On January 21, 1525, a few years after Martin Luther began the Reformation, Conrad Grebel re-baptized George Blaurock and thus the Anabaptist movement began. Five hundred years later, we as Brethren in Christ can trace our theological ancestry back to that day. Anabaptism can be considered our original theological stream.
This edition of the journal observes the five hundredth anniversary of Anabaptism. David Flowers, the new president of the Historical Society who has only been in the Brethren in Christ Church since 2016, tells the story of his journey into Anabaptism, offers a brief history of Anabaptism and the beginnings of the Brethren in Christ, and calls the church to reclaim our roots in Anabaptism: “Now is not the time for the Brethren in Christ U.S. to shy away from our Anabaptist heritage, our theological distinctives, and our core values and convictions. Those outside the church, as well as those who’ve been hurt by the church and have left, don’t want to know how we’re the same; they want to know how we’re different as the Brethren in Christ. Now is the time to rediscover our Anabaptist roots and own the heritage that goes to the heart of who we are.”
Two presentations from the 2024 Sider Institute conference on “Pursuing Peace in a Messy World” continue this theme. David Weaver-Zercher briefly explores the Brethren in Christ and peacemaking by highlighting four moments (he calls them signposts) in our history, and Osheta Moore describes the role of “the beloved community” in peacemaking. Our commitment to peace and nonviolence and our emphasis on the church as a community of believers are both rooted in our Anabaptist heritage.
The third feature is a much longer exploration of how to interpret the Bible’s apparent portrayal, especially in the Old Testament, of God as acting violently. Our Anabaptist forebears concluded that Christian are to be nonviolent, which they mostly derived from Jesus’s words in the Sermon on Mount and Jesus’s own actions, but that theological and moral stance has far broader biblical underpinnings. In the five hundred years since the Anabaptist movement began, only a minority of Christendom has embraced nonviolence, and many Christians have used the Old Testament depictions of God ordering violence to explain and/or justify war and violence. At the same time, many pacifist Christians have sought to make sense of the violence ordered by God, especially in the Old Testament. Gary Emberger, who taught biology at Messiah University for more than thirty years, has adapted an article that he originally published in a scientific journal for a Christian audience and offered it for publication here. Gary came to embrace peace and nonviolence during his years attending the Grantham (PA) Brethren in Christ Church. He and I acknowledge that some of the biblical arguments he offers challenge us to think differently about how we interpret the Bible.
Finally, the four book reviews explore books about how we got the Bible, how we stick together during polarizing times such as we’re living through right now, a new paradigm for evangelism, and a theologian and writer’s battle with eye disease and its spiritual implications..
Harriet Sider Bicksler, editor