EDITORIAL
From
Mennonite to Anabaptist and Beyond
Michael
A. King
As the deadline for putting this
issue of DreamSeeker Magazine together
arrived, I was writing my column on how
Anabaptist-Mennonite values might be
meaningful beyond ethnic enclaves. It
occurred to me the articles and artwork
in hand for publication could be
organized to convey the movement from
ethnic Mennonite customs to generic
Anabaptist values my column proposes.
These materials convey
rich insight and imagery in their own
right. Yet I want in this editorial to
focus on that potential
Mennonite-to-Anabaptist-and-beyond flow
of meaning, because it seems to me a
worthwhile one to ponder with readers of DSM,
many of you Mennonites—but also many
of you belonging to other communities.
How do members of any
subculture embrace their heritage yet
offer its gifts to those shaped by other
communities? That is my question.
I don’t claim this
issue of DSM answers it, but I
hope it engages it. I’ve tried to
work at this by visualizing the materials
as moving roughly from those whose
meaning is likely to be enriched by
membership in an ethnic Mennonite
subculture to those whose meaning is
likely less tied to a subcultural
perspective.
Thus the Sairs article,
Swartztentruber paintings, Hertzler
review, and my own column all strike me
as carrying on a conversation
particularly meaningful to those shaped
by specific ethnic Mennonite communities.
I know these stories and images and
feelings in my bones; I was raised in
them. They are flesh of my flesh.
But readers not sharing
that heritage may at times shake heads.
Without Swartzentruber’s
annotations, what might you make, for
instance, of that naked boy being ogled
in church? Yet that boy could be me. My
grandparents were excommunicated; in The
Merging, my Aunt Evie tells of the
day the bishop came down the lane to give
the bad news.
Then (along with poets
interspersed throughout) come Stoltzfus,
Kriss, Landis, Gehman, Good, Fernando,
King. They are almost all from Mennonite
backgrounds, and this no doubt nuances
their writing in ways my own
Mennonite-immersed brain can’t even
fully grasp. But their passions strike me
as moving out in widening circles,
article by article, away from the
particularity of explicit Mennonite
concerns and toward insights that by the
final articles could be at home in a
range of journals having little
connection with Mennonites or Anabaptism.
Is this good? Bad? My
column affirms moving toward broader
accessibility. Yet if I dare risk
cliché, after watching this movement
play out in these pages, I end up
thinking we need it all—the
particularity of a heritage and the
ability to share it widely.
—Michael A. King
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