“But are they really Anabaptists?” This is a question I hear regularly. The “they” in the sentence varies depending on who is asking the question. A recent issue of Canadian Mennonite explored similar themes, with several articles describing the growing edges of our church and others attempting to define the core or the essence.  

Many contemporary descriptions of the core of Anabaptism say remarkably little about conversion, the inner life of faith or the witness of the Holy Spirit. 

This sort of reflection on our churchly identity is helpful and sometimes a bit irksome. For instance, there are often good reminders about how Anabaptists tend to interpret the bible—through the life and teaching of Jesus—and important common practices like baptism, mutual aid and truth-telling. The effort to reduce Anabaptism to a short list of contextless beliefs and practices makes many scholars break out in hives, yet I can appreciate the educational value of these lists. What I sometimes find dangerous about them, however, is that these lists are rarely clear about the fact that any description of the “core” or “center” of a tradition is a prescription. Increasingly, these descriptions are functioning like a Confession of Faith or a Creed, even though they are not produced through communal discernment. When someone identifies a core of Anabaptism, they are often telling us what they think is non-negotiable right now.  

Inevitably, things are left out. For instance, I notice that many contemporary descriptions of the core of Anabaptism say remarkably little about conversion, the inner life of faith or the witness of the Holy Spirit. This is a startling difference from the early Anabaptists. Some summaries of Anabaptism reduce the movement to biblicism or social critique, efforts once again to underwrite a current agenda.  

“But are they really Anabaptists?” I think this is a very good question, so long as we also ask it of ourselves. “Are we really Anabaptists?”

Some time ago I was giving a talk on leadership in a congregational setting, and I said something to the effect that Anabaptist leadership is shared or non-hierarchical. A woman put up her hand and said that she didn’t think this was true. Her point, as I remember it, was that my view of Anabaptist leadership might hold in white, urban contexts, but that didn’t make it Anabaptist. She was right. A broader look at history and culture shows that many Anabaptist communities have a clear hierarchical leadership structure. I probably should have been more direct about my view that shared leadership is a healthier model for Anabaptist communities in this time and place.  

I recently read the newly released English translation of Hans-Jürgen Goertz’s biography of Conrad Grebel. One of the threads that stands out in Goertz’s treatment of the reformer’s life is the less savory stuff. Much of Grebel’s short life was an unfocused romp around Europe enabled by the wealth and connections of his father. Grebel’s language and the positions he took were often harsh and fractious. In Goertz’s description, Grebel was not a seminal Anabaptist theologian, as most of his ideas were borrowed. What I found more interesting, if no less provocative, was that Grebel’s ecclesial agenda was inseparable from his activism on behalf of rural peasants. Grebel was a radical populist, critical of various taxes, urban elites, and unaccountable clergy. Would he have signed on to our Confession of Faith or found it meaningful to affirm a shortlist of essentials? I’m not sure.  

The joy comes not from pushing others out but from finding spiritual relatives—siblings in Christ—we did not know we had. 

“But are they really Anabaptists?” I think this is a very good question, so long as we also ask it of ourselves. “Are we really Anabaptists?” The value is more in the reflection the question prompts than in any conclusion. This is because lists of “core” or “essential” beliefs and practices will always come up short. That mode of thinking just doesn’t match how communities or enduring traditions work. It’s probably better to think about Anabaptism as something like a “family resemblance” that spans time, culture and geography. Yes, this family resemblance includes beliefs, but it also includes practices and stories and relationships and ethical postures shared by folks from Switzerland as well as Democratic Republic of Congo. The thing about this kind of shared identity is that no one person or group gets to decide who is in and who is out.  

Asking the awkward questions of ourselves and of others, probing the history, reading the Bible, observing culture, arguing about which beliefs and practices are essential—these all help us discern the Anabaptist family resemblance. Note, though, that this only happens as we engage each other as equals, as we notice the differences, as we map the family tree of faith, and as we genuinely encounter and honor our shared participation in Jesus Christ.  

Are they really Anabaptists? Are we?  The joy comes not from pushing others out but from finding spiritual relatives—siblings in Christ—we did not know we had.