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Travis Edward Turner Poling Dean’s Student Scholarship SymposiumManchester College, North Manchester, IN 10 March 2006

The Call to Critique:

William Stafford as Anabaptist Poet

“I belong to a small fanatical sect…”

William Stafford

Critical Foregrounding

An emerging but little noticed category of literature, which by now could possibly

be respected as a genre in its own right, has begun to claim a place of its own importance

among the ever-diversifying canon of texts. This cluster of works only began to take

serious shape during the latter part of the twentieth century as recent and more serious

scholarship has focused on the value of their uniquely revealing nature. Not surprisingly,

this literature is the product of a small minority often silenced by history, a community

which itself has put little stock in artistic endeavors. But times are changing, and so is this

religious and ethnic group known as the Anabaptists.

Today a noticeable Anabaptist literary presence has taken root, as well as the

beginnings of an Anabaptist literary critique. One of the first Anabaptists to formulate a

beginning canon was a Canadian Mennonite named Rudy Wiebe (b. 1934), with his 1962

novel Peace Shall Destroy Many, a story that centers on a young Mennonite man caught

up in the struggle of his Anabaptist upbringing that preached nonresistance amidst the

reality of the Second World War. The book’s “unsparing treatment of patriarchal rigidity

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in a small Mennonite community in Manitoba, cost [Wiebe] his job editing a Canadian

Mennonite magazine” (“New Maps” 872), but lead to the publication of at least twenty

books since. Wiebe has received various honors, including appointment as Officer of the

Order of Canada (Book Rapport). Brethren poet William Stafford (1914-1993) was the

next Anabaptist writer to gain notoriety for his work. In 1963, Stafford won the National

Book Award for his first collection, Traveling Through the Dark (first published in 1951).

“He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose…In 1970, he

was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (a position currently known as

the Poet Laureate)” (Poets.org). Although these and various other Anabaptist writers have

achieved renowned status, little is known about the Anabaptists outside the group itself,

and serious academic study of Anabaptist literature has only just begun. One scholar

dedicated to the study and critique of Anabaptist literary work, including that of Wiebe

and Stafford, is Mennonite poet and English professor Jeff Gundy. Gundy’s critique is

written not only for Anabaptists; he is also responsible for introducing the genre to the

general public. His article “New Maps of the Territories: On Mennonite Writing” from

the Winter 2003 issue of The Georgia Review serves as the introductory framework for

this essay. Gundy’s work leads into my own critique, which focuses on writings by

Stafford, those Gundy described in 2004 as “a model and inspiration for my own

fumbling efforts toward some hybrid of ancient Anabaptist values and literary

aspirations” (“Peaceable” 2).

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Anabaptist Roots

For the first several centuries of Anabaptist history, there were essentially no

Anabaptist writers, “except…preachers, historians, theologians, and producers of earnest

devotional works” (“New Maps” 870). As a highly persecuted religious minority,

Anabaptists purposely avoided drawing attention to themselves from the world outside

their enclaves of safety. Within their own communities, they focused only on their faith

and on their material survival. There was little leisure or desire for crafting literary works

that did not contribute to their general welfare. As Gundy remarks, “Writing was prideful

and individualistic, and good Mennonites were humble and community-minded. Writing

might attract the attention of the world, which might lead to new persecutions” (870).

A brief history of the Anabaptists from Gundy provides a deeper understanding of

the historical context from which this group arose:

Mennonites trace their roots to Switzerland in the early sixteenth century [around

1525], when a small group of reformers became known as “Anabaptists” or

rebaptizers. They resisted not only the Catholic church but also reformers such as

Calvin and Zwingli who sought to create a new state church in place of the old.

Emphasizing believers’ baptism, nonresistance, separation of church and state,

and voluntary community, the Anabaptists found themselves vigorously

persecuted as a threat to church and civil authority, but the movement gained

small groups of adherents across Europe, especially in Switzerland, south

Germany, and Holland. Some became known as Mennonites after the Dutch

church leader and former priest Menno Simons…Today…about 450,000

[Mennonites live] in Canada and the United States. (871)

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Another Anabaptist group not mentioned by Gundy in his article, and the one to which I

belong and from which I write, is known as the Brethren. In 1708, Alexander Mack and

seven others left the German state churches they had known all their lives, and began

their own faith community in a baptismal service in the Eder River in the village of

Schwarzenau. Most came from the Reformed church and had been part of the Pietist

movement that sought to renew the church through bible study and worship in homes,

acts of goodwill, and evangelism that called on all who heard to repent of sin and enter

God’s covenant of love. They became disenchanted with attempts to reform the church,

and concluded it was better to separate themselves from the institution they viewed as

fallen. Mack was inspired by the Mennonites he met through his travels, and perhaps

would have joined them had he not believed that they had fallen from their own doctrine,

with which he wholeheartedly agreed. In the early Brethren pamphlet, “Basic Questions,”

the anonymous author (probably Mack) says the following:

It is true we consider our church fellowship superior to these now deteriorated

Baptists [Mennonites], with whom we are acquainted, and whom we know. The

reason is that they have deteriorated in doctrine and life, and have strayed from

the doctrine and life of the old Baptists [Anabaptist]…We are completely agreed

with [the Anabaptists] as far as their doctrine is concerned, which does not teach

anything in contradiction to the gospel. (Eberly 37)

Despite Mack’s attitude, the Mennonites and Brethren have remained close friends for the

last 300 years. Further, since Mack saw the Brethren—or, as they called themselves, the

New Baptists—as reclaiming “the doctrine and life” of the earliest Anabaptists of

Switzerland, Brethren consider themselves to be fully within the Anabaptist family. The

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largest Brethren group today is the Church of the Brethren, with approximately 130,000

members in the United States and Puerto Rico (Newsline).

Because of the close similarities between Brethren and Mennonites in faith,

history, and culture, much of Gundy’s assessment of Mennonite identity can be aligned

with that of Anabaptists in general, including Brethren. The following three categories of

cultural markers are especially significant:

Mennonites in North America continue to debate the nature of their identity.

Many locate themselves primarily within the Christian tradition as a third stream

of the Reformation, neither Protestant nor Catholic but sharing many basic beliefs

with both. Others emphasize an ethnic identity associated with particular places,

historical events, dress styles, and foods…Still others foreground an ethical

system that teaches peacemaking and community service modeled on the life and

teaching of Jesus. (“New Maps” 872)

During the eighteenth and nineteen centuries, most Anabaptists migrated from

Germany to North America where persecution eventually fell away and they joined the

white middle class. Acculturation signified as much a quality of life for Anabaptists as it

did for most immigrants to America; and for better or worse, most German and

Anabaptist cultural distinctiveness disintegrated over time. As the descendants of these

pious, hard working people gained more and more education and exposure to the wider

world, “some sentimental fiction [by Anabaptist writers] was deemed sufficiently

edifying to be acceptable” (870), and works more literary in appeal eventually followed.

While the publication of Anabaptist literature is slowly increasing today, this genre still

includes a relatively small crowd of writers and readers, and even fewer critics.

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As members of a religious, ethnic and ethical minority that for several hundred years has

shunned the world as dangerous and sinful, today’s emerging Anabaptist writers are

venturing beyond the borders of security associated with the community, and into the

realm once considered to be avoided at all costs. Gundy asks some fundamental questions

about Mennonite writers that again can apply to creative minds from Brethren circles:

“What place might imagination and metaphor, poetry and fictional narrative, have among

a people who have long fled from them? What might the work of a Mennonite writer be,

in the Mennonite sphere and in the wider world?” (872). Can these artists speak of the

world in a constructive manner without being naïve; and can they utilize the methods of

the world to speak to members of their own communities without suffering a new kind of

exile? Even more profoundly, Gundy finally asks, “Can such a minority ethos and

culture, with centuries of obscure history and practice at surviving in an often hostile

world, now offer something of use?” (872). His response is worth noting:

Mennonite writers share a common, often agonized contemplation—of the place

of the writer, the Christian, the citizen, the human being in a world of violence

and disconnection—and a common drive to shape that awareness into language

that may prove accurate, useful, and even beautiful. (872)

In adapting to the wider world, perhaps Anabaptists have not lost everything

valuable to their cultural identity. In the arena of the arts, Anabaptists may be among

those groups most able to look critically at the world around them, having not taken it for

granted for most of their history. Many Anabaptists have felt like social outcasts at

various times in their lives, whether from their own religious communities, or, more

distinctly, from the wider world. Since Anabaptists share not only a common faith but

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also an ethnic identity, this line between the world and the church is often more certain

and more visible than for other Christian groups, and to cross it always involves risk. As

earlier Anabaptists knew well, to write creatively from one’s experience was to risk being

discovered, and being discovered meant certain terror. This exact risk is less present

today, at least in North America, but Anabaptist writers are still taking risks, and they are

probably well aware of that fact. Currently, the risk in crossing the gap between

Anabaptist identity and the world is that the world might discover this community and

find in it an emptiness: a gap between who they are today and who they were yesterday, a

chasm between who they are and who they are called to be. The historical gap and

vocational gap are not always directly related. Anabaptists are not called to simply be

who they were centuries ago; that is impossible. But the two certainly inform and

dialogue with each other. The purpose of the creative minds among Anabaptists is to

explore this emptiness—not necessarily to fill it, but to recognize it, struggle with it, and

most importantly, to speak from it. Among contemporary Mennonite writers such as Julia

Kasdorf, Patrick Friesen and Di Brandt, William Stafford is one Anabaptist writer who

carried out this task most powerfully.

Anabaptist Poetics

William Stafford, although not raised in a Brethren family, married into one in the

early 1940s. He discovered the Church of the Brethren while performing alternative

service during the Second World War through the Brethren Service Commission. As a

conscientious objector without any previous knowledge of the Brethren, Stafford easily

adapted into the Anabaptist community. According to Gundy’s tri-part identity

categorization, Stafford would be considered as an ethical Anabaptist. In a 2004 review,

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“Peaceable Poet: William Stafford’s Witness,” Gundy recounts the following quote of

Stafford from 1955, demonstrating the poet’s ethical identity most clearly:

I belong to a small fanatical sect…We believe that current ways of carrying on

world affairs are malignant. We believe that armies, and the kind of international

dealings based on armed might, will be self-perpetuating to a certain point—and

that point may bring annihilation. Armies are a result of obsolete ways—just as

gibbets are, and as thumbscrews are, and leper windows. (“Peaceable” 1)

Despite this strong critique of US foreign policy that springs directly from his

experiences in this “small fanatical sect,” most of Stafford’s verse does not explicitly

pronounce Christian, or even Anabaptist values. He once said in an interview about

religion and poetry, “values in any direct use, any straightforward asserting, in poetry, are

counterproductive…In short, a direct assertion is a most limited offer of experience for a

worthy reader” (“Revise” 68). This declaration does not pronounce that poetry is devoid

of values, but rather that Stafford was not always fully aware of them, nor intentional

about inserting them into his writing. He does admit, “on reflection, I would find such

values lavishly present” (67). Further, he confirms,

There are not many labels on the value statements in my poetry; but my

assumption is that such values are homogeneous all throughout the lines: we

acquire our values in so many little ways throughout our lives that we may

become unaware of them; but a reader in my opinion could feel in the presence of

such values, if alerted to search for them. (67)

Although he neither talked nor wrote about it in great length, his experiences as a

member of the Brethren community influenced his poetry in ways which only deeper

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study could yield. But now “alerted to search for” the values and other hints of Stafford’s

Brethren identity in his writing, readers can receive his work as an Anabaptist would read

another Anabaptist. By viewing his work through the Anabaptist lens, elements can be

found in the text that even many rigorous critical approaches do not easily reveal.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,a shrug that lets the fragile sequence breaksending with shouts the horrible errors of childhoodstorming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk:though we could fool each other, we should consider—lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.(A Scripture of Leaves)

This poem reflects well the attitudes of early Brethren toward the institutional

church, while calling the present-day community of faith to remember the spirit that

inspired its origin. Appropriately, it serves as the opening to A Scripture of Leaves, the

only collection of Stafford’s work to be published by Brethren Press, the publishing

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house of the Church of the Brethren. The poem speaks of the sense of community that has

been lost among humanity, and seeks to awaken that spirit. The first stanza stands as a

warning:

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. (Scripture 10)

For Stafford, the powerlessness of letting someone other than oneself determine one’s

future does not come from being an insignificant cog in the wheel, unable to turn the

gears in the direction one chooses. It is rather because people do not know each other.

They are strangers, even if they see each other every day—even if they sit next to each

other in church every Sunday.

Anabaptists historically viewed the church differently than the established

churches around them. The Catholics said people are forgiven through penance and the

sacraments from the priests, while the Protestants claimed that the church is a community

of individual sinners, saved primarily by giving one’s personal life over to Christ. In

contrast, early Anabaptists saw church first as a community. Salvation depended on

making a covenant with God in repentant believers’ baptism, but the covenant was also

made with the congregation from whom one hid nothing. Church members confessed

their sins to the entire church body, and took part in communion only after being

reconciled to every member of the congregation. The scriptures were interpreted

collectively by the congregation, and any member who acted against the proclamations of

the community was banned from fellowship with the church. Not only was community a

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central and beloved aspect of the Anabaptist churches; to act in opposition to the

decisions of the church was to go against all members of the congregation, who were

bound as intimately as if they were flesh and blood family. Any dissidents were treated

accordingly. There can be no doubt that this caused considerable heartbreak for the

disciplined member as well as the entire congregation. Community is still very important

for Anabaptists today, although it is expressed more in Sunday afternoon fellowship

meals than in the daily walk of each believer. In the Anabaptist churches today, it is not at

all uncommon to be able to say to someone “…you don't know the kind of person I am /

and I don't know the kind of person you are” (10). Whether or not Stafford had the church

in mind when he wrote this poem, his observation that even persons in community

remain alienated from each other certainly holds true in this context.

Because of this disruption of community, the danger exists that “a pattern that

others made may prevail in the world” (10). If they do not find connections to their sisters

and brothers in the church, the Anabaptist world may be taken over by patterns not

originating from their community. Historically, this meant that such patterns were hostile

to the survival of the church and ethnic group. Sadly, it is not surprising to discover the

same hostile patterns today, even within the Anabaptist churches themselves. While

change is not always detrimental to the church, if members are to consider themselves

still Anabaptist, they must remember the spirit that holds them together and therefore

defines them, and allow the patterns of community to prevail. Additionally, if Anabaptists

“miss our star” (10), the patterns “that others have made” will prevail in the wider world

outside the churches, and their ability to reach into the world and serve it, like they so

love to do, will diminish, if not vanish altogether.

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Anabaptists have no sacraments, or rituals through which God is believed to act in

the life of the believer. Their forms of communion and baptism are seen only as human

symbols of already present realities. Although it would not be recognized in such terms,

community holds the place of sacrament for Anabaptists. Early Brethren concretely

enacted this in the practice known as “the holy kiss,” a formal yet intimate greeting of a

kiss on the lips shared between church members of the same gender. This action not only

marked the recipients as members in good standing, but additionally symbolized the

passing of the Holy Spirit, and thus the formation of a spiritual bond, between the two

individuals. This bond would ultimately encircle the entire community as the kiss passed

from one member to the next around the congregation. This practice is still found

occasionally, in modified form, in the modern Church of the Brethren congregations

during celebration of the Love Feast (the Holy Week reenactment of Jesus’ last meal with

his disciples), but is most often seen only among the old order Brethren sect of German

Baptists. This holy greeting has nowadays been replaced by a quick, courteous handshake

in the beginning of Sunday morning worship, or a few hugs shared in the informal

moments afterward. The shift from the kiss to the handshake seems to be a result of the

loss of such intimacy. The second stanza provides a psychological explanation for such

breakdown of community and identity:

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike. (10)

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When people greet for the first or thousandth time, or even have an extended

conversation, they are often hesitant to let themselves make an authentic connection with

the other individual. It is almost on the subconscious level, “a small betrayal in the mind”

that they might not even be aware of, “a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break” as

they simply dismiss what people say or do. They believe that people live their own lives

that have no bearing on their own; or they might be startled by someone’s words, and

write them off as unworthy of their energy, like people do during their own “horrible

errors of childhood / storming out to play through the broken dike” without them, instead

of trying to lovingly understand their sister or brother. Stafford calls Anabaptists to tear

down these mental barriers if they are to become a vibrant community of faith.

The next stanza proposes an analogy of getting lost even when trying to build

community:

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. (10)

Here Stafford may be criticizing the way some try to form community by simply holding

onto each other, like the blind leading the blind. If one blind man falls into the ditch, all

the blind men following him will fall in as well (Matt 15:14). They may think they are

trying to create community, but rarely do they consider the manner in which they go

about it. They would rather just follow the elephant in front of them, “but if one wanders

the circus won't find the park” (10). The congregation will not find its destination, but

will be wandering like lost elephants. What is worse, people know they are lost, but will

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“not recognize the fact” (10). Their hesitance to admit that they know they are on the

wrong track is perhaps what Stafford calls “the root of all cruelty” (10).

Following Stafford’s critique of the weakening social fabric among those who

treat community as if they were circus elephants, the fourth stanza begins to propose to

the reader a way to mend the tear:

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark. (10)

This appeal is primarily linguistic, but language is usually not “shadowy” or “remote.”

Instead, it is public, like the words “vocal” and “outspoken” imply. But then again,

language starts in a hidden place, in the diaphragm, lungs, and throat; it is propelled by an

invisible breath. When people are taking their time, and being level-headed, they form

words in their mind. Guts, breath, brain: language begins as “remote” and “shadowy.”

When people talk, Stafford warns, they “could fool each other” (10) or even oneself by

lying, saying that everything is fine, that the line is not broken. But first, before talking,

people “should consider” (10), and form their words in their mind, “lest the parade of our

mutual life gets lost in the dark” by saying something that could break the bonds of love.

Instead, members of any community must speak truthfully, opening oneself to the other

in honest confession of, as Stafford says in the first stanza, “the kind of person I am” and

“the kind of person you are.”

The fifth and final stanza serves as a benediction for the work, the summing up

and sending forth as at the conclusion of worship. Stafford says in his interview on

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religion, “church services are poetry from beginning to end; they just are poetry. A

strange thing to me is that someone can come out of [a] church service and ask about

whether poetry is flourishing today” (“Revise” 69). The final stanza shows how, through

poetry, the church, or any community can flourish:

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. (“Scripture” 10)

If community is to thrive in any setting in this individualistic era, its members must “be

awake” (10) to moments of possibilities for connecting person to person in a strong line

that holds, and discourages or lulls no one to sleep. It is their responsibility that “the

signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—” (10), given linguistically—words—“should be

clear” (10). Verbal communications should not be purposely vague (How are you? Fine…

okay…); people should be honest with each other, even—and especially—when they’re

afraid to tell the truth that the line has broken, that the bonds of love are gone, that the

bridge has fallen down. And words should be clear like light, for “the darkness around us

is deep” (10). If people help each other see, “If you…know the kind of person I am / and

I…know the kind of person you are” (10), then perhaps communities will not become

lost circus elephants, but will “find the park” and not “miss our star” (10).

Consecration: Towards an Ethic of Community

Kim Stafford wrote about his father in the introduction to Every War Has Two

Losers, a posthumous collection of the poet’s daily writings, “all his life William Stafford

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was witness for a comprehensive view. He believed in the fragile but essential

community of the world, and he wrote on behalf of what he called ‘the unknown good in

our enemies’” (qtd. in “Peaceable” 1). This “fragile but essential community” weighs

heavily in “A Ritual to Read to Each Other.” His belief “that no creed or code can solve

all problems or smooth all the tensions from complicated human lives” (1) is certain here

as well. What matters is how people treat one another, and whether they know each other.

Community must be built first, in whatever circumstance: in church, the office, homes, or

on the street. They must stay awake, sending clear signals. Then they can begin to

consider how to live as Anabaptists today.

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Works Cited

Book Rapport. “Rudy Wiebe.” WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival. 17 May

2005 <http://www.bookrapport.com/profiles/rudy_wiebe.html>.

Gundy, Jeff. “New Maps of the Territories: On Mennonite Writing” The Georgia Review. Winter

2003. 870-887. 17 May 2005 <http://www.uga.edu/garev/winter03/ gundy.pdf>.

---. “Peaceable Poet: William Stafford’s Witness” The Christian Century 6 Apr 2004.

FindArticles. 18 May 2005 < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/

mi_m1058/is_7_121/ai_n5992715>.

Eberly, William R., ed. “Basic Questions.” The Complete Writings of Alexander Mack. Winona

Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1991.

Newsline “Church membership shows largest decline in three years.” Church of the Brethren

General Board. 27 Apr. 2005. 17 May 2005 <http://www.brethren.org/

genbd/newsline/2005/apr2705.htm>.

Poets.org. “William Stafford.” The Academy of American Poets. 17 May 2005

<http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C040701>.

Stafford, William. A Scripture of Leaves. Elgin, IL: Brethren Press, 1999.

---. You Must Revise Your Life. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1989.

For more on William Stafford, visit my website, William Stafford Online Reader: http://staffordreader.com/