind of inclusiveness.  Where are the high expectations in that?

Agreeing to Disagree in Love

And then there is “agreeing and disagreeing in love.”[9]  I appreciate much that is in this denominational document.  It is intended to help us have healthy processes as we wrestle with contentious issues.  I am sure it has been helpful in that regard.  And I am very grateful to those among us who have gifts and skills that they have offered to our church (and the larger world) to help us deal with our conflicts in healthy ways.  We need their gifts within our churches and in the world.  However, sometimes I fear we are ceding the identity of our Church to our professional conflict mediators.  I mentioned in my “Naming What Unites Us” essay a sermon I preached on Ephesians 2.11-22.  This is one of the most rhetorically powerful passages in the New Testament on reconciliation.  But when we read the potent words on reconciliation in the context of the whole letter we notice the larger purposes given in the letter, within which teachings regarding reconciliation appear.  We “once lived among [the disobedient] in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath,” says Paul, as his way to set up the need for reconciliation. (2.3) By God’s rich mercy, by his grace, we have been saved, given new life in Christ. (2.4) This means we have been reconciled to God in Christ, and to one another, and made “citizens with the saints,” “members of the household of God.” (2.19)  But what does it mean to “members of the household of God”?  It means we “must no longer live as the Gentiles live.” (4.17)  And for Paul this means numerous particulars.  We are certainly to “speak the truth in love.” (4.15)  But we are to speak the truth!  This means that we should know that we should not be “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine.” (4.14)  “Be sure of this,” says Paul, “that no sexually immoral or impure person, or the one who is greedy (that is an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” (5.5)

What I am sure of is that this passage from Ephesians is hardly unique in the New Testament.  Many of the biblical proof texts used in the “Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love,” if examined in context, would yield similar teachings.  It’s not at all clear to me how this equals the moral and doctrinal neutrality implied by (continuously) “agreeing to disagree in love.”  (Which is not the same thing as saying that processes regarding disagreement should not be conducted in healthy ways.  Nor is it to suggest that sometimes, for a time, we suspend the goal of coming to a position in order to work through other issues.  Nor is it to suggest that all matters of disagreement are of equal importance or must lead to the taking of a position.  No, in all cases discernment is needed to test these sorts of issues, believing that unity in Christ is our goal, while speaking the truth in love is a means to that goal.  But true “unity in Christ,” as Ephesians says, equals particulars in both living and believing.)

Yesterday I finished teaching a course on the Sermon on the Mount.  Frederick Dale Bruner, in one of his many intriguing comments on these three chapters in Matthew’s Gospel, said that the Christian life to which we are called by this sermon is “an extreme sport.”  What a wonderful and alluring image.  It reminds me of the picture of the very long line of people moving toward the peak of Mt. Everest—filled with anticipation.  Stanley Hauerwas’ way of naming something similar is to say that the Christian story, into which we are grafted, is an adventure, an exhilarating adventure.  A young man in my class, about thirty years old, affirmed this image.  He agreed that from the gracious beatitudes pronounced at the beginning to the challenging words throughout, this Sermon is a call worth hearing, a call with high expectations that makes the Christian life exciting and the following of Jesus truly life giving.   It is probably unrealistic to think a formal document could begin to match this Sermon, but it would be wonderful if it tilted more in that direction.

One Heresy or Two?

Mark Thiessen Nation

Introduction: The Heresy of “Christianity”

Although this paper will focus on some specific critiques of Peter Leithart’s thoughtful and well-researched book, Defending Constantine, I want to begin by naming striking similarities between Leithart’s project and the primary target of his polemic, John Howard Yoder.[1]  Leithart himself identifies some overlap between his position and Yoder’s in Defending Constantine.  However, these similarities are stated even more clearly and provocatively in Leithart’s 2003 book, Against Christianity.[2]

The first 120 pages of Against Christianity are remarkably Yoderian.  There is also a wonderfully provocative freshness of expression in the book that is rhetorically perhaps more akin to Stanley Hauerwas than to Yoder.  In a phrase, the book was claiming, as Yoder had already in 1964, that the church is a polis.[3]  The alternative to this understanding, Leithart says in various provocative ways, is what has become “Christianity.”  In fact, Leithart claims that standard-issue North American Christianity has become heretical.[4]  How so?  “Religion is private: This is the heresy of Christianity in a nutshell.”[5]

Christianity, as a religion, argues Leithart, has reduced the Christian faith to a belief system—to merely “religious” beliefs and practices over against publically relevant convictions that animate political, secular and social practices.  Thus, “Christianity is biblical religion disemboweled and emasculated by (voluntary) intellectualization and/or privatization.”[6] Within this privatized understanding words like “salvation” are at most only tangentially related to the church; they are fundamentally words about one’s private experience.  But of course even if such theological vocabulary were more deeply connected to the church, the understanding of “church” itself has been domesticated.  Church has been reduced to a merely religious entity, assuring us that it has nothing to do with a public social existence.  To fill out his claims further, Leithart offers chapters on theology, sacraments and ethics, showing how the dominant language related to each of these terms—in the context of standard modern understandings—colludes in the privatization, the spiritualizing of religion, thereby rendering what goes by the name of “Christianity” innocuous.

So, what is the alternative according to Leithart?  It is that the church is a polis.  And what does this mean?  It means, on the one hand, that salvation is inherently social; that is to say, “the Church is that social form of salvation.”[7] Since salvation is inherently social this means that those who are members of the body of Christ embody a way of life peculiar to the salvation made available in Christ.  Therefore, “to be a Christian means to be refashioned in all of one’s desires, aims, attitudes, actions, from the shallowest to the deepest.”  “If one is a Christian at all, he or she is (however imperfectly) a Christian from head to toe, inside and out.”[8] All of this implies, in terms of ethics, that “transformation of life is not an implication of the gospel but inherent in the gospel, because the good news is about transformation of life.”[9]

Furthermore this entails that the church as a social body is also a public assembly—as should be apparent in the very word ecclesia.  Thus the church is by definition secular, social and political. It is not some private “religious” club but rather an assembly of those whose lives are formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, to proclaim and live the gospel is to be political.[10]

With all of this understood, we will realize, insists Leithart, that the real “competitors” to the Church are not just other religions but nation-states, international bodies, Americanism, and any other ideology that embodies alternative beliefs and practices in the public realm.[11] Here is Leithart at the end of his first chapter:

“The gospel is the announcement that the wall is broken down and therefore the Gentiles are welcomed into the community of the new Israel on the same basis as the Jews; thus the gospel is sociology and international relations.  The gospel is the announcement that God has organized a new Israel, a new polis, the Body of Christ, and that the King has been installed in heaven, at the right hand of the Father; thus the gospel is politics.  The gospel is about the formation of one body in Christ, a body in which each member uses his gifts for the benefit of all, in which each member is prepared to sacrifice his own for the sake of others; thus the gospel announces the formation of a Christian economy in the Church.

The gospel announces a new creation.

The gospel brings nothing less than a new world.

If we are going to stand for this gospel, we must stand against

Christianity.”[12]

John Howard Yoder could easily have written these words, as well as many of the other paragraphs in the first 120 pages of this book.  So, what happens between these first four chapters and the last one, which is entitled “For Constantine”—a chapter which is, as it were, a précis for Defending Constantine?

Clues that help to answer this question can be found in the opening paragraphs of Leithart’s response to the critics of his book, Defending Constantine in the October 2011 issue of The Mennonite Quarterly Review.[13]  Leithart began by arguing that the central issue dividing his critics and himself was a disagreement about the gospel.  Two paragraphs later he modified that claim by saying that the disagreement was not so much about the gospel itself but its trajectory. Some comments from Yoder will help us to see that it is both and that ecclesiology is crucial for understanding the link between the two.

A Second Heresy of “Christianity”?

In his seminal essay, “The Otherness of the Church” Yoder said: “The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused.”[14]  If Yoder spoke with the same rhetorical flare as Leithart does, perhaps Yoder would have described this as a second heresy.  That is to say, when one conflates, and thereby confuses, church and world, the worldly powers are largely left to define the “public” realm for everyone, including Christians.  And thus the public, social dimensions of the “gospel” will likely lose their moorings in the gospel of Jesus Christ (at least in certain important ways).  And public vocations, such as those of (now “Christian”) emperors, will be shaped not by the gospel of Jesus Christ but rather by the previous worldly definitions of such vocations.  As a consequence, religion is, eventually at least, consigned to a chaplaincy function within a society that is (again, in important respects) defined by something other than the gospel.  And thus the Christian theological and moral understandings that conflict with the dominant understandings are eventually rendered as private “values.”

Is it possible that Leithart has committed this second heresy, which is perhaps a variation of the first?  For what is at stake here is the gospel—which as Leithart’s formal commitments would have made clear, is inherently social.  Thus, what is also at stake is  ecclesiology.   What seems clear is that Leithart does not really believe that Israel, and later, the Church—in the context of “the [pagan] nations” that surround them—truly is a polis.[15]  Or to be a bit more specific, perhaps he believes that Israel—once it has become like the other nations—fits the bill, but not the church.  Or, at least not the church in its infancy, and thus in the New Testament and in its pre-Constantinian state.  It appears that the church is not, for Leithart, really a polis until and unless it has aligned itself with those who—on worldly non-Christian terms—are already in positions of truly “public” power.  Why else would it be plausible for him to see Constantine and the beginnings of Christendom as the logical flowering of what he argued in the first 120 pages of Against Christianity?

So perhaps what Leithart really meant in the first 120 pages of his book, Against Christianity, is that the New Testament erected expectations that would only be realized with Constantine, who is after all, according to Leithart, “a model for Christian political practice.”[16]  For, as Leithart sees it, it really took a “Constantine” who could wield power in the “normal way” and “is one of us” to realize the vision named in the New Testament—and thus truly to make the church a polis that mattered.

When Yoder, on the other hand, said formally similar things regarding the New Testament, what he meant was that a “politics of Jesus” was being articulated as a way of life for the Christian community from Matthew to Revelation, with the expectation that this politics would be, albeit imperfectly, embodied by the followers of Jesus from the outset.  Moreover, Yoder began a project of naming the specific theological and moral contours of this politics.  He was specific enough, following the lead of the various strands of New Testament literature, that one could thus see the trajectory of what would be faithful to “the politics of Jesus.”[17]  Therefore, with the specifics in mind, one could discern what trajectories—in theology, ethics and ecclesiology—are, in an ongoing way, faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And fortunately for us, Yoder’s project has been amplified and the details spelled out by many who have been influenced by him or simply saw the same things he saw.

The central challenge I would lay before Leithart is to go through the New Testament at least as thoroughly as Yoder and help us to see the specific theological and ethical contours of the gospel politics named there so that we can discern with him how this trajectory leads to the claim that Constantine is “a model for Christian political practice.”  So far as I know Leithart has not yet done anything like this.[18]  Thus I will shift my focus to what he has done in Defending Constantine.

First, however, it will be helpful to briefly describe the nature of Yoder’s central essay on Constantinianism, namely “The Constantinian Sources of Western Social Ethics.”[19]  This polemical essay was a creative attempt to introduce a paradigm shift within the field of Christian social ethics.[20]  That the essay and its influence are largely responsible for Leithart writing this book shows that it has been quite successful.  Yoder was trained in historical theology.  Although he had read more than the average amateur in the field of early church studies as they related to this set of issues, he was, nonetheless, an amateur.  Almost thirty years ago when I asked Yoder what church historian might confirm his claims, he pointed me to Alan Kreider.  Since then Kreider has written numerous essays and a small book that confirm the basic contours of Yoder’s argument, while nuancing and even challenging some details of the claims.[21]  All of this is to say, that I do not turn to Yoder for detailed historical confirmation of his arguments.  I would look instead to professional historians specializing in the relevant historical periods.[22]

But what can be said briefly about the historical claims made in Defending Constantine?  Here, I will limit my comments to Leithart’s chapter “Pacifist Church?,” his overall portrait of Constantine, and his appreciation of Augustine.

[To respect copyright laws, now that this essay is included in a book that is in press, I have only included a portion of it here.  My essay, along with something like a dozen others, is included in the book, Constantine Revisited, edited by John D. Roth, to be published by Pickwick Press, either later in 2012 or in early 2013.]

I am writing this just now because I will soon be posting two things that will appeal to rather specific audiences.  I am, for instance, soon posting an academic lecture I presented last November (in a somewhat shorter version) at the American Academy of Religion meeting.  This annual meeting is a gathering of nine to ten thousand people (well, it is when it coincides with the Society of Biblical Literature, as it does currently).  This is a meeting mostly of those who teach Religious Studies or Biblical Studies in institutions of higher education. There are hundreds of sessions.  Mine was presented in a session that dealt with a newish book called Defending Constantine by Peter J. Leithart.

A friend of mine tells me that  posts on blogs should really be no longer than 750-1000 words.  I’m sure he’s right.  But I also know that some academics post much longer essays.  That is what I will be doing when I post my essay on Defending Constantine.  Also, since this essay is slated to be published sometime over the coming year, I will remove it when it is published (or a bit before; I’m still learning).

Also in coming weeks I will publish some reflections on “The Purposeful Plan,” a document intended to help provide guidance for the Mennonite Church, U.S.A.  I realize this set of reflections may have little relevance to non-Mennonites.  Although I think in an illustrative way it might.  Opinions on that would vary.

Whether it was this exchange that spawned the idea or something else, I’ve come to realize that Bonhoeffer’s problem was hardly unique.  I have come to believe that one of the things that goes wrong in many conversations that relate to moral issues—especially contentious issues, though not just them—is that we too often over-emphasize ONE thing.  We do this either because this one thing matters a great deal to us or it simplifies matters.  But the simplification too often over-simplifies, reducing something genuinely complex to something simplistic.  Thus we too effectively bludgeon “everything else to death with it,” that is with the ONE over-emphasized word, concept or point.

Therefore I wrote an article for the most recent issue of The Mennonite, the official magazine for The Mennonite Church U.S.   It is called “Naming What Unites Us.”

In the first edition of the first volume of his systematic theology, Ethics, Jim McClendon, my doctoral supervisor, says: “Nineteen seventy-four, I believe, was the year I read John Yoder’s Politics of Jesus.”  This is his way of signaling that Yoder also transformed his theology, culminating in the way he approached the task of writing a systematic theology.

My own story is that I became a pacifist within a year of becoming a Christian in a General Baptist church.  I registered as a conscientious objector in 1971.  Something like five years later I read The Politics of Jesus, followed within the next couple of years by three other books by Yoder.  As I see it Yoder helped me to begin to integrate my theology with my ethics.  Having become conscious of, and actively engaged in, issues related to peace and social justice, it was through my reading of Yoder (along with a growing list of authors) that I was helped in integrating my convictions with my life in the church—and discerning how that life related to my witness in the world.  As I see it now, Yoder set me on a theological path that I have been on consistently since the mid-1970s.  In other words, I was becoming an Anabaptist (and many years later, a Mennonite).

That beginning part of my journey—in the Christian faith and a little later with Yoder’s writings—was a long time ago.  I would later study with Yoder, read most of his writings—the most central ones many times—and become a friend of his.  I decided to write my doctoral thesis on him, which was published as a book.  I have edited or co-edited several of his books. And I have now written more than a dozen essays, and about as many reviews, directly related to Yoder’s work.

I’ve been aware for some time that the stories of Hauerwas, McClendon and my own are hardly isolated cases.  Yoder has been of similar importance to many.  And in fact, in recent years, his influence has only increased. I am incredibly grateful personally for this.  I’ve also seen it as a part of my vocation for some time now to perpetuate the influence of Yoder (and Hauerwas, which is a story for later).  Since I attempt (mostly) to keep up on the vast secondary literature on Yoder’s writings, I am keenly aware of various readings and appropriations of Yoder.  In fact within the last decade or so it has been interesting to watch the varied—and competing—streams emanating from Yoder’s writings.  In the midst of this cacophony of readings of Yoder, I have seen it as a responsibility to honor Yoder by keeping alive what I believe are the core—crucial and revolutionary—insights of his. This sometimes requires offering critiques as well as pointing readers to very helpful writings.  This is the reason for this post.

I want to alert interested readers to three important books on Yoder.  The first one is in a different category from the other two.  The first one is The Heterodox Yoder by Paul Martens (Cascade Books, 2012).  Let me say that I am good friends with Paul.  I have heard him give several lectures that moved toward the writing of this book.  He and I have had vigorous arguments around the basic thrust of the book (as conveyed through the earlier lectures and essays).  As it happens, Paul and I share some similar central theological passions. As of a few weeks ago I read his book.  It confirmed my earlier sense that his interpretation of certain strands of Yoder’s thought is profoundly wrong—and in fact seriously distorting in ways both of us think matter.  If that’s true, then why do I think the book important?   For I wouldn’t attach that word to a number of other books I consider wrong.

There are two reasons why I see the book as (at least potentially) important.  First, it is because it helped me to see more clearly the strands within Yoder’s writings that have led some to mistakenly understand Yoder as a “social gospeller.”  Or to put it differently, these misinterpreters imagine that Yoder didn’t believe that true theological convictions mattered that much.  That is to say, he believed that strictly theological matters like God, church, Jesus Christ, salvation, etc. are really not that important, except as means to an end; thus they are dispensable means to an end.  Because the true end, really, of Yoder’s central project is a full embracing of progressive politics and peacemaking—in an effort to transform the world over into a religious image of “Democracy Now” (the most progressive political program on NPR).  Perhaps I am (at least) on the edge of caricature.  But at least something similar to what I’ve said seems implied by more than a few who have seen themselves to be deeply influenced by Yoder. Which leads me to my second reason why this book is potentially important.

Sometimes it is helpfully clarifying to have a bad argument that names important issues, such that it elicits careful, thoughtful critiques.  For this book clarifies the elements of Yoder that have been distortingly drawn upon to make arguments that don’t truly fit Yoder’s central project.  (I put it that way because Yoder was quite ecumenical.  So, just as he would attempt to help just war theorists think more clearly to be better in their use of this approach that he thought was fundamentally flawed, so he would also help clarify the logic of arguments for peace even when he thought the theology that funded such approaches was significantly wrong.  [See Yoder’s book, Nevertheless for this latter.])  Thus I am hopeful that the more thoughtful critiques of Martens’ book will bring some clarity to some false ways of appropriating Yoder related to Martens’ book.  In relation to Martens’ basic argument as presented in earlier essays, I attempted to do this in an essay published last fall. (“The ‘Ecumenical’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’ Yoder,” The Conrad Grebel Review (Fall 2011): 73-87.)  I will be writing a review of the book for The Mennonite Quarterly Review later this year.  And already, a really wonderful, lengthy review of Martens’ book has been written by Branson Parler and is available both in html and pdf versions, which brings me to the other books I want to mention.

Branson Parler and John Nugent are two young Yoder scholars to which to pay careful attention.  Both of them wrote doctoral theses on Yoder at Calvin Seminary!  And on subjects—Christ and culture and the Old Testament—that are not only quite important to Reformed folk, but subjects that have historically separated Reformed and Anabaptist streams of thought rather decisively.  It takes guts and a serious determination to take on such projects in that context.

Branson Parler’s revised dissertation is to be published later this year by Herald Press.  It is entitled Things Hold Together: John Howard Yoder’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture.  I have read a considerable amount of literature on the subjects of this book.  I can’t think of anyone who has dealt more carefully with the issues at hand.  And certainly no one has offered a more careful account of Yoder in relation to these issues.  It is an impressive and timely book.  For instance, one chapter is on the Niebuhr brothers.  Most of Reinhold Niebuhr’s most influential writings are from no later than the 1950s.  The same is true of his brother, H. Richard.  But not only is it the case that President Obama said that his favorite theologian was Reinhold Niebuhr, as I read the chapter on the Niebuhrs I found myself saying repeatedly: “I think many Mennonites I know resonate much more with the Niebuhrs than with Yoder.”  Therefore, it is of ongoing relevance that Parler offers convincing critiques of those with whom Yoder differed.  However, more importantly he gives a compelling, biblically and theologically holistic, account of Yoder’s understanding of Christ and culture that is significantly illuminating within our present contexts.  By the end I found myself saying: “yes, yes, yes; this is why I have found myself captive to Yoder’s theology for all these years.”  This fits a biblical understanding so well and yet also shows how we are to relate redemptively to the world as the body of Christ.  (Parler’s reviews of Martens’ book gives you a taste of what you can expect in his book.)

The last book I will mention is John C. Nugent’s book, The Politics of Yahweh: John Howward Yoder, the Old Testament, and People of God (Cascade Books, 2011).  Nugent’s book is equally relevant, important, and superbly written.  As I said in my endorsing blurb: “This wonderful book is all I hoped for—and more.  Nugent clearly knows Yoder’s thought extremely well.  With considerable intelligence and discernment, he has shown the vital importance of the Old Testament roots of The Politics of Jesus.  But more than that, he has written a book that has great relevance for all Christians interested in the relationship between the Testaments, especially as related to the subject of peace.”  I believe every word I wrote.  This is a book well worth reading.  (One can get a taste of John’s work on Yoder’s views of the Old Testament by reading his introduction to Yoder’s collection of writings on capital punishment which John Nugent edited; the book is entitled The End of Sacrifice. Or one can see Nugent’s summary of his views on Yoder and the Old Testament in his essay in The Journal of Religious Ethics, March 2011.  One can also sample the thought of both Nugent and Parler in the book edited by Nugent, Radical Ecumenicity: Pursuing Unity and Continuity after John Howard Yoder, a fine collection of essays originating with a conference on Yoder.)

As I said earlier, I have seen it as a part of my vocation to carry on (as faithfully as I can, given my limitations) the legacy of John Howard Yoder.  Occasionally I have had some concern that no one in the generation following mine would carry on Yoder’s legacy in a way that was truly faithful to what Yoder taught.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some younger scholars who take Yoder’s work seriously.  Some of them both grasp his writings and employ them in their own work.  I’m thinking at this point of more or less straightforward expositions of Yoder’s thought that are clear, imaginative and engaging current issues.  In that regard, for the first time—coming to know John Nugent and Branson Parler—I can say, in relation to this part of my vocation, I can die in peace.  The legacy will be carried on.  This is important, so far as I am concerned, because I continue to believe that what Yoder was trying to teach us under the label of “the politics of Jesus” is hugely important.  Many have still not fully grasped, and some have seriously misunderstood, what Yoder was saying.  However, truly appropriating the implications of the gospel of Jesus Christ as embodied within the Christian community for the sake of the world is a life-long task.  Thus we need ongoing fresh and compelling interpretations of what this means, of what it looks like.  Nugent and Parler are among those helping us with this  task.

Related links:

• Does Yoder Need a Defense? by John Nugent at his Walk and Word blog
• MP3 lectures from the 2009 conference, “John Howard Yoder and the Stone-Campbell Churches,” which eventually became the core of the book, Radical Ecumenicity, referenced above.