Love letters can be awkward. Too precious. At points cringeworthy in the expression of their ardor. Something meant for a limited and personal audience.

Drew G.I. Hart has written a love letter in Making It Plain. In tone, content and approach, however, it could not be more different from a gawky missive. In this text, Hart has found his sweet spot.

In straightforward prose, Hart explains why Anabaptism and the Black church are needed to break away from the historic intertwining of Christianity, colonialism and empire. Combining autobiographical narrative, history and theology, he makes his case for an “Anablacktivist faith.” 

Here is where his narrative departs from a saccharine love letter. Although a deep and abiding love for both the Black church of his origins and the Anabaptist church of his choosing comes through clearly, so does focused and forceful critique of both communities. He takes the former to task for watering down their prophetic tradition of integrating justice with worship and witness; the latter for failing to “scrutinize power” in their own historical narratives and mission programs. Hart asserts that many Black churches have “severed” themselves from the “death-dealing realities” faced by Black communities and pursued a prosperity gospel instead. He adds that European-American Anabaptist community members have repeatedly failed to come to terms with their “whiteness” and its attendant assumptions and doctrines of White supremacy.

But in so doing he pairs censure with celebration. Womanist scholars emerging from the Black church — themselves equally critical of Black church patriarchy — figure prominently in his discourse. He lifts up the Anabaptist emphasis on Gelassenheit — a German term meaning yieldedness or resignation — as a means to restore “the image of God in all of us” through “surrendering our false self.” The work and witness of Black Mennonite forebears like James and Rowena Lark, Vincent Harding and Hubert Brown receive due praise, as do contemporary leaders and theologians emerging from that same tradition such as Michelle Alexander, Nekeisha Alexis-Baker, James Logan and Regina Shands Stoltzfus.

Making It Plain also reveals evidence of Hart’s theological development and voracious appetite for learning. In contrast to his previous books, the author has more directly addressed the patterns of LGBTQ+ exclusion in the church and called for “full belonging.” And the text is replete with evidence of his thoughtful engagement with a host of scholars, theologians, historians and philosophers. He invites his readers to consider matters of sub­stitutionary atonement, Afropessimism, theodicy and “fugitivity and martyrdom.” Yet, ever mindful of his promise to make it plain, he does so with careful explication.

Hart’s love letter to the Black church and the Anabaptist community concludes with a call to draw on the best of both traditions. He defines this Anablacktivist hybrid as a way to break “free from the cycles of violence, systems of oppression and even our corrupted minds.” Such a claim is a tall order for any theological approach — regardless of how grounded in the experience of the oppressed and marginalized, irrespective of its theological nuance or pragmatic implications.

Yet, Hart’s case is compelling. He avoids romanticizing martyrs — whether Black or Anabaptist or both — while emphasizing that a Christian faith that speaks the truth of the gospel to the powers that be will lead to real life costs, up to and including the loss of one’s life. He also asserts that an equally consistent theme in the practice of faithful Christianity has been fleeing from the world’s “death-dealing social order” for solace and safety. Amid these tensions, he contends that “a community of trusted and Spirit-led siblings” can emerge “who are yielding to the Spirit” and “ready to dance with God’s movement.” 

I find that vision appealing in a historical moment when the very idea of yielding one’s ego, political perspective and cherished religious conviction to the Divine seems to have fled all public space. Hart’s love letter to two traditions — whose people have known the cost of yieldedness, the dislocation of being fugitives and the trauma of martyrdom — is a welcome counter to the public embrace of egocentrism. May those of us who receive the gift of Hart’s word and witness have the courage and the commitment to act upon his call and, by so doing, bring such Anablacktivist communities to fruition.