Naked Anabaptist on Facebook

There’s a Naked Anabaptist on Facebook!

No, it’s not what you might be thinking—nobody is nude. At least, not literally, although at least 80 people have joined the Naked Anabaptist group on the social media site to metaphorically explore what it means to strip down to the bare essentials of the Anabaptist faith.

The new group has been formed by Winnipeg Mennonite pastor and blogger Jamie Arpin Ricci to discuss issues raised by Stuart Murray in his forthcoming book The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith (Herald Press).

According to Arpin Ricci, who pastors the Little Flowers Community Church in that city’s West End, the group exists to “further the vision of Stuart Murray's new book, and to push beyond the assumptions and cultural expression of this historic Christian tradition.”

Questions he has invited group members to answer include: “Why are so many people today outside of Mennonite churches intrigued by Anabaptism? What are the core convictions of the Anabaptist tradition? Who were the original Anabaptists?”

In the foreword to the book, Murray says he wants to answer questions such as: “What does Anabaptism look like without the Mennonite and Amish culture in which it is usually clothed in North America? And can you really be an Anabaptist without living in a common purse community like the Hutterites, driving a buggy like the Amish, or belonging to a Mennonite church and singing in four-part harmony?”

The Naked Anabaptist Facebook group can be found here or by searching for Naked Anabaptist on Facebook.

The Naked Anabaptist will be released April 1, 2010. For more information about the book, or to pre-order it, go to here. The price is $13.99 USD/$16.09 CAD.