The death of renowned United Methodist theologian Richard Hays of Duke Divinity School perhaps marks the almost end of the neo-Anabaptist, pacifist era. His obituaries all cited his very recent liberalized views on sexuality, overturning his previous more traditionalist views explained in his 1996 A Moral Vision of the New Testament. But his pacifism, as also explained in that book, was perhaps more significant and revealing.
Christianity Today hailed A Moral Vision as one of the 20th century’s most important Christian books. Hays addressed marriage and divorce, homosexuality, abortion and war, among other issues. He aligned with the modern neo-Anabaptist movement that rejects all violence. It was founded by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, author of the 1972 book The Politics of Jesus. Yoder redefined the Cross to mean chiefly the rejection of all violence. Yoder’s perspective was popularized by Stanley Hauerwas (still alive), who also, like Hays, taught at Duke Divinity School.
Yoder, Hauerwas and Hays relied heavily on Karl Barth and his neo-orthodox interpretation of Scripture. Barth’s perspective on politics was, especially in his post WWII years, more pacifist and aethereal. He’s often deemed an implicit if not an explicit universalist. Devoted Barthians often see Christianity as an exacting social ethic but sometimes downplay the need for personal conversion and personal holiness. Neo-Anabaptists stress the church as a special community but typically do not stress evangelism. Hays, in A Moral Vision, includes chapters on Barth, Yoder, Hauerwas and also, for contrast, Reinhold Niebuhr.
The neo-Anabaptists ascended to academic and intellectual prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, through the early 2000s. Their adherents are mostly Baby Boomers, like Hays, with some older Generation X. But they have few prominent spear carriers among younger generations. Neo-Anabaptists professed to be orthodox and creedal, with a high view of the church, as they define it. Often, they have defined themselves against popular conservative Christianity, which they typically deemed to be culturally compromised by American consumerism, capitalism, and nationalism. The neo-Anabaptists were never a broad-based movement. They have been chiefly campus-focused academics, intellectuals, and some clergy.
Thanks partly to their Barthian view on Scripture, which sees the Bible as containing but not being God’s word, the prominent neo-Anabaptists have nearly always ultimately abandoned orthodox Christian teaching on sexuality. Hays, shortly before his death, co-wrote a book with his theologian son claiming God has changed his mind on sexuality. He was among the last of the major neo-Anabaptist figures to liberalize. This new book, The Widening of God’s Mercy, essentially renounced A Moral Vision on sexuality, with Hays joining the rest of the neo-Anabaptist community, whose singular unifying doctrine is pacifism.
In A Moral Vision, Hays insisted the Sermon on the Mount bound Christians to an ethic of non-violence, citing Yoder and Barth. He also declared that “there is not a syllable in the Pauline letters that can be cited in support of Christians employing violence.” He reluctantly admitted that the New Testament does not specifically preclude military service but insisted that the Roman soldiers who accept the Gospel are cited only as exceptions. He admitted the Old Testament authorizes violence but said the New Testament has the final word. And he interpreted Romans 13, about the state’s vocation to wield the sword, as a call to Christian submission, not to participation in violence.
Hays, like the rest of the neo-Anabaptist movement, dismisses “post-Constantinian” historic church teaching about just war. Although they mostly would be careful not to describe themselves this way, the neo-Anabaptists implicitly claim for their relatively small movement a special authority that supersedes the universal church.
This ecclesial egotism was always in tension with the neo-Anabaptist exaltation of the church as a special called-out community very distinct from the world. By their understanding, the faithful church is actually a very small group that rejects all violence, contradicting the historic universal church, while affirming a more permissive sexuality, also contradicting the historic universal church. Such dissent from the universal church on important issues made the neo-Anabaptist perspective ultimately unsustainable. Younger intellectual Christians have looked elsewhere.
The neo-Anabaptists appealed to Baby Boomers, like Hays, who were scarred by the Vietnam War and repulsed by resurgent conservative evangelicalism in the 1970s-1990s. They recognized that liberal Mainline Protestant modernism was dying if not dead. And they wanted orthodoxy, but with an elitist twist, which empowered their thinkers as special prophets against the chronic errors of universal Christianity.
These neo-Anabaptists were never numerous but their intellectual vitality gave them outsized influence across several decades. Some of them in their pacifist zeal could be obnoxious. Hays himself was gracious and cerebral. My brief personal encounters with him were charming. Once I emailed him to ask if he thought nation states play any significant role in God’s purposes. He responded succinctly: no! He was clear and articulate about his beliefs. May he now enjoy the fullness of Christ’s presence.
Comment by Wilson R. on January 30, 2025 at 10:08 am
Richard Hays was nothing if not an extremely careful reader and interpreter of the Bible. That, after all, was what originally led him to the conclusion that homosexual practice (not orientation) was a sin, even as he called on Christians in The Moral Vision of the New Testament to accept homosexual persons in the life of the faith community.
His careful reader also led him to conclude that there is nothing in the New Testament or the life of the first-century church to support the theory of “just war.” He was right. There isn’t. Augustine and other Christian thinkers came along later with a rationalization for war based on the realities facing the empire in which they lived. Even though this radical pacifism goes against “the historic, universal teaching of the church” (post-Constantine, at least), it is clearly consistent with the teaching of Jesus and Paul. When you get down to it, just war for Christians is as much a rationalization and a concession to contemporary social and political reality as conservative Christians rail against when it comes to human sexuality and the position to which Richard ultimately pivoted.
While the New Testament message about pacifism does not prepare Christian-dominated societies to cope with threats like Nazism and Putinism, the message is what it is. And it’s interesting to me that, in arguing against pacifist teaching, so many Christians would cite Romans 13 about complying with government authorities, while ignoring Paul’s message to the Philippians (who were proud Roman citizens by virtue of their city’s status as a “colony” of Rome) that their true citizenship was in heaven, which is where their allegiance should be.
On a slightly different note, I suspect that most commenters here have not read “The Widening of God’s Mercy” and do not plan to read it. So let me offer this recommendation. Even if you disagree with Dr. Hayes’ conclusions about homosexuality and the church, I think you will find the bulk of the book to be enlightening and powerful.
He does not argue that the relevant Bible texts should be interpreted to say that homosexuality is not a sin, or that Paul’s damning words should be read in the context of first-century Greco-Roman society. Rather, he and his son Christopher go through both Old and New Testaments to show compelling examples where God’s word on a subject changes–from allowing eunuchs to be part of the religious community to the acceptance of Gentiles and the overriding of food laws and circumcision requirements.
If you believe that living in a monogamous homosexual relationship is sin, I encourage you to read this new book anyway, even as you hold firmly to your view. Hayes’ discussion of the centrality of mercy to Jesus’ teaching, and his argument that Hosea 6:6 (the passage that Jesus twice invokes and invites the Pharisees to go study) is the “key to unlocking all of Hebrew scripture,” are electrifying and enlightening for Christian practice, even if you don’t accept his argument about homosexuality and the church.
Comment by Gordon Hackman on January 30, 2025 at 3:44 pm
I appreciate this piece. I was in a neo-Anabaptist environment for twenty years and eventually came to see it as a dead end and bad theology that produces bad fruit, which I witnessed up close.
As for Hays’ last book, “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” I would encourage readers to seek out some critical reviews before taking Wilson’s advice above. Not everyone has found it to be as enlightening and powerful as he did.
Comment by Wilson R. on January 30, 2025 at 6:55 pm
I did not suggest you would find all of it enlightening and powerful (I said “the bulk of it”), nor that it was necessary to accept his ultimate conclusion about LGBT Christians. But his argument about the centrality of mercy is hard to refute and should be pretty uncontroversial to Bible believers. And that argument covers a full range of applications. It does not apply simply to the LGBTQ issue.
Comment by Tim Ware on January 31, 2025 at 12:39 am
I somewhat agree with the comments about just war posted above. The just war theory is in fact a rationalization which cannot be supported by the Christian Scriptures (Gospels as primary and rest of New Testament as secondary).
The just war theory is nothing more than a tool used in an attempt to give divine sanction to whatever a society wants to do…and it always…absolutely always…deteriorates into “Our wars are always and only just. Their wars are always and only unjust. We are on God’s side; God is on our side.”
Meanwhile, the blood of the untold millions we have slaughtered in our holy-righteous crusades in the name of “god” cries out from the ground.
Comment by Gordon Hackman on January 31, 2025 at 6:04 am
In response to Wilson, some people don’t find “the bulk of it” enlightening and powerful. I spent enough time in the environment of progressive leaning neo-Anabaptist religion to know that I won’t. I don’t have to eat any more garbage to know it taste bad and is bad for me. Homosexuality is not a matter for good faith disagreement and I refuse to be gaslighted.
Comment by Wilson R. on January 31, 2025 at 10:30 am
Gordon, have you read the book and concluded this for yourself?
Comment by Gordon Hackman on January 31, 2025 at 6:41 pm
No. I have too many other things to read and not enough time to read them. I’ve read enough about the book from people I trust it to know that I wouldn’t find it that good. I don’t have to read every clever argument trying to tell me homosexuality is good to know it isn’t.
As I previously mentioned I spent many years in a neo-Anabaptist environment, both ecclesiastical and academic, and I’m not impressed with what I experienced there. This article nails it perfectly. It’s largely an intellectual and theological cul de sac that leads nowhere.
Comment by Wilson R on February 1, 2025 at 11:17 am
As I thought I made clear in my original post, I’m not asking anyone to change their view on homosexuality. Most of the book, frankly, is not about that at all. It is about the centrality of God’s mercy, which he calls “close to the heart of Jesus’ teaching.” Twice, as recorded in the gospels, Jesus directs the Pharisees to Hosea 6:6—God desires mercy and not sacrifices—a passage Dr. Hays characterizes as “the key to unlocking all of Hebrew scripture.”
Mercy, obviously (or at least I hope it is obvious) applies across all aspects of Christian living. Dr. Hays’ analysis of the centrality of mercy is the part of the book I think any Christian would find rewarding, whether or not they applied that idea, as he did, to the question of homosexuality and the church–a question that he and his son do not address directly until the final section.
It seems like a lot of people here like to apply labels. And then a label, once applied, means you know everything about what someone else believes or thinks without exploring further. I don’t even know what people here mean by “Neo-Anabaptist,” although it is apparently pejorative. I read the Bible and think for myself, but if I’m going to be lumped in with a group that is regarded as unworthy of engaging with, I’d at least like to know what the sin of the “Neo-Anabaptists” might be.
Comment by Gordon Hackman on February 2, 2025 at 7:44 am
Sorry, but I find the claim that this conversation is about mercy rather than homosexuality to be disingenuous. The book is about embracing an affirming view of homosexuality. Clearly, the book’s discourse on mercy is embedded in that larger context and is intended to imply that God’s mercy means he won’t judge such behavior.
As for your claims about not knowing what “neo-Anabaptist” theology is, the article gives a very nice and succinct explanation. Reading it, I found myself repeatedly nodding in agreement, as it perfectly described the things I repeatedly heard during my two decade sojourn through that theological environment.
Comment by Wilson R. on February 3, 2025 at 10:19 am
By your description, Jesus would have been a Neo-Anabaptist.
Comment by Cal on February 3, 2025 at 11:00 pm
“Yoder redefined the Cross to mean chiefly the rejection of all violence.” I believe this is known as “eisegesis”, aka “creating your own Jesus who neatly coincides with your pre-existing opinions”.
Comment by Gordon Hackman on February 4, 2025 at 7:12 am
Cal,
That sentence really struck me too. I think, to large degree, it’s the problem at the heart of Neo-Anabaptism. Getting the cross wrong, means getting everything wrong. Without it, you don’t have the gospel.
Comment by Wilson R. on February 4, 2025 at 11:47 am
I wouldn’t agree with a statement that the chief meaning of the cross is the rejection of all violence. To be honest, I don’t draw my theology from reading theologians. I’ve never read Yoder and don’t really plan to.
But this doesn’t mean that nonviolence isn’t part of Jesus’ teaching.
What it sounds like here is that, if you affirm nonviolence and reject the “just war theory” that finds no support at all in the gospels, some people want to put a classification of “Neo-Anabaptist” on you so they can dismiss the argument out of hand.
Comment by Gordon Hackman on February 4, 2025 at 12:46 pm
Wilson,
“Neo-Anabaptist” is not a label externally applied by others, it is a label owned and self-applied by those who propagate the theology. The person who shaped and drove the theological and ecclesial environment I was in for two decades did a PhD under Stanley Hauerwas, was heavily influenced by Yoder, and explicitly declared himself to be Neo-Anabaptist.
Beyond that, I’m not interested in arguing with you any further.
Comment by Wilson R. on February 5, 2025 at 12:10 pm
Gordon:
Arguing? I’ve said from the beginning that I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind here on the issue of homosexuals in the church.
But it’s interesting that raising the point about the centrality of mercy–which obviously applies to all aspects of Christian life, not just the limited issue of LGBTQ questions—should provoke such a hostile response, apparently because a champion of that view happens to be someone who changed his mind on homosexuals in the Church. Therefore, everything else he might say can’t even be considered, so you stick your fingers in your ears and shout “Nananananana!”
Wow.
Comment by Gordon Hackman on February 5, 2025 at 3:39 pm
If that’s how you wish to characterize things, that’s your choice.