Community and Catastrophe

A rich and constructive engagement with the Schleitheim Confession, Community and Catastrophe breathes life into the founding document of early Anabaptism. Van Hoogstraten invites a new generation to encounter the Anabaptist tradition by engaging a familiar 16th century text in the company of contemporary voices like Hannah Arendt, Catherine Keller, and Giorgio Agamben. As a pastor and theologian, I have been waiting for a book like this, one that will enrich readers both in the classroom and in the pew. * Melissa Florer-Bixler, Duke Divinity School, USA * Ever since a controversial baptism ceremony in Zurich amidst the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago, Anabaptist communities have been distinguished for dividing and starting anew amidst failure and schism. In this deeply informed rereading of the oldest church order of the Anabaptists, Marius van Hoogstraten shows how the radical reformation habit of beginning again—without sword or sovereignty—opened a new path of resilient and renewable community life amidst the disintegration of imperial Christendom in early modernity. The book explores the problems and possibilities of this peaceable path with a view to the looming catastrophes threatening the present global order, while maintaining a fluent conversation with current social theory and theology, including the work of Giorgio Agamben, Catherine Keller, Judith Butler, and John Caputo. The result is a contemplative and imaginative meditation on the political potential of highly localized communities of faith and resistance along with emerging forms of sustainable shared life that may thrive amidst the end of the world as we know it. * Gerald J. Mast, Bluffton University, USA *