BOOKS, FAITH, WORLD & MORE

THE SEARCH FOR A BETTER WAY
Reviews of Anabaptist Ways of Knowing and Anabaptist Preaching

Daniel Hertzler

Anabaptist Ways of Knowing: A Conversation About Tradition-Based Critical Education, by Sara Wenger Shenk. Telford, Pa.: Cascadia Publishing House, 2003.

Anabaptist Preaching: A Conversation Between Pulpit, Pew, and Bible, edited by David B. Greiser and Michael A. King. Telford, Pa.: Cascadia Publishing House, 2003.

In a broad sense we might say that these are two books on how to do better what churches agree should be done: teach and preach the faith. They seem to recognize what we all know when we stop to think about it. Such activities tend to become routinized and are in danger of becoming deadly.

As the titles indicate, both books suggest that there is a special Anabaptist need to consider these matters because Anabaptism, with its countercultural perspective, needs to give extra attention to the proclamation and transmission of its message. For most persons these are not books for bedtime reading, but rather for study and discussion. Indeed, the second one provides a study guide.

Wenger Shenk subtitles her book A Conversation About Tradition-Based Critical Education. As for "knowing," she opens with a personal memory about how she would address her children as they left for school: "Remember who you are" (13). This calls to mind two memories of my own. When at the age of 20 I left home for a cattle-boat trip to Europe, my father laid the same burden on me. Also, some years ago D. Campbell Wyckoff, a Christian education professor at Princeton Seminary, proposed a single objective for religious education, that persons "might know who they are."

As becomes clear in her book, Shenk perceives knowing as something more than the accumulation of facts. It is to have a perspective on one’s own identity. She describes her book as a round-table discussion among authorities in the field with herself as moderator. It is a high-level discussion that not everyone will be prepared to join. But if we listen carefully, we will observe that something important is going on.

In the introduction she describes her strategy: a review of distinctives from the Anabaptist tradition "in conversation with early Greek notions of paideia and recent philosophical thinking that will guide my construction of a tradition-based and critical approach to education for postmodern, particular Christian communities" (18). This seems a challenging task. How will she hold all of these diversities together, or to use her model, keep them in conversation? As we will see, she will be looking for common elements.

But before this she reports the results of a survey she did in a local Mennonite congregation of family-based and congregation-based religious practices. She wanted to assess their prevalence over several generations. She polled two groups in the congregation: 68-85 years of age and 30-50 years of age regarding their practice of activities such as family worship, mealtime prayers, and telling Bible stories at home. Church practices she studied included Sunday school, baptism, communion, and footwashing.

She found a significant drop in the number of family religious practices, but less decline and some increase in church-related practices. Shenk wonders "What faith-based daily and regular practices will replenish the wellspring of tacit, tradition-based knowledge out of which can flow a quality of life that will honor God and equip us and our children to be truthful, courageous, just and loving?" (35- 36).

She then turns to a description of the Anabaptist perspective, to the classical Greek paideia, and to three philosophers regarding the question of how we know. On Anabaptism she concludes, after surveying the work of a number of scholars, that "The convergence of discipleship represented by ‘the following of Jesus in life’ joined with the question about how we come to know God will form the core contents of a constructive educational theory" (59). This is where she begins and where she will end. But she consults authorities along the way.

First she addresses the classical Greek concept of paideia, which the Greeks began to use "to describe all the artistic forms and the intellectual and aesthetic achievements of their race, in fact the whole content of their tradition" (61). She views this perspective as important but "insufficiently capable of critiquing its own idolatries and is very susceptible to ideological distortions" (76).

Then she moves to the three philosophers: "What does it mean to ‘know’ and how do the ways we come to know relate to our educational priorities?" (78). From Michael Polanyi, a philosopher of science, she obtains the sense that "all knowing of any kind involves personal commitment and the acceptance of personal responsibility for one’s beliefs" (82).

Polanyi, she observes, suggests "that there is a spiritual reality embodied in tradition that both sustains it and transcends it" and this, she proposes, "invites both a rootedness in tradition and a critical, creative dissent from it which calls the tradition to become more of what it ought to be" (94).

I am interested to see her using Michael Polanyi. When I read his book Personal Knowledge 30 years ago, I was impressed by the same aspects of his thinking. I seem to remember that he illustrated the importance of tradition by observing that no one today knows how to make a Stradivarius violin. That tradition has been lost.

Rebecca S. Chopp, a feminist theologian, is seen to provide a useful perspective because she asserts that "theology as saving grace . . . brings together ethics and knowing within both its communal and personal dimensions.

"Truth isn’t understood to be a disembodied concept but rather is derived out of communal discernment about how we are to live and about what our present and future activity should entail" (103). But Shenk is concerned that with Chopp’s approach "an individual or group can readily come to identify their own preferences with justice, or their own culture with the will of God" (105).

A third conversationalist is Nancey Murphy, identified as both a doctor of science and a theologian. Shenk finds Murphy’s position so amenable that Murphy has written the book’s foreword. Shenk sees Murphy as asserting that "the teachings of Jesus and the Anabaptist tradition provide the most potent resource for the social embodiment of the good" (116). Each of these three persons, says Shenk, "articulates a community centered approach to knowledge making and discernment" (130).

Finally, the author sets out to weave "a theory of education from the conversational strands" (133). She proposes the vine and the branches of John 15 as an educational metaphor, but "the strategies and methodologies suggested below grow out of the ways of knowing we’ve articulated above" (152). Among these is the strategy for children: "To enhance the abilities of our children to understand their world primarily in light of the Scriptures, from the day they are born we will surround them with poetry, songs, images, symbols and stories of the Scriptures on a daily basis" (155).

As she has indicated throughout, knowing is much broader than the cognitive dimension. In line with this, on pages 157-164, Shenk lists "practices" she proposes are "vital for sustaining ourselves and our community of faith" (159). She begins with "Keeping Sabbath." Why begin here? It "is at the top of the list intentionally because our ability to revitalize life-giving practices is all about our relationship to time and the purported lack of it that is at the root of so many of our current ills" (159). Is that not so, in fact?

As an old traditionalist I find it reassuring that Shenk, who now teaches at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, has wrestled with these theories but in the end concludes that what we really need to do is clear our schedules and spend more time with the children. Any who put their minds to it can do these things.

Anabaptist Preaching is also described as a conversation. But whereas Shenk directs the conversation by personally bringing up evidence from the authorities, this book is a forum of 14 authorities, one after the other. Some dialogue is encouraged by a study guide "to help the reader grasp the meaning and significance of each essay" (214). This suggests that the book may be intended for group study. But of course a preacher could read a chapter a week and ponder its significance for the sermon of the week. The subtitle of the book is A Conversation Between Pulpit, Pew and Bible, but the talking seems to be principally from the pulpit, since all 14 writers are preachers.

I have some difficulty perceiving how to do a responsible review of a book with 14 different topics. The study guide tries to be helpful. Question 1 of the General Questions asks, "What thematic threads run through all of the essays in the book? How do these threads give insight regarding Anabaptist preaching?" (227). Question 10 is possibly more discerning: "In what ways, if any, will your preaching be changed by your experience of reading this book? In what new ways do you view a sermon?" (228).

As for thematic threads, I do believe that Anabaptism is assumed by all writers, although in some chapters the references are more subtle than others. There is no definitive chapter on Anabaptism as in Anabaptist Ways of Knowing. Instead, David B. Greiser provides a historical review of Anabaptist preaching. At the beginning of this review he asks what is distinctive enough about Anabaptist preaching to justify a book on the subject. He responds by recounting his own experience as a boy with Anabaptist preaching in its Mennonite form, then follows with a review of it through three phases.

He reports contrasting experiences with Mennonite preaching. He grew up in a congregation of the General Conference Mennonite Church, where the preaching was polished although not strongly Anabaptist. Then he went to Christopher Dock Mennonite School, where preachers from the Franconia Mennonite Conference lacked this polish and publicly confessed it. "For awhile I found chapel a daily exercise in culture shock" (18). These contrasting experiences eventually led him to write a dissertation on preaching in the Franconia Mennonite Conference.

After reviewing in brief the history of Anabaptist-Mennonite preaching, Greiser summarizes what he has found as significant aspects of Anabaptist preaching. (1) It has been congregationally based with a preacher often selected from within the congregation. (2) It has been part of a congregational conversation. (3) It has been considered important even though a lot of it has been poorly done. (4) Sermon delivery has not been seen as a high priority although numbers of preachers apologize for their sermons. Recently, however, younger preachers have taken delivery more seriously. (5) It has been preaching from the Bible.

If this summary seems hardly enough as a rationale for 13 more chapters on Anabaptist preaching, we might turn to the foreword by Brian McLaren, a friend of Anabaptism from another church group. He takes note of the ongoing life of a movement and the need for it to truly understand its gifts. He proposes "that each heritage, including the Anabaptist heritage, has special treasures that it is often unaware of" (8).

What I take him to mean is that the Anabaptist vision, with its emphasis on following Jesus, is worth stressing. But how to relate the tradition to the winds of doctrine abroad in the land is an ongoing challenge. It calls for all the excellence preachers can find. If Anabaptism is worth preaching, we ought to preach it well.

Another theme that seems to pervade these essays is postmodernism. That theme is addressed directly by Michael A. King, in the second chapter, in where he observes that "a common feature of postmodernity" is a "breakdown of authority and the pluralism which flows from and helps to reinforce that breakdown" (33). So, he says, authority must be earned by the preacher rather than assumed.

We live, King asserts, "in corrosively postmodern settings in which renewed humility bred by realizing we cannot after all know all truth becomes a rejection of any quest for truth or right living" (44-45). But this is not necessary, he affirms. We can earn a right to be heard by coming to the Bible as seekers rather than as authoritarian clerics. We can offer an alternative vision rather than rational argument and can provide a context for authority in word and conduct.

And so follow another dozen essays, each of them addressing one important aspect of the topic. If I may allow myself one favoritism, I take the liberty to comment on chapter 10 by Lynn Jost, a student of David J. Buttrick, author of a big book on preaching, Homiletic: Moves and Structures. I labored over that book when it first came out some years ago, and if I understood Buttrick’s "moves" then, I soon forgot them.

However, Jost restores my memory by describing Buttrick’s sermon structure. A "move" begins with (1) a theological statement repeated several times to make it clear, followed by (2) an image or metaphor with only one of them per move. This is followed by (3) an illustration from experience. The move is then finished with a definite statement and leads into the next one, linked—as Buttrick would say—as we link statements in conversation. The sermon is seen as a conversation with the congregation. Jost includes a move of his own from a sermon he preached.

So now I understand Buttrick’s technique better and am considering whether I may use it in my own preaching, though I am not convinced to follow it exclusively. As one who listens to more sermons than I preach, I have concluded that a preacher generally does better to make only one point in a sermon, an impression which can remain in the minds of the hearers for reflection during the week.

I have written that Anabaptist Preaching is adaptable on one hand for group study and on the other for use by an individual preacher. What about Anabaptist Ways of Knowing? Surely Christian education committees would do well to ponder it. If the theoretical material in the center is too daunting for them, at least they can read the first and last chapters.

If our congregations are to teach and to preach—and most of us agree that they must—such activities should be done with all the finesse we can muster.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, studied preaching at Eastern Mennonite college with John R. Mumaw and religious education at the University of Pittsburgh with Lawrence C. Little and others. He has been teaching Sunday school since about age 16.