The Naked Anabaptist

Book

Stuart Murray. The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith. Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2010. 

Reviewer

Jonathan Seiling, Research Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

This book is about Anabaptism’s evolution into “Neo-Anabaptism” or “hyphenated Anabaptism.” It offers perspectives on a modestly successful church planting movement over recent decades in Britain and Ireland, and offers practical examples of church planting in an Anabaptist key. Its ideas deserve to be scrutinized and discussed broadly by Mennonites and others interested in how Anabaptism can offer vibrant and relevant approaches to faith community formation.

Despite the book’s title, the author notes, alas, that “there is strictly no such thing as ‘naked Anabaptism’” (43); it is always culture-clad.

Murray is optimistic, if occasionally boastful, about Anabaptism’s prospects in “post-Christendom,” suggesting that “Jesus might be making something of a comeback” (56). He trumpets Anabaptist tenets in a way that sometimes sounds anti-ecumenical or exudes an air of triumphalism. Much of his book discusses seven core “convictions” of the Anabaptist Network in Britain and Ireland, with examples of how they reflect new forms of Anabaptism (43-134).

The book seeks to answer the questions “What is an Anabaptist? Where did Anabaptism come from? What do Anabaptists believe? Can I become Anabaptist? What is the difference between Anabaptists and Mennonites?”(16).

Much of it aims to convince readers that Anabaptism now means various things, some having no reference to historic Anabaptism. A primary aim is to inspire North American Mennonites either to reclaim aspects of ancestral faith or to envision how it can be re-clothed. An underlying notion is that there is a connection -- or that a stronger connection should be made -- between early Anabaptist tenets and the emerging church movement.

Although providing an overview of historic Anabaptism, this volume looks beyond traditional beliefs and practices. Murray’s premise is that Anabaptism’s rejection of Christendom and its attempt to form alternative faith communities is the best vehicle for navigating into post-Christendom and postmodern society, and that emerging church movements would do well to learn from historic Anabaptism. This premise deserves fuller explanation, especially since the author inverts the basic tenet of Anabaptist faith formation – believer’s baptism. The new mode of church growth becomes “belonging before believing.”

While the book offers insights into salient features of Neo-Anabaptism, some examples border on the ludicrous, such as that of the lesbian pot-smoker who dropped a cannabis habit and joined a conservative Baptist church after merely reading the Gospel of Luke, a decision apparently taken not because of any church community influence (59). Is this an instructive example of Anabaptism?

“Belonging before believing” aims to facilitate missional activity, suggesting Christian communities need to be belonger-friendly before enforcing beliefs or behaviors (60). Murray militates against traditional exclusivity and the infamous ban and shunning. “Belonging before believing,” however, implies a fundamental erosion of the traditional basis for believer’s baptism, namely repentance. Is this inverted approach not a Constantinian wolf in a postmodern sheep’s clothing?

Although Murray offers interesting examples of how it works in his context, these cases are not overly convincing, nor have this reviewer’s experiences of it in North America shown it to be fruitful. There is no shortage of churches that desperately try to swing their doors ever wider, even removing them entirely, in the hope that someone, anyone, might enter and call themselves a member.

In Canada neither Quakerism nor the United Church can point to lack of liberality, refusal to allow diversity, or enforcement of doctrinal conformity as the causes of low membership and sharp decline in numbers. Far from paving a way to reach post-Christendom, Murray has bought into the very principle making religious community now so uncommon, namely commitment to a shared set of beliefs.

The clarion call to repentance resounding throughout early Anabaptist writings scarcely has a role in Neo-Anabaptism, and is heard not as a call to recognize personal or even corporate sin but to admit guilt for being complicit with Christendom! (81)

For example, one man imbibed “Anabaptist values” over many years while participating in a community of faith but received water baptism only shortly before his death (similar to the experience of Emperor Constantine). What did his baptism signify? In such examples the author fails to grasp another related identity marker of early Anabaptism: the presence of the Spirit in the believer’s life. That element was a sine qua non, yet it plays a marginal role in Murray’s description of the British-Irish movement.

While this book may not be useful for applying core Anabaptist tenets either to the contemporary context in North America or beyond western societies, its ideas deserve to be debated. Church groups should see it more as a basis for discussing what growth means today than as a resource for growth. Though inappropriate for studying historical Anabaptism, with its British and Irish “Neo-Anabaptism” examples this volume could be helpful for comparative studies in ministry classes.