Dr. Malinda Elizabeth Berry is Professor of Peace Theology & Director of the Faith Formation Collaborative at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. She holds graduate degrees in Peace Studies (AMBS) and constructive theology and social ethics (Union Theological Seminary). Her current research and writing projects have her working on atonement, ecotheology, and children’s faith formation.
A Wooden Saint in an Anabaptist Home
When I think of St. Francis, a flood of images, memories, and feelings comes to me, and there is one that stands out. I have a carved wooden statue of St. Francis that my mother gave me, probably fifteen years ago. He was an impulse purchase she made with her volunteer discount at our local Ten Thousand Villages shop, but I was glad to receive him and found him a suitable spot in my living room (she had already bought one for herself). My husband noted Francis’s presence and offered a wry comment on adding to our possessions with a statue of the man famed for giving his own away. I replied that I was grateful to my mom for helping me find a pathway to learning about saints and that his physical presence reminded me of his values and vision. Even so, I had to admit, it did require some deeper reflection to understand why and how an Anabaptist-Mennonite mother and daughter ended up with images of St. Francis in their homes.
Why do Mennonites, who historically stripped their meetinghouses of all images and saints, find themselves drawn to Francis of Assisi? The most obvious answer is that Francis is associated in our circles with the famous Franciscan peace prayer, which begins “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” As part of the Anabaptist movement that originated within the Protestant Reformation, Mennonites became known for their commitment to adult or believer’s baptism and radical ecclesiology that put the church and state in strong opposition to one another. Anabaptism was never a centralized or hierarchical movement, so making strong generalizations about it can be challenging. One pattern from our early history that has been an important identity marker is the Anabaptists’ lively debates about “biblical nonresistance,” making us contributors to that part of the Church advocating for nonviolence as a normative part of our Christian witness.1 It is this part of our theological and ecclesial identity that affects how we tell the story of the Church’s history and links us to St. Francis.
In our Anabaptist worldview, any historical figure whose life and ministry mirror Jesus’s by going against the grain of the imperial status quo and turning our collective gaze toward the vulnerable is worth celebrating and honoring.
As a child and youth, I learned in Sunday school, baptism preparation class (what we call catechism), and my Church History class at a Mennonite high school that we Mennonites advocate for a view of history that regards Constantine I’s legalization of Christianity as a bleak day for the faith. When the 313 Edict of Milan paved the way for Christianity’s pivot from a fringe religious movement to the official religion of the Roman Empire via Theodosius I’s Edict of Thessalonica in 380, the clarity that only Jesus is Lord (not the emperor of the day) became all too hazy. In our Anabaptist worldview, any historical figure whose life and ministry mirror Jesus’s by going against the grain of the imperial status quo and turning our collective gaze toward the vulnerable is worth celebrating and honoring.
But, following this historical contour, I see another, deeper reason for an affinity between Francis and Mennonites, and the reasoning, I think, invites us to ponder what healing looks like in the Christian oikoumenē.
In the face of more “relevant” forms of Christianity that historically relegated Mennonites to sectarian shadows, Franciscans’ synthesis of belief and practice vindicates our theological commitment to nonresistance and tenacious vision to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Ecumenical Insecurities
In that same Church History class where I learned about Constantine’s big mistake, our teacher also showed us Franco Zeffirelli’s 1972 film Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Francis of Assisi, our teacher explained, was a hero of the faith because, as his conversion story shows, he could discern the contrast between the complex bureaucracy of church life and the simple purity of the Gospel. This marks Francis as a reformer, paving another path that leads back to Jesus. In other words (and perhaps more words than my teacher ever used explicitly): unlike other Catholics (and eventually Protestants) who failed to find and nurture the radical edge of Jesus’s teachings, Francis was a “good Catholic” and worthy of Anabaptists’ notice. I will be the first to admit it: this is not a gracious reading of my tradition. But what I want to pause to consider is the possibility that, without critical reflection, Mennonites’ embrace of Francis can reflect our ecumenical insecurities (after all, Reinhold Niebuhr labeled us an irrelevant form of Christianity because of our perfectionistic peace ethic). What I am suggesting is that perhaps my mother and I felt a nudge to bring Francis into our homes because he simultaneously represents and critiques Roman Catholicism. In the face of more “relevant” forms of Christianity that historically relegated Mennonites to sectarian shadows, Franciscans’ synthesis of belief and practice vindicates our theological commitment to nonresistance and tenacious vision to love our neighbors as ourselves. The slights and dismissals we have felt over the years because of our peace witness have taken their toll. It can be challenging to invite Anabaptists to share in an ecumenical vision of the Church because we feel joined to the Body of Christ like nothing more than a single eyelash.
I will explore this further below, but along with the shadows, there has, in fact, been a great deal of warmth and light that Franciscan spirituality has offered Mennonites as we contend with our hurts and seek to offer the wider Church our particular charism: radical discipleship offered through a discourse we call peace theology. With this shadowy rawness named, and the Body of Christ oriented in the direction of healing, I can discern a third connection between Brother Francis and Mennonite peace theology: atonement.
The Shared Cross: Interpreting Atonement with Nonviolence
For centuries, Western Christianity’s way of making theological sense of Jesus’s death has been profoundly shaped by Anselm of Canterbury’s satisfaction theory, which the Protestant Reformation adapted into penal substitutionary atonement. While Anselm was originally focused on answering the query of earnest pilgrims who arrived at Canterbury – wondering, “Why did God become human?” – his approach framed salvation as a transaction based in feudal culture, and the logic of his analogy became severe. Our sins have racked up mountains of debt, and it would offend the Father’s honor to simply forgive the debt just as it offends His honor that the debt is unpaid. In this cosmic dilemma, Jesus becomes the victim whose political execution by the government of the day becomes a religious sacrifice that satisfies the demands of divine justice. Mixed with images from other theories of atonement, crisscrossing denominations and traditions, popular American Evangelical Christianity has made the meaning of the atonement synonymous with the meaning of the “good news”: Jesus died for your sins, and unless we acknowledge and accept this sacrifice, we cannot know forgiveness or participate in salvation.
From the perspective of the Anabaptist and Franciscan traditions, this popular view misses the living heart of the Gospel. In his work The Nonviolent Atonement, Mennonite theologian J. Denny Weaver reconstructs another theory of atonement, developing what he calls a “Narrative Christus Victor” approach. Salvation is not accomplished through God’s demand for violent retribution, Weaver says, adding that it is through his faithful, nonviolent life, ministry, and resurrection that Jesus invites us into the fullness of life with God. God’s will was not for Jesus to die; rather, Jesus’s death was the predictable, violent backlash of human systems and imperial powers when confronted by the loving, unyielding Reign of God. Jesus went to the cross ready to suffer for the sake of love rather than inflict violence, and God’s vindication came through the resurrection, overcoming the power of the death-dealing Domination System.
This nonviolent narrative resonates with the teachings of one of the most well-known Franciscans of our time, who has been a significant spiritual teacher for many in my Mennonite community: Fr. Richard Rohr.
For Franciscans, as for Anabaptists, the cross is not a judicial requirement; it is Love’s dramatic, vulnerable refusal to resort to violence, showing us how to embody God’s love in a world all too prone to domination.
In his book, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer, Rohr reflects on atonement as a Franciscan, and what he says resonates with how we Mennonite peace theologians working on atonement frame our views. I am aware that interpreting John Duns Scotus’s view of atonement is complex terrain, but what Scotus helps us see is that the theological meaning of “satisfaction” was never fixed. Reading Duns Scotus as a Mennonite, I hear him pushing back against feudal analogies, insisting that the Incarnation was not the Father’s backup plan to reconcile the household accounts. Instead, God’s decision to become human in Jesus was a free, loving choice from the very beginning of creation. God did not need Jesus to die on the cross to decide to love humanity; God’s love was infinite from the first moment of creation. For Franciscans, as for Anabaptists, the cross is not a judicial requirement; it is Love’s dramatic, vulnerable refusal to resort to violence, showing us how to embody God’s love in a world all too prone to domination.
The stories and legends about Francis that I heard when I was young, painted a picture of a mystic who felt life’s interdependence; it makes intuitive sense that Franciscan theology has room for a holistic interpretation of Christ’s cross. From a peace-based perspective, atonement is about transformation. Atonement and the cross are no longer about fear, punishment, and violence. Atonement – the early modern English neologism deriving from “at-one-ment,” as the Franciscan Society of the Atonement knows well – and the cross become a profound reflection of God’s solidarity with us and our suffering. Atonement and the cross become an invitation to walk the radical, embodied Jesus-way: loving enemies, caring for creation, and resisting the empire’s violence with nonviolence.
Alternative Orthodoxy & Orthopathy
With these harmonious ways of understanding atonement, I want to pick up on Rohr’s description of Franciscan theology as “alternative orthodoxy.” Throughout history, both Franciscans and Anabaptists have functioned as minority traditions within the broader Christian landscape. While mainline institutions prioritized rigid dogma and institutional dominance (doxa), Francis of Assisi and early Anabaptist leaders insisted that true faith lies in praxis – the radical, daily imitation of Jesus.
It is no accident that so many Mennonites seeking to deepen their contemplative lives find themselves drawn to Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation. Paraphrasing Francis’s instructions to Rohr articulates what our tradition has long intuitively felt: that “you only know as much as you do.”2 An integrated Christian identity requires more than just correct thinking (orthodoxy/doxa) or correct action (orthopraxis/praxis). As Mennonite New Testament scholar Mary Schertz and Pentecostal pastoral theologian Cheryl Bridges Johns remind us, a vital component of spiritual formation is orthopathy — “right feeling, right experience, right orientation to the passions of God” (pathos).3
Francis offers the Church a compelling model of integrated orthopathy. His radical peace was not an abstract ethical mandate or a stoic obligation; it flowed directly from a tender, weeping, joyful heart in love with God and all of Creation.
Historically, Mennonites have excelled at orthopraxis – building active relief networks, protesting wars, and organizing mutual aid. Yet without orthopathy, orthopraxis risks becoming a narrow and exhausting moralism. We can become so focused on “doing peace” that our inner emotional life, our spirituality, is stuck in our heads. Francis offers the Church a compelling model of integrated orthopathy. His radical peace was not an abstract ethical mandate or a stoic obligation; it flowed directly from a tender, weeping, joyful heart in love with God and all of Creation. Francis wept over the suffering of Christ, sang to birds, embraced lepers, and counted Brother Sun and Sister Moon as part of his family. His nonviolence was deeply somatic and emotional, rooted in an affective encounter with divine Love.
As we navigate the complexities of contemporary peace theology, I believe we Mennonites can find Francis and the Franciscan contemplative tradition instructive in helping us become attuned to the “orthopathy of peace”: a heart soft enough to grieve with the hurting, empathetic enough to seek restorative rather than retributive justice, and contemplative enough to rest in grace. The carved wooden statue on my shelf is not just an icon; it is an invitation to an integrated life where belief, feeling, and practice merge seamlessly into praise.
For Roman Catholics and broader Protestant traditions, Francis as an “ecumenical icon” can easily be sentimentalized. It is tempting to reduce him to a bird-feeder ornament or a gentle patron saint of pets, softening the edges of his cultural, social, and theoethical critiques.
The Prophetic and Ecumenical Legacy
For Roman Catholics and broader Protestant traditions, Francis as an “ecumenical icon” can easily be sentimentalized. It is tempting to reduce him to a bird-feeder ornament or a gentle patron saint of pets, softening the edges of his cultural, social, and theoethical critiques. When Anabaptists look at Francis, we see a brother who recognized that the Church’s allegiance to violence, imperial wealth, and coercive power was a betrayal of Jesus. An Anabaptist reading insists that Francis’s famous encounter with Sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil during the Fifth Crusade was not just an act of individual piety, but a radical, public act of nonviolent enemy-love that repudiated the holy wars of his era. In this way, the radical discipleship of Anabaptist-Mennonite peace theology offers a critical, constructive gift to Francis’s legacy by safeguarding Francis from mere piety and anchoring him in the political, prophetic scandal of the Gospel.
And what does Francis offer Mennonites today? Francis reminds us to keep our understanding of shalom as large as the cosmos and as small as our own homes. Peace theology has traditionally focused on human-to-human nonresistance, social justice, and the church-state dualism. We Anabaptists-Mennonites have often defined ourselves not just in opposition to the wider world, but to the universal Church as well. Inspired by Francis, I see a pathway toward ecumenical healing and trust that we matter. I also see how Francis’s legacy shows us that we can both hold onto our radical critique of violence in its many forms, even as we heed Jesus’s call to seek unity among believers. Francis pushes our peace theology out in all directions, reminding us that peace includes our relationship with the land, the soil, and every living creature. In an era of global ecological crisis and rampant violence, I see great promise in Anabaptist-Franciscan dialogue.
Conclusion
My mother’s impulse purchase fifteen years ago was a subtle, subconscious act of theological recognition. She recognized in that humble wooden carving a familiar spirit; Francis is a fellow traveler on the narrow, joyful path of nonviolent discipleship.
As an Anabaptist-Mennonite scholar, I am grateful for the ways Francis of Assisi interrupts our rigid denominational narratives. He stands at the ecumenical crossroads, reminding us that whenever the Church loses its way, enticed by the siren songs of empire, power, and redemptive violence, God anoints holy fools to point us back to the simplicity of allowing ourselves to be loved by Jesus.
In this 800th anniversary year, perhaps the ultimate tribute we can pay to St. Francis is not simply to honor his memory, but to join hands across our confessional divides, lay down our weapons, and pray with our minds, hearts, and hands the simple, enduring prayer: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
Notes
1. For those unfamiliar with the term “biblical nonresistance,” it refers to the form of nonviolence deeply embedded in Mennonite life. The term was given intellectually sophisticated framing by scholars in the mid-20th century: “Nonresistance is the term which in Anabaptist-Mennonite history has come to denote the faith and life of those who believe that the will of God requires the renunciation of warfare and other compulsive means for the furtherance of personal or social ends. The term itself is derived from the words of Jesus, ‘Do not resist one who is evil’ (Matthew 5:39). The term pacifism is likewise derived from the words of Jesus, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Matthew 5:9); hence true Christian pacifism may be thought of as synonymous with Christian nonresistance.” See Guy F. Hershberger, Ernst Crous, and John R. Burkholder, “Nonresistance,” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, 1989, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Nonresistance&oldid=166097.
2. This is Rohr’s paraphrase of “A person is only as learned as his actions show; and a religious is only as good a preacher as his actions show” (see The Assisi Compilation, 105, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 2, The Founder [New City Press, 2000], 210), cited in Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media, 2016), 81, emphasis his.
3. Mary Schertz, “Artfully Engaged in God’s Redemptive Purposes for the World: Christian Formation and Integration around Scripture” (2014), Collegeville Institute Lectures 18: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/collegevilleinstitute_lectures/18.
This article originally appeared in Ecumenical Trends 55.5 (September/October 2026), a publication of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute. The journal offers distinctive perspectives where the church, the academy, and the interfaith field coincide, and combines reporting on current developments in ecumenical/interreligious affairs with accessible scholarship, interviews, and pastoral reflection on the dynamics of religious difference on common ground. Find out more, and subscribe to Ecumenical Trends (print and/or online), by clicking here.