Are Evangelicals Cult-hero Worshippers? (Part 3 of 3)

Steven Wall with Rev. Randy Smart 
with contributions from Anne-Marie (Goertzen) Wall

    Traditional Mennonite Evangelicals maintain a consensus-style, congregational intellectual process that is antithetical to the concept of hero-worship.  

    The EMB have always been on the intellectually engaged side of Mennonite culture.  The historic Brüderthaler often assumed leadership roles in establishing schools in pioneer North American communities.  Isaac Peters, the senior Bishop of the EMB, is commended by P. M. Friesen and Delbert Plett for his intellect, his scholasticism and for his understanding and valuing of traditional Mennonite intellectual sources.  John Funk befriended Peters and enticed him to repeatedly contribute to Herald der Wahrheit.

    In Peters’ shadow, the EMB were noted for pursuing intellectual careers as educators, missionaries, pastors, nurses and writers, rather than farming.  Lacking a school of their own, they adopted and contributed to the success and growth of Moody Bible Institute, Grace University and Briercrest Bible College.  In 1911, Evangelical Mennonites established der Evangelisationsbote as the universal intellectual organ for Mennonite Evangelicalism.  Early EMB conferences were attended by the intellectual leadership of both Russian and American Anabaptism and much of the impetus behind the failed Evangelical Mennonite Conference of the 1950s was an attempt by EMB intellectuals to cure a shortage of available pulpits and possibly found a united Evangelical Mennonite seminary.

    Unlike other Mennonite groups which depend on conference schools and seminaries for educational development and leadership, the engines of the Mennonite Evangelical intellect are, and have always been, the Sunday School, congregational dialectic, the unified conference and workshops, and arguably, the pastoral library.  From our Kleine Gemeinde roots, we also retain a strong sense of Pietist reflection on the everyday and the lessons God places within the simple living of simple lives.  Outside resources such as newspapers, literature and books of science and politics circulate freely and commonly amongst congregations and between churches, informing both personal studies and group dialogue.  Intellectual fellowship is definitive of the culture and a constant activity.