During the U.S. Civil War in 1862, President Lincoln began working with state governors to conscript young men for the Union army. In response, Swiss Mennonite leaders from Bluffton and Pandora, Ohio, sent a letter to Gov. David Tod appealing for an exemption from military service for their young men. They wrote that “it has been always one of the first of our religious principles not to bear arms” nor to perform “any military duties.” But the petitioners also stated that “we submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.”

Three decades later, ministers of the same Swiss Mennonite community sent another letter, this time to a court in the nearby city of Lima, in support of a member who had refused jury duty. The ministers — Johannes Moser and Peter Schumacher — distinguished between Christ’s “kingdom of peace” and the offices of law and judgment represented by the jury summons. They explained that as Christ’s followers they must refuse to pass judgment in a law court, even if they respected those who “with a good conscience” served the court.

These two expressions of peace witness by 19th-century Swiss Mennonites in Ohio echo the early Anabaptist teaching that love alone is pleasing to God — a teaching that led to the renouncing of all violence in the life of Christian disciples, including the ­violence of policing and military service.

For example, Anna Manz, who on Jan. 21, 1525, hosted the consequential baptism ceremony in her apartment, testified in court that the Bible study circles in which she participated had discussed “nothing other than the love of God.” Anna’s son, Felix Manz, offered a consistent witness in his public testimonies that the love of God has no place for the violence of the sword — a witness that cost him his life.

When authorities criticized the Anabaptist witness against the sword as an attack on government itself, an Anabaptist conference at Schleit­heim on the Swiss-German border clarified that although a true Christian acting within the “perfection of Christ” could not wield the sword and could not therefore be a magistrate, still the magisterial office backed by the sword was an “ordinance of God” for guarding the good and punishing evil.

This formulation proposed a friendly dualism between nonresistant churches and magisterial authorities. Peace churches — such as the 19th-century Swiss Mennonites in Bluffton and Pandora — expressed their nonresistance as a religious scruple for which they sought tolerance and even protection from Christian authorities who did not share their convictions.

The spiritual posture of humility reinforced this friendly dualism in North American Anabaptist circles. In their 1862 letter to Gov. Tod, the Swiss Mennonites emphasized their submission to authority while stressing that they were making their appeal as “humble servants.”

In a shift away from humility and friendly dualism after World War II, Amish and Mennonite leaders meeting in 1950 at Winona Lake, Ind., put aside such deference and stated their conviction that peace was the will of God not just for peace churches like theirs but for all people, including human governments.

This statement called for a public witness to the “powers that be” of the “righteousness that God requires” of everyone and declared an unwillingness to “compromise with war in any form.”

This more confident form of Anabaptist peace witness, together with the Anabaptist vision of the church as a Christ-centered peaceable community, led to innovative peacemaking initiatives: from humane mental health care to restorative criminal justice to international and regional conflict transformation to peace education to antiracist and antiwar movements and more.

However, in recent years, it became clear that despite their creative peace witness, Anabaptist leaders and communities participated in the same systems of abuse and violence they were seeking to reform — from patriarchal control to White privilege to settler colonialism.

In response to this increasing awareness of Anabaptist complicity with systems of harm and violence, some Anabaptist peacemaking initiatives have adopted a posture of witness oriented more by penitence and reparation than by humility or confidence.

For example, the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery encourages land acknowledgment and practices of repair as part of their peace witness to the violence of colonizing and extraction-based capitalism. Survivor advocacy organizations like Mennonite Abuse Prevention and Into Account promote truth-telling and accountability for abusive church institutions and leaders.

Peace witness grounded in penitence rejects both friendly dualism and Anabaptist exceptionalism. It reflects the evangelical peace testimony of Menno Simons, who, rather than calling on Christian authorities to leave their stations, urged them instead to amend their lives by putting away their swords. Such a penitential peace witness speaks truth to power, while praying with Menno: “Blind I am, do thou enlighten me.”

Gerald J. Mast is professor of communication at Bluffton University and a member of the Anabaptism at 500 advisory group. He belongs to First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, Ohio.