Christian community

Review: The New Anabaptists

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Cover image of "The New Anabaptist" by Stuart Murray

The New Anabaptists, Stuart Murray. Herald Press (ISBN: 9781513812984) 2024.

Summary: An effort to describe the practices emerging Anabaptist communities embody with three case studies as examples.

In 2010, Stuart Murray published The Naked Anabaptist, articulating the core convictions that have shaped the Anabaptist movement. In recent years, working with Mennonite church planting efforts, it became evident that a follow-up work was needed to, as it were, “clothe the naked Anabaptist” (this was considered as a title for this book). What Murray offers here is a description of common practices, reflecting Anabaptist heritage, that characterize these emerging communities. In six chapters, he explores twelve practices common to these communities. Following this, three case studies of diverse Anabaptist communities exemplify these qualities.

Murray’s first practice is a commitment to start with Jesus. He offers examples of war, baptism, tithing, oaths, and women in leadership to show how a commitment to start with Jesus works in each of these matters. Rather than treat the Bible as a “flat” book in which all parts have equal weight, he proposes that Anabaptists read all scripture in light of Jesus and treat the gospels as starting points.

Building on this, the other practices include baptism of would-be disciples and communion as a peace meal. Communion is understood as a celebration of Jesus’ radical work of peacemaking and it is a real meal, enjoyed in community. Closely related to this is the Anabaptist practice of hospitality, extending from shared meal to offering refuge. A commitment to a multi-voiced church in which members listen to each other include multi-voiced worship and biblical interpretation, non-hierarchical leadership, and consensual decision-making. I especially appreciate these last two in light of the abuses of leadership power and the stifling of dissent in authoritarian churches. Murray follows this by practices of truthtelling–mutual accountability and truth-telling, extending beyond not needing oaths to trustworthiness in our speech and actions.

The next two practices affirmed are simplicity and sharing. The author argues here against tithing, which he believes to have no New Testament foundation. Rather, the call is to live an uncluttered and generous lifestyle. This is reflected in a commitment to mutual aid and commonality. Finally, he describes practices of Anabaptist witness. This includes ethical evangelism: inviting without inducing, persuading without pressuring, friendship without strings, sensitivity without compromise, and humility that foreswears having all the answers. Anabaptist witness is also a peace witness. This means emphasizing restorative justice. And it means building bridges of understanding between different cultures and faiths.

In the second part of the book, three women offer case studies of emerging communities. Alexandra Ellish describes the Incarnate project of planting Anabaptist communities in the UK. Karen Sethuraman describes one of these communities, SoulSpace Belfast. She also shares the core values of a spinoff, Soulspace Bristol, an embodiment of Murray’s practices. Finally, Juliet Kilpin offers an account of Peaceful Borders. It offers support to a concentration of asylum seekers and refugees in Calais, France. Appendices to the book summarize core convictions and practices, and offer a liturgy for gathering around the table.

In concluding, Murray proposes that what he is doing is to articulate the spirituality and practices of post-Christendom churches. I think he properly diagnoses our moment. Rather than trying to return to the Christendom project, Murray returns to Jesus and practices reflecting a gospel-centered understanding of discipleship.

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Disclosure of Material Conection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Kingdom of Children

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The Kingdom of Children, R. L. Stollar, Foreword by Cindy Wang Brandt. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2023.

Summary: A liberation theology of the child that centers children in our theology and ecclesial life, arguing for their full humanity and their place as participants in the life of the whole church.

What place do children have in your church? Do you send them off to children’s church while adults do real church? Have we ever thought that we might learn from children? How much do children participate in the leadership of the church? Do we seek their input about curriculum and programs? How do we handle passages in scripture where children are featured, particularly where children in some way bring the word of God or act for God (think of Miriam and Samuel as children for example)?

R.L. Stollar raised all these questions for me in The Kingdom of Children. The book is subtitled “A Liberation Theology,” which for some may be off-putting. By this, Stollar centers the child in his theology, particularly the marginalized, suffering child. Like other liberation theologies, Stollar considers them as the image of God, even as marginalized, sometimes because of abuse, and often treated as less than full participants in the life of the Christian community. One of the most fascinating things is his consideration of God as child in the incarnation–the baby Jesus who does cry, pee and poop, who goes through the terrible twos “learning obedience,” who asserts his place to sit with religious teachers at twelve.

Stollar begins by looking at the situation of children both around the world and in the U.S., and how often they are vulnerable to abuse, even more if they are part of another marginalized group, and how they are often stripped of agency. This makes the case that child do need a liberation theology for them. Then he lists thirteen questions he thinks we must ask in developing a child liberation theology.

Several chapters are devoted to how we love children as we read the Bible, beginning with seven elements that need to be present including focusing on how children’s roles are featured, how we exclude children from stories, how stories where children are absent may imply a lot about children, and especially, that we need to read the Bible with children. He discusses how we read both the bad and good stories, the binding of Isaac as an example on one hand, and the stories of Miriam and Samuel on the other..

He turns from hermeneutics to theology, considering first the other gods as children and then Jesus as child. He considers children as God-to-us and particularly how we should not see them, including as vipers(!), subordinates, tools, blessings to collect (think “quiver full”), property, consumers, or as addenda to our lives. This is followed by chapters on children as prophets, priest, and theologians, particularly as theologians of play. One of the important insights here is to recognize that children, while not cognitively mature are capable of asking profound spiritual questions, having a spiritual inner life, and gaining insights that the whole community may benefit from.

To welcome children in this way is not to adultify them but to recognize their gifts to us as children. He argues that we need to see them as children, and understanding child development, at least in a basic way, is important for those who work with children. Stollar also presses us to think about how wide our welcome is: wide enough for the racially diverse? for those with disabilities? the neurodiverse? He contends for robust child protection systems to be in place for all children, but especially these groups, who are more subject to abuse.

Stollar concludes with inviting us to think about what it means for the kingdom to belong to children. One of the delightful features of this book is how Stollar practices this idea throughout, writing the book in accessible and not academic language and by providing an “including children” section in each chapter. I’m intrigued that Stollar even proposes including children in aspects of church leadership, especially in decisions that involve them.

I see the number of youth walking away from the churches they were raised in and can’t help wondering if the subtle ways we treat them as marginal, “junior” members that discounts both their human dignity and the work of God in their lives, contributes to this exodus. This book made me think about my own childhood. I actually think I was fortunate to have teachers and mentors recognized the work of God in me, who empowered me and others of us. It’s also making me think about the children in my own congregation and how we can welcome and learn from and empower them. I think Jesus would smile on this.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Loving Disagreement

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Loving Disagreement, Kathy Khang & Matt Mikliatos. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2023.

Summary: Moving beyond impasses or civil discourse to loving one another in Christian community while honestly engaging our conflicts through the working out of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

I’ve often found things are little different, and sometimes worse, in Christian community, when it comes to conflict. Often we’ll paper over differences with niceties and placations while we inwardly seethe. Or we just walk away. Or we just keep lots of things off the table and relate at very superficial levels. At its worst, we’ll line up everyone in the church on sides and demonize the others until we split the church.

Some propose the ideal of civil discourse, the best we can hope for in “civil” society. This means rules of engagement separating issues we disagree about and people we respect, reflective listening, avoiding ultimatums, looking for common ground. Kathy Khang and Matt Mikliatos believe we can do better than that in the Christian community because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the fruit this results in that give us the capacity to love across our differences.

The authors, who never met each other in person before writing this book together, practice what they preach. They come from very different cultural backgrounds. They alternate chapters on each of the fruit of the Spirit and ask questions of each other that tease out different perspectives that enrich the discussion. We see the two of them practice this at the very beginning of the book. Matt had initially been approached about writing the book, then Kathy had been proposed as a co-author. Matt thought Kathy would never do it and says, “I decided not to mention it to Kathy. I planned to politely decline for both of us.” Only when a mutual friend asked, “why are you saying no for Kathy” did he reconsider. In the introduction, we read how they process this, how Matt realizes the hurtful impact this has even though intent was good, and how Kathy has often had brothers speak for her as a woman and person of color. What Matt didn’t know was that this was a project she did have energy for. They model embarrassing honesty and grace, and something more–they discover a shared vision for something more than mere civility.

Reading the book, while I appreciated the unpacking of the meaning of each of the nine fruit of the Spirit, what I most appreciated was the dialogue between Matt and Kathy at the end of each chapter. Rather than the “Yes, but…,” that characterizes many dialogues, their are appreciative reflections and searching questions: how can I grow in love toward people I find the most challenging? do you have any examples of a conflict being resolved well and resulting in peacemaking? can speaking truth be kind and comfortable? what is the difference between the “niceness” that makes other people comfortable and the kindness that allows for clear action?

Along the way, discussions of fruit expose dysfunctions in many evangelical churches. The chapter on goodness lays bare the difference between goodness and the legalism many of us grew up with. They explore the difference between joy and toxic positivity. The chapter on self-control not only explores control of body, mind, and emotion but how we deal with anger and when we need to be angry.

Perhaps the key idea in this book is that Christ-shaped Christian community is worth fighting for. Instead of mere niceness or civility, there are times we need to get our disagreements out in the open, even while determined to stay in the ring out of love for those who are called into this same community. We will mess up, need to apologize, and forgive. And the world will see something compelling. The world knows how to fight but it doesn’t know how to love while fighting. The world has seen plenty of fights split people up. It hasn’t seen people fighting to stay together. That’s the kind of loving disagreement that Khang and Milkiatos says the Holy Spirit makes possible. They challenge us to ask, might we do better?

Review: Finding Freedom in Constraint

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Finding Freedom in Constraint, Jared Patrick Boyd. Downers Grove: IVP Formatio, 2023.

Summary: Proposes that constraints in terms of spiritual practices in the context of community, expose our inner desires, allowing them to be healed and formed by Christ.

You might do a double-take on the title of this book. Shouldn’t it read “Finding Freedom From Constraint”? There is no mistake here. It gets at the core idea (as many good titles do) that the author is proposing. As the founder of a missional monastic order, the Order of the Common Life, Boyd proposes that constraints, in the form of a rule of life of spiritual practices, is crucial in Christ’s transforming work in our lives. What he observes is that a crucial element to that transformation is communal practice. Our call to love God and one another cannot be practiced alone. We cannot love, and dies to our self-centeredness, without others. Nor can we die to pride and take on humility alone.

A crucial aspect of how constraint works to free is that spiritual constraints, like fasting, the constraint of food, lays bare our compulsions around food and what lies beneath (pain, trauma, grief) that we try to address with food. As we practice the constraint in community, we can offer these, with the support of others, to Christ for healing and transformation as we discover how deeply we our loved amid our disordered desires. The healing, ordering and purifying of desire allows us to burn more brightly, to “become all flame” for Christ.

The remainder of the book discusses six constraints that form a kind of rule of life–three that we choose and three to which we consent. The three we choose are silence and solitude, simplicity, and marriage or celibacy. In silence and solitude, we submit to the present, to simply attend to what comes, sifting and sorting our distractions, offering them to God, waiting for God, and coming to the place where we know and participate and rest in God. Simplicity is the constraint of our attention, through fasting as we pay attention to the meaning of food and eating, through clothing as we pay attention to what we wear and any attachments we have to clothing, and to our possessions and wealth. Marriage and celibacy have in common the giving away of one’s life for the sake of others. Boyd has some of the most original material on the constraint and practice of love in each state that I have seen and writes with special sensitivity to both gay and straight individuals who choose celibacy, guarding this as a choice rather than something imposed.

The three constraints to which we consent are formational healing, faults and affirmations, and discernment in community. Formational healing means allowing God access to all areas of our lives, open to God’s invitations, accepting the constraints of our stories and experiencing healing of disordered attachments that push God out of the center of our lives. “Faults and affirmations” is a communal practice in families and small groups in which we each confess our own faults and affirm others in their gifts and gracious acts. We practice discernment in community when we bring both personal decisions and those of a community to the community for their prayerful input, listening together for God’s invitation.

This is a book written for small groups and leadership communities to work through together. Each chapter concludes with practical ideas for pastors and church leaders, for small groups, and for parents. The author shares a number of ways he has practiced this in his own family with his wife and four children and vulnerably shares his own transformational journey. For those dissatisfied with the use of spiritual practices on an individual basis, Boyd offers a model of communal practice. And for those who wrestle with the tyranny of a life without constraints, Boyd offers a vision in which constraints free rather than bind.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: What Are Christians For?

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What Are Christians For?, Jake Meador. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022.

Summary: An argument for a Christian politics that recognizes the goodness of all creation including all peoples, that rejects the manipulation of people and places and our own bodies that disregards their nature.

Jake Meador begins this work with the story of Father Ted, who helped a journalist covering apartheid South Africa, escape house arrest and the country. He represents to Meador a kingdom politics committed to life for the whole of life. Meador argues that much of American Christianity divorces faith from creation, from our embodied life, and other human beings, all for our own political and economic ends.

Drawing on the work of Herman Bavinck and Willie Jennings, he describes the immense inheritance we have inherited in the creation and one another. We repudiate this in our Western disregard of both the places we inhabit, living in accord with the particular character of that place, and in our colonization, in our disregard the peoples there before us. The particular expression of our alienation from God for those in the West is the exaltation of whiteness, and the oppression of others. Our reductionist education results in a loss of wonder.

Another reformer points the way back. Martin Bucer taught that the renewal of our relationship with God in Christ renews our relationship to neighbor, to proper governance, and to the care of the land. We learn again to accept the givenness of nature and our place in it. We embrace the household, marriage, and sexuality lived within that relationship, and lives of faithfulness to one another in sickness and health. And we embrace the larger community of God’s people in a particular place. Meador upholds the model of the Bruderhof, who renounce private ownership of material possessions. He advocates for the more challenging work of being this community in one’s own city and neighborhood.

I’m wrestling with my reaction to this book. Meador has great facility for drawing together the work of various theologians, philosophers, and writers, along with some great personal stories. Yet I found the thread of this argument not easy to follow, and a more prolix statement of what Wendell Berry articulates so straightforwardly in What Are People For? and other essays. But it is an important and perceptive argument. The gospel not only restores us to God but to our embodied existence, each other as families and communities, states and the world, and to God’s good earth. It is apparent that our politically and economically captive churches have not heard this enough and this message is so urgent that it cannot be spoken and written and lived enough, until we recover a sense of what Christians are for.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Paul’s Idea of Community

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paul's idea of community

Paul’s Idea of Community (3rd Edition), Robert J. Banks. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020.

Summary: A study of how Paul understood the nature of community in the churches he planted, considered against the cultural backgrounds of first century AD Greco-Roman culture.

No writer of scripture has contributed more to our understanding of the nature of the church and the practices of Christian community than Paul. Yet we often read into Paul our own culture, resulting in our missing the cultural context in which Paul worked and how his writings addressed early believers in that culture. Robert J. Banks has devoted scholarly attention to this topic since the first edition of this volume in 1994. Now, he offers us an updated version of this work, drawing on the most recent research, reflected in an updated bibliography, and a additional appendix, offering a “narrative exegesis” of Paul in a fictional account of a visit to an early house church gathering.

He sets the early Christian movement in the context of other contemporary religions and emperor worship, as well as the social structures of the Roman world. He then discusses the distinctive character of Paul’s idea of Christian freedom–a freedom lived for others. In companion chapters, Banks describes the work setting in which house churches often existed, in a building with a shopfront where business was done, and gatherings in family quarters either in the back or in an “upper room,” and then the heavenly setting. He considers community in the context of the loving family household, calling attention to Paul’s use of family terminology, and the organic reality inherent in the use of “body” imagery.

The chapter on mutual learning and testing of faith was especially valuable, I thought, because of its focus of the knowledge element of faith. In a time focused on praxis, Banks reminds us how much the language of thinking and knowledge and testing is found in Paul’s writing. He shows how this informs faith, hope, and love, and distinguishes Paul’s use of “knowledge” from that of the mystery cults, stoics, cynics, and Judaism.

He considers the practical expressions of fellowship from baptism, to laying on hands, sharing of possessions and holy kisses, and especially the common meal, bringing people together from across the social classes of the day. He offers a trenchant analysis of Paul’s use of spiritual gift language and the configurations of their usage holding together the tension of grace and order. Diversity extends beyond gifts to gender, race, and class, and Banks shows the radical ways the early Christian movement overcame these distinctions in the practice of equality, albeit allowing for functional diversity. This equality eliminates distinctions between priests and laity, between officials and ordinary members, and between the holy and the common. Leadership is defined instead by function and not position. Banks argues here that the laying on of hands was not an “ordination” imparting a special grace but rather the recognition of congregational discernment in prayer and fellowship.

The last four chapters explore the relationship of “missioners” like Paul and his diverse companions to the church, a body sharing in partnership with that mission. He describes how Paul exercises his authority in relation to the other apostles and through both authoritative teaching and service. It is curious that Banks’ treatment of the Pastorals is relegated to an appendix, representing a deferral to scholarship that classifies these as “disputed.” He leaves the question for the reader to decide, noting both continuities and discontinuities and development from Paul’s thought.

Every chapter has been the subject of numerous books and monographs. What Banks accomplishes is to offer a comprehensive overview with both scholarly depth and the concision valuable for pastoral theologians who want to ground practice in solid biblical and sociocultural studies.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. The opinions I have expressed are my own.