In a liberal democracy, there is still plenty for Anabaptists to resist

Our formation in Europe came out of resistance to the state church that ruled all citizens. In the U.S., we need to resist war, civil religion, and Christian nationalism.

In After Christendom, theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes, “Because Christians have been so concerned with supporting the social and legal institutions that sustain freedom of religion, we have failed to notice that we are no longer a people who make it interesting for a society to acknowledge our freedom...We thus fail to remember that the question is not whether the church has the freedom to preach the Gospel in America, but rather whether the church in America preaches the gospel as truth... Freedom of religion is a temptation… [that] tempts us as Christians to believe that we have been rendered safe by legal mechanisms.”

Hauerwas’s argument is unlike one that I have ever encountered. He argues that freedom of religion—not God—has become the thing that renders us safe. In other words, freedom of religion has become a god unto itself for some of us. This is a tricky argument to make. After all, persecution is hardly preferable to having the freedom to worship a God freely. For Anabaptists though, this particular freedom can obscure an awareness of our foundations.

Anabaptism began as a response to the magisterial reformers whom we didn’t believe reformed the church enough. While the magisterial reformers, particularly Zwingli, separated church from state, the Anabaptists wanted to do more. In particular, we wanted to baptize (or re-baptize) adults, as another way to distinguish the Church of Jesus Christ from the state. Our predecessors were persecuted as a result. Some fled; some were martyred. The commitment to non-participation in the state church formed the contemporary Mennonite faith theologically and politically. Those beginnings were without any doubt oppressive, but one thing was clear: our allegiance was to God and God alone.

Anabaptists who fled to the United States no longer felt persecuted by the state, because we were free to worship as we pleased in this country which does not forcibly baptize infants into its citizenry. The post-Enlightenment secularization that Europe experienced during the Protestant Reformation found its crowning achievement in the creation of the United States. The United States, while still quasi-religious, had no official religion or church. All people, theoretically, are free to worship whomever and however they want. To be sure, in practice, this hasn’t always worked, especially when one considers the experience of Jews, Catholics, and Muslims, for example. However, the pressures that necessitated Anabaptism in Europe were, fortunately, not in force in the U.S. Freedom of worship in the U.S. is a great thing, and far better, in my opinion than the French tradition of laïcité, which emphasizes its citizens’ freedom from religion. I prefer our rubric: freedom of religion along with our separation of the church and state.

 The freedom that our predecessors experienced in the United States didn’t need to weaken their own convictions, and it doesn’t need to now. But what we are missing is the political resistance that formed us in the United States. I may be overstating this, but Hauerwas’s criticism of freedom of religion applies to Anabaptists and their relationship to the state. 

Perhaps most visibly, the remnant of political conviction happens during wartimes, as we see now. Though not an official institution of Mennonite Church U.S., Mennonite Action is an action organization of Mennonites and Anabaptists “bonded by a common belief that we have a responsibility to use our voices as powerfully as possible for the cause of peace and justice.. They are “are mobilizing fellow Mennonites and Anabaptists across the United States and Canada to use creative nonviolent actions to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, to end the US and western funded occupation of Palestine, and build for a lasting peace.” Our refusal to participate in state-sanctioned war and violence is certainly an echo of our resistance to the European state.

In addition to that resistance, I believe it is necessary for us to resist what I call civil religion–when the state acts like a church. That is to say, when we are asked to sing its hymns (like the National Anthem), recite its creeds (like the Pledge of Allegiance), honor its patriarchs (the Founding Fathers), or serve its Savior (the U.S. Military). When the U.S. prints “in God we trust” on our currency, it isn’t referring to God. It’s claiming the state and the market as the gods we should trust. All of those images are tinged with religious overtones, and Christian ones, in particular. So it is in our duty to resist the state religion that is often prominently displayed by both political parties. It’s also our duty to resist flag waving and acts of patriotism, all of which seek to subvert God as the only one to be worshiped. 

My urgent point concerns the emergence of Christian Nationalism. It is more dangerous than civil religion, and its presence threatens the values that we appreciate most in a liberal state. Again, freedom of religion, while not a god unto itself, is a right that I as a Christian want and need. What happened to earlier generations in Europe was worth resisting because of how it defied the sovereignty of God. Christian Nationalism, in a very real sense, is trying to make the U.S. a Christian nation. Its adherents believe in a homogenous, patriarchal, Christian ethnostate, and they use theological language to back it up. J.D. Vance is a disciple of this mentality, and individuals aptly called “TheoBros” perfected the ideology. It is more dangerous than the older European Christendom because oppression of others is not merely a side effect, but a central feature. Anabaptists today must stand up to Christian nationalism.

Practically, that means voting against them and keeping them out of power. It means naming them as the threat they are to both democracy and Christianity. It means standing firmly in the belief that God is Sovereign and God reigns now. We don’t need a state church because God cannot be constrained by a state apparatus. This should position us against the party that embraces Christian Nationalism (the Republican Party). It means speaking up, being unafraid to be labeled political, and doing our best to make sure that the worst Christians don’t monopolize Jesus Christ to further their own supremacist agenda.

Anabaptists need to continue to unite as an alternative to the state church, and we do so by rejecting hierarchy, giving voice to the oppressed, and including everyone in our fellowships. When we create these simple, nonviolent, communities, we show the world what the love of God expressed in action and community looks like. Our existence is then a form of resistance. Our true protection doesn’t come from the state or its legal codification of our values. It is God who renders us safe, never the state or the rights that it gives us. While we can enjoy the rights we have to worship, it is paramount that we know that the only god worth serving and that the only god who can liberate us is God alone. Resisting Christian Nationalism is exactly the political position American Anabaptists—inspired by the resistance to European state churches centuries ago—should take today in the United States.