Mennonite Militia

I carry a black semiautomatic rifle in my pickup these days, tucked between the center console and the driver’s side seat, the muzzle resting on the floor near the gas pedal. A powerful flashlight and a green laser sight are clamped on a picatinny rail under the barrel. A high capacity magazine loaded with hollow-point ammo rides in the driver’s side door pocket, along with an extra box of ammo, and a 6,000 lumen spotlight keeps me company on the floor in front of the console. In the dark, without looking down and without parking my truck, I can bring the magazine, gun, and flashlight together and neutralize a threat in seconds. I know—I’ve done it.

The rifle, a loyal Ruger 10/22 in a rugged black synthetic stock, has been with me since my twelfth birthday. It is an old friend (bearing marks of blackberry patches and mud puddles as any well-loved gun should) but the laser sight and other tactical accessories are more recent additions.

I’ve never really been a gun nut. I own three guns. A gun for shooting big things, a gun for shooting small things, and a gun for shooting flying things. I haven’t purchased a gun for close to twenty years. While I’ve gone through a fair amount of ammo in my lifetime, I’ve certainly touched off fewer rounds in this past decade than the previous. On the other hand, I’ve probably also touched off more in this past summer than I have this past decade. So, what inspires a nonresistant Anabaptist with yuppy tendencies to go full blown commando? Why the sudden acquisition of new tactical gear and new tactical habits?

One of my friends recently tipped me off that George Soros was planning to bus Antifa terrorists to rural areas in order to “burn down farmhouses and kill livestock in rural white areas.” The plan, thankfully, didn’t seem to include the Walla Walla Valley, but I was exhorted to gather the flock and pray anyway. In Klamath Falls, a relatively remote, rural community in southern Oregon, local residents gathered on Sugarman’s Corner, armed and ready, but the Antifa Express never showed. They were scared off (it was later asserted on social media) by the show of patriotic force.

There are many who genuinely believe our society is at imminent risk of a total social and moral collapse. They are forming militias with like-minded patriots or comrades (depending on your political views), collecting weapons, and even holding militia training sessions. Some place much stock in the second amendment which preserves their right to form “well-regulated militias” and bars the government from infringing on their right to “keep and bear arms.” They see themselves, with their tactical vests and glammed out AR’s, as the final defense of the American Dream, and as a genuine deterrent to potential governmental tyranny, never mind that the government has such things as fifth generation fighter jets, nuclear powered warships the size of small towns, and Reaper drones armed with “smart” laser-guided Hellfire missiles. Notwithstanding, they are locked and loaded for the Marxists and socialists who will, no doubt, come streaming out of Big City, USA, with their torches and pitchforks and mandatory face masks the moment the Biden/Harris ticket triumphs. Others see themselves as covert freedom fighters for the oppressed, preferring to smash and burn government buildings and capitalist businesses and attack police officers. They don't talk so much about the second amendment and the American Dream, as their political narrative focuses on social justice and minority rights instead, but all the same, they are collecting weapons, organizing militias, and willing to engage in violence to advance their values. And if the Trump/Pence ticket wins four more years, they are locked and loaded to take on the bigotry and greed of the one percenters.

I live a mere afternoon’s drive from Portland, Oregon, where recently, after nearly 100 straight days of protests and riots, a self-described “patriot,” a supporter of a group called Patriot Prayer, was gunned down in the street, ostensibly by an Antifa supporter.

What about these fears? How should we prepare ourselves for a possible future chaos? However counterintuitive, it must be said that the American Mennonite/ Anabaptist community is mostly well armed. “Mennonite Militia” has a certain ring to it, and I dare say we Mennonite country boys could hold our own, not least in the “well-regulated” department. We’ve had some practice there.

It would be fun to run with this misleading narrative a little longer, but no. The truth is, I’m not packing a gun to defend my way of life in the name of God. Nor am I anticipating a need to set up a perimeter and defend my property against raiders in a dystopian post-Covid apocalypse.

Most of you reading this would probably be aghast, even outraged, if I advocated Anabaptist armament for the above reasons. But I wonder why? And I wonder if that outrage would run much deeper than a reflexive moral spasm triggered by generations of cultural conditioning?

That may seem harsh, even judgmental, but I have reason to ask. As I have written elsewhere, nothing has the ability to peel back the masks of society and expose the reality under the surface quite like stress does, and 2020 has provided a stress test unlike anything our generation has experienced before.

What has been revealed is less than we might have hoped for. The sad truth is I don't know of very many congregations that have not been revealed to be harboring within their church deep, unexamined, instinctive loyalties to a kingdom that is not Christ’s. Instead, it looks a lot like one I described above. We cannot serve two masters, and these new loyalties can only have flourished as Christ’s Kingdom gospel of healing for a broken world through the upside-down power of suffering love, authentic relationships and a living, working faith has proportionally faded and weakened.

I don't often hear voices of compassion, sorrow, and healing in response to the chaos and confusion wracking our cities. I don't often encounter a genuine curiosity and desire to understand, so that we can find ways to be healers to our country. I don't see much stretching and flexing of the hands and feet of Christ, as His body prepares to apply the shattering power of suffering love to the chaotic bondage of hatred and strife in our nation. At best there is a reflexive retreat from danger, followed by a moralistic tsk-tsking about it all. At worst there is full-throated baying of left wing right wing political talking points. Though, it must be said, mostly right wing.

The loss of Christ’s kingdom values, which have long been foundational Anabaptist ideas, is tragic, not least because it reveals a fading awareness of our own brokenness and our own deep need of the suffering love, and interdependent human relationships through which Christ touches the world and us. It is tragic because it reveals a deeply arrogant embrace of individualism, and a callous attitude towards the brokenness not only around us but within us. It reveals a disturbing willingness to sacrifice the counter-intuitive, earth-shaking power of suffering love on the altar of economic and social security. In other words, it reveals a willingness to remain broken ourselves and to perpetuate the brokenness around us, so long as our upper middle-class life remains intact.

All of this forms a foundation unable to support the architecture of a Jesus-shaped community, and one seeking to live out His unique kingdom values. It is instead a foundation formed to suit a brassy God and country consumerism, and it is only a matter of time until we become just that. Either we fix the foundation, or our cultural structure will collapse, and our children will install a new cultural structure that fits.

We have serious questions to ponder, and may God give us the courage, the curiosity, and most critically, the love, to not only ask them, but to answer them.

Oh, and about that gun in my pickup? I’ve had a real skunk problem among my pastured egg layers this year. At nineteen confirmed kills and counting, it has proven to be an effective tool for skunk control.