Brethren Witness - Peace and Justice

As one of the three so-called peace churches (along with Friends and Mennonites), the Church of the Brethren has from its inception in 1708 maintained a consistent official peace position. This position has four bases.

The first base is biblical. The Brethren have always emphasized the Holy Scriptures as the authoritative standard of belief and practice. They wholeheartedly adhered to the Protestant principle of sola scriptura, so much so, in fact, that the early Brethren, while accepting the content of the historic creeds, rejected the "symbolic" confessions of the 16th century as unduly limiting the working of the Holy Spirit. Although the Brethren esteem all scripture, they adopted a Christocentric principle of biblical interpretation. This understands the Old Testament in the light of the New, and the New Testament in the light of the "mind of Christ." It is therefore not surprising that the Brethren have been convinced that their desire to follow Christ also means following the way of peace He taught.

The second base is historical. The Brethren looked to the early church as a guide for belief and behavior. The first description of the Brethren asserted that the group felt "powerfully drawn to seek again the footsteps of the first Christians." At the first baptism, the new members asked to be baptized "upon their faith after the example of the first and best Christians." They wished not so much to reform the practices of the state churches from which they came, but to restore the practices of the primitive church. They studied the fathers of the church and learned that the early patristic writers were consistently opposed to warfare and Christian participation in it. With Tertullian, the Brethren could say: "Christ in disarming Peter ungirt [removed the weapons of] every soldier." Inasmuch as the Brethren set out to pattern themselves in all things after the first Christians, they also accepted the early Christian refusal to engage in war.

The third base is sociological. Those religious dissenters who became Brethren came primarily from the Palatinate, in southwestern Germany. This section was cruelly hit by the devastation of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and again by repeated French invasions at the end of the 17th century. The early Brethren had experienced personally in their own families and their own homeland the misery and horror of war. Added to this were heavy exactions by local princes who taxed their subjects heavily to maintain an expensive military and their luxurious court life.

The fourth base is theological. The two Christian movements which most influenced the early Brethren were Anabaptism and Pietism. Anabaptism, deriving from the 16th century Radical Reformation, maintained (with few exceptions) a steady nonresistant position, despite terrible persecutions which thinned their ranks. Pietism was a reform movement of the late 17th century which attempted to restore religious vitality to the German churches. Because of their emphasis upon disciplined Christian life and solid biblical basis, most Pietists opposed participation in war.

Both Anabaptism and Pietism held to a realized eschatology which stressed the necessity of believers living as if Jesus Christ had returned and His kingdom was already present. They largely refrained from speculation about a catastrophic Second Coming, preferring rather to attempt to follow the high ethic presented in the gospel narratives, in particular in the Sermon on the Mount.

Building upon these four bases, Brethren have persisted in calling each other to a peace witness. This has often been expressed in conscientious objection to military service, while otherwise attempting to be model citizens. They have pioneered in developing programs of alternative service, sacrificial social engagement in areas of crisis and need.

August 13, 2001