I am often asked, “What is an Anabaptist?” and “Who are the Anabaptists?” If one listened to everyone who claimed an Anabaptist connection, it would be easy to be confused. For many today a progressive politics is Anabaptist; for others it means being either Yoderian (John Howard Yoder) or Hauerwasian (Stanley Hauerwas). Fair enough, but neither of them is the full representation of Anabaptism.

So today I want to sketch the view of the one description of Anabaptism that shaped the 20th century the most. I refer to Harold S. Bender‘s classic essay called “The Anabaptist Vision.” No, it is not true that all Anabaptists agree with Bender, and no, some today (like Thomas Finger, in his big study, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology, or J. Denny Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist) want to frame things in a different way, but it can be said that Bender’s sketch is the most influential view of Anabaptism of the 20th century.

There are three major dimensions of the Reformation: Luther and the Lutherans in Germany, Calvin and the Reformed in Switzerland, and Zwingli-generated (and then finished later by others) Anabaptism. Anabaptism spread through Switzerland, South Germany, Moravia and then into the Netherlands. The early Anabaptist theologians and statements of faith were uniformly Protestant in theology (justification, salvation by faith) yet were not simply Lutheran or Reformed. Their emphasis on adult baptism, upon profession of faith, as part of commitment to be a disciple, and to form into a fellowship of discipleship distinguished the Anabaptists from both the Lutherans and the Reformed, not to mention the Catholics.

Anabaptism is largely responsible for the nonconformist impulse of the church — to be sure, it has some connections to those before it, like the Waldensians of Italy, but the Anabaptists were radical in their nonconformity to the State and to State-sponsored churches — that is, the Catholic Church, Lutherans and the Reformed. All non-State churches in the U.S., and that’s most, owe some debt to the Anabaptists.

They were a courageous lot — thousands were put to death. They paid their life to be nonconformists, and there’s a positive way to put this: they died in order to be faithful to their commitment to follow the Bible, the New Testament and Jesus Christ.

For Bender, the Anabaptists are the full implementation of the Reformation. Neither Luther nor Calvin went far enough. Bender’s focus is Luther, not Calvin, and he cites evidence that Luther late in his life realized his “mass church,” which was basically everyone born into the community/State would be baptized and be Lutheran, was ineffective in transforming the life of the person. The early Anabaptists, like Conrad Grebel, observed the lack of discipleship among the Lutherans of the Reformation. So the Anabaptists carried through the Lutheran reforms and broke with 1,500 years of the church.

Bender is famous for three features of the Anabaptist vision:

1. The essence of Christianity, or the Christian life, is discipleship — a committed following of Christ in all areas of life. The word on the street in the 16th century — and this word repeated often enough by bitter enemies of the Anabaptists — was that they were consistent and devout Christians. If Luther’s word was “faith,” the word for the Anabaptists was “follow.” The inner conversion was to lead to external transformation.
2. A new conception of the church as a brotherhood of fellowship. The ruling image of a church among the Catholics and Reformers was more national and institutional and sacramental, while the ruling image for the Anabaptists was fellowship or family. Joining was voluntary; the requirement was conversion; the commitment was to holy living and fellowship with one another. Thus, the Anabaptist separated from the “world” to form a society of the faithful. This view of the church led to economic availability and liability for one another.
3. A new ethic of love and peaceful nonresistance. Apart from rare exceptions like Balthasar Hubmaier and the nutcases around Thomas Müntzer, the Anabaptists lived a life shaped by love and nonviolence. They refused to coerce anyone.

Thus, for Bender, the focus was on discipleship not sacraments or the inner enjoyment of justification. The church was not an institution or a place for Word proclamation in emphasis but instead a brotherhood of love. In addition, against Catholics and Calvinists who believed in social reform, like the Lutherans the Anabaptists were less optimistic about social transformation. But, unlike the Lutherans who split life into the secular and sacred, the Anabaptists wanted a radical commitment that meant the creation of an alternative Christian society.

Scot McKnight is author of The Jesus Creed. He blogs at Patheos.com, where this post originally appeared.

There are approximately 1,774,720 Anabaptists in the world, from Russia to Australia, California to China. They are farmers, government officials, businesspeople, stay-athome parents, activists, missionaries, movie stars, bicycle mechanics, and auto workers. They speak Mandarin, Tshiluba, Spanish, English, Russian, French, and Pennsylvania Dutch. They are at the top rung of the economic ladder, and the bottom.

So what is the connective tissue that holds this disparate global body together? Palmer Becker, a Mennonite pastor from Kitchener, Ontario, identifies three central elements.

For Anabaptist Christians:
• Jesus is the center of their faith.
• Community is the center of their lives.
• Reconciliation is the center of their work.

What does this look like around the world? For more than 100 years, mission workers from Mennonite Mission Network and predecessor agencies have been sharing Anabaptist principles with Christians in villages, towns and cities all over the world, contributing in at least a small way to the global explosion of Anabaptist churches, especially in Africa and Latin America (see graphic on page 11). But beyond numbers, the fruits of these mission efforts are transformed lives and communities—Anabaptist Christians reconciling themselves to God and neighbors.

We asked people who have walked alongside Mission Network in various ways how Anabaptism infl uences the way they live out their faith in their daily lives.

Do you see any conflict with Yahweh as portrayed in the Old Testament with the God revealed in Jesus?

I recently shared what I believe to be a Christocentric hermeneutic that not only places Jesus at the center of the salvific story told in the Bible, but that also requires all Hebrew perceptions of God in the OT to be understood in light of Christ, the final self-revelation of God.

It’s a radical hermeneutic that the Anabaptists used, which I also believe was being used by the NT writers themselves in the first century.

Whatever happened in the OT, and however you interpret the seemingly darker sides of God at work within the history of Israel, the buck now stops with Jesus. Plain and simple. While that may not solve those areas of character conflict between Yahweh and Yeshua at this point, it does settle the matter for the sake of discipleship and obedience to Christ’s commands.

Therefore, accepting that Christ is what God is like and has always been like demands a fresh reading of Scripture.

Before folks think this is “cherry picking” to suit our fancy, it ought to be recognized that Jesus did this with much of the Hebrew Scriptures. He reinterpreted the Law and the Prophets in a way that set himself up as the promised “non-violent” and peace-making Messiah—not the Messiah they expected by any stretch of the imagination.

Jesus’ interpretations bewildered and even ticked people off, especially the gatekeepers of Judaism. We need to remember that.

Those who subscribe to my blog may remember that I did a Q&A with Greg Boyd last year. Greg is currently in the process of leading his church through a sermon series on why their church is most closely aligned with the Anabaptist tradition. (Read the Anabaptist Core Convictions.)

Woodland Hills has plans to soon affiliate with an Anabaptist denomination. Greg has been sharing this radical Christocentric hermeneutic with his fellowship. This past Sunday he continued with “The Twist.”

In the following sermon clip, Greg talks about how many believers “jump over Jesus” to support their “biblical” agenda. He says they’ve not embraced Jesus as the full manifestation of God’s good will for their lives.

What do you think about what Greg has said? Do you agree or disagree?
Do you agree that we’re often guilty of mushing the Testaments together?

Some people say that the amount we encounter in a week of the 2010s is like what we might have experienced in a year of time past. Menno Simons died Jan. 31, 1561. In the week of Jan. 31, 2013, Hilary Clinton was calling an unprecedented meeting of all her ambassadors to try to get a handle on the U.S. response to the upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa. More than 450 years after Simons’ death, it is good to remember that many years in the 1500s were like last week in Egypt. Without social media and technology, change took longer to take hold in the past, but it was no less earthshaking. Menno Simons struggled for many years with how to respond to the new opportunities for faith and action that came to him as a priest in the crumbling Catholic Church of the Netherlands.

A delegation of Jesus followers who wanted a radical way of life, came to Menno Simons and asked him to be their leader. He became a leader in the Anabaptist movement upon request. The delegation came while the memory of Munster was fresh. Radical reformers took over that city and tried to usher in the second coming by force. Simons had a more reasoned and gentle way, and he promoted that way the rest of his life. Get the whole story here and the 90-second recap here.

He told the delegation who asked him to lead the scattered Anabaptists that he would pray about the matter of his leadership. When they came again, as he says in his writings, that he surrendered his “soul and body to the Lord … and commenced in due time … to teach and to baptize, to till the vineyard of the Lord … to build up his holy city and temple and to repair the tumble-down walls.” He was re-baptized soon after his withdrawal from the Catholic Church in 1536. By Dec. 7, 1542, one hundred guilders were offered by the authorities of Leeuwarden for the apprehension of Menno, who appeared by night at different places to preach and baptize.

Menno Simons turned away from mere tradition and became Bible-centered in all his beliefs and practices. Once he had turned to the Bible, he took it for the Word of God and made it the cornerstone of all his work. His writings are filled with Bible quotations. His approach to the Bible differs from that of other church reformers in the 1500s. For Simons, everything is, above all, Christ-centered. Every book and every little pamphlet he wrote has this motto on the front page: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). Christ-centeredness marks his theology and the practices he derived from the Bible. Discipleship, or a fruitful, Christian life was very strongly emphasized.

Also emphasized was the fact that discipleship does not take place in a vacuum or as a matter merely between the individual and his God, but rather within the congregation, the church of Christ. Menno’s faith is therefore not only Christ centered, but also church centered. His chief concern was the living in the true body of Christ. Again and again he refers to 1 Cor. 12:13, 25-27, and Col. 1:18-24. The prerequisites for being part of the church according to Menno are regeneration and willingness to bear the cross of Christ. These two are inseparable. Discipline was as natural in the church of Menno Simons as any normal function of the healthy body.

Menno Simons was one of my heroes of the faith when I was first becoming a Christian as a history major in college — I ended up being a history-of-Christianity major! As I met my ancestors in the faith, I kept meeting people in every era who seemed to “get it.” The majority of the church might be adapting to whatever political or philosophical emphasis dominated the world, but God always had someone who notably kept the true faith and fed his or her era with it. Menno Simons was one of these people.

Today, among the many things he has left us in our inheritance from him, I offer four exhortations that match his convictions:

• Pay attention to how the Lord wants us to respond to the times. Be afraid, if you must, but don’t let fear stop you from obeying your heavenly vision.
• Take the lead. Simons did not think he had it in him, either. True leadership may be less about charisma and more about consistently doing what needs to be done.
• Be Christ-centered. As the Egyptians are demonstrating, regimes and ideas come and go. What we can demonstrate is that the word of Jesus is everlasting. The word is not about “god” or “values” it is about the Lord.
• Build a real church. This is the Anabaptist genius that I appreciate the most. The majority of the reformers in the 1500s either cleaned out the Catholic Church and kept the framework, or made up an alternative wedding between state and church with better theology. The Anabaptists took the reform movement to its radical basis and tried to live it out. I’m still impressed that they were so much the church that the authorities wanted to arrest them. May our authorities see us as that real and so not them that we pose a threat.

Rod White is a Brethren in Christ pastor for the Circle of Hope network in the Philadelphia region. He blogs at rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com where a version of this post originally appeared.