Ted Grimsrud—July 14, 2026

Back in 2004 I published an essay that I have been thinking about a lot lately. It was called “Anabaptist Faith and American Democracy” (see the link in the comments). In the essay, I reflected on interaction among three different stories, what I called (1) “the American Empire story,” (2) “the American Democracy story,” and (3) “the Anabaptist story.” My agenda was to encourage Anabaptist types to apply the convictions of their story to the Democracy story in contemporary America. I suggested that to separate the Democracy story from the Empire story would help we Anabaptists see better how we can be involved in the Democracy story.

I argued against what I saw as a tendency for people with Anabaptist convictions to too quickly dismiss engagement with the Democracy story. That is, I believed that Anabaptist convictions did have political significance and that Anabaptists should take their convictions as far as they can in our society’s political world—as far as we can go without compromising on those convictions (most obviously in the area of support for and participation in war).

Second thoughts

I thought I did a pretty good job of making the case, and the essay got a lot of attention. However, I now have some second thoughts about what I wrote. It is not that I no longer think Anabaptists should take our convictions as far as we can. I believe more than ever that Anabaptist convictions are directly relevant for all areas of life, including politics and public policy (and national security issues). At this point, though, I am much less certain that the American Democracy story can be separated from the American Empire story. Such a separation, it seems to me, would have to be possible for bringing the Anabaptist and American Democracy stories together. I now sense that for the United States, the Empire story has always been the dominant story and is now more than ever. It may be that there is no Democracy story apart from the Empire story in this country.