Jordan Ballor points out a trend that I too have noticed over the past few years:
Some years ago Robert Benne wrote an essay in First Things called “The Neo-Augustinian Temptation,” which he describes as a movement “committed to the construction of an independent and distinct churchly culture based upon the full narrative of Israel and the Church as it has been carried through the ages by the Great Tradition.”
But in light of Mark Tooley’s incisive piece appearing this week at the American Spectator, I think the trend might just as well be dubbed the “Neo-Anabaptist tempatation.”
As Tooley writes, “Traditional Anabaptists, such as the Mennonites, foreswore military service and public office while not contesting the civil state’s responsibilities, including armed force. But the new neo-Anabaptist movement is more aggressive, demanding that all Christians, and society, including the state, bend to pacifism. Traditional separatism has also compromised, with today’s many outspoken neo-Anabaptist voices pushing many insistent political demands that invariably align with the secular left and religious left.”
October 6th, 2010 | 11:14 am
Just more evidence of the contamination of the Christian church by the Sons of Karl.
October 6th, 2010 | 11:28 am
ahem: Karl Barth or Karl Rove?
October 6th, 2010 | 11:38 am
I can’t figure out what’s more ridiculous—Tooley’s claim that there’s a unified neo-Anabaptist movement, which includes Stanley Hauerwas, that wants to bend the state towards pacifism, or Ballor’s claim that Mark Tooley has written something that could be described as “incisive.”
As always, Tooley has written something more accurately described as “ideological”—painting his theological opponents into a caricatured corner that serves to free Tooley and his conservative allies from anything like a serious engagement with alternative theological ideas. This is very precisely Tooley’s project: just go to the IRD Web site and read page after page of Tooley dutifully caricaturing any theological position deemed inadequate by his wealthy and identified conservative benefactors.
The idea that John Howard Yoder thought the state could be pacifist is preposterous—Yoder thought the state a rebellious power defined by its violence. Moreover, Yoder argued that the very imperative to “bend” history to good ends—which he euphemized as “the calculating link” in contemporary ethical reflection—was undercut by the cross of Christ.
However, if “bend to pacifism” means “heralding before the watching world the alternative peace made possible by the enemy-loving death and resurrection of Jesus,” then yes, some so-called neo-Anabaptists are eager to bring this theology forthrightly into “the naked public square.”
Isn’t it interesting that Tooley’s discomfort with this robust christological theopolitical vision is combined with his manifest discomfort with the Christian confession of sin? I guess for Tooley Christians can talk publicly about Christ so long as they leave the particular shape of his life and death out of it, and as long as they accuse others of sin but never themselves.
October 6th, 2010 | 11:39 am
Correction: “wealthy and unidentified”.
October 6th, 2010 | 3:55 pm
Karl Marx. Thank you for playing.
October 6th, 2010 | 8:57 pm
One of the smaller errors in this piece is it’s insistence that the religious left is pacifistic, when this is demonstrably not the case. How the author has forgotten their constant entreaties for military “peace-keeping” intervention in Africa, I don’t know.
The <Sojourners-led religious left is a movement dedicated to bringing about a state-enforced, worldwide regime of good feelings. The fact that this looks pacifistic to any serious observer suggests one of two things: either the author classes all objections to current US foreign policy as pacifism, or he assumes that everyone who he detests takes care to fall perfectly into lockstep.
October 7th, 2010 | 8:18 pm
I used to think pacifists were well-meaning but mistaken. I’ve finally come to realize they are lazy illogical cowards, but that’s OK because God loves them anyway. I just don’t want any of them living on my block during an emergency, if its all the same to Him.
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