police abolition

Mennonites versus Police

Mark Tooley on July 21, 2021

The Mennonite Church USA has released a new teaching curriculum touting police abolition. The new resource, compiled last year but released this Spring, arrives as many cities, now suffering crime surges, are stepping back from anti-police rhetoric. As Democratic New York mayoral candidate Eric Adams recently explained: “When I get out of that subway station, I want to see that cop at the top of the stairs.” 

Evidently Mennonites, or at least the drafters of “Defund the Police? An Abolition Curriculum,” don’t want to see police at the top of the stairs. Mennonites are a pacifist sect in the Anabaptist tradition. But traditionally they abstain from participation in government while not disputing the state’s vocation for force through police and military. Many 20th century Anabaptist thinkers, inspired by theologians like the late John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, became more totalizing in their expectations, rejecting all violence as equally sinful, especially the military but sometimes even including law enforcement.

Almost certainly, most of the Mennonite Church USA’s almost 60,000 members don’t want to forego phoning 911 when threatened and still value the police even if they decline to serve in its ranks. But the new police abolition resource does not seem very concerned about their perspective. The Mennonite curriculum explains:

MC USA received requests across the denomination to provide an Anabaptist grounded resource for clergy and congregations to engage in learning about the call for police abolition. When we confess “Jesus is lord” we are leaving behind systems that operate by coercion, violence and punishment. Mennonites have long recognized that following Jesus occurs in our bodies and with our lives. We remove ourselves from military service because we refuse to harm or kill people at the direction of the state. We affirm that all people are made in the image of God. We believe that it is incumbent upon the church to discuss and discern policing as another form of state-sanctioned violence.

According to the resource, calls to abolish police are not new because for “centuries, Black and Indigenous people have called for the end of violence enacted on their bodies and communities by police.” True, victims of police abuse have called for reforms, but very few across history, until recent activisms especially in 2020, have called for abolishing police. Often racial minority neighborhoods have instead complained about the absence of police as they suffer from disproportionate crime.

The resource claims it is helping the church move “into solidarity with the pain and brutality being felt and witnessed on Black, brown and Indigenous people.” But as the recent upsurge in urban crime reveals, it’s very often black and brown people who are crime’s chief victims amid less police.

Writers of the resource credit their inspiration to “Black, queer leaders,” and Black Lives Matter while also inviting white people into police abolition. They make clear that they’re not interested in fixing police problems: “Refuse reform propaganda; acknowledge that the police are doing what they were created to do.” In other words, abuse is intrinsic to policing. Lest there be any doubt, they further insist: “Police abolition is not about reforming the police to be less brutal – it is about the end of police, law enforcement and policing, so that a more just and liberative society and humanity can be built and experienced.

These Mennonites also call for working towards “our collective liberation. We recognize that because all our struggles are interconnected, so too is our freedom.” But “liberation” from what? It’s not fully specified, but the elimination of law enforcement is apparently central to this process.

The anti-police resource is aimed at Mennonite “adult Sunday school classes, Bible studies, small/cell groups or even as family groups.” It asks participants to share their preferred pronouns. And it includes a video interview with Angela Y. Davis, former Communist Party USA vice presidential candidate and winner of the Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize. So an apologist for the 20th’s century’s longest lasting notorious police state, which imprisoned and killed millions, is a featured voice for abolishing the police? The resource warns participants that its content might be “triggering” and so urges “taking a deep breath, closing your eyes, drinking a cold glass of water, zoning out for a minute, meditating, stretching.” Causes for this “triggering” may not be what the writers anticipate.

St. Paul and his imprisonment are cited by the Mennonites. But his admonition that God ordained the state to wield the sword in defense of justice and to punish the wicked is not addressed. There’s no effort to engage traditional Christian or even traditional Mennonite teaching.  Contemporary intersectionality is instead deemed authoritative.

“Transformative justice” is vaguely commended as a substitute for police. It shuns “police, prisons, the criminal legal system, I.C.E., foster care system” and “vigilantism,” although the absence of police would ensure lots of vigilantism as crime victims defend themselves. Abolishing police also means legalizing prostitution, evidently, as the resource complains that law enforcement does violence to “those involved in sex work” with “harassment, fines, arrests and physical harm” resulting from “our desire for supposedly ‘safer’ or ‘cleaner’ neighborhoods.” What about “sex workers” who are actually sex slaves and need rescuing from their captors? Who will rescue them, if not law enforcement?

The resource offers only a gross caricature of police as primarily aiming to suppress people of color and political dissenters. Here’s one example:

The actions of police, specifically those designed to target protesters, activists and local leaders, are designed to uphold the interests of those with power, i.e. white property owners or business owners. In the name of protecting property, the police fire tear gas at women and children. They shoot rubber bullets at people, some of whom aren’t engaging in any resistance. They even ignore other clear threats to public safety like right-wing militia groups that incite violence and have even killed people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

How often do police shoot rubber bullets randomly into crowds? What average percentage of their work is entailed in that kind of violence? And as to the concern about right wing violence, who will respond to it if not police? On January 6, absent the Capitol and Metropolitan police, who would have defended our democracy? What would these Mennonites have done?

The answer: nothing. This Mennonite resource is the sad example of theological and moral vacuity by an historic and storied denomination. It’s all the rage to demonize and mock conservative Evangelicals. But denominations with politically leftwing governance, although less influential, offer their own absurdities that distort Christian teaching and invite ridicule.

Fortunately, very few will be influenced by this Mennonite anti-police harangue. And police abolition as a fad has apparently already crested. Unfortunately, this resource exemplifies the lack of moral seriousness in large segments of U.S. Christianity today.    

  1. Comment by Dan W on July 22, 2021 at 7:15 am

    Perhaps the Mennonite Church prefers vigilantes like the “Bat Patrol” in Atlanta, circa 1981? (Not related to DC Comic’s “Batman”)

  2. Comment by Linda R on July 22, 2021 at 8:09 am

    The nuts have taken over Mennonite Church USA which is why many congregations (like mine) and regional conferences have left. The traditional majority of Mennonites, mostly from conservative backgrounds and areas, have been overrun by groups of liberals who don’t understand much of what traditional Mennonites believe, especially about authority of Scripture. Unfortunately, stories like this will come to represent Anabaptists rather than what the vast majority of traditional Anabaptism is about.

  3. Comment by Jeff on July 22, 2021 at 2:16 pm

    “Police abolition is not about reforming the police to be less brutal – it is about the end of police, law enforcement and policing, so that a more just and liberative society and humanity can be built and experienced.”

    Hmmm. How’s that gonna work, exactly?

    Mennonite “holiness” is a strange and bewildering thing… who can perceive it? However, it seems safe to conclude that their brand of social holiness does not proscribe the smoking of large quantities of really good weed. 🙂

  4. Comment by Tom on July 22, 2021 at 4:08 pm

    St. Paul and his imprisonment are cited by the Mennonites. But his admonition that God ordained the state to wield the sword in defense of justice and to punish the wicked is not addressed.

    I was just going to wonder if they have cut Rom. 13:4 out of their Bibles.

  5. Comment by floyd lee on July 23, 2021 at 12:59 am

    “Black and Brown people” — which (guess what?) includes “Black and Brown” police.

    I know this is true because I’ve attended church services with them. And they showed up when I had to call 911 for help (and yes I’m black). Black and Brown policemen and policewomen do their Romans 13 job, and they save a bunch of diverse lives in the process. (Just like the White policemen and policewomen, by the way.) And sometimes, they wind up dead so that WE don’t have to wind up dead.

    Suggestion to Mennonites: Don’t call 911 anymore when you need Police assistance. When the crooks show up at the door, just let the chips fall where they may.

  6. Comment by Scott on July 23, 2021 at 3:01 pm

    Aren’t they kind of like saying, they don’t want to grow food, they don’t want to eat food, but they certainly want to enjoy the benefits of eating food?

    If absolute non-violence is really what they believe, then it would seem to me that they should also abstain from receiving any and all benefits that they enjoy in their lives from the police and military protecting them, both absolutely via the threat, if not the overt act of violence

    Jesus preached against violence, but he also preached against hypocrites

  7. Comment by Scott on July 23, 2021 at 3:05 pm

    revised (edited for clarity)

    Aren’t they kind of like saying, they don’t want to grow food, they don’t want to buy food, but they certainly want to enjoy the benefits of eating food?

    If absolute non-violence is really what they believe, then it would seem to me that they should also abstain from receiving any and all benefits that they enjoy in their lives from the police and military protecting them, both absolutely via the threat, if not the overt act of violence

    They should choose to remove themselves from a society founded upon the rule of law, which is itself substantiated via the threat of violence

    They should leave this country, for a less violent clime

    Jesus preached against violence, but he also preached against hypocrites

  8. Comment by Ken MacAlister on July 23, 2021 at 3:39 pm

    Do these people really not understand that God is a God of law & order which is part of His justice & holiness? Governments & law enforcement are set up by God. He also brings them down when they operate outside His justice. People can try & defund law enforcement all they want. They cannot defund God.

  9. Comment by George on July 23, 2021 at 4:39 pm

    All the Minnonites in the USA will fit in an average SEC football stadium. Do they really matter? The answer is no !

  10. Comment by Bob Miller on July 23, 2021 at 4:46 pm

    From the tone of the article, it would appear that the person writing is not a true Mennonite or follower of Antibaptist tradition. The reference to “queer” would indicate that they have no idea about the tradition.

  11. Comment by Palamas on July 26, 2021 at 10:18 am

    Mark Tooley isn’t a Mennonite, he’s a Methodist, as anyone who has followed IRD (and not just dropped ijn to make a drive-by comment) would know. The word “queer” is in quotes to indicate that it is not Tooley’s word, but the Mennonite writers of the resource guide. And the word is “Anabaptist,” not “Antibaptist”–you were saying something about having “no idea of the tradition”?

    I’ve extensively studied Anabaptist theology, particularly on the subject of pacifism and political involvement, and what this document sets forth has nothing to do with Anabaptist tradition, except in its most radical elements. Historically, they abstain from involvement with the state, because they believe doing so would compromise their witness for the Kingdom of God. They have not tried to pretend that the Kingdom has come in its fullness, or demand that society as a whole live by their moral and ethical standards, knowing that such a demand is an absurdity when most of the population rejects their beliefs.

    This resource, on the other hand, is a rejection of Mennonite tradition, and a replacement of it with the utopianism of the far left, a delusional idealism that bears no relationship to the gospel whatsoever.

  12. Comment by Wayne on July 26, 2021 at 5:08 pm

    I find it sad that this denomination is rapidly going the way of the Mainline churches. Keep in mind that ultra conservative Mennonites are not part of MCUSA and that many existing conservative/traditional churches and conferences are already in the process of breaking away from an increasingly apostate denomination. This has been precipitated by an increasing liberal adherence to a LGBTQ agenda with several gay clergy being ordained (against church doctrine, btw) and other liberal ideas creeping in.

    Like Palamas, I too have studied Mennonite and Anabaptist theology and have also attended services at both liberal and traditional churches. MCUSA has become a “woke” church in its mission to seek justice for the oppressed and mercy for the downtrodden. Unfortunately, this noble aim has come to overshadow the gospel message of pointing lost souls to Christ, since some are distracted with a social gospel agenda. I hate to say it, but MCUSA is rapidly heading down the proverbial “slippery slope”.

  13. Comment by Virginia Brendemuehl on July 26, 2021 at 8:01 pm

    I quote from “We Wil Not Be Silenced” by Erwin Lutzer, “Only the power of propaganda can account for movements that clamor for defunding the police and vilify law enforcement officers as a great threat to our society while, at the same time, excusing or even defending anarchists. All this is happening at a time when crime rates are spiking in our cities and people fear that they will have to defend themselves when the mob arrives at their door. The destruction of law and order is sold under the banner of progress. and of course, the very noble goal of justice.” This is not an unexpected progression, back in the 70’s already there was a “justice” movement among many Mennonites. I am saddened but not surprised that this is coming from the church I grew up in.

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