THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ANABAPTIST SCHOLARS

Ted Grimsrud

Teachers and scholars who work for Anabaptist-Mennonite (and other faith-oriented colleges) do so, I am convinced, due to a sense of calling to serve God and the churches with their gifts and abilities. At Eastern Mennonite University, our mission is explicitly stated to be seeking to answer Christ’s call to lives of nonviolence, service, witness, and peacebuilding. Such a mission provides an enormously challenging and exciting program for scholarship and teaching.

However, following this program in the context of the institutional concerns characteristic of churches and colleges in our contemporary culture poses challenges. Is our responsibility as Anabaptist-Mennonite scholars primarily to fulfill such a mission as stated above by seeking to understand and follow the truth of the gospel of peace wherever it may lead? Or is it primarily to make sure our work serves the viability of our institutions—recognizing that for the sake of what may be perceived as the institutions’ best interests, we may at times avoid speaking to certain issues or sharing the fruit of our scholarship?

Partly because I teach in theology and partly because this question seems especially pointed in relation to theology (broadly defined to include biblical studies, ethics, and other related disciplines), I will focus on theology in this article. I believe my reflections, however, could be pertinent to all disciplines in Anabaptist colleges and seminaries and hopefully beyond.

As a Christian, I find it most helpful to place the issue of appropriate expression for theologians in the context of spiritual gifts. I believe that because of the gifts theologians have been given, have nurtured, and are hired to exercise, open expression is something our schools should encourage.

This is my central proposal: Anabaptist churches, colleges, and seminaries must respect the giftedness of their theologians. They should expect those theologians to be honest and open in the responsible expression of their gifts in teaching and scholarship.

In other words, the priority for theologians should be serving Jesus and his church by seeking the truth at all times and by speaking directly to the issues of our day. Our responsibilities to our institutions are genuine and important, but the institutions (including the churches) lose their reason for existence if institutional viability becomes the ultimate value.

I do believe Anabaptist churches and colleges should expect their theologians to be active members in their larger denomination. I believe theologians should understand their vocation as being to serve their denomination (as well as the broader Christian church and the world itself).

This membership and vocation should not, however, be constraining. Rather, they are precisely the factors that give theologians the responsibility to speak freely and forcefully, to articulate openly the fruits of our research. Like all members of the church, we are to boldly speak the truth as we discern it.

I joined the Mennonite Church in 1981. I was first licensed as a minister in 1982 and ordained in 1991. On each occasion, I vowed to be part of the process within the church of giving and receiving counsel.

I have always understood this to be a commitment to exercise my gifts as a trained theologian for the sake of the church’s discerning work. In seeing theologians as gifted members of the church, I understand our called-out work not to be in tension with the church’s mission but an essential part of it. We are not more important than other members with other gifts, but we do have an authentic role to play.

I well remember a conversation nearly twenty years ago with my teacher and friend Willard Swartley that has continued to inspire me. Willard spoke of being moved to tears, as he researched Mennonite writing on war and peace, by the unflagging efforts of one of my heroes, Guy Hershberger, longtime professor at Goshen College, to minister to the church by his writing—especially through popular-level articles in such denominational periodicals as the Gospel Herald.

I vowed then that I would try to follow that model. So I am proud of the twenty-plus articles I have had published in the Gospel Herald and The Mennonite since then. Theologians are called to be ministers in the church.

I resist moves that on the one hand seek to protect the church from the academy or, on the other hand, seek to protect the academy from the church. The church needs the work of academic theologians as it seeks to be faithful to Christ. For theologians to raise new questions, to challenge superficial understandings, to foster care in our use of language, should not be seen as a threat to the church’s mission. Rather, these tasks of the theologian play a central role in the church’s mission.

Our ecclesiology asserts that we all are to share in the church’s work of discernment. All voices within the fellowship must be heard. The church must not censor or squelch those within the fellowship (including theologians) who raise questions and suggest new directions.

At the same time, all within the fellowship (including theologians) are called to do their work in service of the work God is doing through a relationship of mutual accountability with the community of faith, not as autonomous individuals.

The work of articulating a living faith, using language that is meaningful and authentic in the present while also faithful to the message of the Bible, is the responsibility of Anabaptist theologians. We are being irresponsible if we shrink from this task. Even when our work is not welcomed, as members of the church we have made a commitment to offer our counsel to our brothers and sisters. We theologians must not be ruled by fear or timidity. We have an authentic role to play in the church—for the church’s own good.

—Ted Grimsrud, Harrisonburg, Virginia, is author, God’s Healing Strategy (Pandora Press U.S., 2000), and Assistant Professor of Theology and Peace Studies, Eastern Mennonite University.