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.
My sense of the inextricable connection between American democracy and the empire has been heightened by my observations of the Democratic Party since I wrote my essay in 2004, especially during the Obama and Biden presidencies. Both administrations had the opportunity to break from the Empire story but turned out to be deeply disappointing on national security issues in many ways. For example, we had Obama’s lack of interest in holding the Bush administration accountable for its disastrous and blatantly illegal war of aggression on Iraq, and we had Biden’s embrace both of genocidal Israel and the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia. I have come to realize that these warist approaches followed in continuity with longstanding support for imperialism among Democratic Party leaders for the entire history of the nation.
The Republican Party has emerged as an ever more overtly anti-democratic and pro-Empire force in the world in the 21st century (long before the Trump years). And this movement by the Republicans has been met by the leaders of the Democrats not with deepened efforts to distance themselves from the toxicity of the Empire but instead with efforts to double down on the main imperial emphases. For example, in recent years we have seen almost all the legislative community of the Democratic Party search for ways to criticize Trump that involve strengthening their commitment to the proxy war in Ukraine rather than try to find ways to achieve genuine peace.
The bipartisan character of support for the American Empire, it turns out, goes all the way back in American history. Pro-democratic movements have arisen, but they tend either to be compromised by American warism or to be marginalized into electoral irrelevance. That is not to say that these movements are not necessary, only that emphasizing the virtues of American democracy is not likely to provide guidance for making the movements genuinely democratic—or worthy of the committed engagement of American Anabaptists. I still see value in Anabaptists engaging democracy, but not so much American democracy. Genuine democracy, in my mind, is incompatible with warism. American democracy, on the other hand, does not seem ever to have existed or to be capable of existing without warism.
Turning away from the American Empire?
I wonder if for us to pursue peace will require a conscious break with Empire, not a focus on reforming American democracy. That is, don’t we have explicitly to turn away from the American Empire? If we turn away from story #1 of American Empire, will we also have to turn away from story #2 of American democracy as well?
What do I mean by “turn away”? I don’t mean physically leaving the country. Nor do I mean completely disregarding it. I have in mind more a mindset, a disposition, a change of focus. Let’s call it a psychic turning away where we bring to the surface the ways the nation shapes our values, loyalties, and commitments and decide to resist those in our thoughts and actions.
A “turning away” from America would lead to commitments to work for a different kind of democracy, one that is non-territorial and non-nation-state oriented. Our task, then, becomes one of imagining a different kind of politics, a different way of orienting our social lives.
Let me sketch some elements of this task:
• At the core of a non-American Empire politics is an utter rejection of warism. Such a rejection means refusing ever to support any American military intervention. Such a turning away has profound implications for how to consider the American Democracy story because every step of the way throughout the history of the United States the American military has been intervening somewhere, be it in genociding indigenous North Americans, enforcing the practices of enslavement, and then expanding and strengthening the reach of Empire. It seems that in reality there has never been an American Democracy story, as far as the nation as a whole goes, without warism being a part of it.
• Being much more attentive to developing a profound critique of the United States from its very beginning. Certainly, we may find many things in our nation’s history to celebrate and draw inspiration from. However, the net impact of the settlement by European people on the North American continent from the very beginning has been devastating and continues to be. We have a responsibility to know this history and to teach it. We can’t truly “turn away” without knowing what we are turning away from and why.
• Cultivating non-territorial fellowship with people from around the world. We can find ways, small and maybe large, to connect with others where nationality plays no role. We can pursue personal relationships and find organizations and fellowship groups that are truly international. We also can pursue overt efforts to resist and overcome the Othering that the Empire does that enhances the potential for wars and other conflicts.
• Refusing consent to the state when it incarcerates, abuses, and kills imprisoned people; when it excludes and otherwise abuses non-citizens; when it subordinates the wellbeing of the American people to the interests of corporations; and, of course, when prepares for and participates in war. Such refusal begins in our dispositions and ways of thinking but also finds expressions in various more public forms of protest and dissent.
• Working on a worldview, a mindset that seeks to surface and repudiate assumptions shaped and exploited by the American Empire. This involves a deep critique of popular media, music, movies and other expressions of the popular consciousness. Such an anti-Empire mindset refuses to let the Empire determine our values and loyalties. We seek to understand how these expressions distort our understandings of what matters most in life.
• Turning away from Empire ultimately requires clarity about what we want to turn toward. The Anabaptist story is only one important resource—a philosophy of life based on Jesus’s message that centers on love and seeks to apply its core convictions to all areas of human relations—that is, to apply love to politics. To self-consciously look at politics with the lens of love will put into sharp relief all the ways the Empire and its ideologies contradict a politics of love and thus are unworthy of our loyalties.
Thinking Pacifism 
I’m currently in an adult Sunday school class that’s discussing the book, Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World, by Kat Armas. Your essay fits in well as supplemental material.