In Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism (1993), Donald Kraybill of Elizabethtown, ON,
and Leo Dreidger of Winnipeg, MB,
aptly named their chapter on the 1950s as Ferment
in the Fifties.
For the EMB, the 1950s was a decade of
irony. On the one hand, the EMB were
positioning themselves for closer formal cooperation with the Allianz
Mennonites of the Chaco and the Evangelical Mennonite Church, fka the Egly
Amish, with whom Bishops Aron Wall
and Isaac Peters had been in such
close fellowship. Informally, the door
had been carefully left open for closer cooperation with independent Mennonite
congregations and the formerly Anabaptist affiliated Missionary Church Association
who had under the leadership of Joseph
E. Ramseyer split off from the Egly Amish in 1898 over the issue of baptism
by immersion.
The door was possibly even a bit more open
towards increased cooperation with the Mennonite Brethren – both in Latin
America and in the local ministerial associations. While disagreements were sparking up between
the EMB and the MB regarding the Allianz conference in Alberta, and on the
mission fields of China and Chaco, relations between the EMB and the Krimmer
Mennonite Brethren, who joined with the MB in 1960, had always been closer and
more cooperative. By the 1960s,
acceptance of intermarriage between the two conferences and a general trend
among the EMB to prefer immersion to the traditional Mennonite baptism of Isaac
Peters and the Petersgemeinde by pouring or by sprinkling, eliminated most none
social and non-economic disagreements between the two churches. On the other hand, relations with the larger
General Conference of the Russländer Mennonites and the Mennonite-Amish and Old
Mennonite Churches in the United States were growing increasingly cold and
dysfunctional. While many local
communities were split between the Grace Bible Institute and the MB Tabor College,
national if not international inter-Mennonite relations were becoming clearly
split between the Grace Philosophy School
and the Goshen Philosophy School.
At this point, things become a bit
dicey. One might easily read sermons and
writings by the Evangelical Mennonites or the Grace Philosophers and those of
the Traditional Mennonites or the Goshen Philosophy and believe that they are
talking about the same thing. In truth,
the 1950s might best be remembered as the decade that the united Mennonite
dialogue ended and the diaspora split along geographic lines – with Ontario,
Chicago, Indiana, Michigan and all points east more or less supporting the
Goshen dialogue of Kraybill, Yoder, Bender and other Goshen College instructors
and alumni, and the northern divide of Nebraska, southern Illinois, the
northern and western states and the larger Mennonite population of western
Canada supporting a more Grace-oriented dialogue – not incompatible with the
positions that would be taken by the alumni and staff of Tabor and Tabor
Canada, and in more or less full agreement with the Mennonite-oriented students
and staff at various Bible institutes including Grace, Biola, Briercrest,
Prairie and the grandfather of them all – Moody Bible Institute in
Chicago.
Supporting this growing divide was the
experience of the various mission boards and organizations. The EMB were becoming increasingly successful
and supportive of pan-Evangelical mission boards such as TEAM and GMU in
Europe, Asia and especially in Latin America.
At the same time, wars, revolutions, anti-colonialism and
inter-Mennonite competition for new congregations slowly wore away even the
most successful inter-Mennonite missions around the world. Inter-Mennonite cooperation ceased in India
under post-colonialist pressures in Dhamatur, India. World War II, disagreements with the
Mennonite Brethren and the gradual Communist victory swallowed up the
inter-Mennonite missions of China – truly tragic for the sacrifices and horrors
endured by the Mennonite missionaries during World War II in order to preserve
the fellowship and missionary witness in that nation. Perhaps the most successful inter-Mennonite
effort was that of the Congo Inland Mission, first established by Alma Döring
and the well-known missionary sisters from the Brüderthaler churches. An anti-colonial revolution seized control of
Leopoldville in 1959, spelling the near ending of the North American missionary
witness in the Congo. As resources and
personnel were switched from these closing fields of historic Mennonite
affiliation, they were redirected by Mennonite evangelicals towards the growing
and increasingly successful pan-Evangelical missions of GMU, TEAM, New Tribes
and SEND. Nor were they the only
Evangelical Mennonites to place resources and personnel with these
non-Anabaptist missionary endeavors.
The problem became more important when
considering future Evangelical support of traditional Mennonite or Anabaptist
schools and the great inter-ethnic/religious establishment that had to date
been one of the most successful examples of international cooperation and
outreach – the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). Writing at the time of this increasingly
apparent split, Paul Kraybill’s essay in the Mennonite Quarterly Review serves
as a virtual blueprint to the divide of faith amongst the New World’s
Mennonites and Amish regarding salvation, missions and the basic understanding
of the church itself.
Allowing the more academic-oriented “new”
Mennonites speak for themselves, we find a lot of confidence, a lot of
intelligence, a lot of vision and a noted fear of loss of spirit:
The 1950s stirred a new ferment
in Mennonite thinking. The winds of
modernization were already unraveling Mennonite plausibility structures as the
new decade opened. Changes in North
American society, growing theological challenges, and rising prosperity were
revamping the Mennonite posture in the larger world. The forces of modernization were shaking
rural Mennonite communities with greater intensity.
The end of World War II brought
American Mennonites home from Civilian Public Service Camps and military
service with new ideas and exposure to other ways of life. … Those who remained
at home were also changing. A [Mennonite
Church] church leader in 1951 said, “The Mennonite Church is becoming highly
trained in education, in business and in the professions. … We are world
travelers now, with a world (and all too often a worldly) knowledge, as well as
a world vision. Our prosperity borders
on the phenomenal in many instances. …”
A new generation of Mennonite scholars, trained in prestigious
universities in Europe and North America, was struggling to translate the
heritage of nonresistance into the context of modern life within the shadows of
the recent war.
A host of social and
technological changes were sweeping Mennonites out of their rural
isolation. They were listening to radios
and reading popular magazines. A few
were watching television. Jet travel,
faster cars, improved roadways, and a wide array of new consumer products were
nudging Mennonites into the modern fray.
The consolidation of public high schools, well underway in the early
fifties, exposed many Mennonite youth to the values of democracy and scientific
thinking, (Dreidger and Kraybill, p 83-4).
At this point, we need to address what
would become known as the Evangelical assimilation issue – the charge and fear
that Anabaptists were being assimilated into losing their unique identity and
becoming Americanized Evangelicals. This
fear was seemingly shared by many Mennonites on both the traditional and the
Pietist-Evangelical historic divides amongst both the American Swiss Mennonite-Amish
and the Russländer. A more terrible and
more confusingly unclear divide could not be imagined for the close-knit
ethno-religion.
The Mennonite Church conference of 1951 was
more or less throwing down the gauntlet to the Pietists and Evangelicals who
were already trained in and sympathetic to the Fundamentalist-oriented
Evangelicalism of the greater North American public. The Fundamentalists were by decree suspicious
of “Modernity”, “Tradition” and secularization.
Here was a MC pastor openly admitting that his church was not only
guilty of these heresies – but openly embraced these false theologies as the
future of his church. On the other hand,
a rather unfair criticism of the Mennonite evangelicals as being anti-Pacifist,
anti-intellectual, and anti-Mennonite was also taking place. One must re-emphasize to the reader that at
this time, both Evangelical and Traditional Mennonites considered themselves to
be consistently within the larger Mennonite tradition and ethno-religious
fellowship or identity. The Pietist –
Discipleship divide that many have identified as originating during this period
could more accurately be seen as having occurred in the early 19th
Century in Russia between the Grossegemeinde and the various splinter groups including
the Allianz, Mennonite Brethren, Kleine Gemeinde, Krimmer and other smaller
Mennonite groups. Lacking the political
necessity (and Imperial command of the Tsar) to bury the hatchet and get along,
the Pietist-Discipleship split had been more enduring amongst United States’
Anabaptists but was still very old news.
For the most part, the two groups had learned to live with each other’s
differences and to get along as a unified greater fellowship (if a slightly disgruntled
one). The sudden anti-Evangelicalism of
the 1950s to the present was hardly a modern phenomenon nor was either
Evangelicalization or assimilation a foregone conclusion. It is possible, as we will see, that the
heart of the disagreement lay over a struggle for political and financial
control over shared resources and the political and academic ambitions of
certain Mennonite individuals.
An area of special pique to the author is
the charge that Pacifism was rejected by the Mennonite evangelicals. This is simply not the case. As we will discover through an examination of
Paul Kraybill’s article and later through the sermons and conferences of the
United Mennonite Conference, both Evangelical and Traditionalist Mennonites had
maintained a clear perspective and concept of Pacifism and both strove to
preserve and teach Pacifism in their respective churches. What had ceased to exist was a shared concept
of Pacifism.
Moreover, there is a very simple
explanation for the division of spirit in the areas of service, pacifism and historicism is first off, the growing
ties between the Evangelical Mennonites and their non-Mennonite North American
Evangelical fellowships accompanied by increasing alienation from United
States’ Mennonite-Amish structures and intellectualisms, and a sort of cultural
or intellectual inferiority complex that had seemingly taken hold of those who
would later form the foundation of the Goshen School of Anabaptism. Guy
Hershberger, John Howard Yoder, Harold Bender, J. Lawrence Burkholder and Gordon
Kaufman would controversially, if ably, found a new sort of Anabaptism that
sought to both justify it as a legitimate historical and theological church and
to provide it with an intellectually acceptable and respectable pedigree and
intellectual vision for the future.
In short, what I am referring to as the
Goshen School, found itself struggling to defend Mennonite culture, theology
and philosophy to non-Anabaptists – many of whom were Protestant-oriented
Liberal scholars – namely Ernst Troeltsch,
Max Weber and both C. Henry Niebuhr and his brother Reinhold Niebuhr. Dreidger and Kraybill indicate that in 1953,
Burkholder was preoccupied with responding to the liberal-orientation of
Reinhold Niebuhr and published a paper with a section entitled in response to
R. Niebuhr, “Is the Nonresistant
Christian a Parasite?” (88). They
quote Burkholder:
I was disappointed upon finding
that my experience of moral ambiguity met virtually no approving, let alone
sympathetic responses from Mennonites in the 1950s – except from students. At that time Mennonite scholars were busy
articulating a sectarian ethic for the Mennonite community. Social idealism seldom reached beyond church
sponsored relief work. Furthermore,
justice was given no place within the Mennonite glossary. Non-violent resistance was considered
“unbiblical.” Hence I was reproved and
the typed thesis, having been rejected for publication, turned brown in the
dusty shelves of the libraries (93).
Reflecting on his encounter with the Goshen patriarchs, Burkholder said,
“Hershberger wanted to absolutize nonresistance as if we could always live by
agape. I was committed to radical
Christianity but I couldn’t do it in the complexity of political situations. Jesus didn’t administer anything, not even a
family. (93)
… no one can be actively responsible for all of society’s problems. Social responsibility does, however, imply a
general attitude of identification with the world. The social responsibility person believes
that he is a participant in the human struggle for truth and justice as these
values are manifested in the social and political realms. He identifies himself with the stream of
secular history and feels obligated to the world. The problems of the world are at least in a
general way his problems… (95)
Burkholder acknowledges that moral dilemmas often require compromise…
(95-6)
Gordon Kaufman is also quoted as radically
revamping the relationship between traditional Mennonite (or Christian)
morality, New Testament scriptural authority and the position of the Church in
the Modern world:
For Kaufman, Christian responsibility has three dimensions. First is the missionary task of preaching the
gospel. Second, Christians should seek
to love and understand their neighbors (society) with integrity. Christians cannot impose a Christian ethic on
a society that does not claim one.
Third, Christians should encourage neighbors and nations to act
consistently with the nation’s ideals, even if the national behavior violates
Christian norms… (98)
The Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition has always tried to interpret love in
the radical sense of the New Testament, but in this tendency to withdraw from
participation in the power struggles of the world it has badly compromised
itself. …
The crucial question, then, is
not whether as Christians we have some sort of responsibility for the social
and political orders in which we live, but rather, what is the nature of that
responsibility, and how must it express itself, (99).
At the same time, Bender was intent on
performing a mission similar to the original task of Menno Simons contra
charges by Martin Luther and Georg Hansen to the prince of Prussia –
that the Mennonites were in fact the historic church of the New Testament and
were a peaceful orthodox group rather than extreme or radical social and
theological revolutionaries. While such
criticisms might be met with a roll of the eyes in the early 21st
Century, Bender and school were writing at a time when socialism, radicalism
and communism were easily and often equated – with severe negative political
consequences – especially in the 1950s.
Also, trapped between potential intellectual charges of historical
radicalism in the past and of not having done enough to fight that ultimate
evil known as the Third Reich, the Mennonites, Brethren and fellow Anabaptists
did have some political explaining to do – both to meet unspoken charges and to
forestall a future loss of hard-gained legal rights in the New World. Again, the vision between the Evangelical
Mennonites and the neo-Traditional Mennonites became one of priorities. Where the Evangelicals met the challenge by
expounding upon their Americanized Evangelical theology and missions fervor,
Bender et al took the traditional route of “re”-writing Anabaptist history to
include only those personalities, movements and branches that conformed to the
liberal-dominated Protestant intellectualism of Elmhurst, Princeton and
Harvard. Like Burkholder, Bender would
later come to dominate teaching and thought at the influential Indiana campus.
The Winona Lake Conference of 1950 sought
to bring the Mennonites from all branches, affiliations and conferences in
North American together to discuss peace, non-resistance and the Mennonite
response to the challenge of Modernity:
Beyond the press of
urbanization and industrialization, the nonresistant tradition faced
ideological threats from liberal Protestantism.
Throughout the fifties the rising generation of Mennonite scholars
wrestled with Reinhold Niebuhr’s
(1937:1391) challenge that Mennonites were irresponsible “parasites on
the sins of others.” They also cringed
when mainstream social ethicists called nonresistance a “strategy of
withdrawal.”
The plausibility of biblical
nonresistance was crumbling as younger scholars – conversant with modern
ethical and theological thought – sought to fashion a new theology of
peacemaking for Mennonites in the modern world.
Mennonites were shifting their focus from their ethnic community to
civic responsibilities in the larger society as they became more urban,
educated, and mobile. (84)
The result of the conference was a
relatively carefully worded A Declaration
of Christian Faith and Commitment (9-12 Nov 1950, Winona Lake,
Indiana). A few of the men on the
drafting committee were Mennonites with whom the Brüderthaler had worked in
Canada – especially Alberta, and with whom the Brüderthaler would be able to
express commonality of faith. The
document seems to accomplish two things – re-affirm the carefully worded agreement
between Evangelical Mennonite perspectives and that of traditional Mennonites
while acknowledging the new and non-discriminatory development role the MCC
would henceforth facilitate on the part of active believers. Pertinent to the following discussion
regarding Paul Kraybill are sections II and the preamble of section III of this
document:
II.
1.
It is our faith that one is
our Master, even Christ, to whom alone supreme loyalty and obedience is due,
who is our only Saviour and Lord.
2.
It is our faith that by the
renewing grace of God which makes us new creatures in Christ, and alone
thereby, we can through the power of the indwelling Spirit live the life of
holy obedience and discipleship to which all the sons of God are called, for
His grace does forgive and heal the penitent sinner and brings us to a new life
of fellowship with Him and with one another.
3.
It is our faith that
redeeming love is at the heart of the Gospel, coming from God and into us to
constrain us to love Him and our neighbor, and that such love must henceforth
be at the centre of every thought and act.
4.
It is our faith that Christ
has established in His church a universal community
and brotherhood within which the fullness of Christ's reign must be practiced,
into which the redeemed must be brought, and from which must go out into all
human society the saving and healing ministry of the Gospel.
5.
It is our faith that the life
of love and peace is God's plan for the individual and the race, and that
therefore discipleship means the abandonment of hatred, strife and violence in
all human relations, both individual and social.
III
These declarations of faith give
no blueprint for peace nor do they assume that human endeavor alone can bring
about a warless world within history, for only when men come under the Lordship
of Christ can they make peace and fulfill the prayer of our Lord, "Thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven." They do, however,
require certain attitudes, duties and ministries of us, to which we do here by
God's grace declare our adherence and our determination to undertake in His
name.
(GAMEO article)
Tellingly, the 1950 and 1951 Annual
Conference Reports do not mention EMB participation in the Winona Lake
Conference. Loosely structured as a
fellowship rather than a centralized sect, the EMB were notoriously absent or
disorganized in their larger group participation. Yet, later statements through the various
unity conferences with the EMC focused strongly on the challenges of Modernism
and the “liberal” universities – a debate more in line with the Fundamentalist
intellectual challenges of the 1920s and the Reagan Evangelical’s
anti-Evolution movements of the 1980s and 90s.
While the failure of the Winona Lake Conference is never directly
referred to – its presence is felt in the almost manic desire by the
Evangelical Mennonites to found their own school and seminary and by their
increasingly alienated status within the greater Anabaptist fraternity –
culminating in the 1986 vote to end Mennonite conference identity and
affiliation for the EMB and the 2003 vote along similar lines changing the EMC
to the newly coined Fellowship of Evangelical Churches or FEC.
Nor was the new social activism embraced by
the MCC sufficient for the liberals. Fall-out
from the conference and the challenges led by Burkholder are manifest in Paul
Kraybill’s article The Relationship of
the Mennonite Central Committee Relief and Service Program and Mennonite
Missions (1957). Engaged
administratively on the missions board for the Conservative Mennonites, Paul Kraybill
traces the developing split.
Kraybill starts off from the traditional,
shared Anabaptist vision, “The
Anabaptists were very clear in their conviction that they were only stewards of
their worldly possessions and that if there was need they would devote all they
owned to the service of their brethren,” (Kraybill, p 60). He indicates that like the early church of
the New Testament, some sort of “sharing” and “brotherhood” was practiced by
the Anabaptists from the earliest times to the present.
The next step in his development was the
creation of the Mennonite mission to India.
The Mennonite mission to India was established in 1899 “prompted by the desire to minister to
extensive famine needs,” (Kraybill, p 60).
This is the same mission joined by the first Brüderthaler missionaries
in 1905. (this is not documented) For
Kraybill’s purposes, this early effort presaged the establishment of the MCC as
an inter-Mennonite relief service in 1920 – in response to the Russian Famine
or Holodomor in Ukraine. World War II
greatly increased the need and scope of MCC relief efforts while engendering
community wide debates as to the meaning, purpose and practice of separation,
non-resistance and pacifism in the greater Mennonite diaspora. Kraybill writes, “World War I and the depression of the early 1930’s had done much to
crush the influence of the liberal “social gospel” movement. Emergency relief was considered completely
valid, not as social action, but as a compelling expression of Christian love,
the positive aspect of nonresistance, an alternative to war. It was deemed imperative as one of the
requirements of obedience to the will and spirit of Christ. It was a means of witness which helped to
interpret the Gospel to those who were disillusioned and distressed by war and
calamity. It prepared the way for
mission and evangelistic outreach when the emergency had passed,” (p 60). At this point, Kraybill is indicating the
uniform, shared quiet witness to open the way of Salvation that was common to
almost all Anabaptists at the time – the Evangelicals, the Traditionalists –
even the Hutterian Brethren (may need to footnote this), “Thus at the end of the first twenty-five years of inter-Mennonite
relief work a satisfying concept of relief work had been established that was clearly
within the tradition of New Testament Christianity and Anabaptist discipleship,”
(Kraybill, p 61) – emphasis mine).
The preceding paragraph is very
important and ought to be reviewed first in its entirety, yet it is not the
best organized chronologically. Kraybill
begins, “At about this same time [World
War II] Mennonite research was beginning to give body to the concept of
discipleship as believed and practiced by the Anabaptists,” (p 61). In the footnotes, he is referring to H.
S. Bender’s “The Anabaptist Vision” from the Mennonite Quarterly Review dated April 1944 – one of Burkholder’s
circle and a future pillar of the Goshen School. The troublesomely unclear use of a pronoun
then separates the Evangelical understanding of Anabaptism from the
anti-Pietist traditionalists (note that the American Mennonite-Amish, like the Grossegemeinde of Russia, were
anti-Pietist – seeing it as a danger and competitor to the continued
traditional existence of the socially-minded gemeinde). If Kraybill is
referring to the “new researchers” then he is in agreement with the
Evangelicals and presumably, closer to the original “Goshen guardians” that had
originally frustrated and held Bender, Kaufman and Burkholder in check. If he is using the word “they” to refer to
Anabaptists – he, like Bender, Yoder, Burkholder, Kaufman and other
non-Evangelical Mennonites, is already rewriting Anabaptist history and thought
by narrowing down the definition of “Mennonite” to the point that only those
who buy into the new social gospel can be considered true Mennonites. This is a definition that would have been
vigorously opposed by Evangelical Mennonites including the EMB, the Allianz,
the EMC and the majority of Mennonite Brethren at that time (see the Unity
Conferences, the explorations of Allianz-EMB theology and church organization,
and Steve Estes’ histories of the EMC).
The reason that this pronoun is so important is that it is an early
reflection of the clear split and theological breakdown between the
Evangelicals and the traditionalists – a break that would not be able to be
bridged without one side or the other giving up the essence of their
faith. Conforming to the new history
that validated the recent thinking of the Grossegemeinde in Russia and the
Mennonite-Amish in Indiana-Pennsylvania, Kraybill claims, “They [emphasis mine] considered the essence of Christianity to
be the transformation of life through discipleship and following Christ in
contrast to the Reformers’ emphasis on the experience of justification by
faith,” (p 61). One can almost hear
Mary Ann Wall exclaiming that “well, then
Menno Simons must have been a Reformer – and I’ll stick with him,” (fictitious
quote to convey the spirit of earlier conversations with Wall regarding
Evangelicalism amongst the Mennonites).
Kraybill continues, “Instead of a
primary concern for personal salvation, there was rather a definite commitment
to discipleship and obedience, and outward expression of an inward
experience. The church was a brotherhood
rather than an institution or a vehicle solely for personal piety or the
preaching of the Word,” (Kraybill, p 61).
A better stage for Loyal Bartel’s and Bill Regehr’s later claims (as
representatives of the late Grace School of thought) could not have been set
for charges by the Evangelicals that the Mennonite faith had degenerated into a
world of traditions, ethnicity and works.
For the Evangelicals, the church is in fact expressly set up to embody
and execute the Great Commission or the saving of souls. The Great Commission is explicit and was repeated
by Christ both before his death on the cross and after his resurrection. As a precaution – the Biblical authors were
moved to include the Great Commission twice – in both Mark ( ) and Luke (
). Presumably, it is the same in
Luther’s German Bible as it is in the English King James’ Version.
But then we come to the confusion –
Kraybill closes that very important paragraph with a longer section that both
the Evangelical Mennonites and the Traditionalists would and could agree with
(though we are now noting that they might be interpreting the same words in
very different ways) – “… The Anabaptists
were pessimistic about the socio-political order and considered it relatively
evil. Their “kingdom theology” and the
concept of “two worlds” led to the conclusion that the only way in which the
social and political pattern could be altered was through the establishing of a
new Christian social order in the form of the church and bringing more and more
men to a new life of discipleship in response to the gospel of Jesus
Christ. For them the New Testament was
not a blueprint for the renovation of society but rather the ethic for a
redeemed life. The tension between the
world with its system and habits and the disciple with his commitment to a
higher allegiance would inevitably lead to suffering, and this was accepted as
a logical and certain result for those who shared in such a fellowship,”
(Kraybill, p 61). Assuming that
Kraybill is writing a paragraph that he feels is consistent – then the
Evangelicals would see a clear inconsistency between a church existing for
purposes other than bringing men to Salvation and the need to bring men to that
point of response to the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
The rest of the article focuses on the
struggle within the traditionalist conferences to both remain true to the
Anabaptist heritage while responding to both the new legal and political
requirements of an earthly church with social or temporal responsibilities and
the “integrity” challenge that so disturbed them as if acceptance by the Niebuhr’s,
Troeltsch and the Protestant establishment of North America and Europe were a
higher priority than remaining true to the Evangelical faith that had at such
great a cost been passed down to them generation by generation for over four
centuries. By this time, Burkholder was
in control of Goshen College and eastern USA Mennonite culture had clearly
capitulated to the Liberal or neo-traditionalists. Interestingly, the much feared Pietism that
Wüst had introduced to the Russländer of Molotschna had originally developed
amongst the early Lutherans (17th Century) as a corrective to the
same tendencies now demonstrated by the new Mennonites.
Note that there is a need to create a word
that describes this liberal tendency amongst the Anglo-American Mennonites from
the Evangelical Mennonite perspective.
The Liberal Mennonites have not provided such a term – possibly to avoid
the appearance of having broken with traditional Anabaptist values. Neo-Traditional is not the best term – it
seemingly implies a return to tradition, not the reworking of that tradition
and those values to justify a new Liberal perspective.
Kraybill then goes on to explore the
logical consequences of this split – first amongst the truly traditional
Anglo-American Mennonite-Amish and then between the Evangelical Mennonites and
the Liberal Traditionalists. His section
titled “The Relation of Relief and Witness” might best be read in conjunction
with the theory of the missionary station in relation to the church presented
by H.C. Bartel (see Annual Report
1952). In order to follow Kraybill’s
argument, it is essential to remember that like Burkholder, Kaufman, Bender and
others, Kraybill has accepted the premise that the world and the place of the
Mennonites within that world was significantly changed by the advent of
Modernism and as a consequence of World War II.
This time, Kraybill starts out the section
reiterating those aspects of faith, missions and service that continued to
unite the disparate experiences of the larger Mennonite and Amish community –
the first four paragraphs of this section contain a series “we believe”
statements that were issued by a Liberal American Mennonite and yet could have
been repeated by any contemporaneous member of the EMB fellowship:
We continue to believe that
sharing of material goods with those in need cannot be neglected by those who
would live the life of a disciple. … We
deeply believe in the significance of the cross in the life of the believer and
that this means that our lives must be sacrificed in the service of
others. We reject the assumption that
service is a sacrament and that thereby men automatically become recipients of
grace. We do not believe that by
suffering we can redeem men, but we can by our deeds of service symbolize in a realistic
and compelling fashion our testimony that the conflicts and frustrations of men
are basically spiritual and can be healed.
[Note: This is an excellent example of using words
that reflect a point of common agreement that be interpreted in two widely
divergent ways – that the conflicts of men are basically spiritual and can be
healed is a shared belief between the Evangelicals and the Liberal
neo-traditionalists, it is the method of healing that is disagreed upon
strongly – whether the meeting of that need physically within the church and
nurturing the healing within the congregation or whether a spiritual wound and
need can only be met and healed by the saving Grace of Christ would be the
point of contention.]
We believe that a disturbed and
confused world needs concrete evidence that the love of Christ is effective and
meaningful and that we must witness against the evil that surrounds us.
We believe that we can best prove
our sincerity and genuine concern by acts of love “in the name of Christ.” We reject the principles of purely social
action and assert that our calling is to lead men to redemption and into the
brotherhood of the church. We are
pessimistic about man and society but insist that we think in terms of building
the society of the redeemed rather than attempting to deal with the corporate
evil that plagues the socio-political world.
We have admitted the validity
of relief as a witness in and of itself, but this raises some very searching
questions. Is it right to serve if we
can’t witness? Is it sufficient to serve
without witnessing even though we could witness? What prevents our service from becoming pure
humanitarianism? Is long range
rehabilitation just as legitimate as emergency relief? If we profess that service is a witness –
what do we expect to result from that witness?
What is the relation of witness and service, of word and deed?
We deeply believe in witness
and accept the basic assumption that the primary purpose of the church is to
extend the kingdom. It is manifest that
our service points men to God, but are we not guilty of a dangerous omission if
we point but do not lead? The basic
command to witness was the command to use the Word, to preach. Service elaborates and interprets the theme
of redemption but of itself is incomplete and inadequate. A deed of love may reconstitute a man
physically, resolve his tensions and even prick his spirit. That man, however, becomes only a more
respectable sinner if the Word does not accompany the deed. The Word without the deed is often barren and
fruitless, but the deed without the Word is potentially dangerous. Unless the Word and the deed co-exist, the
recipient is defrauded and the possibility of redemption is frustrated,
(Kraybill, p 63-64).
Building upon the previous “note,” one
again becomes confused with the conclusion of Kraybill’s credo – an Evangelical
Mennonite will clearly read his use of the term ”Word” to refer to the Gospel
of Salvation and Grace as embodied by the “Word” referring to the
soteriological embodiment of Salvation in the physical and spiritual Christ –
whom the Apostle John clearly refers to as “the Word”. One really wishes that Kraybill would have
gone on to define what he means by “Word” – if he is consistent with the
previous section – then Kraybill seems to be cunningly using the term “Word” to
refer to discipleship within the church, not the Gospel or Christ’s salvatory
action. Even more confusingly, Kraybill
concludes this section and devotes the entirety of his third and final section
examining the role between the church conferences and groups such as the
MCC. That a struggle has begun between
the evangelical Mennonites and the liberal Anabaptists for the soul,
organization, mission and resources of the MCC.
Kraybill’s conclusions are that there is a rational and necessary
connection between the service work of the MCC and both the soteriological work
of the church (whether in Evangelism or Discipleship) and in the growth of the
supporting congregations of the member conferences. In other words, to which workers would go the
spoils?
In the context of the historic Brüderthaler
and the EMB, one must remember that the Unity Conferences between the EMB and
the EMC were clearly and consciously faithful and open supporters of the MCC
and its mission at this time. Furthermore,
the correspondence between John R. Dick, Edgar Stoewsz and Sam Schmidt clearly
indicate that the EMB was firm and resolute in its support of the MCC. The correct question at this point – the
1950s -- is “which MCC does one support?”
A very pertinent question at this point is
how is it that the evangelical Mennonites were not wise to these things. The answer is simple and two-fold. First, while the Brüderthaler EMB were very
active both in contributing to and supporting MCC relief work – even sending
its young men to the peace camps and abroad to minister in the European
missions stations ministering to Russländer and Prussian Mennonite refugees in
West Germany, the EMB were not really that active, involved or interested in
the day to day administration of the MCC in Pennsylvania – a point both
Kraybill and Stoewsz would seek to address.
Secondly, both the Russländer and the Canadian Mennonites have
traditionally been more amendable to seeing the term “Mennonite” as an ethnic
rather than a religious term. This
perspective is considerably different than the American Mennonite-Amish who are
seemingly reticent to see their culture as an outgrowth of ethnic rather than
religious values. The EMB were both Russländer
and increasingly dominated by Canadian Mennonite identities. Furthermore, the evangelical Mennonites could
readily cooperate with what they would see increasingly as a shared ethnic
organization such as the MCC in as much as they indeed felt that they had a
responsibility to care for their own family and ethnic members (der Unza) – such was the original intent
and purpose of the MCC from 1920 to 1950, and knew the value of the MCC. The MCC was the umbrella organization under
which Mennonite men of all stripes and persuasions would live out their
nonresistant pacifist ideals, many missions workers, evangelists and
humanitarians – evangelical and non-evangelical – received excellent training
and experience through the MCC service programs, and finally, the MCC outreach
did provide a real and effective outreach to non-Christians – the lost to whom
the evangelicals felt compelled to reach with the Gospel with Christ – by any
means, no matter the cost.
With no further evidence other than the
coincidence of timing, one cannot but note Rev. E.G. Steiner’s emphatic refutation of much of the Burkholder and
company’s liberal manifestos at the 1951 Unity Conference held at Grace Bible
College in Omaha, Nebraska. Steiner’s
presentation “What is Our Position on Peace and Non-Resistance” to the united
evangelical Mennonites might be summarized under two general headings – that
the Evangelical Mennonite’s focus is on Fundamentalism (Evangelicalism) and not
on ethnic Anabaptism, yet as Evangelical Anabaptists, they shared certain
common understandings with the historic Anabaptist churches and faithful
Mennonites. Fundamentally speaking,
Steiner stressed three points – that peace cannot be established in the World
by the Church, that Peace will only be established at the Millennial Reign
(Kingdom) of Christ, and less explicitly, that Peace is seemingly an interior
condition that has outward ramifications or signs rather than an exterior
accomplishment or work (Matt 19:34, Matt 24, I Thes. 5:3). At the same time, Steiner includes five areas
in which the Evangelical Mennonites agree on Pacifism and Non-resistance with
their traditional brethren – 1/ regardless of being an interior or exterior
condition, the process for experiencing peace is the same with similar impact
on the individual, similar impact on the church and similar impact on the
World; 2/ a reaffirmation that Christians are called to be peacemakers to live
peaceably (I Thes 5:13, Matt 5:9); 3/ The Believer’s Church is separated from
the World; 4/ there is a relative ambiguity regarding practical day-to-day
church and state relations but there is to be a separation between church and
state; and finally, 5/ We are called to be law-abiding citizens yet cannot
support war.
I feel that we are witnessing the transition of communal Continental-Russian
Anabaptism (Schleithiem, Molotschna) to individualized Pietistic (Evangelical)
Anabaptism. Without appropriate
devotional and educational support, this would easily morph into an Evangelical
non-Anabaptist Pietist response to these passages. Spirituality and Discipleship was communal – the
Pietist reforms of Gnadenfelde changed this to an interior, individualized
process in the context of the greater church.
In 1950s, we are seeing the interiorizing of the Pacifist or
Non-Resistance principle on the part of evangelical Mennonites -- the impact is
interior not exterior, the exterior goal in non-achievable until it is
instituted personally by Christ. Perhaps
less evident at this point in the 1950s is that if faith and pacifism become
totally interiorized, then they truly become matters of individual
conscience. Without the ethnic value
system and ethnic communal structure to support and recommend pacifism and
non-resistance, there is neither impetus to accept these values nor any real
cost for not accepting or implementing these values in one’s interior and
exterior lives. By the time the Vietnam
War confronts young Mennonite men in the United States, the value, truth and
significance of these traditional religious values will be lost against social,
political and economic pressures to conform to the Anglo-American culture and
to support both the United States war effort and the values of the new union
between populist Christian religion, conservative social idealists and
international capitalism. Interestingly,
however, whether internalized or external, Steiner’s expository vision of
Mennonite pacifism, while diametrically opposed to the understanding of Bender,
Burkholder, Kaufman and the liberals, nevertheless conforms nicely to the
values expressed in the 1950 Winona Lake Declaration.
Presumably, Kraybill’s article reflects
more than his own personal reflections but rather his personal reflections on
the processes, challenges and conversations held by, about and within the
greater MCC organization and family. If Edgar Stoewsz can verify this – was he
a participant in any conversations with Kraybill? How much did these same conversations and
perspectives affect or instigate the efforts of Stoews and Sam Schmidt to jump-start the EMB’s institutional involvement in
the administration of the MCC and in the shaping of MCC communal values?
What
is clear is that President Dr. John R.
Dick, Stoewsz and Schmidt were all committed at this time to further and
increased involvement by the fellowship in the MCC (see correspondence).
Again, Paul Kraybill seems a bit
inconsistent between his Evangelical and Liberal tendencies but he does
correctly identify the problem that many Mennonites of all stripes were having
with the MCC, “It is a basic assumption
that every believer is a witness and that this witness logically results in
conversion and admission into the brotherhood.
All of our members in their home church relationships are able to
this. It is a bit ironical that in a
program of definite witness value this is impossible. … As noted previously…
this witness is not complete unless it results in church building, which is
manifestly impossible in a united service program. It is this frustration that not only affects
the worker in his service but threatens to influence the future of our church
and throw the focus onto social service instead of evangelism. … After a man has accepted the Word, the
disciple is then responsible to bring that man into the brotherhood so that he
can share to the fullest this experience of redemption,” (Kraybill, p
64-65). Again, most evangelicals and
most traditional Mennonites would respond to his words with a hearty “Amen!”
yet the problem is that pesky little word “Brotherhood”. Kraybill is wanting to bring the new converts
into the gemeinde whereas the
Evangelicals would be responding that it is the spiritual kingdom that matters
– Christ’s dominion rather than that of the local elders or bishop.
In fact, we might be discovering three
different sides to the debate – the liberal Romantic Anabaptists or Goshen
School, the Evangelical Anabaptists or Grace School and the traditional
Mennonite-Amish of rural America. All
three had cooperated in the past, were cooperating at present (less
convincingly) and could cooperate in the future – if the three branches could
remain united. Therein lies the
problem.
The elders and representatives who met at
Winona Lake did a good job re-establishing common ground between the various
Anabaptist factions in North America.
Yet, there were valid gripes on all sides. If the MCC was to continue to operate
effectively and united into the future, it was going to require effective
relationship maintenance between the constituent bodies.
In 1955, the MCC was still busy tending to
the needs of Mennonites around the world.
By this time the term Mennonite had grown to include the fruits of the
many Mennonite missions stations around the world – the Russländer and Prussian
refugees in West Germany, the Russländer stranded in the Russian Far East, the
Congo and African stations, the Indian conference and the still new colonies in
Mexico and South America. “There is a very significant role for MCC in
continuing to serve the churches as a representative body. We believe that this is the only practical
way to maintain a mobile and effective emergency relief organization. Likewise it represents the only way for a
realistic partnership in serving our Mennonite brethren in other countries who
cannot be considered the exclusive responsibility of any one Mennonite group,”
(Kraybill, p 65).
The second major unified program of the MCC
was maintaining the alternative service camps and lobby in Washington (and to a
lesser extent Ottawa and at the nascent United Nations in New York). The lessons of the Russländer in Ukraine and
of the older generation during World War I still reminded the constituent
bodies that they were unlikely to succeed in preserving their rights and
non-resistance stance alone.
Ignoring the newly debated role of the MCC
as a preventative or justice institute as presented by Burkholder, the next
task presented to the diaspora body is to help coordinate efforts and
distribute resources amongst the world-wide Mennonite missions stations and
foreign conferences. “It is our understanding that by and large
relief projects should develop into mission projects,” (Kraybill, 66).
Despite the feeling by many that the MCC
was favouring one set of Mennonite ideals over those of another, the MCC board
was probably feeling pressured by all sides.
If Kraybill was speaking as a participant in these deliberations, his
words continue to bear great weight:
The relationship between MCC
and its constituent bodies needs to be such that this will truly be a partnership
in which the two complement each other and neither trespasses on, duplicates or
contradicts the other. The MCC actually
is nothing more or less than a representative body making possible a medium for
jointly carrying out projects that the individual bodies cannot or do not wish
to do separately, (Kraybill, 65).
We do not believe that MCC
wants to do anything but what the churches want it to do. However, the constituent bodies must accept
responsibility for staying close to MCC so that effective representation and
communication will be possible. Perhaps
the patter of representation needs to be strengthened. … (Kraybill, 65).
MCC should not exist and expand
in spite of the churches, but neither should the churches bypass and evade
their responsibility to help formulate and guide policy and practice,
(Kraybill, 66).
Complaining that the use of advisory
bodies and workshops has “… provided a
realistic means of advice and representation in some cases, but in others it
has amounted to little more than reporting,” he concludes that, “The churches will need to be more clear in
defining the role they want MCC to assume for them and then wholeheartedly
support MCC in carrying out that assignment,” (Kraybill, p 66).
At the time, each individual conference had
an officially delegated MCC contact – a position that Sam Schmidt was to hold
for many years. When MCC-USA and
MCC-Canada split their boards, the EMB maintained two positions – a national
from each nation. Yet, while the church
was busily and constantly trading pastoral staff, visiting new and potential
membership congregations and maintaining its own regiment of conferences and
workshops, finding money to send official delegates to the various MCC meetings
was a perpetual problem. Much of the EMB
correspondence with their unofficial representative to the board involved pleas
for traveling funds or reimbursements for those who would attend the advisory
and board meetings. Good naturedly,
Edgar Stoewsz often volunteered to fill in for the absent conference
representatives – though the utility of Stoewsz’ representation could be
questioned in as much as he was also forced to “represent” several other
smaller groups of Mennonites who found themselves in a similar financial
predicament. To his credit, Stoewsz
seems to have represented the EMB interests satisfactorily and well – at least
according to the notes of thanks from Sam Schmidt and J. R. Dick. In 1950, with Dick’s support, Stoewsz and
Schmidt put a lot of effort into discovering a way to solidify if not reform
the role of the MCC and their commitment to pacifism and non-resistance into
the EMB conference structure.
Under Dick, there was a brief renaissance of
the Mennonite heritage amongst the Brüderthaler, including attendance and
representation at the Mennonite World Conference. But, this renewed interest in the greater
Mennonite diaspora and the role of the Brüderthaler within that heritage would
find it difficult to compete with an increased focus on the increasingly active
Evangelical scene in North America. With
the retirement of Schmidt, formal ties between the EMB and the diaspora’s major
bodies would fall into gradual abeyance, becoming more and more a matter for individual
Brüderthaler to maintain for themselves or within their congregations while the
conference itself moved beyond what many felt to be the false temptation of
ethnicity a tradition.
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