Mennonite but not Anabaptist
A call to end ‘cannibalism’ in Mennonite churches
by Chad S. MasonPrint Article Email to a Friend
This [article] excludes all infant baptism, the highest and chief abomination of the pope.—Article I, Schleitheim Confession (1527)
Baptism is the basic sacrament of initiation, in which a new relationship is established between the candidate and the Church. The candidate formally embarks on the way to discipleship, and the community commits itself to guide the candidate in the following of Christ.—Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J. (1986)
The members of a rural Mennonite congregation stared at me with a peaceful but quizzical silence. They were gracious and hospitable people and were giving me the benefit of the doubt. Drawing from an obscure line by Stanley Hauerwas, I had suggested that “infant baptism can only be practiced with integrity by communities like the Mennonites.” Seeing their reaction, I assured them that in my own Mennonite congregation we do not practice infant baptism, since we believe it to be an inferior practice to convert baptism, but we do honor infant baptisms performed elsewhere. They remained gracious but still apparently unsettled, and I feared I might be lousing up my appearance as a guest preacher.
Their meetinghouse rests quietly on the broad alluvial valley of a winding, sluggish river in southeastern Iowa, where the soil is rich and dark. On a calm summer day you can almost hear the corn growing, and your listening is as likely to be interrupted by the clomping of a horse-drawn carriage as by the sound of automobiles.
This valley has been the home of Amish and Mennonite farmers for more than 130 years. It may be a long way from Schleitheim in time, distance and circumstance, but the rhetoric of the Radical Reformation still carries much emotional potency here.
However, it is important to situate that rhetoric in its historical context, lest we misunderstand and misuse it today. “Anabaptism” is rebaptism, not simply believer’s baptism. (The prefix ana- means “again.”) The first generation of radical reformers had to be called Anabaptists because everyone in European society was already baptized; there were no unbaptized proselytes available to the first radical reformers. Subsequent generations of radical reformers continued to be called Anabaptists, not because they refused to baptize their own children but because they remained willing to rebaptize Catholic and Protestant converts.
State power: In rebaptizing their converts, radical reformers publicly rejected the indiscriminate practice of infant baptism in medieval Europe and its entanglement with the machinations of state power. Today Christians of all kinds have lauded the theological and political vision of the Anabaptists. In a time when baptism inducted a new German citizen but seemed to have lost its connection with the way of Jesus, one could fairly ask whether such a baptism was fully Christian. In the context of 16th-century Europe, rebaptism served as a clarion call for Christians to reconnect baptism with discipleship and to disconnect baptism from state control. Anabaptism constituted an alternative society amid warring church-state complexes and called people out from those complexes of power to embrace the weakness of Christ. Today the radical reformers are widely admired for issuing that call under the constant threat of martyrdom.
But what should we as Mennonites think about the current time, when Catholics—especially in Europe and the United States—are no less disenfranchised than we are from the corridors of worldly power? Should infant baptism continue to be a church-dividing issue now that our Catholic neighbors practice baptism, of infants and adults, discriminately as part of an intentional process of disciple-making? What shall we do when infant baptism comes unglued from its historical Christendom apparatus and no longer serves as a rite of entry to civil society? Under such conditions, can Mennonites legitimately exclude all infant baptism? Such exclusion surely lacks the theological and political relevance it had for the brethren at Schleitheim.
Simply put, Catholic baptism is no longer coincident with worldly citizenship. Catholics themselves are keenly aware of this. They conduct their baptisms not in private but during Sunday Mass, as public initiations to God’s alternative society. They know that if their children are going to stay Catholic, they will need the purposeful care of the Catholic community. They’ll need strong parishes and committed Catholic parents and mentors; they may even need Catholic schools. Catholics know they are resident aliens, a subculture distinct from its surrounding host. In postmodern America, Catholics know they must intentionally cultivate Catholic beliefs and practices in order to prevent their extinction by American beliefs and practices.
Sound like anybody you know?
Personal reasons: Granted, I am not aware of any Mennonites today who would require rebaptism for Christians of other communions to join their congregations. But many Mennonites remain willing to rebaptize new members who request it for personal reasons. In other words, because the theological and political function of Catholic infant baptism has changed, the prevailing Mennonite rationale for rebaptism has also changed. Today our willingness to rebaptize is most often rationalized in ways that seem to owe more to the Declaration of Independence than the Schleitheim Confession. We justify rebaptism by arguing that the individual did not choose her infant baptism and cannot remember it, so it somehow lacks “meaning” or “personal importance” for her.
I have grave theological concerns about this language. It suggests that baptism serves essentially private functions, aiding the candidate’s pursuit of happiness by providing her with fond memories and a sense of personal spiritual enrichment.
In 21st-century America, rebaptism may serve to underwrite individualism, which is as perilous to Mennonites as to Catholics. In America, and perhaps elsewhere, rebaptism contributes to the modern deception that baptism is a private matter and not a public initiation to God’s alternative society. Mennonites ought to stop rebaptizing people—even those who request it—and not only because rebaptism is disrespectful of Catholics. In our context, rebaptism is also disrespectful of our own Mennonite commitment to the church as a public reality larger than the individual. Our capitulation to the autonomy of the individual, manifested in our ongoing willingness to rebaptize upon request, is not only a kind of predation on other communions; it is a kind of cannibalism of our own. By handing baptism over to the choice of the individual, we are eating ourselves alive.
After all, if we accept a wayward Catholic’s rejection of her baptism on the grounds that she did not choose it and can’t remember it, what answer can we muster for the departing Mennonite who rejects our faith on the grounds that he was merely born and raised Mennonite?
The world is not medieval anymore. All Christian communions have now been removed from power by Western liberalism. Thus have we come, ironically, to a historical moment when Mennonites may need to reject Anabaptism in order to preserve the Mennonite association of baptism with discipleship and the Mennonite disassociation of baptism from power. Especially in places like southeastern Iowa, it has become fair to ask which community is closer to being in power, Mennonites or Catholics. The answer, of course, is neither. Both now stand in solidarity as varied expressions of God’s alternative society, distinct from the dominant power of American individualism.
In order to be radical in their proclamation to such power, Mennonites should refuse rebaptism to every person who wishes to act as his own pope. Perhaps then we may all, together, eat the flesh and blood of Jesus instead of our own.
Chad S. Mason is pastor at Christ Community Church, a Mennonite Church USA congregation in Des Moines, Iowa.
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Additional Notes
From Article 11 (“Baptism”) of Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective:
We believe that the baptism of believers with water is a sign of their cleansing from sin. Baptism is also a pledge before the church of their covenant with God to walk in the way of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Believers are baptized into Christ and his body by the Spirit, water, and blood.
...
Christian baptism is for those who confess their sins, repent, accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and commit themselves to follow Christ in obedience as members of his body, both giving and receiving care and counsel in the church. Baptism is for those who are of the age of accountability and who freely request baptism on the basis of their response to Jesus Christ in faith.
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I identify with the confusion of the Mennonite congregation that heard Chad Mason suggest that Mennonite churches should refuse to give believer’s baptism to Catholics, even if they request it. His argument is based on two ideas; 1) that Anabaptists rejected infant baptism primarily because it was associated with the power of Christendom, and, 2) that to honor a person’s request to be baptized as an adult is to cave in to modern individualism. Both of these ideas are extremely questionable. To honor a person’s desire to publicly express their faith and their commitment to Christ and the church through baptism does not necessarily mean we are exalting personal choice above the community of faith. I teach in a setting where the majority of my students have been baptized as infants in either the Catholic or Russian Orthodox churches. This hardly makes them members of a countercultural alternative society. Infant baptism, at least in this part of the world, is a practice that leads to the majority being merely nominal church members. Every time I teach on the topic of baptism I hear from Catholic and Orthodox students who regret their being baptized as infants, and deeply wish they had been active participants in their own initiation into the community of faith. The article concludes by proclaiming, “Mennonites should refuse rebaptism to every person who wishes to act as his own pope”. So if a Catholic joined our community and requested adult baptism we should assume they wish to act as their own pope and refuse them? Steve Dintaman Theology Department Chair LCC International University Lithuania
One significant omission from Chad's article is the New Testament command of repentance and baptism by those who can make a choice to follow Jesus. The desire and conviction of Menno Simons and other Anabaptist fathers to return to the simplicity of wholehearted devotion to Jesus as described in the New Testament was a major factor in my decision to come into the Mennonite Church nine years ago. Sadly, as my mentor who helped me enter this family of faith said when he resigned his credentials in the Mennonite Church, "the church is leaving the very convictions our forefathers died for." I do not ask my Catholic friends to abandon the particulars of their faith in order to have fellowship; why should that which is a foundation of my faith ( and our Mennonite forefathers) be abandoned as well? I wonder how Menno would respond to the challenge for Mennonites to reject Anabaptism?
Brother Mason seems to be tending toward the seige mentality that many Christians have in the United States. Christianity is no longer the establishement, and so many Christians of various stripes band together, circle the wagons, and do their best to fight as one against the decadent forces of society. The problem is, we still have major differences with those churches who perhaps would still control society if they could. I'd venture to guess that the pastors of many of our local Catholic and Protestant churches pray for "our troops" in their services. Most of them likely also have the flag of the United States in their sanctuary. Some Mennonite churches even do this. Although I did read awhile back of a Methodist church that took the American flag out of the sanctuary, voting to only bring it in on patriotic holidays. I don't wish to cast aspersions on the sincerity of those who value their infant baptisms. However, brothers Dintaman and Hutchings make good cases for us to hold fast to our insistance on believers' baptism.
Any church that baptises babies and attempts to justify any war such as WW1, WW2, Korea etc as part their catechism eg the Catholic church, obviously doesn't understand the gospel of the kingdom of God, so how can they say they demostrate repentance and believe the gospel of the Kingdom of God? Their understanding of the gospel is faulty. The gospel dosn't allow Christians to attempt to justify war or to 'baptise' babies. Also last time I checked babies can't demostrate repentance or belief so how do they qualify for baptism? Repentance comes before baptism not after. Infant baptism isn't a baptism at all according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am one former catholic who was baptised as an adult but I have rejected that Catholic baptism and was rebatised into a Mennonite congregation. My baptism into the Catholic church still makes me feel ashamed,stained, dirty and spiritually raped because I was not taught the gospel according to Jesus but merely the doctrine of the Catholic church.How dare someone say that an individual should not be allowed rebaptism!My mennonite baptism not only brought me into the Mennonite fold but it also washed away the semen of the catholic catechism! Their belief in just war and infant baptism and my acceptance of their 'gospel' meant that I was, in my ignorance at the time, affirming that war can be justified and the rest of their catechism. Using the logic of this article are we anabaptists to accept the baptism of Mormons who wish to become Mennonites?
As I was working today I thought of those Catholics and Mennonites and others who have been baptised only by pouring and who have then moved to the Baptists or other denominations who only accept baptism by full emersion. Are these people, who have been onced baptised by pouring and then rebaptised by full emersion protestants or anabaptists? Baptism is only meaningful if it means something to the individual who is baptised and to the congregation that witnesses it (both). After all, for an anabaptist-baptism is only a symbol - it cannot save. Does anyone think God cares about rebaptism except that baptism is at least done? - water baptism is largely for our (outward)benefit to show the conversion and continued obedience of the convert to Jesus' commandments. It is God who baptises and saves with the Holy Spirit and adds to His Church (Matt 3:11).Were those who were baptised by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3,4)already baptised by water?Were not some converts baptised by the Holy Spirit before they were baptised by water? God expects continual conversion and turning away from sin and that is what is important to God (Matt 3:11,Luke 3:16). So for all those theologians who would play 'God' in regards to water baptism should take a good look at their position of judging others who have been rebaptised. I would be interested to know if these 'once only baptism' theologians also believe that 'a person once saved is always saved'. And let us not forget that both Hitler and Stalin were both baptised. Were their water baptisms of any use to God?
Writing in the April 2003 edition of Mennonite Quarterly Review, A. Orley Swartzentruber said: "In the history of Israel there is no instance of a pagan man (such as Cornelius or the Philippian jailor) asking to be joined to the People of Israel, while leaving the rest of his household outside of the Covenant until such time as each of them came to a personal decision. If the transition from the Old Covenant to the New had entailed such a break with the prevailing corporate thinking about families, we could expect to find some statement of it somewhere in the New Testament. Instead we read that the Philippian jailor was told, "You will be saved, you and your household . . ." and that "he was baptized at once, with all his family. (Act 16). "The central, tragic Anabaptist fallacy has been to regard itself as the True Church, instead of recognizing itself as a community within that church, structured on a monastic model, distinct from the church by virture of a more disciplined life . . . but continuous with it and not separate or antithetical to it." "Mennonites have succumbed to the Enlightenment notion that ideas and understandings are the one thing necessary. One must understand or one cannot be saved. By the same token, if one understands and believes, the sacraments of the Gospel are practically redundant." Swartzentruber was born into an Amish-Mennonite family, served as a missionary under the Elkhart Board, and later served as a priest under the Episcopal Church, USA.
In regards the posting of friesensle:I don't know of any anabaptists who believe they belong to the 'true' church.It is simply a case of belonging to a christian church that bases it's practises on scripture and the practises and teachings of the early church, not on a theology that goes beyond scripture. E.g baptising babies and justifying war.(check out the Catholic catechism, under the heading of 'war') To believe anything, a person must have weighed the pros and cons of the subject at hand or that which is under consideration. Without understanding (enlightenment) the pros and cons of any subject how is one to come to a decision to agree(believe) or to disagree (disbelieve)? It is not a case of being or not being anabaptist it is a question of a rational decision based on scripture.It just so happens that anabaptists, at least the ones I know of, have a belief that is in accord with scripture and the teachings and practises of the early church (ante-Nicene).Yes, of course a person can choose to move to another denomination, but for one to embrace a belief that war can be justified and that infant baptism is Ok, shows that a person is moving from a belief based on scripture to a decision made on 'idea's' Christianity. Jesus Christ isn't interested in an 'idea's' christianity, Christ is interested in whether we obey His teachings. One of those teachings is to believe, repent, and be baptised. A child's baptism is meaningless. I feel that there is too much christianity these days that are based on an individual's 'ideas'- theology rather than scripture. Infant baptism would be better done with soap to be of any use.
I was raised in a tradition that cared less about baptism than I care about the Pope. I've spent the last 21 years of my life as an unbaptized Christian. Next week I will be baptized in the Jordan river. Sitting here in a Palestinian shop, I'm forever thankful that I'm making this decision rather than someone making it for me for the sake of a tradition mired in hierarchy and violence. Underlining this article is a rant on the wickedness of modern individualism. A month ago, I spent a day in Hebron with a CPT'er who prefers to protect Palestinians from Israeli bullets over taking the eucharist with his home community, is this individual not where Jesus would be? There are forms of discipleship that defy tradition and community. The most radical ones often do. Recently I spent 3 weeks in the West Bank, in Bethlehem, Hebron, and Nablus and where ever I went I met an Anabaptist presence. When was the last time you saw Catholic in Hebron? Radical discipleship is just too individual I assume. Ask yourself if doing Church is taking the eucharist in cozy Des Moines or eyeing up an Israeli M16.