The Missing (Neo)Anabaptist

The Post-Evangelical Engagement With Culture

Photo by Aiden Frazier on Unsplash

We are living in strange times.

Everybody is mad at everybody.

People quit talking to me, not because I disagree with them, but because I dare to ask questions. Which to them is disagreeing. Complexify is a bad word, evidently.

And everywhere you look, we have the reactions against the despised ‘evangelicals’. I put “evangelicals” in scare quotes, because who actually knows what an ‘evangelical’ is anymore?

Among the post-evangelicals, the ex-vangelicals, the refried-beans-evangelicals, we have the theological responses we’ve all become used to. These are responses to the exclusionary defensive fundamentalist tactics of their previous evangelical pasts. In response, most turn to some version of a protestant liberalism (in the theo-political sense), a train that many of us were on at one time in the nineties, but had to hop off of, when it failed to meet the cultural challenges (for me it was in my PHD program at Northwestern). There were different versions of a classic protestant liberal response, many in reaction to evangelical fundamentalism. There was the version seen in the Emerging church development twenty years ago. There is another version of it running in the current deconstruction movement of the post or ex evangelicals. In all of this, the Neo-Anabaptist option is rarely, if ever, given more than a passing glance. It goes missing among the options.

These three main theological positions can be charted in a trajectory as follows. There is the defensive exclusionary evangelical position (DEE). What follows then, the protestant liberal response.(PLR)  And then almost always missing? The neoAnabaptist response. (NAR).

In my view, the evangelical fundamentalist and protestant liberal positions are born from within a Christendom Protestantism. They both rely on individualist epistemologies, where either cognitive rationality or experience grounds truth claims. These epistemologies work well within a Christendom hegemony where Christianity is majority faith. But once challenged, in a culture where Christianity is dethroned, they must either get defensive/coercive (DEE) or accommodative (PLR) to maintain influence. Eventually both prove impotent in actually engaging the cultural challenges with Jesus, within the multiple cultures we find ourselves in.

This is where a Neo-Anabaptist (NAR) response can prove helpful. Already inclined to see church is a post Christendom world, as dis-established. The NAR sees the church as a socio-cultural way of present (non-coercive) witness, working out its own culture under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, from which it can then engage and dialogue with multiple cultures.

I know this is difficult to see or understand if you’re a DEE or PLR (you’re probably too busy contending with each other to notice any other way?). So let me chart a few of these theological responses within this trajectory and see if I can convince anyone that the Neo-Anabaptist response should be given a serious consideration by anyone seeking to engage the cultural issues of our time. I’ll start each time with a stereotypical DEE defensive assertion (against culture). Then I’ll move to the PLR response (accommodative to culture). And then I’ll go to one possible NAR response working out within it’s culture as a (non-coercive) witness before the world. Tell me at the end (in the comments) whether this makes any sense?

1.)   All humans are going to hell apart from Jesus! (DEE) All humans (including from all other religions etc.) in the world are going to hell, even those who have never heard the gospel!! (PLR) Jesus is just one way among many paths to eternal salvation with the one God of the universe. All people will find their path eventually to eternal salvation (kind of a John Hick universalism). (NAR) God has come into the world uniquely in the person and work of Jesus- God’s Son in the flesh. It is through this unique encultured embodied entrance of God into the world through Jesus that He shall save the world through His presence among us. We can not pretend to know all of the “how” God shall do this through Christ , but what we do know is this is the way God has come to us, to me, the here and now. We know that some can and reject this salvation (so we are not universalists in regards to Jesus). Through all of this, our response is obedience, faithfulness to what we do know in Christ, and to offer God’s salvation through Jesus to the whole world (again as embodied witnesses, not coercively). There is no need or way to declare judgement pre-encounter on all other humans and the world religions. We engage people, and their religions in dialogue one encounter at a time, and let God work.

2.)   Justice is not part of the gospel! (DEE)The gospel is Jesus died for your sins only, and through Him you have a personal (only) relationship with God through Jesus and pardon from eternal conscious torment. (PLR) The gospel is that Jesus has announced God’s Kingdom has come, He is working for justice in the world, and it is our job to get busy and participate in bringing this Kingdom into being. (NAR) God’s justice for the world-systems and our personal restored relationship to God are part and parcel of one gospel of Jesus Christ. And it is through the church of Jesus that we as individuals come under His Lordship, and His Kingdom (justice) first takes shape among us, from which we give witness to what God is already doing in the whole world, to bring manifest God’s justice for the whole world.

3.)   Only males! can be pastors and teach exercise authority over a congregation. (DEE) The Bible is clear, “women be silent in the church.” No further hermeneutics needed. (PLR) Women and men are equal. Equality and justice are the reality of God’s Kingdom in the world. Therefore women have equal status to men in the church’s leadership. (NAR) Patriarchy/hierarchy are a result of the fall. These sins are overcome in Jesus’ victory over sin.  This victory does not eliminate the distinction between male and female. Instead Jesus heals and restores the mutualist relation between male and female so that both female and male flourish equally together in leadership and the gifts for the inbreaking Kingdom of God in the reign of Jesus.

4.)   The church is the refuge of Christians!! who are saved. (DEE) The church gathers us out of the world to fend off being infected with the evils of the world. (PLR) The church is an auxiliary organization for the work of God’s Kingdom (justice) in the world. It is a training organization for people wanting to be social witnesses and workers (volunteers) for bringing God’s Kingdom (justice)into the world (NAR) The church is a demonstration plot for the Kingdom, where people gather under His Lordship in their lives together, and are so empowered by the Spirit to live in His reign ahead of time and be the witness to this Kingdom in their neighborhoods. The church-world distinction is restored, but not in an exclusionary way. Because Christ is reigning over the whole world, the church is merely ahead of the world (chronologically- not separate from the world) in manifesting his reign, as a sign of where the whole world is in process of going, they just don’t know it yet.   

5.)   Marriage is between a male and female only. (DEE) God created humans as male and female. This is the created order and God’s plan as revealed in Scripture. Any affections, attractions that lead otherwise are due to sin and must be shunned. (PLR) God has created all people as good and in his image. All attractions, all sexuality is part of that good as given (essentialism), to be affirmed as created good and part of being created in the image of God. LGBTQ relations are to blessed as created by God for God’s flourishing. (NAR) Queer theory/post structuralism helps us see the nature of deep sins within the constructs of our modern sexuality. This includes various forms misogyny, patriarchy, commoditization of bodies, sexual abuse, pornographic fetishizing, etc. Queer theory helps us see how culture trains us into gender and sexuality constructs (performativity, iteration, subjectivity, naturalization) that construct the broken systems of heterosexuality. The church therefore must be a place of sexuality/gender deconstruction, unwinding antagonism + attractions, renewal and discipleship in Jesus. Here we see how the incarnation of God, in Jesus, shapes us to respect all bodies, unwind abuse, reconcile and heal abuse and oppressive hurts, upend patriarchy, for a transformation of sexuality and gender in the Kingdom. This discipleship historically (over 2000 years) has eventually shaped Christians into monogamous mutualist (male and female) faithful marriage in all peoples. This discipleship is inclusive, an invitation to all people, especially heterosexuals, who have been absorbed into the sins of commoditization of bodies, transactional marriage, and other cultural sins.

OK, to all my friends within the various DEE, PLR matrixes. Does this make any sense. Comments please.