Mennonites work at repairing the past

The adversarial relationships of Anabaptists and other church groups in the sixteenth century are being examined and resolved in various ways by their spiritual descendants in the twenty-first century.

Lutherans and Mennonites in France, Germany and the U.S., for example, have held national dialogues in recent years over their similarities and differences around such issues as baptism, the Lord’s Supper and relations between church and state. They have also discussed the 1530 Augsburg Confession which is still foundational in Lutheran liturgy and theology worldwide and contains a sharp condemnation of Anabaptists.

What connections exist between the Augsburg Confession’s condemnation of Anabaptists and their execution in Lutheran lands in the past? Does this condemnation of Anabaptists apply to Mennonite World Conference (MWC) member and related churches today?

Mennonite and Lutheran scholars, theologians and historians offered their perspectives on this question at the first international Mennonite World Conference and Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Study Commission held at the Ecumenical Institute in Strausbourg, France June 27 to July 1.

The study commission’s conclusions will be reported to the governing bodies of MWC and the LWF for further action and possible official statements. Planners anticipate three annual international dialogues. Co-chairs of the commission are Rainer Burkhart, Mennonite church leader in Germany, and Gottfried Seebass, Lutheran theologian, also from Germany. Co-secretaries are Larry Miller, MWC executive secretary, and Sven Oppegaard, LWF Associate General Secretary for Ecumenical Affairs.

Reconciliation between Christians of the Zwinglian Reform tradition and the Anabaptist global church was highlighted a year ago when some 400 representatives of the two groups met in Zurich to offer confession and forgiveness. The meeting included the unveiling of a memorial marker on the Limmat River at the spot where six Anabaptists were drowned for their faith between 1527 and 1532.

On that June 26, 2004 occasion, Reudi Reich, president of the Reformed Church of the Canton of Zurich asked for forgiveness for the persecution, torture and death inflicted on Anabaptists “in a combined action by Church and State.” Ernest Geiser, president of the Council of Elders of the Swiss Mennonite Church, indicated that descendants of these Anabaptists “no longer see themselves as victims,” and said, “We accept your confession with a spirit of forgiveness.”

A recent “reconciliation conference” held in New Holland, Pa., which drew nearly 600 people to its opening night, has taken this attempt to deal with the past a step further. According to a report in The Mennonite, the April 7–9 event, in which 19 Swiss Evangelical–Reformed pastors and friends met with Mennonite and related groups, was “infused with calls to repentance, declarations of forgiveness and ‘prophetic utterances’.”

This event was organized by Lloyd Hoover, a Lancaster Mennonite Conference bishop; the Lancaster Conference did not sponsor the event, however. A major theme of the conference was the image of sons returning to their fathers, from Malachi 4:6, with Anabaptists seen as the rebellious sons who had rejected their Reformed fathers during the Reformation. “That rebellion and subsequent attitudes of unforgiveness and divisiveness, leaders said, have locked the heritage of Anabaptist descendants.”

In a subsequent editorial, The Mennonite editor Everett J. Thomas called the confession “strange,” but suggested that such efforts, as well as other inter-denominational conversations, “reveal an abiding interest in right relationships with sisters and brothers in the Christian church around the world.” Fostering ecumenical relations must have one goal, however, Everett went on, and that is “to contribute distinctive Anabaptist–Mennonite beliefs as we interact and learn from the global Christian community.”

—from MWC releases and media reports