#stuart murray

The last few weeks have felt like a thousand years and I am exhausted. I have been distracting myself with various projects, one of which was reorganizing my bookshelves. In the course of which I decided I'd really better either finally read this book or admit I was never going to. I read it. Unfortunately. When this book came out a decade ago, it was THE central point of discussion among Mennonites for a while. I put a good faith effort into reading it at the time, and got about a hundred pages into it before giving up. My past self, on their first attempt to read this book, left occasional little pencil-notes in the margin, and I'm honestly kind of pleased and proud to look back on those marginal notes I left. Even a decade ago I was frustrated with and questioning some of the same things that concern me today in this book. The concerns I noted a decade ago: 1. The comment "UM." left next to a description of an approach to scriptures that says the Old Testament must be read as pointing towards Jesus. Yup, me then and me now agree that's a pretty antisemitic approach to the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. 2. "I agree Christendom is problematic, but I see a logical flaw: doesn't this celebration [of the end of Christendom] imply celebrating the fact that not everyone's Christian [even though he's explicitly interested in making people be Christian]?" "[And why is he so pro-mission, when] what would mission do but bring more people to Christ and return us eventually to Christendom?" 3. "Also I think all this post-Christendom talk is a bit premature." 4. "You know, this book feels very self-congratulatory about Anabaptism, and the fact that so many Mennonites are reading it ditto...." 5. The comment "yes." left next to a sentence saying "Distrusting scholarship deprives us of helpful resources with which to understand the Bible; scholarship need not, as the early Anabaptists feared, distort or evade the text." Past and current me both got to this sentence frustrated after so much time spent on the wonderfulness of interpreting the scripture without reference to authority. Too much sola scriptura, not enough "hey maybe there's a good reason to talk to experts about the thing they're an expert in?" And okay yes there are good things this book is saying too, about the importance of acting in the cause of justice, and listening to the voices of the marginalized, and the good stuff provided by the peace tradition and nonviolent resistance, things like that. And I appreciate that there's a wee section near the end of some of the issues Anabaptist is prone to (even if I might quibble some about what is and is not included there), to keep it from being TOTALLY self congratulatory. But the overall focus of the book on the value of Anabaptism in a post-Christendom world bugged me. For the record: I think Christendom is BAD, not just "problematic" like young-me said. But I still really don't think we have actually left it behind! It's just....mutated over time and faded a bit. But still going strong. And yet the author thinks it's so clear that we are entering post-Christendom that he doesn't even need to prove it, and then goes on to make the post-Christendom world basically the main point of his book. And I am also not a fan of the idea of mission, of which the author's clearly very fond -- to me it feels pretty colonialist. I'm not willing to say that the religious tradition in which I was raised is inherently superior to the religious traditions in which others were raised, so although Christianity works for me it seems culturally arrogant to try to push it on others. And then besides the whole big Christendom/missions thing, there's also various niggling little details that tell me I don't think I like the author and don't want him on my side. At one point he quotes a story someone tells him about a "confronting lesbian" who then reads the gospel of Luke and gives up cannabis. This story is supposed to be in illustration of the point about the importance of knowing Jesus and following Jesus's example, but....I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS. SEVERAL QUESTIONS. He then goes on, on the next page, to talk about "welcoming and inclusive" churches (which he approves of) being parallel to how Jesus often needs to call on his own disciples to change their behaviour or rethink their beliefs. "Welcoming and inclusive" is at least today a kind of...code term that means "hey this church is okay if you, a gay person, attend" and I do not know whether the term so strongly implied that in the time Murray was writing BUT IF THAT'S WHAT HE MEANT. (In case you're not following: the implication is that these churches should only be welcoming and inclusive in order to slowly convince their queer members to stop being queer. I don't know if that's what he's saying! But that's how it reads. And the story of the "confronting lesbian" does not put me in a position of trust on the topic.) And the premise of the title is false. The "naked Anabaptist" - Anabaptism without any of the cultural accretions - is not actually naked in this book, just wearing different clothes. Murray's not interested in what Anabaptism in a vacuum is, but instead in specifically what Anabaptism in the current era in Britain among people interested in the emerging church is. And then he feels like somehow his experience of Anabaptism is what's truly universal, truly "naked." And also the writing was boring? Like, it wasn't even fun to read the sections I disagreed with in order to argue with them, I just found myself glazing over throughout the entire book, whether I agreed with what I was reading or not. Which made it hard to do a close read sufficient to really tease out everything that niggled at me and why (there was definitely more than what I discuss above). But I just didn't end up caring enough about this book to bother. So here we find ourselves. And I can finally get this book off my shelf.

Stuart J. Murray, in The Autobiographical Self: Phenomenology and the Limits of Narrative Self-Possession

Michael Orsini and Joyce Davidson, “Critical Autism Studies: Notes on an Emerging Field,” Worlds of Autism: Across the Spectrum of Neurological Difference

Mostly, though, we don’t argue with aboriginals about genocide. We ignore them.

  Carleton's English department is where it's at. 

Interview with Stuart Murray; Author of The Naked Anabaptist

What many who are being caught up in this movement lack is a sense of tribal identity and historical rooting, and many are looking for this. A central feature of post-modernity is the longing to “live in a story” that’s bigger than oneself. Many, therefore, are looking for a tradition they can align with. The only tradition that embodies what this rising breed of Kingdom radicals is looking for is the Anabaptist tradition. This is the only tradition that consistently refused political power and violence. This is the only tradition that made humble, self-sacrificial love the centerpiece of what it means to follow Jesus. It’s the only tradition that isn’t soaked in blood and the only tradition that looks remotely like Jesus. Many (in fact, most) of the early leaders of this movement in the 16th century paid for their non-compliance with the Christendom paradigm by being martyred. This tradition is a treasure to be cherished. And it’s a tradition whose time may have come, for this is precisely the vision of the Kingdom that millions today are waking up to. Stuart Murray, The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith (Third Way Collection)