PACIFIST HISTORIOGRAPHY

Abstract

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In light of the recent publication of two new histories of a minor and radical Christian tradition – namely Anabaptism, which begins in the sixteenth century and finds a complex reception in contemporary Mennonite pacifism and political resistance – this article fields critical mediations between descriptive and normative approaches to the writing of history, and against the contrasting political forces of neutrality and polarization, through a comparative reading of Troy Osborne’s Radicals and Reformers: A Survey of Global Anabaptist History and Astrid von Schlachta’s Anabaptists: From the Reformation to the 21st Century. Refusing capture by both the fantasy of apolitical description or the ideological trappings of normative ideal-types, and critiquing the tendencies to polarize and neutralize difference when interpreting the past and intervening in the present, this article provides a case study for a pacifist and antiviolent approach to the writing and reading of history in our time.