Books, Faith, World & More

History as Viewed Through Personal Experience

Reviews of John D. Roth's Beliefs, of Stories, and of Pratices

Beliefs: Mennonite Faith and Practice, by John D. Roth. Herald Press, 2005.

Stories: How Mennonites Came to Be, by John D. Roth. Herald Press, 2006.

Practices: Mennonite Worship and Witness, by John D. Roth. Herald Press, 2009.

John D. Roth is professor of history at Goshen College and editor of The Mennonite Quarterly Review, a scholarly journal established by H. S. Bender in 1927. It is described as “A Journal Devoted to Anabaptist-Mennonite History, Thought, Life, and Affairs.”
The January 2010 issue includes five articles on Balthasar Hubmaier, an Anabaptist leader who is under a cloud for Mennonites because he did not affirm pacifism. The editorial notes that “This issue of M Q. R. will not resolve the hotly debated question of Hubmaier’s credentials as a normative Anabaptist theologian. But it does confirm that interest in Hubmaier’s thought continues to flourish.”

A regular feature of this journal is also book reviews. Eleven reviews in this issue cover a variety of historical and related topics, closing with a review of a book of poems. The journal is mainly concerned with high-level historical scholarship.

Now Editor Roth, who is a member of the Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship near Goshen, Indiana, has written three “popular” books on subjects of concern to all Mennonites, scholars or not. Each of the three books is introduced by a problem which the author has encountered in his own life or in professional contacts. It does not appear that the three books are intended to be a series. Rather, the premise for each book seems to be a problem identified that has pressed him to look for a solution.

However, if the books are not a series, the solutions are cumulative. What is discovered and included in the first and second books has relevance for the problems dealt with in the third.

The first of the three begins with a discussion between Roth and a Japanese man he met on an airplane. The man was working for a Japanese agency and wanted to better understand how Americans think. “‘Who was this person, Jesus? He asked. . . . ’ Can you explain to me, ‘he finally said, ‘just what it is that Christians believe?’” (9). 

Roth admits that he was caught off guard and has attempted in this book to respond at some length to the question. After a brief look at the variegated history of Christian thought, much of which he finds unsatisfactory, he proposes “to give a simple account of the Christian convictions that have sustained the Mennonite church for nearly 500 years” (13). He writes as a historian and, it would seem, a lay rather than professional theologian with the 1995 Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective as a background for his work.

The first two chapters cover subjects which Mennonites have in common with other Christians and then he follows in chapters 3 to 11 with four distinctive Mennonite understandings: biblical interpretation, baptism, discipleship, and a visible church. With each of the four he describes the Mennonite position, acknowledges problems the position entails and aspects on which Mennonites do not agree with each other and then summarizes at the end.

At the end of chapter 11, Roth acknowledges that Mennonites do not always “have it together” but he concludes, “At their best, Mennonite congregations are settings for Christian practice, that bear consistent and joyful witness to God’s love for the world and God’s desire that all people live in respect and trust for each other” (143).

Stories begins by telling of how one of Roth’s daughters came home from school unhappy and quarreled with all in the household. Later she retired to her room and when her father went in to seek reconciliation, he found her looking at family pictures. They reviewed pictures together and the conflict was forgotten.

From this anecdote he proposes that stories can help us clarify our identity. “When we tell the collective stories of our congregations, our denomination, or the larger faith tradition, we are looking for points of continuity to join us to the past” (10-11). So the historian proposes to review the stories of the Christian church and particularly the Mennonite church.

He begins with the development of the Christian church from a movement to a structure. Then on to Constantine and the medieval Christian empire. The picture is painted with a broad brush since he wants to hasten to the Reformation and Anabaptists. But I wonder if he might have included a little more documentation of the rise and development of the church from which the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition emerged.

He gets to the Reformation in chapter 3, with Martin Luther and early Anabaptist history. After one chapter on the Reformers and two on early Anabaptism, he moves to the development of Mennonite churches in various geopolitical sectors: Europe, South Russia, North America, and around the world. 

Roth makes an effort to be frank about the ambiguities involved in seeking to develop and maintain a church without the political support expected by the Catholic and Protestant churches. At the end of chapter 5 he writes, “The struggle for identity amid the pressures of compromise and forces of renewal has structured the contours of Anabaptist history ever since” (113).

One chapter is devoted to South Russia and two to North America, where he ends with a discussion of the multi-ethnic character of current Mennonitism. He states that “the very future of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition depends on a capacity to embrace those beyond ourselves, knowing that the Spirit of God hovers at the borders of that cross-cultural encounter” (187). The last two chapters deal with Mennonite mission efforts, Mennonite World Conference, Mennonite relations with other Christians, and finally the question of how to preserve and nurture a Mennonite identity.

There is a historical warning near the end featuring Leonhard Weydmann, a seminary trained Mennonite leader in the Palatinate of Germany who composed a new catechism for Mennonites. “The traditional Mennonite emphasis on moral regeneration had virtually disappeared, and teaching regarding the nature of the church had become generically Protestant” (230). 

In 1967 I visited the meetinghouse of the Weierhof Mennonite congregation in the Palatinate. I found memorial plaques on both side walls, one for soldiers killed in World War I and the other for World War II. I seem to remember that the name Hertzler appeared on both lists.

“In the end,” writes Roth, “the most powerful stories are not about us, but about encounters with God in which we must take off our shoes because we are standing on holy ground” (241).

Now there is a third book. Another problem, another book. This problem represents more personal and denominational angst than the first two. Roth found himself spiritually rundown and reasoned that a hike on the Appalachian Trail would be an opportunity for spiritual renewal. The problem was not his alone. He discovered spiritual uncertainty in various Mennonite congregations which he had visited. The hike “was to be a vision quest—my chance to wrestle with God alone in the wilderness, to discipline the body, and to commune directly with the divine through nature” (15).

The hike did not go well. Weather and blisters conspired against him and the 19-day hike ended after four days. One might make several observations: He began the hike in late October and he evidently had not practiced well ahead of time, thus the blisters.

But of course the failed hike serves as an introduction for what he wants to present: his studied proposal for ongoing renewal through spiritual disciplines (practices) available if we will undertake them. “The Christian faith,” he writes, “is an invitation, not a threat, it is a witness to be borne, not a demand to be imposed. Its authority is ultimately anchored in nothing more than the testimony and practices of the living body of Christ” (25). Well, of course.

The work, then, is organized in three parts, one section on worship, a second on witness, and a final one, “Looking Forward.” The message is that the source of spiritual renewal is to be found in our traditional practices if we will follow them.

Some of us have read that near the end of the nineteenth century when Mennonite churches seemed weighed down by traditionalism, John S. Coffman introduced revivalism and John F. Funk published Sunday school literature. These practices provided stimuli for the twentieth century. Some of us remember revivalism with mixed feelings and Sunday school for adults is not today what it once was. 

Roth proposes that the answer to our present malaise is to be found in worship. If the first of the three books is concerned with defining what we believe and the second with clarifying Mennonite identity, the third is a response to the question, “Why go to church?”
Indeed, Roth introduces a second problem in chapter 5, the case of a Mennonite student who admitted he no longer attended church. “I feel much closer to God taking a walk along the millrace than I ever did in church on Sunday morning” (62). 

Roth’s answer to this is that no matter what we do, something is shaping us. “Even if my student may not acknowledge the fact, his ethical choices are always being shaped by a community—if not the church then some other community” (98). 

The rest of the book seeks to show how the worship of God influences our lives. “By practicing the presence of God in worship we can experience true reconciliation with God, with each other, and with creation. And this is good news” (99).

Nothing presented here is radical except to the extent that the Mennonite tradition itself is radical. Included are several references to the Amish experience at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, when ten of their children were shot by a demented neighbor. “What stunned the watching world in the days following the shooting was less the reality of the horrific violence than the response of the Amish community” (80).

Roth observes that the Amish have devotional practices such as regular recitation of the Lord’s Prayer with its emphasis on forgiveness. So when the time came to forgive, the Amish were ready. Perhaps it can be mentioned that the Amish have persisted without revivalism, Sunday schools, or a worship band to lead the Sunday morning assembly.

From worship Roth moves to witness, which he develops broadly from our bodies to our families, our communities, and our worship spaces. Like the Amish who pray the Lord’s Prayer regularly, he calls upon us to practice our faith and our traditions advisedly. Keep our eyes open and our heads above water.

The chapter on “Bearing Witness in Our Committees” includes two sorts of anecdotal evidence, one historical and one current. It opens with the determined and futile efforts of Swiss authorities to stamp out Anabaptism: “the Anabaptists . . . were widely known for their moral integrity and their readiness to follow Christ in daily life” (149). As for present witness, he illustrates the dilemma with two experiences from his travels.

On one airplane he met two Germans who were pleased to know that he was a pacifist but had no interest in his Christian faith. On the next plane his seatmate saw him reading his New Testament and was pleased to meet a fellow Christian. But he when he learned that Roth was a Mennonite he became incensed. “‘My son is a Marine. And you guys are a bunch of parasites. It just makes me sick.’ Then he got up, went to the bathroom and returned to another seat” (152).

Roth observes that “peace and justice” on one hand and “evangelical” witness on the other “face a powerful temptation to be relevant to the world according to the world’s criteria. . . . A witness to the gospel of Christ, by contrast, is vulnerable and cruciform” (166).

So we have three books. Not a series, but the subjects tend to interact. All three themes are important to Mennonites, but the third represents the most personal angst on the author’s part and speaks more directly to our own: How may we do church today in a manner which is relevant to our context? How can a two-thousand-year-old tradition provide life for us and others?

The editor of The Mennonite Quarterly Review has bared his soul. We are invited to do likewise.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, is an editor, writer, and chair of the elders, Scottdale Mennonite Church.