Category Archives: Mennonite

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, baptism, Evangelicalism, grace, Mennonite, salvation

Collaborating with Grace, the Gift from Beyond

February 14, 2022 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests Leave a comment

For a year I’m 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. Here at Kingsview & Co I’m posting my contributions along with links to the larger conversation.

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It’s interesting to note that Wesley Granberg-Michaelson joins the significant number of “Respectful Conversation” partners reporting having made some sort of journey beyond or at least through evangelicalism as part of embracing their current tradition. I’d count myself among such. Though I was born into the Mennonite church and raised by Anabaptist-Mennonite parents, whether what we believed in was Anabaptism or an evangelicalism tinged with fundamentalism was often unclear.

I resonate, then, with Granberg-Michaelson’s report that he started out evangelical, going back to a conversation in the kitchen with his mother when he was just four. There is indeed appeal in accepting Jesus before going to the dentist to make sure to be saved in case Jesus returns more quickly than young Wesley returns from the dentist.

I made the same move as Wesley except oh, maybe 100 times, and it just never seemed to take. I never seemed to become unqualifiedly saved. I remember when I was maybe 12 overhearing my mom say to my dad something along the lines of “If he doesn’t do it by the time he’s 16 he never will.” To this day I’m not sure if “it” was accepting Jesus, but I think it was. That only added to the pressure and caused maybe another 50 efforts to become saved.

But thoughts and feelings that seemed not to belong to saved people would always return shortly after a few days of the sainthood that would validate that Jesus was now in my heart. For me the solution, if such it was, to the quandary came from choosing in my twenties to try out whatever it meant to follow Jesus. I’d aim to follow Jesus whether or not I always believed there was a Jesus to follow and whether or not I had any confidence that Jesus was in my heart.

In light of that, I feel almost a twinge of envy that Granberg-Michaelson can report that the Reformed tradition “chose me.” There is gift here, the gift of feeling that Someone has chosen you which is moving and affirming in a different way than if it was primarily you who did the choosing. As Granberg-Michaelson summarizes, “Grace comes solely as God’s initiative, as pure gift. Faith is never an achievement or personal accomplishment.”

I mostly concur. And I think we Mennonites influenced by the individualism often linked to evangelical influences can be reminded by Granberg-Michaelson of our tradition’s from-the-start convictions that the walk toward and with Jesus happens as we become members of Christ’s body.

Each of our traditions can also find gifts in the summary of the Reformed tradition as confessional, covenantal, committed to the conviction that the world belongs to God, aware that sin is real indeed yet so is the journey from “guilt to grace to gratitude,” and ecumenical.

Those of us who are grandparents, as am I six times over, may also find blessing in Granberg-Michaelson’s testimony that “When I sit with my two grandchildren on my lap, my Reformed theology gets undone.”

My Mennonite theology gets undone too, though this did send me down a side-trail that may nevertheless deserve a touch of exploration: wondering how any of us help next generations see gifts in our traditions as religions and denominations and traditions are in so many ways coming undone.

Some of my grandchildren are being raised in ways connected to Christianity, even sometimes Mennonite-flavored. Others less so. In-laws range all over the faith–or lack thereof–map. When we get together, we can’t assume that, say, Mennonite is our common understanding.

Even so, how surprising, and moving it has sometimes been to learn that even grandchildren as young as two pay attention for example to prayer at meals and regardless of their particular background will often propose or even personally initiate prayer. This includes the youngest, whose heart has somehow instructed her to put her two index fingers together and close her eyes as a gesture of prayer.

I suspect at least two factors come into view here. One is that indeed the communal emphases of our traditions hold insight. We are formed together, not simply apart and not entirely by larger cultural influences even as traditions increasingly atomize.

The other is that we do need somehow to take into account Granberg-Michaelson’s testimony to not only chasing grace ourselves but also being chosen and blessed by it whether or not we’re fully capable of understanding it. This takes me back to his thoughts on covenant.

On the one hand, I remain a committed enough Anabaptist-Mennonite that I don’t fully embrace his conviction that covenant includes infant baptism.

When an infant is baptized in a Reformed (or other) congregation, theological critics will complain that he or she has no choice in the matter. But that is precisely the point. Christian faith is carried communally; it’s personal but not individualistic.

I see the power of this understanding and in that sense am drawn to it. Still I’d prefer to look for ways the communal carrying of Christian faith Granberg-Michaelson rightly emphasizes does not preclude reserving baptism for the adult or at least adult-in-training believer consciously committing to the journey with Jesus.

Here I see some analogy with my marriage commitments. I could not have become the married person I am apart from community and “covenantal relationships of love.” And I respect that marriage arrangements vary across cultures in enriching ways. Yet I’m grateful to have had the privilege of intentionally–though certainly not in full understanding of what I was doing!–committing myself to another through sickness and in health until death does us part.

On the other hand, and as I ponder through the prism of my grandchildren, I see much to celebrate in Granberg-Michaelson’s report:

So, I don’t regard my prayer in the kitchen as an autonomous, individual act of free will, but as part of a mysterious movement of grace transmitted imperfectly but certainly through covenantal relationships of love. Believing and belonging are intertwined, and not always sequential.

Amen. Maybe the Mennonite in me can see adult baptism as collaborating with the grace which comes as gift from Beyond. Many thanks, Wesley, for leading us so meaningfully from guilt to grace to gratitude.

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

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, communities of discernment, MC USA, Mennonite, Mennonite Church USA, Teachings of Jesus

Amid Complexities, Five Things Many Anabaptist-Mennonites Emphasize

December 10, 2021 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests 3 Comments

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Yes, I will summarize five Anabaptist-Mennonite emphases. But I don’t dare try before addressing complexities of doing so when so many groups stress so many different things.

We can link some Anabaptist-Mennonitisms back to Swiss Anabaptism. Even as approaches to Anabaptist origins and contemporary implications vary (as historians contest whether “polygenesis,” “monogenesis,” or some blend best explains Anabaptist beginnings), noteworthy was the 1525 Zurich move by leaders such as Conrad Grebel and George Blaurock to rebaptize each other. They and others called for rebaptizing adults committed to a “believers church” and by 1527 produced the Schleitheim Confession summarizing early Swiss Anabaptist beliefs. They also contributed to a believers church shadow: if only believers belong in the church and are to rightly live Jesus’ teachings, there is potential for endless schism over who is the true believer.

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Today, among many Anabaptist-Mennonite groups, some include the name Anabaptist, some Mennonite, some neither. Yet they are broadly part of Mennonitism, whether in North America or worldwide. Mennonites gained their name as disciples of the 1500s former Roman Catholic priest, the Frisian (Netherlands) Menno Simons. Other Anabaptist groups, such as Church of the Brethren, Brethren in Christ, Hutterites may have varying links to Mennonites but involve different branchings-out of Anabaptism.

Then there are the Amish. Though they diverged in the 1600s, their roots are Swiss Anabaptist. The Amish are part of my family lineage some generations back. Despite their split from branches of Anabaptism with which I’m most connected, their plain and simple living commitments make their own contributions. The Amish have sometimes intertwined with Mennonite streams as wings of Mennonites and Amish have migrated back and forth. Thus for example someone like my aunt Evelyn King Mumaw could tell of how, after her family was put out of its Mennonite wing, they attended Conestoga Amish Mennonite Church.

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The point is not the details but that one could go on and on about who believed what, belonged to whom when and for how long, evicted one group or joined another. As addressed in my response to Orthodoxy, long unfolding Anabaptist-Mennonite diversification seems only to have gathered momentum in Mennonite Church USA, to which I belong. This has led to MC USA losing nearly half of its members since its formation in 2002. Despite the goal—heal divisions and merge two prior denominations—MC USA faces continuing challenges, and the merger split off MC Canada from what had been a binational church.

As touched on in response to Orthodox writer David Ford, a significant though not only factor heightening tensions has involved LGBTQIA-related decisions. I once pastored a congregation the denomination later excommunicated when it was perceived to have moved too far toward inclusion; I was saddened when delegates of another congregation I was then pastoring voted for eviction. In 2015 I was an MC USA seminary dean when the university to which it belonged navigated both internal divisions and the wider denominational tumult in moving toward a more inclusive hiring policy. In 2015 and beyond, many congregations and some conferences—regional and/or affiliative clusters of congregations into which MC USA is subdivided—shifted loyalties to different entities or left MC USA entirely.

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So what do Mennonites believe amid ongoing wrestlings? Key is the 1995 Mennonite Confession of Faith in Mennonite Perspective and its summary of 24 principles MC USA formally affirms. But what of Anabaptist-Mennonite streams that have left MC USA or in some cases never joined?

For example, CMC, formerly Conservative Mennonite Conference, now labeling itself an “evangelical Anabaptist denomination with headquarters in Irwin, Ohio,” offers alternative statements of faith on theology and practice.

LMC—“A fellowship of Anabaptist churches,” formerly Lancaster Mennonite Conference—was until recently largest of MC USA’s conferences. Now LMC states commitment to the 1995 COF but doesn’t mention in summarizing Anabaptist-Mennonite history its departure from the denomination of which it was once such a large part.

Acronyms such as CMC or LMC in place of Mennonite matter. They signal preference to emphasize evangelical and/or Anabaptist over Mennonite components.

Evana Network emerged amid 2015 MC USA controversies. Evana (abbreviating “evangelical Anabaptist” theology), speaks of embracing the 1995 COF but also various confessions of the Mennonite Brethren (yet another denomination) and CMC even as it asks members to commit to requirements as “defined in our covenant” and expects congregations to belong to a Congregational Covenant.

Statements Evana embraces vary in emphasis and details. For example, the 1995 COF speaks of a “fully reliable and trustworthy” Bible even as CMC affirms Scripture as “without error in the original writings in all that they affirm.” Evident here a century later are ongoing effects of Fundamentalist/Modernist controversies.

Then one could ponder Anabaptists emphasizing a Jesus manifested in social and communal ethics versus Jesus as personal savior. In The Absent Christ: A Theology of the Empty Tomb (Cascadia, 2020), Justin Heinzekehr describes a God “mediated to the world in and through material relations.” Reviewing in Brethren in Christ History and Life (Aug. 2021), pastor Zachary Speidel says that for Heinzekehr, Christ’s absence makes space for the sacred “to be inseparably bound up in ethical relationships with . . . others.” But Seidel underscores Jesus’ presence: “When I speak of ‘Jesus,’ I speak of my Savior, my Lord, my Friend, and my Shepherd.”

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When I was pastor into 2008 at Spring Mount Mennonite Church, we faced such larger dynamics but also complexities in our immediate setting. To remain viable, given the congregation’s dwindling to 35-some participants, we needed to welcome persons from diverse backgrounds. Pointing in microcosm to increasing diversity of Anabaptist-Mennonitism, often growing most quickly in cultures and settings beyond North America or within the U.S. beyond earlier ethnic and racial enclaves, eventually about half the congregation came from diverse settings. These ranged from Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations to “Nones” sometimes having no prior faith commitments.

What beliefs might we hold in common? After 11 years of wrestling with this, I preached in my final months sermons summarizing five values Anabaptist-Mennonites often emphasize while still embracing many affirmations of other Christian traditions. (These values overlap with the fine summary of seven convictions provided by the Mennonite World Council but were intended to be even simpler):

The first involves “No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). That introduces value 1: The starting point for Anabaptist-Mennonite understandings of God, the church, and all life is the New Testament and the Jesus Christ revealed in it. If we find understandings in Scripture, church, world, or our lives that conflict with New Testament teachings about Jesus’ Way, we give Jesus priority.

This is why the Sermon on the Mount is key to daily living. Jesus repeats, again and again, “You have heard that it was said. . . . But I say to you. . . .” Here Jesus reshapes the lives of followers—including Anabaptists—by teaching radical understandings of how God works and what God expects of us.

Value 2: God’s kingdom or realm comes first. This Anabaptist-Mennonite teaching has 1500s roots. Back then church and state often intertwined in what is sometimes called Christendom. Being baptized as a baby into your state church made you Christian. As radicals reforming the Reformers, the Anabaptists concluded Jesus taught that infant baptism doesn’t make you Christian. Rather, to be Christian is to make an adult decision to follow Jesus.

When you decide to follow, you become a citizen of God’s nation. You put God’s realm first. If your earthly nation, society, community, or even church asks you to violate the teachings of Christ and ways of God, you obey God .

Value 3: An Anabaptist-Mennonite church is a believers church. A believers church is made up not of people born into it but who have consciously decided to follow Jesus.

That decision is momentous. Only those who grasp the meaning and cost of following Jesus should be baptized, Anabaptists claimed. This was how Anabaptists, meaning “rebaptizers” as their enemies named them, came to see adult baptism as important enough to die for when Christendom entities ordered them to stop

Though as evident above this can catalyze division, the dream is that you and your co-believers will form alternative accountability structures helping you discern Jesus’ Way and find wisdom and courage to live it.

Value 4: Anabaptist-Mennonites are committed to love and nonviolence. We believe this because Jesus taught and modeled it, even dying on the cross and forgiving those who put him there. This means together cultivating a personal lifestyle of loving enemies and forgiving those who hurt or offend us. This has generated Mennonite contributions to conflict transformation. It means we can’t in good conscience follow Jesus and kill other people. So in theory (not always in practice) we don’t participate in war even if the alternative is prison, as Mennonites faced in World War I, or conscientious objection, as I registered for during the Vietnam War.

Value 5: Anabaptist-Mennonites embrace wholistic mission. We share Christ’s love with souls and bodies. The saving news of the gospel must be shared. And Jesus wants the bodies of God’s children, of those blind, captive, oppressed as he put it in Luke 4 and the “least of these” as he named them in Matthew 25, to be cherished. This means caring when injustice, racism, poverty, hunger, nakedness befall any of God’s children or creation itself and has led to such service organizations as Mennonite Disaster Service and Mennonite Central Committee.

These five values are neither exhaustive nor speak for all Anabaptist-Mennonites. Many treasures and shadows, or ways Anabaptism might correct other traditions or be corrected, await other venues (and are touched on in responses to Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Lutheranism). Yet I hope I’ve hinted at our complex, sometimes tormented, sometimes spine-tingling history and beliefs.

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

Anabaptist-Mennonite theology, Church structures, Doubt, Faith, formation, Future of the church, Mennonite, Mennonite church, worship

Enriched by the Churched and A-Churched

December 6, 2019 Kingsview & Co posts from Michael A. King and guests Leave a comment

When I became a seminary dean in 2010, polls were showing that membership and participation in traditional Christian denominations was falling. As the decade proceeded, the unraveling gathered speed. In an October 17, 2019 update, Pew Research Center reported that “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.” Across some 10 years, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as Christian is down some 12 percent to 65 percent. Meanwhile “the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular,’ now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.”

In recent years I’ve left to others the challenges and opportunities of running seminaries during such a time as this. This has given me more energy to focus on the reality that this isn’t just an institutional matter; it’s deeply personal. When I was growing up I don’t recall knowing anyone in my immediate circle of loved ones being other than Christian and a regular churchgoer. Now the majority of my friends and family are what I might describe, respectfully, as “A-churched” in the Greek sense of “A-” pointing to an absence of.

As Pew indicates, and whatever the trajectory may become in future decades, for now this trend seems only to be strengthening among those I love. It has perhaps also intensified as political polarization separates Christians into camps who can only shake their heads in disbelief that the other camp could be understood to be truly Christian.

This came to mind as I was discussing with one of my pastors participating in a ritual of congregational healing in preparation for treatment of a leaking aortic valve. At the same time, my wife Joan was working out logistics of an informal ritual with a circle of her friends who had supported one of their group also needing heart treatment. They were now offering this ritual to me.

I value both settings, I realized. As one formed in the church before I even knew who I was, I continue to experience the power of a community gathered in Jesus’ name in hopes of offering to each other and the world at least glimpses of being the Body of Christ.

And as one who has personally spent periods traveling through many of the “A-” dynamics of our age—A-theism, A-gnosticism, A-churchgoing—I also was moved to envision support organized not against but outside of traditional congregational structures.

I‘m grateful that at the moment I’m not responsible for envisioning how this plays out institutionally, as congregations, church schools, denominations, and faith traditions wrestle with what it means to thrive—or not—amid current trends. My time of institutional leadership as the trends gathered force showed me I didn’t have failsafe initiatives.

But as I ponder the personal dimensions of all this, I do draw some inspiration from simultaneously experiencing the power of both formal and informal communities of care. When I discussed some of this with Joan, she reported wondering how even informal communities of healing will continue to be available, given how often they spend capital inherited from formalized faith settings.

Joe Hackman, the pastor who helped shape the Salford Mennonite Church ritual before he shifted roles to MennoMedia, saw connections with Joan’s feedback. He noted that

For spirit and the spiritual, we have been able to rely on the deep spiritual wells of our grandparents, but once those wells are depleted and we have not created our own wells, there’s nothing to pass on to our children other than moral values. Maybe that’s enough, but I’d like to think we could pass on something more.

So I hope instead of pitting them against each other, as we sometimes do, we can be flexible enough to learn about the gifts of each type of community. I hope we can be enriched by comparing and contrasting the life stories that cause each of us to navigate joys and dangers of being churched, A-churched, both, or more.

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