Abstract
This is a disappointing book from a potentially interesting source. A collection of nine essays by North American writers, it is effectively the product of two workshops initiated by the Humanitas Anabaptist-Mennonite Centre at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. Theoretically, the focus is limited and clear, inasmuch as it seeks an understanding of Anabaptist identity through its theological roots and contemporary methodology. The ‘elephant in the room’ throughout (which is scarcely concealed) is the impact of the vision of Harold Bender in his 1944 book The Anabaptist Vision, and then subsequently the contribution of John Howard Yoder, notably in his influential The Politics of Jesus. This present volume concentrates on reactions to what is seen as the narrow and constricting vision set out by both writers, which is then further complicated by Yoder’s fall from grace, following the revelation of his serial sexual abuse of numerous women.
Paul Martens’ opening essay is a fairly concise exposition of the nature of the presenting problem. He refers to Anabaptist traditions and their title deeds from the Reformation period, implicitly referring to both their commitment to ‘believers baptism’ and the consistent pacifist strand in their thought and practice and thus also the polity which flowed from these. Martens also includes the contribution of Menno Simons and the emergence of the Mennonite arm of the Anabaptist tradition. Karl Koop’s essay, which follows, expands on this general theme; both writers explore issues of distinctiveness and a contrasting openness, the latter of which avoids what they describe as narrowness and indeed a tendency towards sectarianism.
Thereafter, however, the clarity of focus is lost in a series of issue-based essays which often bewilder through their use of what feel to be almost ‘private languages’. So Laura Schmidt Roberts, exploring tradition, text and narrative using Paul Ricoeur’s critique, includes one sentence of 56 words in total: her final phrase, which concludes ‘due to the pluriform and underdetermined nature of historical traditions and their texts and due to the perspectival locatedness of interpreters’ (p. 35), is an indicator of both a syntactical and a linguistic complexity that would make this and other sentences perfect candidates for ‘Pseud’s corner’ in the British context! Women’s issues, ‘Queering Anabaptist theology’ and ‘Trauma-informed methods in Mennonite theology’ follow.
The situation is rescued to a degree with Jeremy Bergen’s clear and informative piece on the ecumenical vocation of Anabaptist theology. Bergen cleverly includes issues relating to Bender and Yoder in his analysis. R. Bruce Yoder’s essay on the dialogue between indigenous theological methodology in West Africa and the twentieth-century Anabaptist vision is interesting as a worked example of a wider debate. Paul Doerksen returns to questions of distinctiveness and constraint, using Stanley Hauerwas’s critique of Mennonite theological tendencies. Perhaps the mistake is to have produced a collection for general publication that seems to echo Anabaptists talking among themselves, despite their sharply avowed message within these essays of the need to avoid sectarian tendencies.