Anabaptism

This coming sunday, Sunday 8 April, is Easter sunday. It is the crest of the Christian calendar, the high point of Christian faith, as we remember and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is also the last of our lenten meditations on lament.

Last night's lament was a journey through the seven last words of Jesus on the cross, with the small group of women and men who remained with him, who took him from the cross to the tomb, and who returned after the sabbath to anoint his body only to find it gone. And we joined together to return to the Lord with our wounds, because he is wounded to.

‘Come, let us return to the Lord;
   for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
   he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
   on the third day he will raise us up,
   that we may live before him.
Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;
   his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
   like the spring rains that water the earth.’
      Hosea 6:1-3

This sunday's lament is called 'Come Lift Up Your Sorrows: Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice, Weep With Those Who Weep.' During this meditation we will be celebrating the Meal, the Lord's Supper, communion, the eucharist, in the manner that the Anabaptist martyr (and my personal hero) Balthasar Hubmaier offered, which includes a liturgy called The Pledge of Love.

Last night we had our third evening on Anabaptism, my personal confession about why I call myself an Anabaptist. The previous evenings were Who Were the Anabaptists? and Anabaptist Lives.

We had quite a full house, including a visit from a tourist on this website, which was great. I had a blast, but then it was an evening about something I'm deeply passionate about, so I was always going to enjoy it, wasn't I?

Anyway, I thought I'd upload the presentation I created to the site, which you can download below. The presentation is in PowerPoint format, and, as before, I've also created a clickable QuickTime to this page.

Here it is.

Lloyd Pietersen was the course director of Advanced Workshop and runs the Anabaptist Studies blog. In his 'about' page he says that 'In particular, as a biblical scholar, I am interested in Anabaptist readings of biblical texts.'

And that's got me thinking.

In the light of the last couple of evenings we've had here in the Birmingham community on Anabaptism (which I've posted about here on the site), Who Were the Anabaptists? and Anabaptist Lives, and the upcoming evening this Thursday when I bare my heart to talk about Why I am an Anabaptist, I've been wondering about what it might mean to conduct Anabaptist readings of biblical texts, what spices are peculiar to the taste, you might say.

So here's a little list of thoughts about what might go into the roux of Anabaptist readings.

Last night we had the second of our evenings exploring the roots and routes of Anabaptism. Previously we looked at the question 'Who were the Anabaptists?'. Last night's session was discovering some of the stories of the early Anabaptists, their lives, their impact and their deaths, frequently as martyrs.

Many of the stories are taken from Martyrs Mirror, an astonishing book that is a remembrance of the godly lives and staggering deaths of Anabaptist martyrs between 1524 and 1660 and thousands of other early Christians. Martyrs Mirror records the lives of both well known and anonymous martyrs, many of whom are merely listed as one of a number who died on a given day, nothing more.

We looked at the lives of some of the key figures in the birth and growth of Anabaptism, such as Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, Michael Sattler, my personal hero Balthasar Hübmaier, Menno Simons (who gave his name to the Mennoites) and Jacob Hutter (I would have loved to have looked at others, such as Pilgram Marpeck, Dirk Philips, Hans Denck, Jakob Ammann (who gave his name to the Amish) and more - but there's never enough time!) And we also read some of the brief summaries of the lives and deaths of less well known Anabaptist Martyrs (taken fom the From Anabaptist Seed section of the Third Way Café site).

Anyway, as before, I've uploaded to this page the PowerPoint version of the Keynote slides I used for the evening, and I've created a clickable QuickTime of the Keynote slides. And there's notes below, too.

Last night we had a Thursday evening gathering exploring the roots and routes of Anabaptism. I suggested doing this because, from time to time, I've slipped into conversation something about an Anabaptist perspective without really saying how why Anabaptism is important to me or indeed what Anabaptism really is or who the Anabaptists were and are still.

This evening was the first of three (also on 22/02/07 - 'Anabaptist Lives' - and 01/03/07 - 'Why I Am an Anabaptist'), and I thought I'd put here on the site a QuickTime and a Powerpoint of the Keynote slides I used last night. The QuickTime is an interactive movie, so you need to click on the slides to make them progress. Obviously these are only bullet points and I narrated much more detail for each slide than is presented. I'll try and put some indicators below.

Well, here's the next post on the current train of thoughts about the old classic phrase of believing, belonging and behaving (constructed in whichever order you want).

Last time around I put together some thoughts on the old paradigm of first confronting people with beliefs. If you read that post you'd know that I suggest we find ourselves in something of a paradox with regard to beliefs. Having beliefs as a starting point can be deeply problematic in our polysemic, polymorphic world, especially when beliefs are held and espoused rigidly and dogmatically. On the other hand, we all hold beliefs, whether we accept it or not. One cannot operate as a human being without believing that certain things are true (murder is wrong, education is worthwhile, a red light means stop, etc). We neglect conversing about beliefs at our peril.

So given the ambiguity about engaging over beliefs, what about connecting through 'belonging' to eachother and to a community beyond?

So, again it's been a while since the last post. Why do we have to earn money to live...?

Anyway, time for some further thoughts on belonging, believing and behaving, and whether that is helpful language in the post-modern world.

In the good old days of modernity believing was always the place to start. It was assumed that the basis for conversation between people was essentially apologetic - arguing, in both the best and worst possible ways, about logical, philosophical, spiritual, theological and ethical issues until one party or another was intellectually convinced of the 'way the world is.'

Sorry it's been a while since my last post - half-term school holidays and earning a crust have come in the way of writing anything much here of late. And I've been wondering what to post after the last essay I put online about reading Joshua as a Christian. I think I will follow this up with a series of posts about reading the Bible after Christendom, after modernity and in the context of alternative and emerging churches and Christian faith communities.

For the time being, however, I've got another issue on my mind.

It's frequently said that a distictive characteristic within emerging churches is that of belonging to a community before any mention of believing comes along (if ever!), let alone behaving - that life is lived as a spiritual journey of discovery, a vast expanding horizon of experiences and possibilities. And yet, and here is the irony, there is often also a strong missional emphasis it would appear.

So, a question arises - after modernity and after Christendom, how might we go about encouraging people to consider the challenges of Christianity, and the challenges presented by Jesus? Does the believing, behaving, belonging analysis of evangelicalism bear any relevance at all?

One of my questions about the place and role of the Church and of local churches in society at large is its attitude towards those on the margins of society. It seems fairly clear from the Gospels that Jesus embodied a view of the world that was predisposed to the poor and marginalised.^[1] It is important to note, for example, that when Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 in the Nazareth synagogue, he stops in the middle of v2, declaring the Year of the Lord's Favour (in resonance with the Jubilee and Sabbath years of Lev. 25) for the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives and the prisoners, but not initiating the day of God's vengeance.^[2]

Here is the real question, though. If the Church, and local faith communities in particular, are going to rise to the challenge of following in the footsteps of Jesus, what should their attitude and praxis be to the poor and to 'sinners'?^[3]

Paul Wilson of Sanctuary, Billingham is reasearching the effect that the Workshop Christian studies programme has on learners, focussing particularly on two areas – church involvement and spiritual well-being.

If you have studied on Workshop, you can help Paul by downloading and completing a questionnaire. You can email or post your completed questionnaire back to Paul - see Paul's Blogger profile for details.