Fruitful Conversations

"Giving to the poor was neither a legal obligation, nor a matter of personal whim, but a sacramental entering into a mysterious cycle of outgoing and returning love whose widest sphere was the divine charity itself." Catherine Pickstock, After Writing, p144

What Catherine Pickstock writes of guilds in the middle ages is true of that majority of Anabaptists who were not communalist in their shape. Peter James Klassen calls this 'the economics of mutual aid.' (The Economics of Anabaptism 1525-1560) While 'mutual aid', with its resonances of Kropotkin, does not quite capture the spirit of these brethren in that way that Pickstock's "...entering-into a mysterious cycle of outgoing and returning love..." does, it seems nevertheless the most adequate shorthand if taken as entailing this deeper sense.

These Anabaptists were being accused of practicing community of goods by the authorities and such as Georg Schnabel would not deny it. Rather, it was understood, not as a legalistic requirement, but as something flowing from the Spirit who would see no one in need when another possesses more than is necessary. And so Georg Schnabel said to Landgrave Philip:

"The community of goods among believers is practiced thus: everyone who has more than he needs gladly shares with his poor brethren." - quoted in Klassen, p38

Sitting behind this practice of sharing is the fact that all is held in trust from God and belongs to no more to one than to another. Klassen writes that

"...everything beyond the actual need of the individual was placed at the disposal of the whole group." - Peter James Klassen, The Economics of Anabaptism 1525-1560, p42

This practice of mutual aid lies somewhere between Pickstock's 'personal whim' and the legalism which the Hutterites represent. What does this practice of Spirit-led, yet deeply concrete mutual aid look like for we who prefer personal whim? What structures might be required if we were to practice this menner of community of goods? These non-communalist Anabaptists so-called are perhaps communal in ways which we finds almost impossible to imagine.

3 Mimesis and the Messiah

The missionary capabilities of groups which are habitually small and obscure might be doubted. Perhaps, however, a Messiah-shaped missional mode is the reason for these 'problems' of size and public profile. Troeltsch writes of the sect-type that:

“The sects take the Sermon on the Mount as their ideal; they lay stress on the simple but radical opposition of the Kingdom of God to all secular interests and institutions.” - Ernst Troeltsch

While Troeltsh’s comments obviously do not apply to all groups bearing the name 'sect' they do, however, describe the capacity for 'sects' to take seriously the teaching of Jesus, even when they are incommensurable with the dominant society. To be missional like Jesus may not be popular. To be missional like Jesus takes a cruciform shape; it includes a baptismal willingness for a non-conformist posture to the dominant society.

It is precisely the vulnerability entailed in the rejection of dominance and acceptance of Jesus' teachings as normative for Christians which, I believe, constitutes a precondition for mission and it is this which I think 'sects' have the potential to embody and exemplify. It is out of this shape that the kind of creativity which Jesus embodied arises and it is this creativity which makes for the formation of compelling contrast societies, ie. missional communities. These communities do not attempt to be creative but are so by virtue of their mimesis of the Messiah. It is a mimetic relationship with the Messiah which makes a group compelling. It is often the same trait that makes them minorities. They are not less effective or relevant for this, however. It is this shape which births their creativity.

3.1 Mimesis of the Messiah as a Non-Coercive and Catholic Relation

For Toynbee, the sign of a creative minority’s decline is its adoption of coercive power. (A Study of History, vol. VI, p176). If this is true, it suggests that creativity is itself intensely linked to the unwillingness to use coercive power. To be missional is to be potently vulnerable. To be potently vulnerable is to cultivate creativity. The active rejection of force breeds creativity⁷. Jesus' creativity resulted in the Sermon on the Mount. We must take up the burden of embodying the same creativity in the present, not through slavish devotion to the Sermon on the Mount as principles for action (pace Tolstoy and Gandhi) but through a relationship to the Spirit which moved the Messiah in first century Palestine.

Each particular embodiment of the creative Spirit of the Messiah is not somehow becoming more parochial in being concrete but is taking the local shape of something universal, or ’cosmic’, as my fellow communard Jarrod McKenna would say.

John Howard Yoder writes of the parochial nature of the state’s claims:

“The universality of Christ’s reign is replaced by the particularism of a specific state’s intentions.” - John Howard Yoder⁸

It is not the ’sect’ - ongoingly seeking to embody the Messiah’s universal reign of love - which is parochial, but rather any organisation which has no such universal to embody but seeks, from its own power, to make itself universal. 'Universality' is a quality which is given, not taken. The Church-type of Troeltsch falls into this later category. Unless there is someone truly universal to call us it to ’be’ from without, no matter how large we are, we are parochial. 'Relevance' is not mitigated through a group being a minority. In fact, the willingness to adopt coercive modes of relating in order to become either more numerous or to enforce an ethic on others is an admission that the 'good news' is not potent of itself. The gospel is betrayed through the use of coercive power; its power to bring people into it's life by its sheer goodness is denied. Non-coerciveness itself is essential to that goodness.

3.2 Mimesis of the Messiah as Non-Rivalrous

"... we are being given the sort of desire that will enable us not to be moved by the social other but instead empower us as creators of a quite different social other."- James Alison⁹

Mimesis of the Messiah, because it is an imitative relationship with someone outside of mimetic rivalry, begins to distort the relation into something more than the creation of mere formal likeness. It becomes what Toynbee calls Transfiguration (see section 4 below). A mimetic relationship with the Messiah begins to transform us totally in the way that imitation of social forms cannot. James Alison calls this of the utter gratuity of the resurrection. Jesus is resurrected as someone who is totally beyond the systems of rivalry which ordinarily constitute us. He returns to his disciples without resentment, without a victimhood with which he may berate them. This being-beyond-rivalry is the kind of being we are being given when we imitate the Messiah. The relationship is turned around from one in which we are somehow in control of what we imitate to one in which we are transformed by one who is beyond ordinary mimetic relationships. This begins to suggest the impoverished nature of the mimetic relationship and that the only desirable kind of mimesis is that of the Messiah, which distorts the relation's ordinary dynamics. It is this which the Quakers quoted in the first section understood well:

“We do not want you to copy or imitate us. We want to be like a ship that has crossed the ocean, leaving a wake of foam, which soon fades away. We want you to follow the Spirit, which we have sought to follow, but which must be sought anew in every generation.” - First generation Quakers a Balby, York, late 17th Century¹

It is only through an immediate and personal relationship with the Messiah that any group can become anything worth imitating. In as much as they are worth imitating, they will continually point to their relationship with the Messiah as the source of that imitability and the only possibility of its proliferation. Because they are caught up in imitation of one who is beyond rivalry and so are being given a non-rivalrous identity which appears as something potent amongst relations which necessarily descend into rivalry and violence. This same non-rivalry means that a group may be something different to the dominant society without gaining its identity through being against it. There is a nonchalance in their posture. This nonchalance does not suggest a lack of care, a lack of concern that the powers in rebellion be brought into justice, peace and joy. This nonchalance is that of the servant Messiah in John chapter 13, who took up the towel, the mark of a slave, to wash his disciple's feet because he knew 'he had come from God and was going to God'. Peter protests:

‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’

Jesus was able to be a scandalous other because he knew 'he had come from God and was going to God'. Through his non-rivalrous practice, Jesus brings his disciples into that same relation: ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ Unless you are not scandalised by the fact that I am driven by a Spirit which not that of any which drives this world, you cannot yourself enter into the Spirit which will move you into non-rivalrous self-giving love.

'Sects', while all too often driven by a spirit which is against the dominant society, have often displayed a practice which is unconcerned by what is happening around them. The Amish, for example, are now becoming the paradigmatic of the life of care which we must all begin to move in (Casaubon's Book: Production, Consumption and Amish Economics). They have become so not be desiring it but by simply getting along in a life driven by a care for Creation which they have learned from the Creator and from the Messiah who said "Love your neighbour as yourself". As Wendell Berry says:

"I do not think that we can make sense of Amish farming until we see it, until we become willing to see it, as belonging essentially to the Amish practice of Christianity, which instructs that one's neighbours are to be loved as oneself. To farmers who give priority to the maintenance of their community, the economy of scale (that is, the economy of large scale, of "growth") can make no sense, for it requires the ruination and displacement of neighbours." - Wendell Berry¹⁰

The mimesis of a Messiah who is beyond rivalry frees us from being against and allows us to embody a reality which is quite different and yet gratuitously rather than resentfully so.

“... the initial intention of the “sectarian” communities which in the course of Western history have renewed a minority ethic has not been to be sects. Division was not their purpose ... They rather called upon the church at large to accept as binding for all Christians the quality of commitment which would in effect lead them all to be separated from the world once again in order to be appropriately in mission to the world.” - John Howard Yoder

’Mimesis’ is a Greek word which means ’imitation’. I use it here because of its richer associations than ’imitation’, because of the tradition of its use and because of the resonances that it brings together. Mimesis, according to René Girard, is the way in which humans desire. We are imitative creatures, mimetic creatures. That we are mimetic places us in continuous rivalry with each other. If you get a newer model of mobile phone, suddenly I am unhappy with mine and desire yours or one like yours. We have all seen a child who wants a toy - with which his or her sibling is playing - who looses interest in it once the sibling gives it up. This is mimetic desire. The child desires "according to their desire of another" and so do we. I use these trivial examples to show how pervasive is this mode of desiring. Mimesis is at the core of all of our relationships.

The concept of mimesis is also used by Arnold Toynbee to describe the relationship between ’civilisation’ and ’creative minorities.’ Greer summarises Toynbee's argument in this way:

"...civilizations emerge when a creative minority inspires the rest of their society with a vision of human possibility powerful and appealing enough to break through what he calls the “cake of custom,” the rigid body of tradition that shapes the behavior of traditional cultures. The key to their success is the universal human habit of mimesis – our incurable habit of trying to imitate what impresses us...Civilizations rise when a creative minority with an openness to new visions becomes the focus of mimesis instead." - John Michael Greer - "A Failure of Mimesis"

’Sects’ have been just such ’creative minorities.’ For example, Quakers were famously influential in the demise of the slave trade in the early 18th Century. We may not wish to make ’civilisation’ the primary body upon which ’creative minorities’ act or which they influence. However, if desire is mimetic, as Girard suggests, then the relationship is transferable to any human organisation. That is, if we are imitative creatures and creative minorities play a significant role in forming our desire, a mimetic relationship is not limited to ’civilisations’ but extends to all areas of life. Indeed, ’civilisations’, as such complex systems, can hardly be acted upon directly. They must rather be changed through the alteration of their constituent parts.

“We do not want you to copy or imitate us. We want to be like a ship that has crossed the ocean, leaving a wake of foam, which soon fades away. We want you to follow the Spirit, which we have sought to follow, but which must be sought anew in every generation.” - First generation Quakers a Balby, York, late 17th Century¹

The term ’sect’ is much less likely to be used appreciatively than it is to be used as a term of scorn or suspicion. It is my belief that there is much to learn from (some of) the groups which fall into the category of ’sect’ and I would like to advocate a more appreciative approach to matters sectarian. In particular, I would like to suggest that sects provide concrete historical examples of the missionary shape of Jesus the Messiah; that of potent 'powerlessness'. (Of course, not all sects are potent in their powerlessness but the shape of powerlessness may give rise to such creative potency if it is imitative of the Messiah.) Embodying something imitable is a mode of mission. Sects are imitable by their societies when they concretise creative alternatives. I suggest that imitability is the product of creative practice derived from imitation of the one ’through whom and for whom all things have been created.’ In as much as they embody the Messiah and thus also creative alternative lives, sects engage in a kind of mission. Through this potential for the creation of compelling contrast-societies, ’sects’ can be instructive for a Messiah-shaped practice of mission. 'Imitation' is not the only kind of mission, indeed it is an impoverished kind. I suggest, also, that 'sects' have potential to exemplify communities which induce structural as well as personal change.

1 Sectarian Suspicion

It seems quite natural to most of us most of the time to write off some groups - without knowing anything about them - on account of their bearing the name of ’sect’. I will not deny that there is a limit to the energy available to explore every group that we encounter but I do not think that ’sects’ deserve neglect as a category. Some groups which bear the name are very worthy of our energy. There remain some which I have very (very) little time for but it is not on account of their being ’sectarian’. Other ’sects’ ongoingly provide me with inspiration. I intend to write more of these later groups in the future. For now I would like to explore why ’sects’, as a category, may provide insights into a Messiah-shaped missional practice. Lets look briefly at what the category captures.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s primary definition is simply ’a class or kind of persons.’ This early definition has a close relationship to its use in Latin from which it is borrowed. This first sense, along with all senses down to the fourth, is marked as ’obsolete’. This word is no longer used with this meaning in English. The fourth sense is ’a religious following; adherence to a particular religious teacher or faith.’ but the subpart a. shows that this cannot be applied to Christianity, Judaism or Islam (and presumably any other religion) in general but only to ’different’ subparts thereof. And so we come to the dominant use which I suggest we must overcome:

“A body of persons who unite in holding certain views differing from those others who are accounted to be of the same religion; a party or school among the professions of a religion; sometimes applied to parties that are regarded as heretical, or at least deviating from the general tradition.” (emphasis added)

And so we have ’differing’, ’heretical’ and ’deviating’. I do not want to dwell long on the English usage of the word but I would like to draw attention to the Constantinian nature of the category. ’Sects’ are not named by themselves, they are named from without. It is often size and the ability to use coercive power that qualifies a group to name another group as a ’sect’. It is a name which dispenses with the need for dialogue. It does not merely name difference but a class of difference which may be ignored for the purposes of conversation because they do not possess coercive power or are somehow threatening to those who do. I would like to consider now the sociological use of the term, which will lead us into a discussion of the potentially missionary shape of ’sectarian’ groups.

Ernst Troeltsch distinguishes between two descriptive types: the Church-type and the sect-type. They are descriptive tools and form poles on a spectrum - they do not apply strictly to any particular group. For Troeltch, the Church-type is that kind which is:

“... overwhelmingly conservative, which to a certain extent accepts the secular order, and dominates the masses; in principal, therefore, it is universal, i.e. it desires to cover the whole of humanity.” - Ernst Troeltsch

The Church-type, then, is deeply connected to and dependent upon the existing social order. Its capacity for creativity is in this way somewhat more limited in scope than the sect-type. The sect-type is that kind which is constituted by:

“... comparatively small groups; they aspire after personal inward perfection, and they aim at a direct personal fellowship between the members of each group. From the very beginning, therefore, they are formed to organise themselves in small groups and to renounce the idea of dominating the world.” - Ernst Troeltsch

It is this renunciation of domination which is of particular interest to me. John Howard Yoder, commenting on Troeltsch, takes this as the relevant point also:

“The term, in this [sociological] usage, has to do not with the narrowness of the ’sect’s’ truth claims, or the pettiness of its cultural self-understanding, nor with the size of the group, but with the quality of the group’s recognition that it is not in control of the wider society.” - John Howard Yoder

I would like to suggest that this shape which has renounced dominating the world, whether explicitly or by fact of powerlessness, can provide an incubator for Christ-shaped mission. I have said already that there are particular sects that I have little time for and it must be acknowledged that this shape may be possessed by those who would dominate if they could, and if they can’t, they ’lord it over one another.’ Although I am suggesting that we do not rule out any group because they have been called ’sectarian’, I am not suggesting that ’sects’ are somehow good by virtue of the category. I do, however, think the category describes a shape which is potentially fertile ground from which Christian mission might spring, however much some who have that shape fail to realise its potential. I would like to broaden our conversation partners. The kind of conversation we might have is suggested by this shared renunciation of world domination.