Polarization | Kingsview & Co

Some months ago Harold Heie, with whom I had once co-edited Mutual Treasure: Seeking Better Ways for Christians and Culture to Converse, asked me to consider being the Anabaptist-Mennonite contributor to a conversation on “Following Jesus” among writers from 12 different Christian traditions. Each month a writer makes a main presentation on her or his tradition and the remaining writers offer responses.

The inaugural post was by David Ford, of the Orthodox tradition, and I was Anabaptist-Mennonite respondent, a response also offered below. In future months I’ll also potentially share other responses and my main post on my own tradition, scheduled for December 2021.

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As I’ll explore more fully in my main post (Dec. 2021) on how Anabaptist-Mennonites view following Jesus, the fragmentation of my tradition(s) makes it a challenge to discern the most fruitful vantage point from which to write. Not only is Anabaptism embodied in multiple traditions but its expressions in Mennonite Church USA, to which I belong, are increasingly fragmented.

MC USA is currently only about a generation old after being formed in 2002 from the merger of prior Mennonite denominations with their own centuries-long histories of fragmentation. Yet already in the past decade or so, inability to resolve deep differences, not limited to but certainly often revolving around whether and how to welcome LGBTQ participants, has caused MC USA to lose almost half its members. The pre-merger denominations had a total of 130,000-some members, the merged denomination initially 120,000-some, and the current denomination in the 60,000s.

As I’ll touch on again in my December post, each fragmentation sends sub-traditions rippling this direction and that. As I wrestle then with what standpoint to adopt in responding to David Ford’s insightful, inspiring, even moving overview of what it means to follow Jesus in the Orthodox tradition, I find myself drawn to remembering the main emphases, often enough stereotypes, within which I was shaped from boyhood on. Let them provide, helpfully or not, hints of a grid for approaching Orthodoxy and engaging how Ford’s articulations fit or challenge the impressions within which I was formed.

A primal emphasis I imbibed practically from cradle on was that Anabaptism and specifically my Mennonite expression of it had reclaimed the purity of the early church after centuries of corruption. Such Anabaptism was not only a reaction against the historic church, particularly Roman Catholic as experienced in 1500s Europe, but also a Radical Reformation reaction against or at minimum beyond the “establishment” Protestant Reformation. This is why early generations of Anabaptists and Mennonites were often persecuted and killed for their beliefs. I’ll always remember the Church of the Brethren (another Anabaptist tradition) seminary friend who, sitting among our Reformed-tradition friends, told the professor and class he still could hardly fellowship among those whose forebears had drowned, burned, beheaded his ancestors.

Still a core enemy was commonly viewed as the Roman Catholic Church, casting its thought-to-be-corrupt shadow over the entire church but perhaps more malignantly than Eastern Orthodoxy. The latter seemed almost too distant and different to be meaningfully engaged.

If there was an error particularly linked to Orthodoxy it was perhaps iconography. As a visit to many long-established Mennonite church buildings devoid of sacred imagery will sometimes immediately make clear, Mennonites have long been iconoclasts, sharing with many Protestants the view that icons are idolatrous but in their Radical Reformation way rejecting icons with even greater passion. The distinctive style of Orthodox iconography has sometimes made it seem even more greatly “other.”

A second emphasis was that in contrast to Catholics and Protestants, often viewed as “buying” their salvation through such practices as infant baptism, the Mass/Eucharist, and/or “cheap” grace,” Mennonites embodied the saving power of Christ through literally living out the teachings of Jesus. Hence Mennonites (stemming from the Anabaptists whose name means “rebaptizers,” a label imposed by enemies) viewed infant baptism as not being faithful to the Jesus who invited adults to make a conscious decision to follow him. Even quite conservative Mennonites frequently resisted the state through refusing to take up arms because Jesus taught love of enemies. They resisted swearing oaths because Jesus taught us to let our yea be yea and our nay be nay. And so forth.

Today some branches of Anabaptist-Mennonitism have moved far beyond the more stereotypical aspects of such emphases. Mennonites engage in interfaith dialogues with Roman Catholicism and sometimes Orthodoxy and even become converts. So it would be misleading to suggest that attending appreciatively to David Ford is anomalous. But I do want to underscore—appreciatively indeed!—that Ford does ease the path for respectful conversation. While not minimizing or disrespecting such traditions as my own, he offers an Orthodoxy radiating significant strengths and appeal.

I experienced particularly this paragraph as summarizing Orthodoxy as an integrating tradition ranging across Scripture, theology, liturgy, the historical church from apostolic age on, spiritual practices, and more:

For this endeavor, the Orthodox Church provides many resources for spiritual growth, including daily study of the Holy Scriptures, being guided by the Church’s long-standing interpretation of them; time-honored prayers for many occasions; rich liturgical life, replete with psalmody, and including hymns filled with devotion and sound doctrine; the Sacraments—especially the Eucharist, celebrated at every Divine Liturgy, and the Sacrament of Confession; celebration of the many great holy days (Feasts) of the Church Year; the writings of the Church Fathers; the Lives of the Saints; the doctrinal proclamations and canons of the Ecumenical Councils—especially the Nicene Creed; veneration of the Holy Icons; the sign of the Cross; the connection with one’s Patron Saint and Guardian Angel; and the spiritual direction of one’s spiritual father.

Though no doubt partly due to my own blind spots, particularly my early experiences of Anabaptist-Mennonitism left me feeling that the key requirement of following Jesus was to live correctly, in faithful and even almost slavish embrace of Jesus’ teachings, particularly in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. We were to live in conformity only to Jesus, not the false and pagan practices of “the world.” Sixtysome years later, I still relive the weeks my parents forbade my taking part in a first-grade play that included bearing fake weapons. I’ve remained haunted by the near-contemptuous look on my teacher’s face, seeming to say that my family’s values were not only strange but idiotic.

But I had less idea how to nurture a spirituality that would empower such practices. I experienced my tradition as telling me how to live but not so much how to do the living. Ford also emphasizes holy living, at times perhaps echoing a perfectionism I’ve experienced in my own heritage. Yet he also offers a tradition rich in resources for the journey. As for me and my house, we can learn much from that.

We can as well from the “Holy Icons.” For some years I had a Mennonite university colleague who had invested passionately in learning about Orthodox icons and allowing them to inspire his own art. There is a power in visual expressions of holiness sometimes hard to find in traditions focused on words and practices.

When it comes to ethical living, Ford generates two responses for me. First, as a neophyte in encountering Orthodoxy, I was surprised at how strong—and for me stereotype-shattering—the above-introduced emphasis on holy living is. As Ford observes, echoing my own tradition’s commitment to Jesus’ commandments, “Growing in communion with Jesus is accomplished in large measure through keeping His commandments (John 15:10; also 15:14 and 14:15).” Ford relatedly highlights “Endeavoring to surrender our own will to His will (Luke 22:42); this includes surrendering our own will appropriately as we self-sacrificially serve others, placing their needs and desires ahead of our own.”

Second, I did look for Anabaptist-type determination to address the social justice implications of the Sermon on the Mount. I searched for ways Orthodoxy might champion the cruciality of not allowing social, economic, political idols, the nation/state, or the Powers as some might put it, the last word on such matters as, say, how we solve conflicts or share resources, including within and between nations. Or how vital it is to disobey the state if it insists on practices—such as accepting being drafted and sent to war—that violate Jesus’ teachings.

Or seeing major implications for social justice understandings in such calls as Jesus offers in his Luke 4 “inaugural address” proclaiming good news and release to the the poor, captive, blind, bruised. For at least some Mennonites (by no means all amid our many splits but certainly evident in a variety of Mennonite position statements of recent decades) there are resources here for analyzing the troubled state of U.S. creation care, economics, governance, politics, policies, and how to proceed when societies tilt toward the rich, the powerful, those who amass and exploit rather than care for the least of these.

I’d expect that implicit in Orthodoxy as described by Ford are paths for social analysis and justice. At that same time, the explicit focus is particularly on individual, personal, interpersonal, internal spirituality and its nurture and expressions. It seems to me that Orthodoxy would benefit in this area from interaction with Anabaptism.

On the conversation with Orthodoxy could go. And on I hope it will, with my tradition and others, as we share and together find our mutual treasures.

—Michael A. King is blogger and editor, Kingsview & Co; and publisher, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He has been a pastor and seminary dean is currently a participant in Harold Heie’s Respectful Conversation project within which a version of this response to Orthodoxy was first published.

One cousin was already at the beach. When the other topped the dune and they spied one another, both galloped across sand and their different ages, three and nearly five, arms outstretched.

It was a thrill to watch, this pure delight.

Then they met. She yanked off his hat. He hurled sand in her face. They probably both meant more to tease than assault. Yet in seconds they were tussling, mutually enraged. Grownups ran to separate them. Screams of anger and pain burst forth.

Sorrow flowing. Delight drowning. So lovely. So quickly so nasty. Just those few moments, yet within them lurked the human condition writ large. We thrill to companionship. And constantly we scan: Is our share of love, voice, justice, place in the community safe?

As the beach fight raged, it pointed mostly to the usual work of growing up. But it also became a microcosm of the nuclear furies world leaders threaten, the claims to “blood and soil” with which some assault those they believe to be stealing it, the growing inability of adults, including the most powerful one in the world, to do better than yank hats, throw sand, egg on violences of mind, spirit, and body.

It still hurts to remember the sand fight. Not because the combatants were terrible; they were acting their age. After grownups reinforced the norms of civilized behavior, they didn’t forswear battle but could often be spied whispering under a blanket, sharing books, even cuddling. What hurts is how quickly the joy fizzled, a cloud spreading over that sun-drenched beach precisely as beauty raced toward fulfillment.

What hurts is that the image of missing each other precisely when on the cusp of finding each other seems to capture our current national and planetary condition. There is so much to be awed by, so much wonder crying out for attention, so much human yearning to embrace the other and challenges of the day before the planet shuts us down. Yet the thermometers measuring our hate and Earth itself show global temperatures soaring as we yank hats and throw sand. This is why in the August 14, 2017, issue of The New Yorker, Robin Wright asks, “Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?” This is why the January 17, 2018, New York Times analysis of the 2017 U.S. tax cut is headlined, “Sharper State Divide in Congress Seen as ‘New Civil War.’”

Extrapolating from children is dangerous. But I wonder what might have happened if adults had egged on instead of pacifying the cousins. And I find myself asking what adult intervention looks like when the grownups themselves regress to childhood. How far does the hate spread? How many casualties are suffered? What finally enables combatants to recapture their vision of delight long enough once more to pursue it?

When Adam and Eve lost their way in Eden, God warned of trouble ahead and that an angel with a flaming sword would bar their return. But next, Genesis reports, they “made love,” setting in motion the births of Cain and then Abel. No return to Eden here as soon they rolled in the sand and Abel was dead. Still, the ending of Genesis 4 reports, Adam and Eve made love again, Seth was born, Seth had son Enosh, and “At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.”

Now we fumble toward the next chapters in our and (we pray) God’s story. I wonder if it’s precisely when we honor a story larger than our own—which is what adults intervening in the sand fight called for—that we grow back up and into delight.

—Michael A. King is publisher and president, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He writes the column “Unseen Hands” for Mennonite World Review, which first published this post.