For some reason a great number of people, among whom I shamelessly include myself, have found it appropriate to speculate ad nauseum about what the first Anabaptists would do were they magically resuscitated and plopped into the 21st century.
The first Anabaptists would break Covid restrictions with abandon; they would fastidiously uphold them in order to protect the vulnerable.
They would homeschool their kids in order to ward off the rot of broader culture; they would send their kids into any school so they could be the salt of the earth.
They would challenge leaders of organized religion; they would meekly submit to God-ordained authority.
Those dear old Radical Reformers might, depending who you ask, align themselves with the Emerging church or the Plain People from Ohio; with an eco-community in London or a homeschooling network in rural Kentucky. They might be socially liberal or they might have founded Focus on the Family.
In reality, short of a séance, any speculation about that esteemed band of pilgrims from central Europe remains just that: speculation. We don’t actually know what they would do.
We do know some things, and an obvious place to start might be that they tended to promote baptism for consenting adults. Well, actually it was stronger than that. Their views on baptism gave them their very identity (Anabaptist means re-baptizer).
But even here, if we are looking for prophetic characteristics of early Anabaptism, then emphasizing adult baptism might no longer be a good starting point. As Stuart Murray Williams points out in The Naked Anabaptist, in most contexts today the act of baptizing adults is about as benign as taking a walk in the park.
All of us who claim to be modern-day Anabaptists have one thing in common: we think our practice or belief—or website, or diet, or clothing, or style of worship, or view of gender and sexuality—is different from the dominant group. We all seek to offer another perspective, a “third way.” We are all careful to keep church and state separate. In terms of authority, Anabaptism, at least officially, looks to the community, in contrast to Catholics who look to church hierarchies and Protestants who look to the individual conscience and the Bible.
I know it is grossly oversimplified, but that is my explanation for why organizations as diverse as Rod and Staff Publishers and Mennonite Church USA are all claiming the label of Anabaptist.
This is my belief: the term Anabaptist still holds currency. It is a transnational, trans-ethical movement in which all may freely participate. However, as is the fate with prophetic words and names, the provocative associations around the term Anabaptist can decrease quickly. Maybe we do not need more seminars hammering out who is a true Anabaptist and who is not. Instead, maybe we should follow our convictions—follow Jesus in our time and place—and let people call us what they will.
Because all speculating aside, that is exactly what the early Anabaptists did.