Where the People Go

Community, Generosity, and the Story of Everence

John D. Roth

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781513806792
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A barn raising. A quilting bee. A credit union. A socially responsible investment. Where the People Go tells the story of Anabaptist-Mennonite efforts to enable communal forms of sharing. Mutual aid, stewardship, and generosity are deeply embedded in the Christian faith and have been actively nurtured among Anabaptist-Mennonite groups. Spontaneous forms of assistance—a barn raising, a quilting bee, shared meals—are the best-known expressions of such compassion and generosity, but the commitment to "sharing one another's burdens" has also found expression in more formal structures. Seventy-five years ago, Mennonite Mutual Aid emerged to organize the principle of sharing within a growing Mennonite denomination. A dynamic organization from the beginning, MMA moved quickly from a burial and survivor's aid plan to include health, property, and automobile insurance. In coming decades, the organization shifted its focus from mutual aid to stewardship and generosity, symbolized by a growing emphasis on socially responsible investment programs, wholistic health, financial planning, and services associated with its member-owned credit union. Always an agency of the Mennonite church, MMA, now known as Everence, has balanced its spiritual commitments with an increasingly complex regulatory environment, the national strains associated with the health-care debate, the shifting sensibilities of its customers, and the organizational complexities of a major corporation. This story of Everence captures the stresses and idealism of a church-related institution committed to mutual aid, stewardship, and generosity during its seventy-five-year history.

The Word Made Flesh

The Theology and Practice of Mutual Aid in the
Anabaptist-Mennonite Tradition

Early in March of 1528 a group of some two hundred refugees, recently exiled from the Moravian city of Nikolsburg for their religious convictions, laid out all their earthly belongings and committed themselves to share their possessions freely with each other in the spirit of the early Christian church. Led by “one-eyed” Jacob Wiedemann, the group was part of a much larger movement of religious radicals known as Anabaptists (or “rebaptizers”) who had fled to Moravia in the late 1520s seeking refuge from persecution.

Most Anabaptists had started out as followers of Martin Luther. They were inspired by the reformer’s defiance of Catholic tradition, persuaded by his appeal to “Scripture alone” (sola Scriptura), and eager to follow the teachings of Christ as they encountered them in the Gospels. But the Anabaptists broke with Luther and other mainstream reformers over several key issues.

The most fundamental difference focused on baptism. The Anabaptists understood the Christian life to begin with repentance, followed by a voluntary decision, like that of Jesus’ own disciples, to follow Christ in daily life. Thus, in contrast to both Catholic traditionalists and the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican churches that emerged out of the sixteenth-century Reformation, the Anabaptists advocated the practice of adult baptism instead of infant baptism.1

Other Anabaptist convictions were no less radical. Based on the life and teachings of Jesus, the Anabaptists practiced an ethic of love that extended even to the enemy. In keeping with Christ’s admonition in the Sermon on the Mount, they also refused to swear oaths or use courts to defend their legal rights. The Anabaptists pursued a disciplined life, reminiscent of a Benedictine monastery. They told their members that followers of Jesus could expect to suffer as Christ did, even to the point of death. Not least, they believed that the Christian life entailed a new view of possessions—followers of Jesus should share their money and property with each other freely, as if all were members of the same family.2

In the years following its origins in the Swiss city of Zurich in January 1525, the Anabaptist movement expanded rapidly. But just as quickly, it encountered fierce opposition. Within two years the majority of its most dynamic missionaries and leaders had been killed, and scores of its members fined, tortured, imprisoned, or forced to flee their homes.

For a time, the feudal lords of Moravia—today part of the Czech Republic—opened their territories to hundreds of religious refugees, offering them safe haven despite their unorthodox beliefs. But even in Moravia, the principles of religious toleration had its limits. When an Anabaptist group in Nikolsburg refused to pay taxes earmarked for war with the Turks, they aroused the anger of the local prince. When they refused to swear oaths of loyalty to defend the territory with arms, or to acknowledge that magistrates who did so could be a Christian, the ruler’s patience was stretched to the breaking point. In March of 1528, the prince ordered Wiedemann and his group to leave.

Thus it was that the bedraggled group of refugees “took counsel together in the Lord because of their immediate need and distress.” Then, “each one laid his possessions [on a cloak] with a willing heart . . . so that the needy might be supported in accordance with the teaching of the prophets and apostles.”3 Within a few years the group, now settled in Austerlitz, formalized its commitment to mutual aid by establishing a highly-organized community of goods that rejected all private property. Under the leadership of Jacob Hutter, they became known as the Hutterites.4 In the decades that followed, various Anabaptist groups would express their commitment to mutual aid in very different ways. However, the basic conviction that followers of Jesus would share their possessions freely and generously became a central theme in the Anabaptist tradition, one that continues to inspire many different Christian groups still today.

Established in 1945, in the context of the Mennonite tradition, Everence traces its theological origins to this early Anabaptist movement.

In the course of its five-hundred-year history, two themes in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition are particularly relevant for understanding the practices that have shaped Everence throughout its seventy-five-year history. The first is a clear conviction that the Christian faith necessarily entails an earnest and ongoing conversation about economic practices—the biblical teachings on community, stewardship, and generosity. The second theme, just as pronounced, is that Christians in the Anabaptist tradition have expressed their convictions regarding economic practices in a wide variety of ways. As culture, context, and concerns have evolved across the centuries, patterns of Christian mutual aid and stewardship have likewise evolved. Everence traces its roots to these traditions of continuity and change.

An Anabaptist Theology of Mutual Aid

Although significant differences soon emerged among the Anabaptists, all groups regarded economic sharing as a core conviction, as central to their Christian identity as adult baptism. Repeatedly—in confessions of faith, interrogation records, letters, and even hymns—the early Anabaptists argued that the Christian faith could not be separated from economic questions of buying and selling, borrowing and loaning, possessing and sharing, charity and mutual aid. They believed that followers of Jesus should take seriously Christ’s command not to “lay up treasures on earth” (Matthew 6:19), or the example of the early church of having “goods in common,” (Acts 2; Acts 4), or Paul’s encouragement to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galations 6:2). One of the earliest descriptions of Anabaptist church life, for example, included this clear admonition:

Of all the brothers and sisters of this congregation none shall have anything of his own, but rather, as the Christians in the time of the apostles held all in common, and especially stored up a common fund, from which aid can be given to the poor, according as each will have need.5

Their theological arguments for sharing earthly possessions were remarkably similar. They began with the conviction that God created humans in God’s own image to honor God by living in relationships of trust and transparency. God had entrusted the world to humans, calling on them to be stewards of creation. This was the purpose for which humans had been created—and God pronounced it good.

Yet the Anabaptists were not naive about the reality of sin. In the opening chapters of the Bible, sin arises from the concept of “mine” and “thine,” and the associated posture of the clenched fist, rather than the open hand. “For as the sun with its shining is common to all,” wrote Ulrich Stadler, an early Hutterite leader, “so also the use of all creaturely things. Whoever appropriates them for himself and encloses them is a thief and steals what is not his. For everything has been created free in common.”6 As a result of a sinful self-centered understanding of possessions, we have all become refugees and aliens from Eden, living estranged from God and each other, and at war with nature.

But that’s not the end of the biblical story. The Bible, the Anabaptists believed, is an account of God’s effort to restore humanity to our created purpose. Even if we have a deep inclination toward selfishness, possessiveness, and greed, humans also have an equally deep desire to live as God intended—in relationships of intimacy and generosity. The biblical story, as they saw it, was an invitation by God to unclench our fists, to be freed from the anxieties of possessiveness, and to trust in God’s extravagant bounty and goodness.

Thus, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God called Abraham and his descendants to become a community that put its trust in God. No matter what the circumstance, God always provided for the material needs of God’s people, sometimes in miraculous ways, such as when Moses commanded the water to gush forth from a rock (Exodus 17:6), or when manna fell from the skies to feed the hungry children of Israel (Exodus 16:1-36), or in the promise of a land “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8, 17). In return, God’s people demonstrated their trust in God’s provision by offering sacrifices of their finest crops or animals—literally burning their possessions at the altar. Ultimately, the faithfulness of God’s people was measured by the care they extended to the most vulnerable in their community: the poor, the widows, the orphans, or the strangers and aliens who were passing through (Deuteronomy 10:18). The Hebrews described the flourishing that arises from rightly ordered living as shalom.

The shalom that God intended found its fullest expression in the person of Jesus Christ. For the Anabaptists, the incarnation—the Word made flesh in the person of Jesus—was the hinge of the entire biblical story. In Christ, the new Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), God offers a wayward humanity the possibility of being restored to life the way God intended at creation itself.

Repeatedly, the message of Jesus was to let go of possessions—give and you will receive; don’t worry about the future; don’t hoard up treasures on earth; give to all who ask. These were not merely encouragements to adjust one’s attitude toward possessions; they were invitations to participate in concrete acts of extravagant generosity. Jesus, for example, explicitly warned his disciples against “storing up treasures on earth” (Matthew 6:19-21); he suggested to the rich young ruler that true freedom in Christ is possible only if he was ready to sell his possessions and give to the poor (Mark 10:17-22); and he affirmed the gesture of the woman who poured out expensive oil on his feet as an expression of worship (Mark 14:3-9). At the heart of the gospel is an invitation to share possessions freely—even exuberantly—with others and to live in the childlike trust that God will provide for your daily needs.

These same qualities were part of the early church as it took shape after Christ’s ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. For the first Christians, the decision to follow Jesus—to become a “new creature in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17)—meant letting go of the sin of possessiveness. Sharing of material goods in the context of community—what would later be called mutual aid—was an essential mark of the Spirit’s presence. One of the first official acts of a new community in Jerusalem was to identify deacons to tend to the needs of widows and the poor in their midst. Repeatedly, Paul exhorted new believers to share generously with each other, and he issued sober warnings against church members who celebrated the Lord’s Supper while ignoring differences in wealth (1 Corinthians 11:17-32).

Behind this posture of generosity and trust in the early church was a desire for koinonia—a rich word appearing often throughout the New Testament that means fellowship, sharing, partnership, or communion. Because believers “share in” (koinonia) the divine character of Christ (e.g., 2 Peter 1:3-6), they are called to express koinonia with each other. Thus, the early Christians described in Acts 2 “devoted themselves” to the koinonia:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. (Acts 2:44-47)

As a result of this tangible expression of koinonia “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

The apostle Paul made a similar connection in his letter to the Corinthians. As recipients of God’s generous gift of mercy and grace, the churches in Macedonia would naturally share “generously” and “cheerfully” with the needy saints in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8-9). One of the earliest compilations of Christian doctrines, a text known as the Didache, included the following instruction: “Never turn away the needy; share all your possessions with your brother and sister, and do not claim that anything is your own.” “The evidence is conclusive,” writes one scholar of the period, that early Christians “held the sharing of wealth to be an essential part of the Christian community.”7

Although the Catholic Church eventually made its peace with private property and the later feudal structures of inequality and power, the radical economic teachings of Jesus refused to disappear, particularly among monastic orders, who have preserved the principles of shared possessions, mutual aid, and voluntary poverty until today.

Despite the deep anxieties of sixteenth-century princes that the Anabaptist teachings on economics were a threat to social stability, in reality the Anabaptists were simply carrying forward a set of principles deeply embedded in the biblical story and the broader Christian tradition. “Freely you have received,” Jesus instructed his disciples, therefore you should “freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

Diversity of Anabaptist Witness

Agreeing on the principles of koinonia, however, does not resolve the question of how those convictions will find expression in daily life. For example, when Jesus said “Give to all who ask” or “Give no thought for tomorrow,” what did he actually mean? Even earnest Christians like the early Anabaptists, who were determined to take the words of Jesus seriously, quickly recognized that some interpretation would be necessary. Here is where the story becomes more complicated.

HUTTERITES: COMMUNITY OF GOODS

For the Hutterites, the biblical mandate was clear: all sin can be traced to the desire to possess things. They rejected private property in the conviction that the gathered body of believers (Gemeinde) only became the body of Christ if it literally held all things in common (Gemein). The most radical of the Anabaptist groups, the Hutterites rejected all private property, refused to pay war taxes, and adopted a communitarian life that erected a clear boundary between their communities and the surrounding society.8

Contemporary descriptions of Hutterite colonies as “beehives”...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Word Made Flesh: The Theology and Practice of Mutual Aid in the Anabaptist- Mennonite Tradition
• 2 “. . . Where the People Go”: Origins and Early Years of MMA (1935–1949)
• 3 “Bearing One Another’s Burdens”: Diversification and Growing Pains (1949–1962)
• 4 MMA Comes of Age: Fraternal Benefits, Insurance, and Investments (1961–1978)
• 5 The Healthcare Crisis Intrudes (1975–1991)
• 6 “Best of Business; Best of Church” (1992–2005)
• 7 From MMA to Everence: Succession Challenges, Restructuring, and a New Name (2005–2014)
• 8 Everence Today (2014–2020)
• Notes
• The Author