Attached to Paper Session
Meeting Preference
The 1963 Mennonite Confession of Faith states, "The message of the Bible points to the Lord Jesus Christ... He is the key to the proper understanding of the entire Bible." Stuart Murray Williams (2000) similarly asserts that Anabaptism is a Christocentric rather than Christological tradition, one in which the person of Jesus Christ is a central interpretive figure. Anabaptist theopolitical ecclesiology has, in particular, been built on the exploration of what Jesus's death and suffering means as a central model of the way of peace and the love of one's enemies (Yoder, 1965). As a result, some Anabaptists in the past and present, including Hans Denck, have lauded the experience of suffering as salvific and integral to salvation (Friedmann, 1973). Anabaptists have also proposed that "oppressive power structures are subverted and the oppressed are freed when those with little power, counterintuitive as it may seem, subordinate themselves to the powers that be." (Barringer, 2016, p.135). The concept of revolutionary subordination, drawn especially from the theology of John Howard Yoder, is one where cruciformity as a central tenet has become a sword in itself, enabling the further victimization of sufferers of gendered and sexual violences in Anabaptist communities (Peachey, 2020). Victims are pressured to embrace and accept the pain inflicted by abusers and aggressors and the desecration of their bodies, viewing suffering as redemptive, spiritual, purposeful, and transformative.
This paper explores a deeper understanding of Christ's crucifixion and suffering, beginning with the assertion Tombs (2023) makes that the cross was, in fact, designed as a violation of the body, a ritual stripping of the humanity, bodily integrity, and dignity of victims. Crucifixion was, in short, designed to make Rome and Caesar powerful and masculine in contrast with the bodies of those designated by the "marks of slavery" (Kamen, 2010), including flogging (Saller, 1995). The Philippian doxology summarizes this by articulating how Jesus bore the likeness of a slave. The early Christians understood a fundamentally anti-imperial, revolutionary message in the cross and embedded the cross within their liturgy and rituals such as the Eucharist and baptism (Streett, 2013). Thus, this paper asks, "What does it mean for an Anabaptist to wrestle with the imposition of hierarchies of dignity and shame, imperial masculinity and colonized femininity, and impenetrability and penetrability in the crucifixion?"
As communities that pursue peace, Anabaptists must be unequivocal in their rejection of evil and pursuit of good in ecclesial communities, particularly goodness that is tangible and corporeal for themselves and for their neighbors. I intend to explore what the crucifixion symbolizes in the light of sexual and gendered violences and violences against the body today. Rather than glorifying the suffering of "pain", Anabaptists need to begin to explore a political ecclesiology of peace beginning with the cross and its rejection of phallocentric socio-political systems that impose "shame" on some in order to aggrandize others. We can then begin to identify destructive self-aggrandizement (colonization, patriarchy, racial capitalism, and spiritual abuse, for example) as violence, and thus that which the peace church must reject and separate itself from order to enact ecclesial politics of the Kingdom of God where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. This radical identification with the suffering and rebuke of their abusers will counter the fetishization of suffering as valorous in its own right and victim of abuse as those specially burdened in peace church communities to manifest superhuman forgiveness and love. This signals a return to and re-imagination of both cruciformity and peace.
References
Barringer, J.B. (2018). Subordination and freedom: Tracing anarchist themes in first Peter. In: A.Christoyannopoulos & M. S. Adams (eds.), Essays in Anarchism and religion: Volume II, pp.132-172. Stockholm University Press.
Friedmann, R. (1973). The Theology of Anabaptism: An Interpretation. Herald Press.
Kamen, D., 2010. A corpus of inscriptions: representing slave marks in antiquity. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 55, pp.95-110.
Murray, S., 2000. Anabaptism as a conversation partner. Mennonite Quarterly Review, 74(4), pp.555-561.
Peachey, L.G. (2020). Salvation for the sinned against. In: Stephens, D.W. and Albrecht, E.S. (eds.), Liberating the politics of Jesus: Renewing peace theology through the wisdom of women, pp.147-163. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Saller, R.P., 1994. Patriarchy, property and death in the Roman family. Cambridge University Press.
Streett, R.A. (2013). Subversive meals: An analysis of the Lord's Supper under Roman domination during the first century. Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
This paper critically examines Anabaptist political ecclesiology, beginning with the assertion that willingly accepting suffering at the hand of one’s abusers is salvific, redemptive, and transformative. This approach, known as “revolutionary subordination”, has been devastating to victims of sexual and gendered violences in Anabaptist ecclesial communities. Given that Anabaptists root political theology in the suffering of Jesus on the cross, “revolutionary subordination” can be challenged with historical and theological analyses of the crucifixion as an act of imperial violence, one that strips victims of their dignity and humanity. If we begin to understand violence as the imposition of “shame” on crucified and penetrated bodies, we can better understanding the cross's fundamental rebuke of violent self-aggrandizement, including that of colonization, patriarchy, racial capitalism, and spiritual abuse. Then, we will better articulate both peace and cruciformity as radical identification with the suffering and rebuke of their abusers.