A response to Bonnie Kristian’s review of the Anabaptist Community Bible

A homophobic interpretation of the Bible is as much a product of its context as one that liberates queer people.

I was honored to be a part of the Anabaptism at 500 advisory committee, as well as contribute to the Anabaptist Community Bible itself. I was proud to write an intro to Philemon and an essay on contextual theology. The topic essays at the end of the Bible are some of my favorite parts. But evidently, they aren’t everyone’s favorite.

I found out recently that Bonnie Kristian, a writer for Christianity Today, published a cynical review of the Anabaptist Community Bible earlier this month. Frankly, I was happy not to read it when it came out. But when I did get to it, I told the advisory committee and some friends that I took major issue with her critiques—I even felt defensive.

The Anabaptist Community Bible is a Bible that comes complete with community commentary from over 500 churches, scholars, and historic Anabaptist witnesses. The translation of the Bible is the Common English Bible; and while we wrestled with including international voices, we stuck with largely American voices because the Bible is an American English version.

Kristian notes that the most distinctive feature is the aforementioned marginalia. She praises both the Anabaptist scholar and witness notes, but pauses at the community notes, which she pejoratively dismisses as an “odd jumble of observations and queries any lay Bible study is likely to produce.” She argues that some of the comments are intended for “group discussion,” but some others “have an agenda” (like questioning why anyone would object to women’s ordination today). Kristian’s critiques are transparently partisan—or rather, to use her term, agenda-driven. Of course, critiquing community commentators for having an agenda, whilst not acknowledging her own agenda, is simply put, as our Lord says in the Gospels, hypocrisy. On top of all, to add to her condescension, she quipped that we should take her dismissal as a compliment.

I think it is ungenerous to reduce the Spirit-led community notes the way she did. In fact, I read the thousands of comments church groups made, and I believe the Holy Spirit indeed spoke through the community. For me, it was a confirmation of the Anabaptist communitarian biblical hermeneutic and evidence that the Bible can be read, loved, known, and interpreted by anyone—no seminary degree, or Evangelical interpretation, required.

The beauty of the Anabaptist Community Bible is found in the diversity of voices in the communal hermeneutic it contains. Perhaps to Kristian’s surprise, the many voices that contributed to the Bible are as theologically diverse as Anabaptism is—we had contributions from Hutterites, members of the Bruderhof community, and the conservative Brethren In Christ, along with more progressive voices from MC USA and other denominations and traditions. Kristian may wonder “if it is enough,” but I found the comments to be challenging to my own worldview and affirming of my own interpretations of the Bible. It’s a shame Kristian couldn’t see beyond her own bias.

She praises some of the topical essays, particularly Meghan Larissa Good’s essay on Christocentrism, one that the committee worked hard on, as well as Stuart Murray’s essay on early Anabaptistic biblical engagement. She says it is in that final section of the Bible where she might spend her most time. Our goal for the topical essays was to offer answers and context to questions people have about reading the Bible. We imagined what might get people to not read the Bible and tried to help them engage scripture with our essays.

Kristian didn’t share that viewpoint, especially when it came to my essay on contextual theology. In that essay, I simply argue that the Bible was written in a context and we should read it in its original context, but also read it in our variety of contexts. Kristan certainly does that herself, but for some reason, won’t extend the same courtesy to those with whom she disagrees.

I offered a brief survey of contextual theologies, which Kristian demeans as rehearsing a “usual list.” I guess liberation theology, black theology, and womanist theology are just “usual things” for her, but I do not think they are something most laypeople are familiar with. But she particularly takes issue with my four sentences on queer theology. She spends far more time in her review discussing her criticisms of queer theology (and of me) than I do in the essay on that subject.

My treatment of the subject reads as follows:

“Queer theology not only offers a biblical interpretation and theology from queer or LGBTQIA people but also seeks to ‘queer’—that is, challenge, complicate, or skew-binary lines in all theologies. Though queer theology is often interested in gender and sexuality as they relate to the Bible and Christianity, it seeks out all the in-between spaces that are often ignored by either-or forms of thought. This not only results in a reading of the text that is affirming for queer folks but often challenges forgone conclusions about the Bible and Christian life in general.

Christianity itself incorporates many elements that queer theology seeks to highlight. Christianity is queer, says theologian Linn Marie Tonstad, ‘because it is about strange intimacies and transgressions of binaries" and "because it is about radical inclusion and love."

For Kristian, even that very light treatment was too much gayness for the Bible. Despite my noting that queer theology, very much like Anabaptism itself, challenges norms established by the authorities and is useful for everyone regardless of whether they are queer or affirming, Kristian reduces my passage to an ideological piece that simply reiterates “modern sentiments.”

She calls it a “surprising and strident way to conclude the essay section of the Bible intended for the whole of contemporary Anabaptism.” Of course—the four sentences on queer theology are hardly a summary of the Anabaptist Community Bible, and her shock of its inclusion tells us more about Kristian’s agenda than about me, the essay, or the Bible.

What’s worse is that Kristian covers her own bias by using Anabaptists in the Global South as a shield. She argues that members of the Global South are likely to be conservative on issues of sex and gender, while simultaneously saying they probably wouldn’t even access this Bible, which is largely selling in the West.

Yes, it’s true, I offered a tiny bit of understanding into queer theology. And sure that may isolate many people, including conservatives in the Global South. But I want to emphasize this very plain fact to Kristian. My family are culturally conservative immigrants from Egypt. I am a queer person deeply familiar with that cultural ethic and I am prepared to challenge it, even if it offends homophobic people in the Global South. I am acquainted and familiar with not only the culture she appropriates for her own bigotry, but also comfortable naming the homophobia she exploits as a product of Western colonialism. I’m not alone in that perspective either, and despite what Kristian says, some of the 370,000 Ethiopians that she said probably won’t read this Bible are, in fact, queer. Queer people are everywhere.

Impressively, she critiques the Bible as too Western-centric, because of its largely American scholarship, while also saying non-Western readers would be put off by it. She proceeds to zero in on any hint of queer-affirming theology or commentary in the text, like she had Terminator’s vision lens on.

She acknowledges that Westerners may “raise an eyebrow” at this essay and some of the notes. The beauty of a communal hermeneutic is in fact to expand our minds—raising eyebrows is actually a good thing when we are reading the Bible together. We should learn from one another and grow together. That’s the special thing about reading the Bible together, and if that’s what the Anabaptist Community Bible does, then it succeeds at its goals. I praise it for that accomplishment.

For Kristian though, that’s not a benefit of the Anabaptist Community Bible, but something to guard against. She dismisses the ordinary concerns readers might have about passages of the Bible where God seems judgmental as an “unfamiliarity with Scripture.” She’s disappointed that the volume’s editors included “misguided and ignorant” comments in the notes—what she really means are notes that she disagrees with or that cause her some discomfort. She then openly projects her own issues with MC USA and her reason for her departure from the church on to the Anabaptist Community Bible itself.

She thinks that the “knowledge and understanding” of Anabaptists 500 years ago is at risk of being lost at MC USA, I suppose, in part, because of our affirmation of queer people. She continues to tell us she’s no longer a Mennonite because of how “unsteady” Anabaptism is because it’s not “solidly grounded” on scripture. She is much happier in creedal and liturgical traditions that place “authority in ordained, seminary-educated ministers” (by the way, I am ordained and seminary-educated, but never mind that).

Despite leaving the Mennonite church, Kristian wants to remind us that Anabaptists died for their hunger for and submission to scripture. For her purposes, I suspect that merely means a submission to a homophobic hermeneutic. As far as I am concerned, that is a shocking and strident way to end a partisan critique of the Anabaptist Community Bible, especially during an era where Trump’s policies will increase queer suicidality and may very well put trans and queer people to death.

The best way then to follow the radical Anabaptist witness is to stand arm-in-arm, side-by-side with queer people as they face their oppressors and death itself. Not to simply double-down on well-trodden, rehearsed, and bigoted interpretations of the Bible as Kristian openly does in her transparently agenda-driven review.