Not so fast my neo-Anabaptist brothers (and sisters?). It seems like a brief and short response to the prevalent myth running in neo-Anabaptist circles, in regards to the problem of white homogeneity that needs broader insight to break past the myth and look at what is actually going on in reality.

I have seen and heard in blog posts, Twitter conversations, conferences, and personal encounters with neo-Anabaptists, a particular answer and response to Anabaptism’s apparent white homogeneity problem. The answer often seems to seek to offer a sort of origins story or myth that explains the current realities that they must now address in their work today. And yet, the response given by many (not all) neo-Anabaptists has been misguided, misinformed, and misrepresentative of the past and present reality of race in issues in Anabaptism. Without going into a long treaty to respond I do hope to clarify a few points that should reorient the discussion and point it in a new trajectory, leading hopefully to better ecclesial and social practices among Christians self-identified as Anabaptists.

It’s not us, it’s them

What I have observed is usually a white male neo-Anabaptist (that is someone outside of the historic Anabaptist denominations like Mennonite or Brethren) will be wrestling with why all their Anabaptist networks are dominated by white people. In considering this reality, neo-Anabaptists point to the fact that they have joined into an already ongoing Anabaptist tradition that goes all the way back to the 16th century. They narrate in brevity how Mennonites fled Europe and came to the U.S. because of the severity of century’s persecution and displacement with the hopes of finding peace and quiet in the new land. As the story unfolds more, they highlight the quietism and ethnocentric life that developed by these communities that huddled into rural communities and largely remained in familial and ethnicity defined communities for generations out of the trauma of the past. In doing so, they inevitably created a homogenous community, that is a white homogenous community. From there, neo-Anabaptists suggest that they have now entered into this conversation and community that already had a white homogeneity problem prior to their joining the conversation. They see the gift of groups like the Mennonites, as carriers of a great tradition but also lost and veiled by these white homogenous practices.