Anabaptist ReMix

List of Abbreviations

Part I The Frame

The broad scope of this volume is illustrated by this section which begins with a poem and ends with chapter summaries. New directions for theology, ethics, the arts, reflections on racial and gender identities, personal pilgrimages, institutional decision-making, and cultural engagement are introduced in this section. The approach to these topics, as cultural engagement, is a departure from a more traditional, community focused approach to Mennonite studies. This framework is an invitation for the reader to traverse a wide landscape when, as Ratzlaff’s poem signifies, we envision God’s creation as a shoe.←1 | 2→

Three Angels

Preface

The practical roots for this book can be traced to many coffee mugs devoured by the editors at the Hyde Park caffeine purveyors known as Bonjour Bakery and Piccolo Mundo. The theoretical roots are deeper and more complex. We were both educated during the era when “The Anabaptist Vision” by Harold S. Bender had considerable influence among Mennonites. He advanced the thesis that the Swiss/South German Anabaptist Martyrs were the spiritual geniuses of our tradition and that adherence to their primary principles (biblical faith, discipleship, nonresistance, and community) could rescue Mennonite thought from the seductiveness of Fundamentalism and the encroachment of modernism.¹ That was then, this is now. The limits of his study became evident as scholars turned their attention to the wider Anabaptist movement. Bender essentially limited his analysis to a five-year period (1525–1530) and within that narrow timeframe, apparently further limited his examples to those who were imprisoned or martyred. Early Anabaptism was far more pluralistic than Bender’s thesis implied.²

These essays are an improvisation on familiar themes in North American Mennonite/Anabaptist studies: ethics, community, faith, and culture. Each contributor explores new, even nontraditional, avenues for action and expressiveness. As editors, we have selected topics in many theoretical and practical areas in order to illustrate the rootedness and expansive attributes of this tradition. We stand amidst these questions: from where have we come, what is our identity, and how will we navigate the future? Can we improvise our ←5 | 6→way with these new chords and harmonies: remix the familiar with the innovative? That is the challenge before us.

The editors offer a hearty thank you for the multitude of institutions that have nourished our growth through the years. These include our communities and churches of origin: Bethel College Mennonite Church (Dennis) and Bethesda Mennonite (Lauren). The schools where we received our training: Bethel College and Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (for both of us), Harvard Divinity School and Chicago Theological Seminary (Dennis), Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union (Lauren). Our years of employment included church and non-church institutions: Lauren—San Francisco Opera Company, Seattle Mennonite Church, Goshen College, and the University of Michigan. Dennis completed successful careers at Oaklawn Psychiatric Center, Goshen College, Mennonite Mutual Aid, and as a self-employed management consultant. Many faculty and instructors gave us the research and analytical skills for our academic achievements. ←6 | 7→For the sake of brevity, I, Lauren, am grateful for the work of these professors: William Gering and Keith Sprunger (Bethel College), Leland Harder, Clarence Bauman (Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary), Doug Adams and Wayne Rood (Pacific School of Religion), Marvin Rosenburg, and Margaret Wilkerson (University of California-Berkeley), and Mia Mochizuki and James Emperor (Jesuit School of Theology). In addition, the opportunity to lecture on theater and religion at German conferences hosted by Horst Schwebel (Marburg), Klaus Hoffmann, (Hannover), and Ingrid Hentschel (Bielefeld and Hamburg) served as a guide for my thought on the connections between the arts and religion. And I, Dennis, thank my mentors who include Howard Snider, Duane Friesen and William Keeney (Bethel College), Gordon Kaufman and Krister Stendahl (Harvard Divinity School) and Robert Moore (Chicago Theological Seminary). Dennis gained insights into church institutions and leadership through management consulting engagements with the Mennonite Church—General Conference Mennonite Church merger, Mennonite Central Committee, the Church of the Brethren General Board, and numerous other church agencies and institutions.

Introduction

The creative clash of tradition and innovation causes most aspects of culture to be in continuous remix. Crucibles of adaptation are present in religion, law, education, science, technology, publishing, arts, media, etc. The present volume on Anabaptist ReMix: Varieties of Cultural Engagement in North America is a case study of one religious tradition—Anabaptists and Mennonites—and a few fragments of transformation in the modern and post-modern era. Theology is re-imagined as a conversation about human nature and emergent images of the divine. The arts are re-framed as a prophetic examination of conflict, catharsis, and justice. Christian pacifism is given new partners and new projects with those in the just-war tradition. Women find a new voice to tell stories of abuse, oppression, and healing. Native American, Black, and Latinx voices call attention to buried stories calling for resurrection. The power of institutional structures is interrogated and challenged to prophetic missions of equality, healing, and justice.

The contributors to this volume answer the question: “What have the ‘inheritors’ of Anabaptism done since the publication of The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision over 60 years ago?”¹ Our thesis is that they have made significant contributions to North American society, directly, and the global community, more indirectly. Currently, Anabaptist/Mennonite voices are diverse, inclusive, and pluralistic in their views. Diverse in that they represent a large variety of disciplines and methods. Inclusive because they often break down the barriers from inherited views on race, gender, identity, and doctrine. Contributors describe how aspects of the Anabaptist legacy have had an impact on how they engage with the contemporary world. Contributors were selected on the basis of the importance, creativity, and diversity of their work ←9 | 10→and life experience. We bring this creative mix of tradition and innovation to curious and adventuresome readers. The original Dutch/Swiss Anabaptists were among the major sectarian movements of that era, rejecting the dominant narratives of the Protestant and Catholic state churches. This book continues that pioneering work of creating new narratives of understanding, identity, and action in the world. Each generation adapts to newly emerging social, economic, political, and artistic realities.

Many North American Mennonites have seen their identity over the last seventy years through the prism of the H.S. Bender address on “The Anabaptist Vision,” delivered to the American Society of Church History in 1943. Bender wrote that the Anabaptist conception of the church involved “the insistence on the separation of the church from the world, that is non-conformity of the Christian to the worldly way of life.… Conflict with the world was inevitable.”² The Bender vision did not include a mission to the world, but a vision of church separation from the world.

But earlier in the 20th century an alternative vision of Mennonite presence in the North American context was articulated. This alternative vision was “shunned” and refused publication by the Goshen College Mennonite Historical Society and the Mennonite Herald Press in Scottdale, Pennsylvania.³ The author of this alternative Mennonite vision was young ←10 | 11→Edmond G. Kaufman, writing a 1927 PhD dissertation at the University of Chicago: “The Development of the Missionary and Philanthropic Interest Among the Mennonites of North America.”⁴ At the end of this dissertation, Kaufman summarized that North American Mennonites were engaged with the larger culture through: “eight publishing houses, eight Mennonite higher educational institutions, twenty-five Mennonite hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the aged, and over seventy-five Mennonite city and rural missions.”⁵ Kaufman also noted hundreds of Mennonites engaged with American Indians and the peoples of India, China, Africa, and South America. This book on Anabaptist ReMix: The Varieties of Cultural Engagement in North America is a continuing celebration of the Kaufman vision of active Mennonite mission and social engagement.

One of the most contentious aspects of the Kaufman dissertation was his use of sociological sect-cycle theory to explain the experience of Anabaptist and Mennonites in their European and North American contexts. A sect initially grows out of a social context in which most people are in a state of fusion with the culture at hand. Then comes a period of crisis, conflict, schism, and isolation, a period of indefinite duration. The initial motivation is likely to be reform rather than separation. Isolation becomes a group ideal and strong internal community norms are developed. “The peculiarities are gradually given divine sanction, are bolstered up by Scriptures, and become cardinal principles, the neglect of which is punished as heresy.”⁶ Dominant forms of leadership and followership often develop: the people are called to “subordination to a few outstanding leaders, who, not only themselves live in the consciousness of a higher power, but demand allegiance, loyalty, and the sinking of the individual’s wishes in the welfare of the group.”⁷ Some contributors to this volume are in active rebellion to this “sinking of the individual’s wishes” for the sake of group solidarity under centralized patriarchal leadership.

The transition of sects out of isolation often involves generational conflict. The older members of a sect continue to assert the superiority of sectarian styles and norms, while younger members of the sect make:

attempts at revision so as more nearly to conform to the standards of the outer community. This often brings on divisions and schisms which generally are a ←11 | 12→sign that the period of disintegration has set in.… Sooner or later the world becomes more tolerant and refuses to take the sect seriously.… Gradually the customs, practices, ideals, and doctrines of the two groups [sect and larger culture] more or less conform and the sect is again slowly fused with the larger community by ceasing to exist, or becoming a denomination gradually federating with similar bodies.⁸

There is a period of declining conflict and the sectarian group tends to return to assimilation within its larger cultural context.

This book on Anabaptist ReMix leaves unanswered the question of whether or not some sectarian solidarity will be maintained as current-day Anabaptists engage freely in nearly all aspects of North American culture. As editors of this volume, we hope that a renewed assertion of Mennonite distinctiveness will emerge. As we survey the contributions of authors in this volume, we see a distinctive integration of nonviolent reverence for life, a zest for authentic personal and community vitality, and struggles for justice and sustainability in the larger human community. These are the unifying themes that hold together this wide-ranging collection of essays.

We also see a weakness in our identity and solidarity in the 21st century North American ethos. Assertive and confident faith communities are needed to balance against the power of big corporations and big government. In the midst of cultural domination by big corporations and big government, we do not see a counter-force response for building coalition and institutional responses to transform or resist this domination. As we survey the church scene across North America, we see declining congregations in traditional rural Mennonite strongholds and small and barely viable Mennonite fellowship in many urban settings. Acculturation and denominational schisms leave vitality in publishing, education, and outreach in limbo.