Recently I posted a comment on someone else’s blog and, in part, received the comment on my comment listed below:
With all due respect, the Radical Reformers’ desire to do away with the liturgical aspects of worship probably had more to do with the fact that those using the liturgy were also persecuting the Anabaptists all over Europe during the Reformation. Both R.C. and Protestant persecuted the Radical Reformers.
So I looked up the writings of Menno Simons (Mennonites) and he was rather strong on why he was against Liturgy from both Scripture and practice. It struck me that it is a tremendous insult to Radical Reformers such as Menno Simons and Jacob Amos to place the locus of their decision to do away with liturgy on the fact that they were being persecuted. If one looks at this argument closely, it means that rather than Menno Simmon’s theology being a considered decision based on Scripture study and prayer, it was closer to an emotional decision based on feeling persecuted.
More than that, by “blaming” the Roman Catholics and Protestants for the loss of liturgy among the Radical Reformers, would not that seem to imply that the loss of liturgy was somewhat unnecessary? That is, if only the Roman Catholics and Protestants had not persecuted the Radical Reformers, maybe they would have kept some liturgy. Treat me nice and I will treat you nice. But, again, this changes the locus of the Anabaptist decisions from a considered decision to an emotional decision
In our culture we have swung so strongly towards the psychological explanation for people’s actions that we actually end up dishonoring men and women who were willing to go to jail–for instance, John Bunyan, the writer of Pilgrim’s Progress–and die for the sake of what they believed, for the sake of a considered decision and not merely as a reaction to someone else’s actions.
I am sure that the poster of the comment had no desire whatsoever to minimize the Radical Reformers. But, by trying to shift the “blame” where there was actually no blame to be shifted, the poster ended up minimizing the very Anabaptists he/she was trying to protect.
There is no doubt that our culture influences our decisions. There is no doubt that our personal experiences influence our decisions. There is no doubt that our insufficient information–because we are human and finite–influences our decisions. However, too many have taken it too far, to the point that one begins to wonder whether anyone made a considered decision. In part, this is a reaction to the modernists, who insisted that with pure logic and reasoning alone, one could deduce the truth. [Think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.] That turned out not to be true.
But, we need to be careful to not reduce people’s decisions to merely culture, emotion, and personal experience. People do make considered decisions. They may not have “full” information, and they are not purely emotionless decisions. But, neither are they only emotional or cultural decisions, like some of the post-modernists imply. I am convinced that Menno Simons was very wrong in much of what he said. But, I do respect that the mistaken theology that he espoused was just that, theology not reaction.
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