By Kathleen Kern

The denomination in which I grew up — Churches of God, General Conference — did not advocate pacifism, although its 19th-century founder, John Winebrenner, often spoke and wrote against Christian participation in war.

I joined the Mennonite Church when I was 19 partly because Mennonites still respected the teachings on war of the 16th- century Anabaptists. These forebears of the Mennonite churches believed — as I have since I was a child — that Christians could not both love their enemies, as Jesus commanded, and kill them.

Since some Mennonites have come to regard the antiwar stance of other Mennonites as a bizarre anomaly, I offer the following:

Conrad Grebel, letter to Thomas Müntzer, 1524:

The gospel and its adherents are not to be protected by the sword. . . . True believing Christians are sheep among wolves . . . and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by slaying the physical but the spiritual. They use neither worldly sword nor war, since killing has ceased with them entirely.

From the Schleitheim Confession, 1527 (Michael Sattler the probable author):

We have been united concerning the separation that shall take place from the evil and the wickedness which the devil has planted in the world, simply in this; that we have no fellowship with them, and do not run with them. . . . Thereby shall also fall away from us the diabolical weapons of violence — such as sword, armor and the like, and all of their use to protect friends or against enemies — by virtue of the word of Christ: “You shall not resist evil” [Matt. 5:39].

From Michael Sattler’s response to charges brought against him before his judges ordered him tortured and burned alive in 1527:

If the Turks should come, we ought not to resist them; for it is written: Thou shalt not kill. We must not defend ourselves against the Turks and others of our persecutors, but are to beseech God with earnest prayer to repel and resist them. But that I said, that if warring were right, I would rather take the field against the so-called Christians, who persecute, apprehend and kill pious Christians, than against the Turks, was for this reason: The Turk is a true Turk, knows nothing of the Christian faith; and is a Turk after the flesh; but you, who would be Christians, and who make your boast of Christ, persecute the pious witnesses of Christ and are Turks after the spirit.

Jacob Hutter, Plots and Excuses, 1535:

Where the government or power expects something beyond the order of God . . . and which afflicts our conscience such as taxes in war and similar things which contribute to the destruction of men, then we say with Peter that we must obey God more than man.

Menno Simons, Foundation of Christian Doctrine, 1539:

The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife. They are children of peace who have beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks, and know no war. . . . Our weapons are not weapons with which cities and countries may be destroyed, walls and gates broken down, and human blood shed in torrents like water. But they are weapons with which the spiritual kingdom of the devil is destroyed. . . . Christ is our fortress; patience our weapon of defense; the Word of God our sword. . . . Iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who, alas, regard human blood and swine’s alike.

Menno Simons, reply to Gellius Faber, 1554:

Peter was commanded to sheathe his sword. All Christians are commanded to love their enemies. . . . Tell me, how can a Christian defend Scripturally retaliation, rebellion, war, striking, slaying, torturing, stealing, robbing and plundering and burning cities and conquering countries?