Something that keeps me connected to my Anabaptist heritage is the podcast Anabaptist Perspectives. The young hosts are sincere and thoughtful and while they may still lack the intrepid wit and repartee of some podcasters, they make up for it by choosing interesting guests and letting them speak without interruption. I particularly enjoy when they invite a broad range of guests. (They have shied away from hosting women, but we trust that will change in time.)

It seems that some listeners, however, are not as gung-ho about this diversity, especially when it comes to hosting ‘liberal Mennonites’. As one listener wrote in the comments, “Honest question. How can Anabaptist Perspectives give a platform to a professor from a liberal Mennonite college that is LGBTQ affirming?”

The commenter, as it happens, was criticizing none other than John Roth. Now, it would be cheeky of me to assume the moral high ground over someone contending so earnestly for traditional marriage. Yet I wonder if he hasn’t inadvertently become a Crotch Christian, to borrow a term from an acquaintance in Belfast. Is it possible that he has reduced the multifaceted Christian faith down to the single issue of gender and sexuality? Regardless of John Roth’s views about sex (and one suspects they are more nuanced than the commenter’s visceral evaluation), I find him a highly qualified and compelling interpreter of Anabaptism.

The episode begins with the host asking Roth why the phrase from Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s,” was so important for early Anabaptists. It seems this is a softball question for Roth, who spends the next 20 minutes answering.

I should mention here that John Roth is not to be confused with another prominent Anabaptist historian (that’s an historian to you), John Ruth. Confusingly, John Ruth shares many of John Roth’s interests and also confusingly, he wrote a massive narrative history tome on the Anabaptists entitled The Earth Is the Lord’s. John Ruth’s book is listed on Amazon for 1,499 USD as we speak, enough money to buy a decent car where I’m from.

But I digress. I was deeply curious what John Roth would answer because I myself had come across this same phenomenon about 5 years ago: the Anabaptists loved the phrase “The earth is the Lord’s.” In fact, according to David Bosch no other passage from Scripture appears more often among early Anabaptist court testimonies and creeds, save perhaps the Great Commission.

There are three reasons, said John Roth, why that was the case.

First, they did not hold the traditional view of the time that you had to worship God in a certain building where certain people officiated while wearing certain vestments. In this way, they heralded John Wesley who famously said several centuries later, “The world is my parish.” The Earth, not just the cathedral, is the Lord’s.

Secondly, said John Roth, the Anabaptists loved this verse because it fit with their convictions about material possessions. That is, followers of Jesus should not horde their belongings but share generously. The earth’s abundant riches are not private property that can be bought, sold, or preserved in an attic with mothballs. No, the earth is the Lord’s. All of which causes a serious question to niggle in my mind: Would the early Anabaptists be called Marxists in today’s milieu?

Finally, the phrase was important for eschatological reasons. While the first Anabaptists recognized the reality of evil in the world, they also believed that the ultimate, cosmic victory had already been secured (Colossians 1:20). Hans Denck, especially, was an early Anabaptist advocate of this compelling belief.

It is unsettling and confusing, then, that the blood descendants of those subversive Christians sometimes espouse something quite different on all three of these points. No doubt I have a bee in my bonnet about this because of my own set of shaping experiences. But despite that, how can “ethnic Anabaptist” churches today refuse to celebrate communion with folks who do not adopt their exact cultural practices and specific doctrinal beliefs? How can those who claim the Anabaptist heritage pamper themselves with every imaginable luxury while they sanctimoniously separate themselves from neighbors who perish in abject poverty. Would the revolutionaries whose name still lingers five centuries later, the Anabaptists, stand for this?

One truth remains: The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. Unless we make some kind of attempt to live as if that were true, we can hardly call ourselves Anabaptists.