Just what is an Anabaptist Christian?

I get that question all the time. What is an "Anabaptist" (anti-baptist!?)? What do Mennonites (and Brethren in Christ) believe? Do we have strange rituals? Do we drive buggys? Are Mennonites all vegetarians?

I was asked to prepare a Sunday School lesson for an adult class at Emmanuel Faith Chapel, an inner-city, storefront African-immigrant congregation in Las Vegas, Nevada (yes, Las Vegas) that belongs to the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference. The church seeks to serve the poor and marginalized in obedience to James 1.27, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from being polluted by the world." This small church, despite its chronic challenges, is a church committed to personal holiness and aid to the marginalized, and it is a breath of fresh air in a world of churches more concerned about the color of the new carpet in the narthex.

So, I get "the question" from one of the new seekers at Emmanuel Faith Chapel -- what is an Anabaptist/Mennonite/Brethren in Christ? I supposed I could have spoken at length about the Radical Reformation in Europe, or the Great Awakening in the USA. Instead, here's how I tried to answer her...

Anabaptists build our faith on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Yeah, I know, so does every other Christian. But Anabaptism has a unique Jesus-foundation. We think all of Jesus matters: birth, life, teachings, death, resurrection, ascension, promised return. All of it matters in the here and now. No part of Jesus is walled off by history, or irrelevant until the Millennium. All of Jesus matters. Period. Anabaptist were "red-letter Christians" before Gutenberg invented red ink. Because all of Jesus matters; all of Jesus matters to everyone, everywhere. The Gospel is contemporary, universal and transcultural (I didn't use those words at Emmanuel Faith Chapel). Because all of Jesus matters to everyone, everywhere, our faith takes on three essential dimensions...

First, Anabaptists see Jesus as the foundation of our prosperity. Yes, sports fans, I used the Pentecostal formulation. I work among and with leaders who see Fred Price and Joel Osteen and even Rev. Ike as role models. Ignoring the economic dimension of the Gospel with folks who are poor and who minister with the poor is just arrogantly stupid. But, and this is important. Jesus provides us a foundation for prosperity by freeing us from that which enslaves us. I told my sisters and brothers that Jesus does not care one bit if you are ever rich. Jesus does care that each and every one of us gets released from that which enslaves us and binds us and addicts us and alienates us. The foundation to prosperity is not giving me a nice car or company jet. The foundation to prosperity is finding freedom from bondage through hearing the truth about ourselves: we are broken people; we are deliberate sinners; we are completely loved by God; we are saved by the faith of Christ. When we are free enough to accept that truth, that grace, we will be free enough to practice the kind of good economic stewardship that allows us to build and share our financial resources.

Second, Anabaptists see Jesus as the foundation of our pain. Jesus doesn't mince words. He says his disciples are required to take up their cross and follow Jesus. Christianity is not magic nor medicine. the purpose of Jesus was to take away the sin of the world, not necessarily the pain of the world. In our pain-denying culture, Jesus invites us to pathos (again, not a word I used at Emmanuel). The symbol of the theater is two masks, side by side. One mask represents comedy; the other represents tragedy. In the modern western church, we are willing to embrace the comedic (or at least score a cheap laugh or two), but we run and hide when tragedy shows us. The Amish, fellow Anabaptists and younger cousins of the Mennonites, taught the world about the Jesus way in the face of tragedy when a rural school was the object of a gunman a couple of years ago. Parents who had lost their children that day went to the widow of the man who shot their little girls, and forgave them. Such forgiveness is not a denial of pain, but an embrace of grace in the midst of pain. I have been wronged in ways much smaller that the parents of the Nickel Mines Amish community...I wish I could forgive half as well.

Third, Anabaptists see Jesus as the foundation of our purpose. We are purpose-driven people. But with apologies to my friend Rick Warren and the wonderful cottage industry that has sprung up (and the income derived therein does great good in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic)...Anabaptists do not seek our purposes...we seek God's purposes. Now I know how smarmy and uber-pietistic that can sound. Hear me out. Anabaptists seek to surrender our ambition and our purposes to God and fill our lives with God's purposes. This is why community is so important. I can't figure out the Divine Purpose all by my lonesome. It takes a church to discern the will of God. I need help to be a faithful disciple. I need to work with others to live into the peace of God in Christ. If I want to live a holy life, I must live in community with others....

I suppose I could have said more. I didn't. I suppose it may be hubris or an oxymoron to suggest that Anabaptists are Jesus-centered Christians...but its the best I've got...