Conclusion

When I look back over these 500 years of history, I see a long stream of refugees, people searching for a home, a place of peace and security, both literally and figuratively. These were people who, for whatever reason, were dissatisfied with their current conditions and strove to find something better, some place where they could finally settle.

The early Anabaptists emerged in an environment that was already rife with social, theological, and political ferment and change, the dissolution of the medieval feudal and Catholic order. But they believed that the political and religious institutions that were starting to congeal were not good enough, that the reform didn’t go far enough. They flirted briefly with political revolts and communal social experiments, but finally settled on a form of disciplined religious community that was in the world, but separate from it in theology and religious and social practice.

These stubborn non-conformists were persecuted and driven from their homes because of their beliefs. For the next three or four hundred years, they wandered through Europe and then the Americas, finding brief respite where they could, settling to create communities, then moving on when the environment became too hostile or when the community outgrew its land base.

The varying paths of physical migration with their different histories brought different emphases within the basic Anabaptist philosophy: the Dutch Mennonites who ended up in Russia differed from the Swiss Mennonites who ended up in Pennsylvania; the Swiss Mennonites broke with their Amish relatives while still in the Palatinate; the Hutterites followed a different route to Russia and ended up with a more radically communal social structure. Each group was searching for a philosophical/theological “home” that they could live in, and when they came back together in North America, there was a great deal of cross-fertilization and further fermentation, further fracturing and an occasional re-merging.

These are people who take ideas seriously, who strive to structure their individual and communal lives so they are consistent with their beliefs. They take these things seriously enough that they are not only willing to stand against the broader society around them, but to separate themselves from people within their own community—even, in extreme cases, from members of their own families—with whom they cannot agree. Curiously, they believe so strongly in peace that conflicts often drive them apart. There is thus a constant tension between the centripetal pull of communal peace and security and the centrifugal drive of individual critical analysis.

 Always on the move, then, both physically and intellectually/spiritually. Looking for peace, a community, a place to call home.

While I have never been a member of a Mennonite church and no longer believe in any sort of god, I definitely bear the traces of these people and this legacy of searching for a refuge. Like Menno Simons and David W Martin, I have always taken life seriously, with the result that my life has been a continual scrutiny of the society I live in and of any new trends with which I come into contact, a continual search for ideas and practices that are more consistent, more just, more congenial with my ever-evolving view of what it’s all about.

I find it very difficult to have fun, to just relax and enjoy, to blend in with everyone around me. I have been a non-conformist pretty much all of my life. I cannot simply accept the status quo. I am driven to distinguish myself from the mob, can never quite go along with the pack. At the same time, however, I usually feel like an outsider and am always searching for some sort of community of like-minded people.

I have never lasted long in any organization, whether it is the Board of Directors of the Global Community Centre, the executive of the Society for Technical Communication, or the executive of our NDP riding association. I lasted as an employee at NCR Canada for only 18 months: most of my career has been as a contract writer, often working for multiple clients at the same time.

I am attracted to the work being done by the Mennonite Central Committee, but I could never be a member of any Mennonite church. I volunteer at a community bicycle shop, Recycle Cycles, which is run by the Working Centre, an organization based on the principles of the Catholic Worker Movement and the ideas of Wendell Berry, but I wouldn’t last long on their board of directors, I am sure. (Yes, bicycles are as important in my life as they were for old David W, though in a very different way.)

In many ways, I view myself as just one in a half-millennium-long branching stream of refugees. I’m still looking for a place, and the research that went into this project is part of that search. I feel a little bit more literally at home here on my corner of ancestor Joseph Schneider’s land in the centre of Block 2, where my people have lived for over 200 years. And intellectually (and maybe even spiritually, though not religiously), I think I have been able to situate myself a little more securely within this history of intentional non-conformity, of striving for community and for peace.

In the process, I have encountered a number of other refugees from evangelical fundamentalism, people with Mennonite and Plymouth Brethren backgrounds who, like me, have moved beyond that narrow notion of spirituality and, like me, are digging through the rubble of our shared past to find new meaning, new paths for moving forward that are less self-righteous, judgmental, and divisive.