BOOKS, FAITH, WORLD & MORE

A TIME FOR RENEWAL—AGAIN
Reviews of Road Signs for the Journey, Is It Insensitive to Share Your Faith? and Borders and Bridges

Daniel Hertzler

Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA, by Conrad Kanagy. Herald Press, 2007.

Is It Insensitive to Share Your Faith? Hard Questions About Christian Mission in a Plural World, by James R. Krabill. Good Books, 2005.

Borders and Bridges: Mennonite Witness in a Religiously Diverse World, edited by Peter Dula and Alain Epp Weaver. Cascadia Publishing House, 2007.

These three books do not exactly belong together, but they have a common concern: How may the good news of Jesus Christ be made known, particularly as interpreted by Mennonites? Each book comes at the question in a different way. The first describes how as a church we’re not what we ought to be. The second reflects on the message from a "missional" (outreach-focused) perspective, and the third describes how some persons have been doing it. Let me confess. I think I want to include the second and the third in some way to respond to the charges of the first.

Some historical background may be useful. From 1984 to 1996 Herald Press published four volumes as "The Mennonite Experience in America" series covering Mennonite history from 1683 to 1970. The story these books tell is of a people marginalized by their faith and not always successful in shaping a lifestyle of following Jesus.

Richard MacMaster’s first volume ends with a quotation from a Methodist pastor who "said of Mennonites and Dunkers that they had a ‘scheme of discipline’ that was divisive to the social order; it clashed, he said, ‘with the common methods of government and civil society,’" but he found that "They were ‘remarkably peaceful and passive’ and being so, they were ‘readily tolerated and excused’’’ (Land, Piety, Peoplehood, 287).

Throughout the series Mennonites and Amish are found bumping against the assumptions of "government and civil society," especially in times of war. But at the end of volume 4, Paul Toews is hopeful. He notes that between 1930 and 1970 there were contrasting methods of dealing with societal pressures. One was that of the Old Orders who "have worked hardest at preserving the spatial folk communities." On the other hand, "Progressive Mennonites have worked more at preserving community via new denominational structures, ideological formulas, and ecumenical alliances." He concludes that "Into the 1970s both strategies worked." (Mennonites in American Society, 1930–1970, 342).

In the meantime Mennonite sociologists began to survey Mennonite churches to see whether modern Mennonites reflect the convictions of their Anabaptist predecessors. Two studies of five Mennonite groups appeared: Anabaptism Four Centuries Later, by J. Howard Kauffman and Leland Harder (Herald Press, 1975) and The Mennonite Mosaic by J. Howard Kauffman and Leo Driedger (Herald Press, 1991).

The first volume concluded with a list of four "Unresolved Tensions" and the observation that "The impact of a secular order is always threatening to religious pluralism" (342). In the second the authors concluded that "Theological pluralism is very much a part of the Mennonite Mosaic" (271).

Road Signs for the Journey follows these two studies but is not quite the same. Since the publishing of The Mennonite Mosaic, two of the five Mennonite denominations surveyed have merged but then re-divided into Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada. Kanagy’s study is of Mennonite Church USA. While the directors of the earlier studies were sociologist-churchmen, Kanagy is a sociologist-pastor, who delves into the book of Jeremiah as commentary on his report.

So, on the one hand, as a sociologist he finds deterioration in our Mennonite identity. On the other hand, like a revivalist he exhorts us to respond to the charges and get on with our work to become "missional" churches. Another difference from the earlier studies is that Kanagy has arranged for a special sample from Racial/Ethnic Mennonite churches so members of these congregations may be adequately represented. In certain respects he finds these members representing our calling better than those of us in the dominant Caucasian culture.

The study is interpreted within the context of the Protestant church in the United States, which is found to be "A Church in Crisis." Kanagy observes that evangelicals on the one hand "too often embrace a ‘God and country’ civil religion that diminishes the transformative power of the gospel, while Protestant mainliners emphasize the need for social justice without addressing personal salvation and individual transformation through Jesus Christ" (26).

As for Mennonites, "Our difficulty in managing the politics of these culture wars has silenced our unique and historic witness as a people of God who—in word and deed—proclaim the gospel’s power to transform both structures and individuals" (27). This is Kanagy’s thesis and the rest of the book serves to illustrate it.

He makes regular use of the message of Jeremiah as a source for his exhortation that we need to respond to the task that is before us. At the conclusion of chapter 8, which uses the Jewish Babylonian exile as a theme, he wonders "if we shouldn’t be doing two things at once: connecting to the broader culture while at the same time spiritually discerning what distinguishes us from that culture" (174).

Among the findings which concern him is that our church is getting older. In the 1970 survey, 54 percent of Mennonites were in the category 18 to 45. By 1989 this had dropped to 45 percent and in this most recent survey to 30 percent. Also, the church has gotten smaller. In 1989 the two denominations which now make up Mennonite Church USA totaled 130,329 members. Today we are 109,000. Of course it may be noted that in a number of cases this involved congregations discontinuing membership in district conferences at least in part because of uneasinesses with the merger of the two denominations.

Of more concern is erosion in our convictions about the kingdom of God as related to the kingdoms of this world. Although 71 percent believe that war is wrong and 93 percent see peacemaking as "a central theme of the gospel" other opinions do not seem to support these convictions. "Almost half of Mennonites (48 percent) believe that America is a Christian nation; 67 percent would pledge allegiance to the flag, and more than one-third (35 percent) believe it is okay to fly an American flag inside a Mennonite church. Nearly 25 percent support the war in Iraq, and 42 percent believe that the ‘war on terror’ is a religious battle" (128).

Kanagy’s response to the decline in numbers is for us to be more evangelistic. In this too he finds us lacking, although the racial/ethnic members are better at this. He lays out a prescription for success: "if local congregations increasingly reflect God’s reign, such changes will bring new members who will have more questions rather than fewer about what it means to be Anabaptist" (193).

My local church experience models in some respects the pattern described by Kanagy. Mennonites came to Westmoreland and Fayette Counties at the end of the eighteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth they were in decline but at the beginning of the twentieth began to revive.

Bible teaching in Sunday schools was the method of extension while the organization of Mennonite Publishing House in 1908 gave the church wider connections. Sunday schools evolved into congregations, and by 1960 there were three congregations. Then termites took one of the buildings and the two former Sunday schools united.

At the end of the twentieth century, migration out of the area and the demise of Mennonite Publishing House pressed down upon the two remaining congregations, and in 2003 they merged. Now on a good Sunday the merged congregation fills one meeting place with perhaps some in the balcony.

Having weathered the storms of merger we look ahead and ask what our evangelistic ministry should be in the years ahead. It will evidently not be Sunday school which once filled schoolhouses. We’re looking for the contexts in which to share our faith, and we expect to find them.

Now to the other two books. Krabill’s is more or less a memoir. He tells stories about his experience as a missionary Bible teacher in the Ivory Coast of Africa and ponders the meaning of the gospel in that context as well as anywhere else in the world in our time. He ruminates about the message and proposes that "The earthly life of Jesus, his ministry, death, resurrection, and return to heaven together constitute the single most important event of all time, the event by which history is divided and all other events are defined and understood" (26).

From here on he raises questions implied in the subtitle: the meaning of Jesus, the ridiculous character of the church, the contrasting messages of the Bible and the newspaper. Chapter 7 describes the background of the church in Ivory Coast for which he had been a Bible teacher. It was started by William Wade Harris, who had only 18 months to work before he was expelled from the country. But in that short time he was able to found a church.

Krabill goes on to comment on how the worldwide population of the church is moving south. He observes that "Our greatest challenge as undeserving recipients of God’s peacemaking initiative is to get ourselves up to speed with what God has already been doing in the many millennia before our arrival. And then" he concludes, "we must determine through prayer and discernment, in what ways we might participate in God’s local efforts already well underway" (141).

The message is in line with Krabill’s role as "Senior Executive for Global Ministries at Mennonite Mission Network." At the end of the book he mentions a possible new frontier for the worldwide mission of the church. There is, he says, "a vision among Chinese Christians to send 100,000 missionaries ‘back to Jerusalem’ in the next 10 years" (143).

The idea is that the gospel began at Jerusalem and now they propose to take it back to where it began. If such a vision is carried out one can scarcely imagine how the Israelis and even the local Christians might respond.

The third book, Borders and Bridges, provides its own answers to questions raised by the first two. The subtitle identifies the message, and each chapter provides a variation on the theme. James Krabill has asked, Is it insensitive to share your faith? The message of this book is that interfaith contacts are delicate and may be open to misunderstanding, but yes—it is possible to share the faith.

The context for the origination of material in the book was a 2004 meeting of Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace Committee "who first offered feedback on initial versions of portions of this volume" (10). The editors are both former MCC administrators, and all but one of the chapters grow out of MCC activities. One can imagine that an organization which does relief and development "In the Name of Christ" may be pressed on occasion to say whether its work is "evangelistic enough." This book provides its own sort of answer.

The answer is that the faith may be shared—if it is done sensitively. As Alain Epp Weaver observes in the introduction, "Interfaith bridge building is not about adherents of different faiths relinquishing their truth claims . . . or about watering down religious convictions to a lowest common denominator. For Christians," Weaver underscores, "interfaith bridge building is motivated by the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord over all creation and history" (14).

Chapter 1 reports on activities in Indonesia where Paulus, an Indonesian Christian, was able to relate to Agus, an Indonesian Muslim. Agus said, "‘If I had only known you and associated with Christians like I am doing now, I would not have needed to lose 50 of my soldiers who were killed in Ambon and Poso. I regret killing Christians’" (20).

Some chapters report interaction with Catholics and members of other Christian traditions. Among them is Edgar Metzler’s report on the experience of the United Mission to Nepal, where Mennonites have joined forces with other Christians. When the program began, Nepal was officially Hindu—no other religion was legal.

As time has gone on, Nepal has opened somewhat, so there are now Nepali Christians with whom program directors can relate. Metzler concludes that it has been possible to build bridges to persons of another faith without giving up faith in Jesus. He cites three MCC Peace Committee guidelines of which the third is "Desire . . . everyone to come to see their lives in light of the gracious judgment of the cross, so that we may grow together into the future community that Jesus made possible" (88).

In the final chapter Peter Dula proposes "A Theology for Interfaith Bridge Building." Drawing on Karl Barth, he outlines a position he sees as avoiding the pitfalls of pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism. He says that on the one hand are liberals who see all religions as essentially the same and on the other conservatives who insist that "Outside of, say, Christianity, there can be no truth" (162).

Following Barth, Dula says that although we agree that Jesus is the light, other lights should be recognized for what they can show Christians about their own failure to take the light seriously. In the end, he reports that of "the new truths" discovered by MCC workers, "the most frequently returning theme is relationships" (168).

But, of course, MCC is not building churches. Yet in holding up Christ as the light while recognizing other lights, Dula suggests an approach for all who wish to cherish the church and extend its borders. Is this too sophisticated a formula for us to use in our local churches? I hope not.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, is chair of the elders, Scottdale Mennonite Church.