Mennonites and Wilderness

Mennonites and Wilderness

ne Wiltness

      Faith Mennonite’s sermon on 02 September was “Learning from the Wilderness,” (Deut 4:1-2, 6-9; Mark 7:1-8; 14-15, 21).  Dan Leisen and Gerald Schlabach spoke on their wilderness experience at the International Boundary Waters, a popular national wilderness area that excludes all forms of modern convenience that do not run on muscle power alone.  I took two observations away from this presentation – both men departed from my traditional understanding of the Deuteronomy passage as pertaining to the development of the interior life of the individual and of the congregation.  Instead, they focused on the rules that allow you to enter the wilderness, such as “Leave no trace.”

    Heidi Wall Burns wrote her masters’ thesis at Iowa State on changing perspectives of “wilderness” in United States’ literature – indicating and exploring shifts between fear and terror to Romanticism and Exploitation to Preservation.  Leisen and Schlabach would seem to be representative of the latter.

    Similarly to American culture, the Mennonites have gone through many different periods of fear and romanticism regarding wilderness.  The 1860s and 1870s were decades of unrest in the frontier amongst the Cherokee, Sioux and other Western tribes – the Custer incident occurred as late as 1876 – two years after the initial immigration of Russian Mennonites to Nebraska and Kansas.  The Sioux Uprising of 1862 enabled Federal troops to evict the tribes from treaty lands in southwestern Minnesota, further opening up space for Mennonite expansion into that area as well.

Our Daily Bread

Van Meegeren and his (forgery) Christ in the Temple, (c) NY Times

Aundajchtihch

Pietist Mennonite practices regarding the daily devotional are as intrinsic to the Russian Mennonite identity as is verenika – in fact, one is surprised to learn that there was a revival of Bible study and devotions in Gnadenfelde under the influence of Eduard Wüst – when had it ended?

    Personal study of the Bible and searching the Scriptures for oneself is an intrinsic aspect of the Anabaptist revolution – the first Adult Baptisms were performed only after intense study of the Scripture.  Schools were started, Bibles translated and preachers sent out to encourage other Christians and non-Christians to discover this direct personal access to Christ’s teachings for themselves.  Even more than pacifists or Adult Baptizers, the term Students of the Bible would most adequately describe the well-spring and radical vision of our Swiss, Flemish and Frisian predecessors.

    No story reveals this truth more strongly than the personal testimony of Menno Simons – the teacher whose leadership helped to preserve and re-organize the early Anabaptist church antecedents of our various conferences and denominations today.

Pietist Passion of J. S. Bach

J. S. Bach by Haussman

   So J. S. Bach was not Mennonite, but his music has been sung in Mennonite churches for at least three centuries and will continue to shape and influence Mennonite music and church services for several more.  While I am unable to share much of the actual performance with readers of a blog such as this, a couple of ideas from Bach’s libretto did happen to stand out during this year’s performance – a couple of very touching original passages reflecting a high degree of spiritual pietism and a rather in-depth prescient study by Bach of the Postmodern concept of intertextuality.

Mennonite Children's Prayers

Late 20^th Century USA: ⁽¹⁾

Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

And if I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

        If I should live another day,
        I pray the Lord to guide my way.

       God bless (names of family).

Amen.

Traditional Hutterite Prayer: ⁽²⁾

Ich bin klein,

Mein Herz ist rein

In Jesu Namen

Schlaf ich ein.

Die lieben Engelein,

Werden meine Wächter sein.

Amen.

I am a little child

My heart is pure

In Jesus’ name

I go to sleep

The lovely Angels

Will watch over me.

Amen.

Some thoughts regarding Pietism:

  It is not entirely clear that Pietism predated Anabaptism – in as much as Zwingli is considered to be an Anabaptist antecedent, and Dirk Philips is considered an Anabaptist founder, so would any reformer that displayed the key ingredients of the pietist theo-philosophy be by definition worked into the Radical Reformation as an Anabaptist or at least, heavily and perhaps fatally suspected of significant Anabaptist-leanings.  Just as the Mennonite and Hutterite Anabaptists built on the traditions of Zwingli, Huss, and the Waldenses, and even, for that matter, on Luther and Calvin, the Pietists represent a distinctive moment in time, separate but probably heavily influenced by Anabaptism – especially the Anabaptist strains from the Netherlands and Danzig.

  Most notably, Spener was, and remained, a Lutheran born about 100 years after the death of Menno Simons.  Of the Pietist precedents, none shines out more clearly than Johann Arndt.  In The Pietist Theologians, Carter Lindberg puts forth a pretty strong case that while Arndt was definitely a contributor to Pietism, he was not in the end a true Pietist and that the honorific of  “Father of Pietism” should remain on the faithful shoulders of Spener and his Pia Desiderata.  Arguably, both Arndt and Spener contributed significant personal and new content to the shaping of Pietism and peculiar approaches to the combined influences of the Luther Reformation, the Dutch-German Mystical traditions dating back to the Middle Ages, and the spirited Anabaptism that those men saw around them.  In fact, we know from his biographical narrative that Arndt was acquainted with and probably influenced by Mennonite neighbors and business connections.  Interestingly, his exclamatory exclamation contra his Mennonite neighbor leaves room for being both influenced by the Mennonites as well as sharing a new discovery with them  -- that they, the Mennonites, would want to keep such a wonderful things to themselves.

More Work on Definitions

Defining Oneself

    This past weekend, I have spent considerable time attempting to develop stronger, more universal definitions for many of the terms that I use in my essays and which I tend to encounter in my reading.  I also spent a fair amount of time writing an essaic criticism of the rhetorical argumentation in a recent series published in Fellowship Focus on the emergent churches.  The emergent church movement is a new concept to me, so I was able to approach the articles with an open mind.  However, the quality or organization of their particular line of argument was often inconsistent, non-linear, even self-contradictory, leaving me, the reader, confused and uncertain.  Note that one finds it much easier to criticize the work of another than to recognize the same deficiencies within oneself, which is why there is a certain intellectual strength to be found in the Scholastic or even consensus-building process -- and why most books and literary efforts shower such profuse praise on those who assisted in the editorial process.