As delivered by Jenny Alderfer
at ORTCON2026
I was at a salon recently and a young woman there asked if I went to church. I said, “Yes, I’m a Mennonite.” Her eyes widened and she asked with a mixture of alarm and delight, “Did you escape?!” She was so disappointed when I told her no. Most people in my church look pretty much like me, not like conservative Mennonites or our denominational cousins, the Amish, with hair coverings and plain dress.
But it is true that I don’t look like most Mennonites in the world today. Globally, there are over two million Anabaptist-Mennonites, “representing 305 groups in 86 countries.”[1] One church alone in Ethiopia is experiencing such rapid growth that they need over 20,000 new pastors at this very moment. The Holy Spirit is up to something.
If we look back through church history, Anabaptism emerged in 1525 in Switzerland after the Protestant Reformation, as part of what is called the Radical Reformation. It is worthwhile to review early Anabaptist history because history seems to be repeating itself, as history does.
After the Constantinian and Augustinian eras, the idea of “church” as the body of Christ that functioned as a family was lost.[2] As early Anabaptists broke away from the nationalistic, authoritarian empire in which they were steeped, some distinctives developed.
In their small groups and church gatherings, they wanted to relive Acts 2 and rediscover Jesus and the ways of his first disciples, living their daily lives according to the Sermon on the Mount through and with the presence of the Holy Spirit. In contrast to Catholics, Anabaptists had no holy words, no sacred things, no holy places, and no sacred persons[3]
They simply believed that Jesus Christ was the center of their faith. That community was the center of their life. And that reconciliation was the center of their mission in the world.[4] They taught the importance of sharing resources and mutual aid. Of peace and love for enemies. Of building an alternative society. Of truth-telling.[5] And of making an adult confession of faith through a believers’ baptism. Thus, the name “Anabaptists,” which literally meant “rebaptizers.”
Most importantly, love was the chief mark of this radically reformed church — a love that expressed itself in care for one another and for everyone around them, no exceptions. As you can imagine, early Anabaptist communities were magnetic to outsiders because they modeled a lived-out Christianity.
Yet, Church historians describe early Anabaptists as heretical, marginal, and revolutionary. Many of you can relate. Anabaptists in fact, aimed to be nonconformist, a deviant group within society, challenging contemporary norms and living under the authority of the Bible in anticipation of the Kingdom of God. This did not go over well, of course. I mean, it didn’t go well for Jesus either. Like other reformers in that time, leaders and participants in the early Anabaptist movement were persecuted, ousted, and killed. We have a record of these in a treasured tome called Marty’s Mirror.
Five hundred years later, thousands of believers gathered in Zurich to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism around the theme, “the courage to love.” Meanwhile, many former believers have disassociated from their churches yet long for an embodied, emotional, and communal experience with the divine — for a love-centricity that offers truly good news to a religiously doubtful and wounded humanity, including deconstructionists and “nones.”
This is why I would posit that a contemporary neo-Anabaptist doctrine of God rooted in the primacy of divine love is not only timely but also morally acceptable, deeply compelling, and soteriologically generative for all who are spiritually inclined toward knowing, experiencing, and magnifying God’s love. Neo-Anabaptism gives us a theological framework for this, whether or not we’re Anabaptists.
So, tonight I’d like to focus on how and why a neo-Anabaptist doctrine of God could contribute to the flourishing of creation; the extent to which positive transformation is or is not possible if we embody something other than God’s true nature; and the work we all have ahead as participants in the Center for Open and Relational Theology — because Christendom is falling and we cannot waste this moment.
Early Anabaptist theologians provided alternatives for the conventional religious imaginary of their times. Yet, the love-centric doctrine of God that could have developed from their scholarship was never drawn out among contemporary Anabaptists or more broadly among Christians. Following Jesus’ ways guided Anabaptist discipleship since the beginning of the radical reformation, yet many Anabaptists then and now hold a doctrine of God embedded with legalistic frameworks and an angry God motif.
As a contemporary Anabaptist Mennonite, I am alarmed by pervasive Calvinist thought and ideology centered on penal substitutionary atonement; the conflation of God’s angry wrath and justice; terrifying rapture myths; random sin scales that promote human judgment and demonize or marginalize others; and repentance as an action that only “bad people” have to do to correct their naughty behavior.
So, even as Anabaptism celebrates its 500th anniversary, with a theme of “the courage to love,” Anabaptists and other Christians, still have not arrived at a clear, firm agreement about God’s character.
Alternatively, we can ask what is possible when our spiritual habitus is borne of a faithful perception of God as revealed definitively in Jesus Christ, in congruence with John’s declaration that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16) and the Hebrew Bible’s consistent portrayal of God’s hesed (steadfast love). In harmonizing these fundamental declarations about God’s character with Jesus’ greatest command, we can sow the seeds for a robust, transformative doctrine of God as we enter into the fall of Christendom and a new reformation.
Tom Oord’s scholarship and all of us here in our own contexts are exposing and addressing serious gaps in systematic theology and spirituality in general. From my own neo-Anabaptist perspective, I propose that our doctrine of God shapes our capacity for communion with the divine and is therefore existentially and salvifically determinative. In other words, this is really important work we are doing. We are part of a movement that can change everything for the better, for all time. But we have a lot to do, like:
- Continuing to flesh out a broadly convincing, transformative, love-resonant theology and theodicy (thank you Tom Oord!), because while many Jesus-centered movements are forming worldwide, Jesus-centricity alone is not necessarily convincing people of God’s loving character, even among peaceful Mennonites.
- Identifying patterns in how divine love manifests in creation and how these material realities and experiences inform us about God’s character.
- Consistently preaching and teaching about a doctrine of God rooted in the primacy of divine love that elevates and edifies God’s character but is also biblically grounded, pastorally relevant, and wildly attractive.
- Addressing troublesome Bible passages through annotated translations and commentaries that have a love-centric hermeneutic while at the same time, returning to the Jewish tradition of midrash, of bold and grace-filled dialogue about God, Scripture, and theology — with laity. And while we’re at it, laying down the false doctrine of scriptural inerrancy, once and for all.
- Redefining sin as the corruption of desire,[6] as Sarah Coakley convincingly argues, and refixing our greatest and deepest desires on the divine, to experience true repair and repentance through immersion in God’s love. This turning toward God is true repentance and it is for all of us. It is a relational spiritual practice.
- Normalizing spiritual struggle to once again become Isra-El, people who wrestle with God and are blessed.
- Cohering discipleship, community life, and service around love.
- Examining the transformative possibilities of embodying a loving God and the perils of communing with false gods.
- Refusing to worship God and instead relate to God.
- Rejecting the hierarchies in our spiritual communities that so often result abuses of power.
- Rendering an eschatological vision that affirms the triumph of love.
Together, we could generate thousands of more considerations, and I hope we do later, but suffice it to say, we are all here for a reason. I suspect many of us are tired of living in a state of disharmony. We are drawn to love. We are tuning in to something enchanting with which we resonate. So, from here forth, let’s delve deeper through the metaphor of love resonance. I am Mennonite after all, and our tradition entails singing hymns in four-part harmony.
In keeping with this metaphor, in which we play a vital role, we here at this Center for Open and Relational Theology Conference need a name. Before coming here I wondered, what do we call ourselves? Are we ORTs? No, that sounds like an alien species in the Star Wars cantina. I considered calling us “lovers,” but that might raise some questions about what exactly goes on at these “open and relational” gatherings.
Instead, for tonight as we consider love resonance, I will call us the love choir: we for whom love in its fullest sense — self-giving, other-regarding, desiring, creative, and transforming — is not just a virtue we aspire to, but the clearest truth about reality itself and the greatest hope for our common future.
Let me set the stage: when the congregation’s singing stops in Constantine’s Aula Palatina in Trier, Germany, the reverberations continue for three fourths of a minute as harmonized voices “sing back” to the church.[7]
In this sacred space, it is as if in loving God, God’s love echoes back to believers. This is an ironic realization to behold in a church built by Constantine, whose empire has veiled God’s character until this day.[8] Yet, divine love always finds a way through, no matter the epoch, place, or circumstance.
The Spirit breathes in and through all of creation and permeates the space between and among us. It is no surprise then, that humans seem to be wired to share love and when we do, lo and behold, we and our communities thrive.[9] From a theological perspective, this means that when we echo divine love, life seems, well, heavenly. This is actual good news!
Yet, many Christians remain steeped in Constantine’s Christendom,[10] worshiping a violent, retributive God who justifies their own behavior — a convenient defamation of God’s character that has reaped horrific societal consequences. Many of us just can’t listen to the cacophony of church, state, and a mean god anymore. Plus, the scary choir director has slunk out of the theatre and now, we are witnessing the fall of Christendom, the deconstruction of belief, and a new reformation.[11] God’s love resonates relentlessly, even if we don’t always tune in.
The best part about this is that whatever tradition brings us into this room, we share something essential: the conviction that love is not just one quality among many, but the very foundation of all that is pleasing and alluring; the animating force behind creation; and the deepest longing of the human heart. Really, love resonance is all that matters.
For centuries love resonance has lived under many names and in many houses: in the Johannine declaration that God is love; in the passion of the early Christian anchoresses and mystics; in the Sufi poets’ visions of divine longing at the heart of all things; in the Jewish tradition of hesed; in the Hindu bhakti devotions; in Buddhism’s metta (lovingkindness) and karuna (compassion); in the philosophical humanism that grounds ethics in love, care, and solidarity. Love is for all of creation. It always has been.
So, love choir, who is our choir director now? Well, Jesus who was God enfleshed, is a great choice. Jesus’s birth, ministry, death, and resurrection show us God’s love in motion. As the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being,[12] Jesus, the human-divine aspect of our triune God, is naturally God’s frequency.
This means that we humans as God’s imagers and the very body of Christ, can enter God’s frequency. We were created by some mysterious Divine Word that compressed the air and made a choir from the chaos, so we have the potential to get into synch with God, just like Jesus did.
How exactly might this work? In the Gospel of Luke, Gabriel’s proclamation to Mary, “The Lord is with you,”[13] was perhaps the most supreme example in Scripture of God’s love resonance with a human. When Jesus was “conceived” by the Holy Spirit and implanted in Mary, she was open to the idea of carrying the living Christ within her in every way she could as a human – in body, mind, and spirit. She was pure and full of potential — she was virginal. In this state, she opened herself completely to God and replied to God’s messenger, “Here am I.”[14]
Through her total willingness to be the vessel for Jesus the Christ, Mary achieved love resonance with God. What happened next was hardly surprising. As the Messiah grew in her, she declared, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior”[15] and then, in her Magnificat, she conceived God’s magnificent Kingdom vision, as if she was seeing through God’s eyes and narrating God’s imagination for the world.[16] Imagine if we could do that!
To a certain extent, science can explain what happened to Mary because resonance occurs when objects experience the force of things in their own frequency.[17] As beings created by God, God is in our frequency and we are in God’s. So, with our free will, as living matter, we can choose to avoid or draw nearer to similar frequencies around us, to feel their vibe as our kids would say. As relational beings, we can amplify or decrease our resonance with God’s frequency of love. When Jesus tapped into God’s love, he healed people. Created new things. Nourished those around him. Miracles happened.
There’s evidence today that communities with high levels of loving behavior flourish.[18] Isn’t that interesting? They’re doing what Jesus did. It makes sense then, that Jesus’ greatest commands to us involve loving God and one another.[19] Because Mary, who went all in, with her heart, soul, mind, and strength,[20] prompted the miracles at Cana. Jesus turned water into the best wine at her behest.[21] Love resonance is life-giving and world-bending. It is the best Kingdom building block we have. It is powerful and salvific.
Likewise, it would be reasonable to say that a God whose essence is love cannot engage in the world in any other way than love. The story of Job presents this in a plain way: God cannot cause Job to suffer but the accuser can.[22] God only has one frequency: love. While some would say this is a limitation, the opposite is actually true. Consider this:
- Sympathetic resonance is a physics concept where one vibrating string causes another to vibrate at the same frequency. Applied theologically, it suggests that love in one being awakens or amplifies love in another. It’s true right?
- Moral and spiritual attunement is the idea that those who are tuned in to love as the fundamental frequency of reality can recognize and respond to it across different traditions.
- Ontological resonance would suggest that since we were created by Love, that love is the deep structure of being itself, so humans and all of creation are capable of vibrating in harmony with it.
- Relational resonance is the way love creates mutual recognition and solidarity across differences. So, like not only knows like. Like loves like.
This is the full meaning of being a love choir in love resonance with our Divine God of love. That is the song we are trying to sing. Imagine if we take even one example from those considerations we talked about earlier and apply love resonance to them. Let’s start with the Bible, because the Bible has been the source of so much social and spiritual pain. What if we give Scripture an exquisite love resonance sound bath?
What if we say that Scripture is simply the story of God and us, God-breathed and human-written? God always works through people and while humanity was called to write our sacred texts over thousands of years, we are still engaged in a holy partnership with God to read and interpret Scripture. After all, the Bible was never meant to be dried ink on a page. It is the living Word of God. It is one of the primary ways we can encounter God, but the way we approach Scripture is critical to the quality of that encounter.[23]
What if we say that scriptural inerrancy is errant?
What if we write open and relational translations and commentaries? This would allow us to analyze and define difficult words more accurately, based on their original meanings. For example, exchanging fear for revere. Or, redefining sin as Nicole Torbitzky does – a refusal of self-transcendence – and as Coakley does – the corruption of desire – and offering the comforting assurance of Julian of Norwich – “all shall be well.” Or, where the phrase “God’s wrath” appears, expressing the concept of humanity experiencing the consequences of our behavior. This is a love-resonant reading of Scripture.
And what if we had an open and relational interpretive checklist of possibilities to assist lay readers when faced with troubling passages? Questions could include things like what might be the author’s two cents and why? What are the contextual influences at hand? Is a literary device like metaphor or hyperbole being used to make a point? Are these depictions of spiritual warfare (not flesh and blood wars)? Did this story really happen or are the narrators trying to make a point with a fictional plot? What genre is this? These considerations give us alternatives. Paired with the Holy Spirit’s assistance and communal discernment, including midrashic exegesis, Scripture could be enlightening rather than frightening.
Let’s try another sound bath, this time on love-resonant practices that stoke our desire for a God who is worthy of our love and at the same time, overcome our refusal to transcend. Spiritual disciplines like contemplative, mystical, and communal practices can help us fine-tune ourselves; stop the habit of worshipping an unloving, violent portrait of God; and avoid spiritual perversion and idolatry. With practice, we can recalibrate and come into love resonance. These spiritual disciplines can be taught and modeled once we are doing them ourselves.
We can soak broken church models in love resonance. We can soak our daily lives in love resonance. We can soak our day jobs in love resonance. We can soak our relationships in love resonance. We can soak our response to suffering and grief in love resonance. The possibilities are endless.
Love choir, we have a tremendous opportunity before us to make a joyful noise![24] To reverberate back God’s loving intentions and original declarations of goodness from the time of creation, to reapproach tov meod, the goodness between and among all things,[25] to return to Eden where we can walk with God in the cool of the day.
It’s like the hymn from the 1800s[26] goes:
My life flows on in endless song,
above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the clear, though faroff hymn
that hails a new creation.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?
Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing.
It finds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?
Amen.
[1] Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism, www.goshen.edu.
[2] Becker, Palmer. Anabaptist Essentials: Ten Signs of a Unique Christian Faith (p. 18). Kindle Edition.
[3] Becker, Palmer. Anabaptist Essentials: Ten Signs of a Unique Christian Faith (p. 22). Kindle Edition.
[4] Becker, Palmer. Anabaptist Essentials: Ten Signs of a Unique Christian Faith (p. 20). Kindle Edition.
[5] https://amnetwork.uk/anniversary/anabaptism-a-brief-history/
[6] Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 11 and 33.
[7] John L. Ruth, “Hymn Singing as Worship” (discussion, Wisdom Table, Franconia Heritage, Harleysville, PA, June 13, 2023).
[8] Gregory A. Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 153, Kindle Edition.
[9] J. Zhou, M.M. Prinzing, K.D. Le Nguyen, T.N. West, and B.L. Fredrickson, “The goods in everyday love: Positivity resonance builds prosociality,” Emotion, 22(1), (2022): 30–45, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001035.
[10] Stuart Murray defines Christendom as the creation and maintenance of a Christian nation by ensuring a close relationship of power between the Christian Church and its host culture.Murray summarizes Christendom values as: a commitment to hierarchy and the status quo; the loss of lay involvement; institutional values rather than community focus; church at the center of society rather than the margins; the use of political power to bring in the Kingdom; religious compulsion; punitive rather than restorative justice; marginalization of women, the poor, and dissident movements; inattentiveness to the criticisms of those outraged by the historic association of Christianity with patriarchy, warfare, injustice and patronage; partiality for respectability and top-down mission; attractional evangelism; assuming the Christian story is known; and a preoccupation with the rich and powerful.
[11] “Markers for a Jesus-Centered Transformation,” Jesus Collective, accessed August 1, 2023, https://jesuscollective.com/media/podcasts/category/markers-of-a-new-reformation.
[12] Heb 1:3
[13] Luke 1:28
[14] Luke 1:38
[15] Luke 1:46-47
[16] Luke 1:48-55
[17] Ben Brubaker, “How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality,” Quanta Magazine, January 26, 2022, https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-resonance-shapes-reality-20220126/.
[18] J. Zhou, M.M. Prinzing, K.D. Le Nguyen, T.N. West, and B.L. Fredrickson, “The goods in everyday love: Positivity resonance builds prosociality,” Emotion, 22(1), (2022): 30–45, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001035.
[19] Mt 22:37-40
[20] Mark 12:30
[21] John 2:1-12
[22] Job 1:6-12
[23] Meghan Larissa Good, The Bible Unwrapped: Making Sense of Scripture Today (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 53.
[24] Ps 98:4
[25] Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right (New York, NY: Waterbrook, 2016), 31.
[26] https://hymnary.org/text/my_life_flows_on_in_endless_song_above