This book has its most immediate roots in a dissertation completed in 1995 at the University of Pittsburgh for the Department of Communication entitled "Social Movement Rhetorics of the Radical Reformation." Two chapters of this book—two and five—are drawn directly from that dissertation. The rest of the book was written to answer a question that arose in the process of writing the dissertation but could not be adequately addressed in that project: How did Anabaptist writers and leaders articulate the relationship of their defenseless communities to the civic order ruled by the sword? Answering that question was for me part of an older personal quest rooted in my childhood years as part of a plain Mennonite community, where I was nurtured and educated into what many would call a "sectarian" self-understanding with apparently clear boundary lines between church and world. As a youth I was aware of both the clarity and ambiguity of these boundary lines. On the one hand, the people of my church dressed and behaved in ways that firmly marked us as different from the rest of society. On the other hand, at the very center of our communal practice and worship were texts and hymns and rituals that were quite clearly shared with the "world" and with "worldly" Christians. For example, the central sacred text of our worship—the King James Version of the Bible—was prefaced by a dedication to King James that I often examined with puzzlement as a child, reared as I was to believe that true Christians could not be magistrates. In the Mennonite grade school I attended, I learned both the story of the American Revolution and the story of defenseless Anabaptist martyrs, quite conscious that these stories contradicted one another and somewhat doubtful about the Mennonite version of two-kingdom theology by which these narratives were related in my education. Thus, this book is also an attempt to propose answers to questions I posed to my grade school teachers at Zion Christian School and my Sunday school teachers at Zion Conservative Mennonite Church. The question of how Christians should relate to the surrounding social and political order stayed with me both as a high school student at Peniel Holiness School and through my undergraduate years at Malone College, an institution affiliated with the Evangelical Friends. While at Malone, I participated in the American Studies Program of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, where I was assigned to read John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus, a book which convinced me that radical Christian discipleship is not mutually exclusive from civic and political witness, even though the form of that witness exceeds and sometimes supercedes conventional electoral politics. Dr. Kim Phipps, then a professor at Malone, introduced me to rhetorical theory and criticism, which was to become my disciplinary orientation for thinking about political action and Christian persuasion. My education in church-related institutions thus complicated and deepened my own convictions about Christian nonconformity and nonresistance and prepared me well for graduate studies in a public institution where scholars and students shaped by a large variety of national, ethnic, religious, and political traditions encountered the emerging academic theories of poststructuralism, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies. I discovered that the particular peace church stories that had been a central feature of my own identity were welcomed at the table of academic discussion, along with stories brought by others, including those of Latin American revolutionary struggles, the Greek Sophists, the American religious right, the Sri Lankan civil war, gay and lesbian movements, feminism, and so many more. I am especially grateful to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Thomas Kane, for encouraging my interest in studying Reformation-era Anabaptist movements, even though my academic discipline continues to largely neglect the rhetoric of the continental Reformation. Because the completion of the dissertation was a springboard for the present study, I am grateful to Professor Kane and the rest of my dissertation committee—Dr. John Beverley, Dr. Danae Clark, and Dr. John Poulakos—for their rigorous and energetic questioning of the premises and conclusions of that project. Dr. C. Arnold Snyder, professor of history at Conrad Grebel University College and a preeminent scholar of sixteenth-century Anabaptism, provided a nine-page detailed critique of my dissertation that I found very helpful while revising chapters two and five. He also raised many insightful questions to which I hope the rest of this book is the beginning of a response, even though it is likely that he will continue to have fruitful concerns about both my methodology and my conclusions. Chapters three and four benefited from vigorous exchanges that followed their presentation at meetings of the Anabaptist Colloquium—a group of North American scholars specializing in Anabaptist studies that meets annually to discuss emerging scholarship. During the past eight years while completing this book, I have been blessed with a teaching position at Bluffton University, a school affiliated with Mennonite Church USA. At Bluffton, the dissenting tradition of Anabaptist defenselessness is profoundly engaged with the problems and possibilities of contemporary U.S. society, thus offering a wonderful context for studying Anabaptist rhetoric. The university has provided both funds and conversations that have advanced this project. I am grateful for three Bluffton University Study Center Grants (in 1997, 1999, and 2001) which helped in the preparation of chapters three, four, and six. Many Bluffton colleagues have provided input during numerous faculty colloquia where much of this material was originally presented, and students in my "Mennonite History and Thought" classes during the 1999-2000 and 2002-2003 academic years proved to be helpful conversation partners as I tested my conclusions with them. Student research assistants Hannah Kehr, Kyle Rinker, and Jennifer Roeherle helped with formatting, indexing, and bibliographical work. My thinking about Anabaptist history and theology has been deeply shaped by an almost constant dialogue during the past decade with Dr. J. Denny Weaver, professor of religion at Bluffton, a scholar who has made so many important and influential contributions in Anabaptist historical and theological studies. Weaver has specifically impacted this book both as the C. Henry Smith series editor and as a discussion partner whose office is just down the stairway from my own. It should be clear by now that this book, like myself, is a product of the church, in particular, the Mennonite church and the broader peace church tradition. My life has been spent and continues to be spent in the church and in church-related institutions. During my adult years, the congregations of Berlin Mennonite Church, Pittsburgh Mennonite Church, and First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, have been my primary contexts for accountability and spiritual discovery, providing resources of meaning and self-understanding that are inextricable from my scholarship. For me, church life and family life have been mutually reinforcing sources of sustenance and guidance. My parents, Jacob and Joan Mast, nurtured me in the faith and supported my academic pursuits from a young age. My children, Anna and Jacob, were born during the writing of this book, and their lives have contributed immeasurably to the joy and hope that make the completion of any large and difficult project possible. My wife and colleague, Susan Biesecker-Mast, has lived with this project from the time we first met in graduate school. She has embodied for me all of those practices that Anabaptists associated with the "marital sister": unfailing support, wise discernment, gentle criticism, persistent inquiry, and passionate commitment to the church of Jesus Christ. This book is dedicated to her with love and gratitude. —Gerald Biesecker-Mast Separation and the Sword orders:
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