 Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We're here in Boston, Massachusetts with Dean Taylor. You're the president of Sattler College sitting here in your office 17 floors up above the city and and something I know you're passionate about. I've heard you speak about before is the early Anabaptist understanding of community and can you just kind of I know it's a big question but can you give us a synopsis of what the early Anabaptist writers said about that topic? You know this is a really really important question. It's a great question. Community is intrinsically connected to being an Anabaptist and it is actually very different than an evangelical understanding of the church and let me give you an example. Chiki Chesterton has an interesting take on this lamppost and I read that once and it really made me think of this analogy he gives of the lamppost and it made me think of the views of the church. So I'm going to use Chesterton's idea but take it to Burger King. All right so let me start this with an idea of Burger King. All right so let's say you're in Burger King. Got yourself your seven dollar burger what are they charge you for on the turnpike and you're there eating and you're there with your family and you're looking around and and you know and there's this lady here and she's on the way to Pittsburgh the other way to see her grandmother and there's this guy over here and he's recovering drug addict on his way to Philadelphia for this and there's other persons there and people there and you're all there in the Burger King and you know it kind of feels like church. You know you're there you're you're having a meal you know you're you're there but here's the key the gathering is an accident. There's no reasonable there's no no no way we would reason that tomorrow even the same gathering would be there that next week the same gathering would be there that that the whole thing is a gathering it's a nice gathering but it's an accidental gathering. The view of the church with the Anabaptist and I believe the early Christians was let's say we're there now and this tour bus comes in and this tour bus comes in and they all got these you know Goopy t-shirts on that you know they're they're there and they're coming through and they are going somewhere and they're going somewhere together they set together and they're all talking and ruckus and all this you know and they get this and they go and you're sitting there and you see them coming you see them go but they're on purpose they're decidedly together and they're doing something decidedly together. That's the Anabaptist view of the church. What has happened, and particularly in America in the 21st century now, is this, it's a beautiful thing. You have some great sermons. You have a great worship services and everything. And there's lots of people there, but the gathering is an accident. And so the idea of community, the idea of an on purpose gathered people of God that you get intimate with, you share life with, you share dreams, and you share successes and failures is a very important and missing element of the church that I think in the 21st century. The Anabaptist view of the church imbibes that in community from the very beginning. When you look at some of the early quotes and the way they, they talk about it and you have to put yourself in their context. So even today, you know, in the parish system where, you know, a geographic area would have been that we would have today in like Catholic churches or something like that would be the way that all the Protestant and Catholic churches were. So a general geographic area where people just went to church. When the Anabaptists started, they were on purpose. So you joined the church community as a, because of your faith, as a statement of faith and joining together was on purpose. And this very act is one of the most significant acts of early Anabaptism. Now this was expressed in different ways. Of course, the Hutterites took it the furthest, but all parts of the Anabaptist have that degree, have some degree of community. There's a, there's a quote here in recovery of the Anabaptist vision. And Franklin Letell brings up a, an interesting, some interesting ideas on the idea of early Anabaptism in community. And he says this at the core of the 16th century Anabaptists is found in their view of the church. R. J. Smithson, author of one of the few reasonably adequate books on the movement says this, quote, the real issue between the Anabaptists and the other reformers was on the question of the type of church which should take the place of the old church. He goes on to quote the great, he goes on to quote the great church historian Philip Schaft to the effect that quote, the reformers aimed to reform the old church by the Bible. The radical, the radical reformers attempted to build a new church from the Bible. So the idea was to allow the Bible just have its, and create a church from this. The reformers idea was to correct this and correct that the radical reformers, which is why they have the name, wanted to take that, that further on. The idea of community he goes on is built into that in, in every way. He says this on page 127. He says the church, the church as a community of discipleship is the needed word and witness today. This can be seen in the encounter with alternative ideologies. Some time ago as national socialism and communism were in full flood, the general secretary of the world council of churches expressed the problem in these words, quote, the main task of the Christian community and the greatest service which it can render to the world is to be the Christian community. Then he, then Little says for the real tragedy of our time is that we have on the one hand an incoherent mass of individual Christians and on the other hand powerful impulses towards new forms of community but no Christian community. Christians today do not form a true community and the communities which shape the new world are not Christian, meaning like the communist thing that was happening. Actually that's quoting the world council of churches. The present day task of the Christian community is therefore not to enter more deeply into the world but to rediscover itself. It must learn to understand again what Christian community means before it can go out and change the world around it. And so he brings out this idea that you know how each of the Anabaptists when just the fact that you were coming against the world and forming together these societies by faith and discipleship it changed, it is a community. Again this impulse that seemed to be in them about you know you're being persecuted, you're coming together, that you obviously saw them you know coming together like that. Interesting there's some records so like in the very first church in Zulacon which came from, so you have Zurich and if you've ever been there you know right up the hill is Zulacon where the first church was being planted. There's records there of how they they were being accused of knocking the locks off the door, holding all things in common and having this common pot. Now Felix Montz when he was in court denied that they actually had a complete common purse but there's several different writings that mention a, he denied a community of goods, a complete community of goods but they did all have a common pot where they would put different things in for help for the need, for the needy. And so there's interesting also some work done a man named Opakal and he was doing a lot of the work on the Hutter Rights and he talks about this church order which was, it seems to predate even the Schleinheim Confession and in the church order and in the things that the cover letters that come with the Schleinheim Confession, again there's this talk of sharing and this talk of community sharing that they have. As this was expressed particularly in the South German and Austrian area a lot of these people had seemed to be experiencing more of this type of community. Now it's perhaps some people argue that they had a little more freedom you know with the persecution. There was more the Lutheran area there and one of the leaders there was who was the most successful in converting people back to Lutheranism was sort of mild and Philip of Hesse. And so the communities there you see you know practice this way. With the Hutter Rights it you know it came off to a rough start so it's interesting when you have the whole Anabaptist starting you know like 1525 you know and then 1527, Schleinheim, the first martyrdom at 1527. Now to make it then to in up to from 1525 to the very first three baptisms all the way to Moravia. I mean Moravia was opening up and all the Anabaptists moved to Moravia in that short amount of time 1525, 1527 and a little bit after 1527 12,500 people had been converted and were able to be willing to sell everything they had and gone to Moravia because hoped to have freedom of religion in Moravia. It was so big in Moravia that the Liechtenstein the emperor the king there prince there himself converted to Anabaptism and was and was rebaptized. The publishing house with Froschauer and Hubmeier they all made it there and the difficulty is is that this was it was so popular that it was starting to maybe be an Anabaptist state church. So a lot of these convictions that Schleinheim had just established were now being tested and so but there's something else that added to the mix. At the same time Solomon the Magnificent had a jihad against Europe and was actually coming up had gone through Hungary take Hungary and now coming up towards Moravia and so Charles V was making this order okay everybody on these border countries has got to get and carry a sword so that you can defend ourselves against a Muslim attack. So you talk about early Anabaptists so out of all those Hubmeier started publishing and trying to defend the sword and they're trying to do to change the view from Schleinheim 200 of them said no we're not compromising we're not going to do this we're not going to compromise we're not doing this and so they said well you got to leave I'm sorry you're gonna have to go so they upped and left and started going out and these 200 were the what became the Hutterites and so they were didn't know what to do they threw their they threw their coats on the ground and said what do you got I don't know what you got and basically threw everything in there and and this was the start of it. There was a few movements also there was another one that was around that area that was also had a community of goods but with a different spin to it and then some of the early evangelism that they had there brought in people like Jacob Hooter and Peter Rittiman and then they came to it and it more developed into what they had for community of goods. Your question was was it different so yet they would definitely have taken it further than the rest of them that matter of fact that group that I just mentioned um have a quote here um Gabriel Asherham so they would have been a non-Hutterite group but another early Anabaptist group in the Austrian area and this type of thing but a different spin on community and you'll hear you'll hear what he says um this is him speaking he says the apostles did not preach anything about community of goods nor order anyone to keep it in the first church of Jerusalem but when they heard the good news of Christ and the kingdom of God the people believed and came to take part of the visible kingdom of the Holy Ghost he filled them with joy and fixed their heart upon a heavenly blessing so they counted earthly possessions as nothing willingly on their own and without being told motivated only by the joy in their heart they went and sold their property bringing the money from it to lay at the apostles feet then they distribute to everyone according to the need the first believers began community of goods without being told everyone given out of his own free will community of goods as a result was an open witness of the kingdom of God that has already come to them it was not something commanded by men for the sake of the kingdom of God it was something that free flowed so they actually were debating with the early Hutterites they eventually came into the Hutterites and and came um there's also other ones you're mentioning some other ones had some different views like in the south German and they were very strong that we cannot just live worldly lives and um that we have to have sharing and this was very much part of all of them and I think still is very part of all the Anabaptists and here's the difference of it's a debate that kind of comes up now a little bit when people start to think about community usually end up with two different thoughts on it you think oh it's um biblical I mean look you you read later in the epistles and you see well clearly I mean I mean there were there's instructions on how a home should not burden the church and yet take care of your widow and and there's these other ones and then the people who read who are just has to be community read the acts and say oh no no look at acts two and four and then people make debates it's it's very clear that there is no command to live in community um and I would say the Hutterites would come close but even the early Hutterites would have well maybe they would have come pretty close to saying that but but would it come most of them would have not said that it was something that was a command and certainly today you don't find a Hutterite usually I've not found one who would say that it was a mandatory way that you had to live um however what's what we end up losing is that what's behind the radical teachings of taking care of the church and this you know found in the later epistles and in the community of goods and acts is behind it like I think Abraham um what's his last name yeah asher ham brought out behind it were the radical teachings of the kingdom of god and so acts two and four are not a command they're a testimony of how to apply the radical teachings of jesus the later epistles although they didn't have community of goods and I think that's very obvious they did not but but yet behind it all was still the radical teachings of jesus christ and to live these radical economics and so what I what I hate is to hear the debate back and forth um the guys who are all everything has to be community of goods have usually forgot why they should be living community of goods it's when you and then the ones that say oh no community of goods is unbiblical it just it doesn't even make sense I mean the the acts two and four it's sort of like celibacy to make an argument that everybody would have to be celibate would be a hard sell for the new testament okay um or the whole bible but to say that it was unbiblical would also seem to be inappropriate it's kind of like that this is a radical way to apply some teachings and it's not for everyone but it's some some precious calling to the whole thing um yeah so where I think I was going earlier the thing with those who who just claim you have to live in community the thing that you notice in the early how to write writings and I can bring out that the reason they lived in community and the reason they were missionaries and the reason they did these things everything they kept saying because of the commands of christ and so what I would encourage communitarians today is to let the essence of why you're there let the um the reasons of why you're living in community be motivated by radical kingdom living and then to the others I would say um if if you don't feel called to live in community which most of us don't then still we still can't get away from the radical teachings and commands of jesus christ to live radically on this earth with our economics it's not a a a license to live how we want and so that's what you'll see in the early anabaptist whether you're hudderite or non-hudderite they were very concerned about materialism very concerned about sharing and and helping the poor mental simons makes an argument how the the state churches don't care whether you still have people begging so this is absolutely ridiculous and we would never allow one of our people to beg so we don't have a community of goods in holand but we do have a a um a place where we would bring those resources those who live in community of goods need to realize they're doing that because the commitment they're trying they should be trying to apply jesus's radical teaching on his uh sharing his using the the uh community for an out an outlet for a radical mission discipleship this expression of the trinity the community of the trinity expressed in the and john um these should be the things motivating a communitarian on the other hand those who say well i thought it all called to live in community i think there's absolutely that the majority of the support in the new testament those people were not living in community but paul was still saying let those who are how's he worried let those who are wealthy get be ready to distribute that this this idea of radical sharing was still in every whether it's community or non-community the teachings of christ are what's behind and underneath every one of them um so however we express that we should be thinking how can i put to practice the teachings of jesus christ and whatever the best way that you can do that i think is should answer where you come on that there was kind of a division you know in um in how people got along that some of the bigger things that come out is pilar marpex he was there in switzerland and so he had a lot of connections with the swiss brethren also with the hutterites and you know you get all those guys were a little bit too sure of themselves when it came to where the only one i mean you get it certainly from minnow simons you get it from pilgrim arpeggio get it from the hutterites and you get it from the swiss brethren and so um each of them thought that they're away was you know the best way um so yeah but i i you can see a uh a challenging of these thoughts back and forth as some of them interact like that reading the early christian writings totally changed my life i thought i was a strong zealous christian up until the time i read their witness and then i realized boy if i'd lived in the church back in those days i would be considered a backslidden really washed out christian with the early christian writings we can go back and we can see what did christians believe when there was still just one church where everywhere on earth all christians believe the same thing and they could trace it back to the days of the apostles through these courses our listeners are going to be learning a lot about the new testament they're going to learn a lot about church history and what the early christians practiced back then but the whole point is to help them build an obedient love faith relationship with jesus christ for that to be strengthened so that they can become vital citizens of god's kingdom so the differing choices in lifestyle that these groups that were doing the community of goods you know all all living together whatever how what what was the outcome when compared to the rest of the anabaptists and then what would have they learned along the way what are some of the challenges and big question there it's a great question um when it comes to organization nobody touched the hutterites i mean uh and so when we look at like the first mission focus and all the the zealous missionaries of the early anabaptist um it was the hutterites and so this original idea of a missional a missionary minded community was very effective and during a time of a lot of persecution um you can look at a map of the different communities that the the moravian hutterites had planted it was incredible and so you know in in a year in the years that they had to survive famine and the plague and the 30 year war and back and all those things the couple more g another jihad in the 1600 came and and took lots of them back to different places and to survive through all that and keep a missionary focus was incredible i've written a little pamphlet called the hutterite mission machine which goes into details of how they did that the swiss brother were also very effective um and then one thing i appreciate about the swiss um both the swiss all the hutterites the the swiss brother and the um the mar peck and some of the south germans and such had a a brotherhood and a community spirit that was very prone to not splintering as a matter of fact there was no divisions no major divisions at all and the swiss brother and or the hutterites until um the dutch um way was brought to them through jake of almond and during all those splits that were happening with jake of almond there's lots of things you could be said about that and the other thing but there was something about the swiss thinking that seemed to be more i don't know community minded in general um the dutch unfortunately even at the end of minnow's life was seemed to be prone to to fracture and it it seemed to be a little bit more cerebral a little more theological when you read minnow simons writings versus peter riddimans of the hutterites writings i mean it's like night and day uh just the way the spirit is there as far as literature um all of our early you know or a lot of our early literature that's been kept and maintained the hutterites of course with that organization that gave them that so once they got beat down and and finally you know through years and years of compromise and beat down and finally they kind of restarted didn't quite have the same mission drive that the original people did uh and they had a restart now that reboot came with many of the things of living in community and many of the things they had and that sense but without the mission drive then it became a difficulty of just keep polishing within the community and this becomes dangerous for any of us during that time the swiss brother and i think we're more more able to be more versatile and to go different places and to move and to come into burn and come out of burn and and to establish the mountains in this and that gave them a great advantage under some of those severe persecutions and so you get a lot of that and and just the whole coming to america in the 1700s um you know we can thank to the the amish and the uh the swiss brother the amish came of course a little later in the late 1600s in the 1700s and as a renewal group to the swiss the swiss brother and uh and again you had that so you know when you get later each of their worst expressions when you get into the powderites eventually end up in russia and had now sort of lost their vision and we're still living in community it gets really bad it gets really bad and and that's when you're sometimes wondering would it be better for just us not to exist or to exist in this way and you and they were very honest and they tell like something just goes for pages on you know something that happened like for instance they get to when they were trying to make a decision should we go west towards the protestants and catholics who are killing us or east to the muslims they chose the muslims so when they get to transylvania though there's the the sultan there had made a law you can't chop down crosses and religious items or you're going to get your hand chopped off you know he did that because he didn't want a bunch of raids on all the churches and everything well somehow the right boys were out there one day and the the chronicler right and not for religious reasons decided just to chop down a few of these crosses and the sultan found out and it goes on for an on here about how they had to beg for him not to get his his hand chopped off and they had to threaten to pay money and anyway it's one of the most honest histories i've ever read and it just gives some of the the facts that are there the fact that they could even say that in honesty i think is awesome yeah okay this is the chronicle of the hudderite brother in volume two um page six six six all right they there was a time where they were no longer living in community and they were going to restart it they tried it and it failed there was two versions one that did pass where they said they didn't go to man but just trusted in god and and there's a lot of just relying only on god and not the old ways and that kind of a thing and there was one that that said they realized that they actually say if you're not living in community you're not a christian and we're very strong in that way and that one failed and that one closed and at the end it said quite a few members of the new community were well aware how awkward the situation was but they nonetheless submitted without protest others saw the drastic changes to their property as only a means in an outward um alteration with the purpose of restoring the group to what they regarded as true christianity these now turn their attention particularly to the children's education but in spite of all kinds of suggestions and consultations the group could not come to a united decision about anything vital the women in particular showed little inclination for communal life to overcome their resistance a resort to course of measures had to be made at every step and a result the arrangements were devoid of all suitability and practicability practicability obviously here's a very honest statement the reformed and methods of property holding did not of itself bring the hope for results of richer blessings to the members souls many of the most sincere men failed to find the expected moral compensation either for their personal rights they had given up or for the material advantages they had sacrificed in order to start the community little by little they were overcome by the conviction that nothing was achieved by simply holding all material goods in common and that true community could not be established for the time being since the members are not permeated by the holy spirit it's amazing the other congregation though they says here they fell on their knees and most seriously calling to god that they should the god calling to god that he should show them with power from on high how to establish this work of the holy spirit through them and that this might happen in honor and praise and glory of his holy name they did not counsel with flesh and blood or old documents any longer but only with god almighty and this group then went immediately it succeeded it went into missions it began to share and it's actually that's the group that survived and came to america later on oh wow but in every time in their history and today when their mission focused when it's driving for kingdom purposes it's powerful but when it's not it's not and then it falls apart and and yeah it's a strong tool it's either a strong tool for for positive things or it's a strong tool for not the swiss brother and still though you cannot separate an abaptist with the idea of a community in a time even today if you hear people from midnight churches will talk we'll say yeah our community and they'll use this term community almost unwittingly that it's it's part of us because we're accountable to one another we um we submit to one another we share you know the just the idea of having your hospital bills and and sharing things like that with each other in a church from my background was unthinkable and for and for all the anabaptist churches whether they're Hutterite or Amish or or Mininar whatever um it's just well it's just expected you wouldn't think of any other way these kind of things are really deep within the anabaptist idea of the church and it needs to be it's something we we should we should be sure never to lose wow that's yeah that's really interesting and the contrast you're showing there between those two different communities there is i yeah i didn't know that that's that's fast yeah i preach the sermon once with tail up two communities and because this was a restart that they had stopped having community of goods in Russia for a while they said we're going to start it again and there was two trials one very legalistically done and one in the spirit of god and and then as soon as they got to america the the one that came to america said now we've got to go back and evangelize and bring people to the light and then unfortunately after a couple of them were killed in world war one they went up to to canada and sort of took more of a um oh more protective isolation isolation type of way which has not been healthy i don't i i i wrote the anabapt or the how to write mission machine in a prayer to remember those beginnings it's right there in their statement of faith um about the missions and about how you should have an apostle that's leading missions and and these different things and it's uh i'd love to see it done again see it happening wow that's the last question i had is there anything else you'd like to share i encourage us as we go on the 21st century you know um and as the word is atomized where we just keep getting knocked down to our smallest amount and there's nothing that that binds us together um this question of community and again not necessarily in in a how to write community i'm not necessarily not in a how to write community but just the idea of having real lives together here in boston with followers the way uh we've been practicing like um um living as close together sharing things and that type of a thing the church needs purposeful concepts of of living lives together in some way and as the world is getting worse and worse we need to start thinking of creative ways to do this and so um i think it's something that we don't need to lose and it's something we can gain not with any feeling that you have to do it this way or have there's no there's no commandment there's any way you have to do it but allow those commands of jesus to form genuine and true community in our lives thanks for thanks for taking the time to share and and there's a ton of research that went into that so thank you for doing that and sharing it with us i really appreciate it amen thank you buddy