How the author’s journey has been shaped by different Anabaptist communities

In his book The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith (Herald Press, 2010), Stuart Murray writes as one who has been drawn to the Anabaptist tradition from the post-Christendom British context.

He explores both the historical dimensions of the movement and core convictions that have developed as contemporary followers of Jesus in the United Kingdom engage with this tradition. Whether or not you identify yourself as an Anabaptist, it’s a good read. It’s a good read for anyone committed to worshiping and following Jesus.

Murray identifies four kinds of Anabaptist communities today. Reading The Naked Anabaptist has prompted me to reflect again on the many ways my story has been shaped by multiple communities expressing the Anabaptist vision in different ways.

Here are some reflections on how I have been shaped by each of the types of contemporary Anabaptist communities named by Murray.

The descendants of the early Anabaptists: the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites (Type 1)

This first type of Anabaptist community represents the rock from which I was hewn. Biology and genealogy tell me I am from Swiss-German descent—from Miller and Ehst, Snyder, Souder and Moyer.

On my father’s side the lineage goes back to Swiss Brethren via Jakob Ammann’s branch. They first landed in Holmes County, Ohio, before the pioneer spirit took them out west to the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

My maternal roots are in the Franconia Conference—in the soil deeded to Mennonite immigrants by William Penn. The Bally farm passed down over eight generations is a testament to the values of faith and hard work that served Mennonites well as they established spiritually, culturally and economically flourishing communities in a new setting.

While I was connected to this community through family ties, we lived at a distance for most of my childhood. This changed in my senior year of high school, when I moved back to Pennsylvania to attend Christopher Dock Mennonite High School in Lansdale.

I married into a Midwestern expression of this kind of Anabaptist community. My wife’s mother was from the Kansas Mennonites, who emigrated from Prussia. Because of this, I have relational ties to places such as Hillsboro, Newton and Hesston.

We have old photos of Unruh and Bartel family on our mantel. We make and eat peppernuts during the Christmas season. Because of this connection, we know what it is to eat zwieback and verenika.

While my genealogy qualifies me to be a cradle Mennonite, I have not always felt at home in these highly embedded communities. Having lived other places outside traditional Mennonite enclaves, I was not always sure I fit in, even though I had the right last name and could play the Mennonite game with the best of them. This likely has much to do with the fact that my earliest memories are as a part of Murray’s third type of Anabaptist community.

New Anabaptist churches in many nations as a result of Mennonite and Brethren missionary activities (Type 3)

This expression of Anabaptism has shaped me linguistically, culturally and theologically.

I was born in Mexico while my parents were serving as missionaries with the Pacific Conference of the Mennonite Church. This is the earliest place I remember being from. Before I knew about shoofly pie, I knew about tamales. The Anabaptists in northwest Mexico did not associate their faith story with the European origins of Anabaptism. In fact, the most common way they self-identified was as evangelicos.

The only visible sign of Anabaptism might have been the prayer veil worn by the women converts to this movement. Their brown, sun-baked skin and black hair told another story—a mestizo story. It was a story of hard work and struggle. Their worn huarache sandals and swept dirt floors had more to do with the struggle of subsistence campo life than an Anabaptist conviction about simplicity.

Yet theirs was an authentic faith. Personal testimonies provided an ongoing narrative theology within which the community bore witness to their experience with God. An experience that had to do with transformed living made possible through a personal encounter with Jesus. The community gathered for vibrant worship with guitars and hand clapping.

My experience as a participant in Youth Evangelism Service and later as an administrator for Latin America with Discipleship Ministries confirms Murray’s observation that each of these communities interprets the Anabaptist tradition in its own way. I have seen these diverse interpretations in Puebla, San Pedro Carcha, Cusco and Tegucigalpa. These expressions of gospel meeting culture flavored with an Anabaptist telling of the story continue to emerge as movements with their own unique gifts to bring to the table.

As I write this, I’m hosting Beny Krisbianto, an Indonesian pastor from South Philly and fellow student at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Va. Beny is a pastor and leader among an emerging network of Indonesian churches in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Greensburg, Pa., and New York City. Some are cultivating formal connections with Franconia Mennonite Conference. Are these churches Mennonite? Are they Anabaptist? Perhaps that remains to be seen.

These same questions and observations could apply to Sunnyside Mennonite Church, the congregation where I serve as pastor, and Lancaster Mennonite Conference, the fellowship of churches we are a part of. What is evident is that many are coming to the table in the kingdom.

Other denominations that began later but drew inspiration from Anabaptism: various Brethren groups, the Bruderhof movement and some Baptists (Type 2)

Upon returning from the mission field, my family lived in Tulsa, Okla., for seven years. During these years of living in the Bible Belt, my theological wardrobe was influenced by other streams—some that could be situated in this second category of Anabaptism.

We moved from Mexico to Tulsa so my father could take a teaching position at Oral Roberts University. While ORU does not represent this second category of Anabaptism that Murray identifies (imagine a Bruderhof community with a Prayer Tower or City of Faith), we did attend Parkside Mennonite Brethren Church during these years.

It was here I learned about potluck meals, singing hymns and church as community. Little did I know at that time that the last names—Pankratz, Unruh, Balzer, Harms, Ratzlaff, Wolgemuth—represented a different entry point into the Anabaptist story from Miller. Nevertheless, the theological garb was familiar, if at a subconscious level.

During these years in Oklahoma I had the opportunity to hear John Wimber speak. Wimber’s story was formative for me. A hippie musician who played with the Righteous Brothers, he eventually had a profound encounter with Jesus and became a founding leader of the Vineyard Movement—a movement that attempted to espouse a third way between Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism.

The “empowered evangelicalism” garb was influenced by the social consciousness of Wimber’s Quaker roots and the kingdom theology of George Ladd.

This movement, while less overtly Anabaptist, provided some clothing that would become a part of my theological wardrobe. The call to radical discipleship expressed through extravagant worship and empowerment for “doing the stuff” of the kingdom were several distinctives that complemented my Anabaptist theological garb.

Neo-Anabaptists, who belong to other traditions but acknowledge the formative influence of Anabaptism (Type 4)

It wasn’t until my 30s that I rediscovered the gifts contained within Anabaptism. It was as I engaged with other traditions that converged with Anabaptist theology that I began to find my own story within this many-layered tradition.

Conversations with emerging Christianity as well as Eastern Orthodoxy have provided many rich opportunities to re-examine the Anabaptist way of telling and living the Jesus story. While Orthodoxy does not represent a neo-Anabaptist movement, there are important areas of theological overlap—including salvation as a journey of discipleship within the community of faith.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Vineyard Central in Cincinnati, Ohio. I had learned about this community through an article that compared it to the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C. I was drawn to visit and see for myself what this urban, neo-monastic community of house churches was like.

Conversations that weekend provided clear evidence of a community that was drawing from a variety of streams, including Anabaptism. Reading materials included books by John Howard Yoder and John of the Cross. Spirituality combined inward and outward movement. Hospitality and incarnational presence in an urban neighborhood were as much a part of the communal life as were the contemplative practices of prayer and silence.

It was among this community that I learned to appreciate good ale and the grace of submitting to a communal rule of prayer, using The Divine Hours. This community has continued to stimulate vision for what it means to live into a missional vision for church. It was among this community that I discovered a way of receiving the gifts contained both within the Anabaptist tradition and the broader Christian story.

I am a part of many relationships that increasingly bear witness to the possibility that we are in a time of upheaval and profound transformation in the church and in the world. Old boundaries no longer apply. Many stories are coming together at one grand storytelling table in the kingdom of God.

In One Body, Many Stories, Diana Butler Bass says we need all those stories to be fully Christian. We need the practices and experiences—the gifts of each tradition—to gather at the table so we can hear each other’s tales along the way.

This is the emerging reality in a post-Christendom world. In The Naked Anabaptist, Stuart Murray brings the Anabaptist tradition with its many interpretations to the story table. He offers a vision for Anabaptism that moves us beyond cultural time warps and separatist tendencies.

I am grateful for the way Murray brings the Anabaptist tradition to the storytelling table. He brings the story to life with refreshing humility—naming strengths and weaknesses.

His way of telling the story acknowledges the multiplicity of interpretations and ways the vision is being lived. Murray’s way of telling the story makes room for the authenticity of each of these interpretations while calling us beyond Christendom accommodations of purpose-driven individualism on the one hand and sectarian visions aimed at preserving cultural ghettos on the other.

This confessional stance and posture of humility fits our present context, in which we find ourselves gathered at storytelling tables with Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox Christians. These tables are providing opportunities for confession, healing and renewed possibilities for partnership in mission.

There is a party taking place even as Christendom structures and narratives are deteriorating. I plan on showing up. I think I will wear something from my eclectic Anabaptist wardrobe.

Brian Miller is pastor of Sunnyside Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pa.