Menno gets violent re: paid pastors

How do you imagine Menno Simons coming off in person? I mean, the Menno-nites are named after him... so a gentle, charitable, peaceable, non-confrontational sort?

Partly right.

But what made him so angry that if he were alive today,
he might join fellow non-resistant Christian Bruce Cockburn in a "rocket launcher" attack? (:
(or at least a temple tantrum or two)?

Paid pastors.

From "The Complete Works of Menno Simons 1496-1561),"
an excerpt from a letter to some...one of the heaviest of the 1,070 pages:

"..all your calling is nothing but sowing on the seashore or reaping the wind...it is apparent you are not true messengers of God...seeking temporal profits and incomes...Your...pensions and rents are such an abomination before my eyes that, verily brethren, I would rather be beheaded, burned, drowned, or torn into quarters by four horses than to receive for my preaching such benefits, pensions and incomes.

Yes, when stated salaries to preachers were established, there surely crept into the church of Christ a very fearful, corrupting pestilence, which has so corrupted, alas, that there are scarcely any left who have retrained the breath of Christ in them. To this you must verily all consent.

-"The Complete Works of Menno Simons," p.445

Glad I took the Google Ads off my blog...(:

But I also get a paycheck from a university descended from Menno..