Mennonite Weekly Review

On my desk is Follow Me: A History of Christian Intentionality by Ivan J. Kauffman, published by Cascade Books, 2009, 251 pages, $42.50.

Lapp

In a fresh and provocative manner, Ivan Kauffman explores two basic polarities in ecumenical Christianity. He labels these “intentional” and “institutional.”

Kauffman calls himself a Mennonite Catholic. A graduate of Hesston and Goshen colleges, he has lived in Washington, D.C., since the late 1960s. He has been active in Mennonite and Catholic conversations, particularly through the Bridgefolk group.

Kauffman calls this book “a work of ecumenical history, an effort to view the Christian church’s story as a single whole.”

I am much drawn to the title and basic theme — “follow me” as an indication of intentionality. A more common term, “believers church,” suggests intentionality as belief rather than obedience.

Kauffman divides the book almost equally between two forms of intentionality — one celibate and monastic, the other non-celibate and evangelical.

Kauffman calls Jesus’ disciples “a lay evangelical community.” This and other early Christian communities lived with the threat of persecution for 300 years. After that, with growing political and cultural acceptance, many of the devout were attracted to an ascetic lifestyle, the basis of the monastic movement.

This book surveys the monastic movement from St. Anthony to the present. Kauffman emphasizes the periodic renewal of the larger church. He labels Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi and Peter Valdesius of Lyon “evangelical” preachers.

The story of lay evangelical communities has a strong base in pre-Reformation history. Kauffman traces a number of groups that “emphasized individual religious conversion, immersion in Scripture, the role of the Spirit in Christian life and voluntary lay-controlled institutions.” They tried to bridge the “divide between belief and discipleship.” He observes the strong embrace of peace in nearly each movement. He laments “the medieval church’s failure to create a place in its structures for the evangelical movements.”

Mennonite readers will be intrigued by the way Kauffman connects 16th-century Anabaptists to evangelical movements. He says Anabaptist evangelical communities left two legacies: “The first is that self-governing communities of intentional lay Christians who lived out their lives in the ordinary conditions of family and work can be created and sustained. The second is that it is possible for such communities to be absolutely nonviolent.”