But for the grace?

                                                              
Note: This is fourth and final in a series about my trip to Europe last summer, part of which I spent exploring religious and family roots.

I began my Summer of 2009 European tour getting in touch with my Anabaptist heritage of religious persecution in Canton Berne, Switzerland. I ended it in Nuremberg, Germany, exploring another and even more extreme example of human inhumanity that is very much a part of the shared history of most of the modern world.

Nuremberg was the home of the Nazi Party and the site of massive annual Nazi Party rallies, one of which was immortalized by Leni Riefenstahl in the film Triumph of the Will. I particularly wanted to go to Nuremberg because of the film. It is one of the finest examples of pure propaganda ever put on film, and I have long used excerpts of it in the classroom to teach critical thinking and viewing.

The sites represented in the film still exist in Nuremberg, and seeing them firsthand was a special lesson even for me, the teacher, in the gap between cinematic reality and physical reality. Of course, the sites have also changed. Gone are the flags and banners and gigantic swastikas, and the stadium seating of the rally ground is mostly overgrown.

Hitler made speeches at Nazi Party rallies from the platform behind the rail high on the façade of the Zeppelin Field Grandstand. A gigantic swastika once stood on the top of the Grandstand. Wikipedia has a brief clip of it being blown up.

           
But the monstrous edifice that dwarfs human figures and presented Hitler at a god-like height above the crowds to make his speeches is still an awesome sight. The Grosse Strasse, or Great Street, for parading military might is a road-building marvel: 1.25 miles by 44 yards of precisely cut black and gray granite squares laid on a road bed able to support war machinery and ranks of marching men.

However, it was not these impressive monuments that gave me new insight into how so horrendous an event as the Holocaust could happen. Rather, it was the careful, historical reconstruction of the rise of Nazism out of patriotism and human desire for community, the creation of the “Fuhrer” myth out of a charismatic leader, the birth of a military juggernaut out of an army of proud workers, and the consequent horrors of death camps and world war—all presented in unflinching detail inside the Documentation Centre museum on the site—that prodded me to a new level of understanding of how we humans can be seduced into inhumane treatment of those we deem less worthy.

My response in the Summer of 2009 was, "There but for the grace of God..." I was remembering the surge of patriotism and anger in the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that led us to invade one country and manufacture a war with another. But in the summer of 2009, with those wars seemingly winding down, I thought we were moving on.

Today, in the face of our own U.S. version of homegrown terrorism against Muslims--burning mosques under construction, threatening to burn Korans, and more--over an Islamic community center with a prayer space* at 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan, I'm not so sure.

*Note: I will not call it a mosque because I have heard and read arguments both ways and consider that to be an open question. And I will not say it is "at Ground Zero" because it isn't. It can't even be seen from Ground Zero.
                                        

Anabaptist Roots: Bern

                                                    
Note: This is third in a series about my trip to Europe last summer, part of which I spent exploring religious and family roots.

Last summer's exploration of my Anabaptist roots culminated in Bern, the Capital of the Swiss Canton of Bern and the center of the severest persecutions of the Anabaptists. On the outskirts of town, we passed a castle where Anabaptists were imprisoned.
                                                                                                                                       

In Bern we saw the Rathaus, or City Hall, where Anabaptist trials were conducted. We walked down the Gerechtigkeitsgasse, or Street of Justice, where Anabaptists were flogged and beheaded. How tragic it is that people engaged in the greatest injustices often attempt to cover their tracks by creating symbolism—like the name of this street—in direct contradiction to what they are doing. Today the Street of Justice in Bern is laced with flowers cascading from window boxes.
                                                                                                                                           

We ended our tour of Bern in the Swiss Reformed Cathedral, the site of a service of reconciliation between the descendants of the Anabaptists and the Swiss Reformed Church. When, you might ask? In 2004—almost 500 years after the persecutions began! For a people charged with reconciliation, Christians can sure cling to a grudge.

Although Anabaptism is part of my heritage, I no longer am an Anabaptist. I joyfully participate in the baptism of infants into Christ’s Holy Catholic Church. But traveling in the footsteps of the Anabaptists has helped me to understand why, for example, I am fiercely opposed to state or official religion of any kind, and why I stand fiercely on the side of respecting and protecting the freedom of everyone to believe and worship as they choose.

I do believe in Christian unity, but I believe that unity can be found in the spaciousness of the Holy Spirit, without forcing conformity in belief and practice on the community of the faithful.

And, finally, I believe the practice of examining my religious heritage for what to keep and what to respectfully set aside has both strengthened my faith and made me more open to what the Spirit would teach me through the faiths of others.

Anabaptist Roots: Täufer Versteck

                                                        
Note: This is second in a series about my trip to Europe last summer, part of which I spent exploring religious and family roots.

The oldest continuously operating Mennonite Church in the world is located in the village of Langnau, Switzerland. It was unlocked but seemingly empty when I arrived on a Sunday afternoon in July 2009.

The bulletin board in the vestibule featured a large topographic map of the area marked with “meeting places around 1888.” The persecution of Anabaptists in Switzerland had ended only a few decades earlier. These meetinghouse churches are thus likely to be located in places where the Anabaptists hid from authorities. The terrain depicted on the map makes it clear why: This part of Switzerland is a warren of narrow valleys between forested mountain ridges, offering a wealth of hiding places and making pursuit difficult.

To the left of the map was a photograph of the very church in which I was standing, the “Alteste, Alttäufergemeinde Kehr” or “oldest Old Baptist Community Church.” Of course, the building has changed a great deal, but it is still recognizable as the building in the photo.

In a room just off the vestibule, two very old silver chalices were displayed in a case mounted on the wall. These artifacts surprised me. The Mennonite Church I grew up in would never have owned a silver chalice. Such vestiges of Roman Catholic and Swiss Reformed liturgy were soon judged by the Mennonites to be idolatrous distractions, and they developed instead a plain, unadorned “non-liturgical” style.

The sound of a piano eventually drew me to the main sanctuary, where a young man was practicing. When he found out why I was there, he gave directions to a place called the “Taüfer Versteck,” or “Baptist Hideout,” near the tiny village of Trub, Switzerland, about 20 minutes away.

The Täufer Versteck is in a combination barn and farmhouse built in 1608. It has been in the same family for centuries. During the Anabaptist persecutions, the family built a cleverly concealed hiding place, covered by a balanced piece of timber in the hayloft, such that a person fleeing the authorities could run to the place, jump on the end of the timber and slide into the hole, disappearing in an instant with the timber falling back into place over his head. (It was in fact the male leaders of the movement who were pursued most aggressively, but some women lost their lives as well.)

Although it was Sunday and the Taüfer Versteck was supposed to be closed, the matron of the farm saw me and my travel companion walking about outside. When she learned that I was a descendant of the Anabaptists, she opened the museum, showed us the hideout and demonstrated how it worked, then left us to roam about at our leisure. In one room, we listened to audio-taped stories from the diaries and letters of people who had survived the persecutions. We went into the gift shop, picked out books and souvenirs, and left money for them in an open basket there for that purpose.

The next day we traveled to Bern, the source and site of the severest persecutions in all of Switzerland. That story will be posted next week.

Anabaptist Roots: The Emmental

                                               
Note: This is first in a series about my trip to Europe last summer, part of which I spent exploring religious and family roots.
 
I went on a pilgrimage last summer, in search of my family and religious roots. Actually, they weren’t lost; I’ve always taken interest in and known where I came from. But when the opportunity arose to spend some time in Europe, I wanted to visit the places where my ancestors and their faith were born, and to which they fled to escape persecution for their faith.

My journey began in Zurich, Switzerland, where the Anabaptist movement was founded in the early 1500s. “Anabaptist” means “rebaptize,” and the people who formed the movement believed that only those who were old enough to make a mature confession of faith in Jesus Christ should be baptized into the church. Their name came from the fact that people joined the movement by being baptized as adults, even though they had been baptized as infants.

The official state church in Switzerland at that time was the Swiss Reformed Protestant Church, which perceived the Anabaptist movement as a severe threat to the orthodox faith. It did not take long for the civic and religious leadership to set out to “stamp out the Anabaptist weed,” as it was ordered in official documents of the time. The Canton of Berne, which includes the beautiful and fertile Emmental Valley, was the most energetic and harsh in its persecutions. Anabaptists were beaten and imprisoned, and when that didn’t stop the movement, they were beheaded and drowned. 

A man named Marx Boshart hosted a clandestine meeting of the fledgling Anabaptist movement in his home in Zurich in the early 1500s. He was among the first to be rebaptized and was later imprisoned for his role in the movement. 

My mother’s maternal grandmother was a Boshart. Family historians have not yet been able to establish a link between her and Marx Boshart, but given that her family was from the same region of Switzerland, we strongly suspect there is one and I am proud to claim him. 

Eventually many Anabaptists, including both paternal and maternal strains of my mother’s family and the maternal strain of my father’s family, fled from persecution into the Alsace region of France and the Waldeck region of Germany. Members of my mother’s family in particular were prominent in the formation of the Mennonite Church out of the Anabaptist movement, and members of my father’s family were part of the group that broke away from the Mennonites in the late 1600s to form the Amish Church.

My first visit in Switzerland was to the oldest continuously operating Mennonite Church in the world. It is located in Langnau in the Emmental Valley and was founded in 1530. There I encountered a young man practicing the piano who gave directions to a place called the “Taüfer Versteck,” or “Baptist Hideout” near the tiny village of Trub, Switzerland. I will continue with that story next week.