Liberating the Politics of Jesus: Renewing Anabaptist Theology through the Wisdom of Women

Last updated on: March 15, 2019 at 1:08 pm By David C. Cramer

Ever since the extent and gravity of John Howard Yoder’s sexual offenses have come to public light, it’s common to hear the question, Where does Anabaptist-Mennonite theology go now? This week the Institute of Mennonite Studies is hosting the conference Liberating the Politics of Jesus, which promises to provide a compelling answer to that question. One of the conference organizers, Darryl W. Stephens, provides a bit of background: The vision of liberating the radical political ethic of Jesus Christ, as witnessed... Read more

Tempted by the Devil: A Lent Sermon (Luke 4:1–13)

Last updated on: March 11, 2019 at 7:22 pm By David C. Cramer

This weekend, after three years of regular bedtime readings, my 9-year-old and I finally finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy. For those who haven’t spent three years reading the books or twelve hours watching the movies, I’ll summarize briefly. The evil Lord Sauron forges 20 rings of power, 3 for elf kinds, 7 dwarf kings, 9 for human kings, and 1 for himself to rule over them all. After Sauron is killed in battle, his ring still gives his... Read more

Lisa Sharon Harper on the Very Good Gospel

Last updated on: March 7, 2019 at 7:55 am By David C. Cramer

Last weekend I had the good fortune of hearing Lisa Sharon Harper speak in South Bend on the theme of her book The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right. Harper is the founder and president of Freedom Road, a consulting group that aims to “help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world.” In her sermon based on her book, she... Read more

Concern Pamphlet Series and the Genesis of Neo-Anabaptism

Last updated on: March 3, 2019 at 8:35 pm By David C. Cramer

One cool thing about working at AMBS is that there’s a table of free books in the lounge—books that have been remaindered by the library or donated by retired faculty or alumni. And sometimes those books include John Howard Yoder’s personal bound copy of the first eight issues of the Concern pamphlet series.* As GAMEO describes, Concern is the name given to a series of pamphlets initiated by a group of young American Mennonite graduate students, relief workers, and missionaries who... Read more

A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence

Last updated on: February 28, 2019 at 8:37 am By David C. Cramer

A few years ago the good people at Sojourners invited me to write a short article on the varieties of approaches to Christian nonviolence. In “A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence,” Sojourners (January 2016), I describe eight distinct approaches to nonviolence, each exemplified by a Christian thinker or activist: 1. ‘Realist’ Nonviolence Walter Rauschenbusch (1861- 1918) Key Work: A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) 2. The Nonviolence of the Disinherited Howard Thurman (1899-1981) Key Work: Jesus and the Disinherited (1949) 3. The Nonviolence of Christian... Read more

Anabaptism or Neo-Anabaptism—What’s the Difference?

Last updated on: February 28, 2019 at 7:54 am By David C. Cramer

Recently I had a conversation with an AMBS colleague about the distinction between Anabaptism and neo-Anabaptism. After I shared with him what I thought the differences were, I did what I normally do when I’ve just said something with more confidence than is warranted: I went back to my office and looked up the terms on the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO!). Problem is, there’s no entry there for neo-Anabaptism (yet). And the original entry for Anabaptism is written in part by the father... Read more

Recovery: A Jubilee Sermon (Luke 18:31–43)

Last updated on: February 22, 2019 at 9:56 am By David C. Cramer

Last year the church where I serve as teaching pastor, Keller Park Church (South Bend, Indiana), celebrated its 50th anniversary—or our very own year of Jubilee. To celebrate this occasion, I preached a series on the Jubilee theme as found in the Gospel of Luke (with allusions to Isaiah and Leviticus). Below is the fifth sermon of the series. (While you’re here, check out the other sermons, Revolution, Release, Rest-oration, and Remembrance.) If you ever read straight through one of the Gospels, you’ll be... Read more

Dispatches from the Anabaptist Ecosystem (2/19/19)

Last updated on: February 18, 2019 at 11:26 pm By David C. Cramer

Here’s a roundup of some stories that caught my attention from various Mennonite outlets over the past few weeks. If there’s any I should include in a future dispatch, let me know in the comments. 1. Militant Mennonites Over at Canadian Mennonite, Karl Koop writes about an aspect of Mennonite life that many Mennonites would like to ignore: pro-war Mennonites. Koop writes, To be sure, there has always been a nonresistant or pacifist thread running through the Mennonite story. Throughout the centuries,... Read more

Remembrance: A Jubilee Sermon (Luke 22:14–20)

Last updated on: February 13, 2019 at 1:34 pm By David C. Cramer

Last year the church where I serve as teaching pastor, Keller Park Church (South Bend, Indiana), celebrated its 50th anniversary—or our very own year of Jubilee. To celebrate this occasion, I preached a series on the Jubilee theme as found in the Gospel of Luke (with allusions to Isaiah and Leviticus). Below is the fourth sermon of the series. (While you’re here, check out the other sermons, Revolution, Release, and Rest-oration.) When I was in college, I tried to keep a regular... Read more

#MennoControversy: Was J. Lawrence Burkholder Censored?

Last updated on: February 14, 2019 at 12:28 pm By David C. Cramer

If you’re not Mennonite, J. Lawrence Burkholder may be the most influential Mennonite ethicist you haven’t heard of. Burkholder had a distinguished career as a Goshen College and Harvard Divinity School faculty member, including being named as the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity and first chair of the Department of the Church. And he later served as president of Goshen College from 1971 to 1984. But despite all this, his publication output was fairly meager. One explanation for this,... Read more