In seminary I have spent a lot of time discussing and exploring the whole question of what Anabaptist distinctives mean for today, especially as we Mennonites relate to the broader culture and try to figure out our identity in a post-Christendom era. I have found Stanley Hauerwas to be a helpful thinker for sorting out this issue and speaking to the church’s relationship to culture.
We Mennonites like this dude. He is a feisty pacifist, likes to criticize the Constantinian church and cites Yoder left and right. We like to identify ourselves with him as somebody that gets that the crucial aspect of the church as needing to be different from the status quo and, especially, that whole ‘nonviolence is the hallmark of the Christian life’[1] thing.
Like us, Hauerwas recognizes that an antiquated problem of the Church is its ready subscription to a Constantinian view of Christianity. So why does he hark time and time again that the story of Christianity should be fundamentally anchored in the story of Jesus and the Gospels? Does that apply to Mennonites? Isn’t that inherently what our distinctives help us out with? Wouldn’t he see for example peace theology as a form of immunization for the church against the dominate culture? In 1995, he writes to the situation Anabaptists find themselves in:
Hauerwas is not saying that Anabaptists are somehow pagan; rather he is saying that the onus is now on Anabaptists to distinguish anew their identity and vocation in a post-Christian era. He implies, with his choice of the word “pagan,” that Anabaptists are in need of finding ways to center their convictions again in Christian terms, precisely because Anabaptist distinctives—like the belief in social justice, peacemaking and the rejection of the Christian status quo—have such mainstream appeal. Hauerwas brings up a central issue that I hope to illuminate, namely that we no longer are in the business of distinguishing ourselves from a normative Christian culture, but that we now need to distinguish ourselves from a pagan culture.
For Mennonites we have a unique set of challenges that accompany a post-Christendom shift. In fact, when we are honest, the implications of a changed Christendom present us with the similar sensation of disorientation, dissonance, disruption and disestablishment that is evidently present in the mainline traditions. John Hall Douglas gives a succinct account of the context we face:
The extremity within which the disciple community in North America finds itself today is not only the end of an age, it is also the end of a long and deeply entrenched form of the church. The single most far-reaching ecclesiastical factor conditioning theological reflection in our time is the effective disestablishment of the Christian religion in the Western world by secular, political, and alternative religious forces.[3]
The narrative of the Christian status quo has lost its storyline, and through that so has the Anabaptist point of reference in its own narrative. So in an odd way the church that always saw itself as marginalized is now experiencing a form of disestablishment. By no longer being able to identify ourselves as the subplot over and against the broader narrative of Christianity in the West, Mennonites are also entering a period of disestablishment. What will our distinctive of peace and nonviolence mean in a post-Christendom era? What will our narrative of being the counter-Christendom church mean in the new post-Constantinian chapter of Christianity?
In the recent publication on the profile of Mennonite Church USA, Conrad Kanagy outlines the current context of the Mennonite church. Among other trends, he reports that there is an overall decline in membership, increased urbanization, cultural assimilation, increasingly aging demographic, less commitment to the Anabaptist identity, and disengagement of young adults.
He writes as a way to move forward, Mennonites need to address “the disruption that we feel and the chaos we fear, and it means overcoming our tendencies to ‘default’ to our previous understandings of the church under Christendom.”[4] We need to figure out anew the meaning of church today in new ways and ways that acknowledge the continuity Mennonites share with the rest of Christianity. In the wake of a collapsing Christendom, “the world we always wanted” does not give us relief from the task of fundamentally discerning what the meaning and mission of the church is today.
In a post-this, post-that world, Christianity cannot be assumed as normative anymore. I think this is where Hauerwas sums up well what we are facing. He observes that “the challenge facing Anabaptists is to discover the implications of living in a world in which they have won.”[5] In this way, I believe we need to reexamine our Anabaptist identity in light of a new context and envision a new narrative that sustains the church through the process of disestablishment; a narrative that radically situates our distinctives within the particularity of Christian faith.
Now, I believe Anabaptism will be a tremendous resource for many in our post-this, post-that world, precisely because of distinctives like community, discipleship, and peacemaking. But for for all my Anabaptist/Mennonite homies out there, we need to learn to distinguish ourselves as Christians and move away from the practiced reflex of distinguishing ourselves from Christianity.
For some more thoughts along these lines, check out my friend's article in the Mennonite Weekly Review.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), xxiv.
[2] ———, "Whose Church? Which Future?: Whither the Anabaptist Vision?," in In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 73.
[3] Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg ; Fortress Press, 1989), 200-01. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997).
[4] Conrad L. Kanagy, Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2007), 193-94.
[5] Hauerwas, "Confession of a Mennonite Camp Follower," 521.
We Mennonites like this dude. He is a feisty pacifist, likes to criticize the Constantinian church and cites Yoder left and right. We like to identify ourselves with him as somebody that gets that the crucial aspect of the church as needing to be different from the status quo and, especially, that whole ‘nonviolence is the hallmark of the Christian life’[1] thing.
Like us, Hauerwas recognizes that an antiquated problem of the Church is its ready subscription to a Constantinian view of Christianity. So why does he hark time and time again that the story of Christianity should be fundamentally anchored in the story of Jesus and the Gospels? Does that apply to Mennonites? Isn’t that inherently what our distinctives help us out with? Wouldn’t he see for example peace theology as a form of immunization for the church against the dominate culture? In 1995, he writes to the situation Anabaptists find themselves in:
Ironically, the Anabaptists now live in a world which they said they wanted – that is, a world in which no one is forced either by the government or by societal expectations to be Christians – but you, as well as the churches of Christendom you opposed, are ill prepared for such a world. You have won the war, largely for reasons beyond your control, but in winning you have become unintelligible to your selves by making a fetish of those aspects of your lives that seemed so important for the last war. For example, ‘voluntary church membership’ was a prophetic challenge against mainstream Christianity, but once Christendom is gone the call for voluntary commitment cannot help but appear as a legitimation of the secular commitment to autonomy. In a Christendom world it took conviction to be a pagan or an Anabaptist, but given the world in which we are now living it is hard to distinguish pagans from Anabaptists.[2]
Hauerwas is not saying that Anabaptists are somehow pagan; rather he is saying that the onus is now on Anabaptists to distinguish anew their identity and vocation in a post-Christian era. He implies, with his choice of the word “pagan,” that Anabaptists are in need of finding ways to center their convictions again in Christian terms, precisely because Anabaptist distinctives—like the belief in social justice, peacemaking and the rejection of the Christian status quo—have such mainstream appeal. Hauerwas brings up a central issue that I hope to illuminate, namely that we no longer are in the business of distinguishing ourselves from a normative Christian culture, but that we now need to distinguish ourselves from a pagan culture.
For Mennonites we have a unique set of challenges that accompany a post-Christendom shift. In fact, when we are honest, the implications of a changed Christendom present us with the similar sensation of disorientation, dissonance, disruption and disestablishment that is evidently present in the mainline traditions. John Hall Douglas gives a succinct account of the context we face:
The extremity within which the disciple community in North America finds itself today is not only the end of an age, it is also the end of a long and deeply entrenched form of the church. The single most far-reaching ecclesiastical factor conditioning theological reflection in our time is the effective disestablishment of the Christian religion in the Western world by secular, political, and alternative religious forces.[3]
The narrative of the Christian status quo has lost its storyline, and through that so has the Anabaptist point of reference in its own narrative. So in an odd way the church that always saw itself as marginalized is now experiencing a form of disestablishment. By no longer being able to identify ourselves as the subplot over and against the broader narrative of Christianity in the West, Mennonites are also entering a period of disestablishment. What will our distinctive of peace and nonviolence mean in a post-Christendom era? What will our narrative of being the counter-Christendom church mean in the new post-Constantinian chapter of Christianity?
In the recent publication on the profile of Mennonite Church USA, Conrad Kanagy outlines the current context of the Mennonite church. Among other trends, he reports that there is an overall decline in membership, increased urbanization, cultural assimilation, increasingly aging demographic, less commitment to the Anabaptist identity, and disengagement of young adults.
He writes as a way to move forward, Mennonites need to address “the disruption that we feel and the chaos we fear, and it means overcoming our tendencies to ‘default’ to our previous understandings of the church under Christendom.”[4] We need to figure out anew the meaning of church today in new ways and ways that acknowledge the continuity Mennonites share with the rest of Christianity. In the wake of a collapsing Christendom, “the world we always wanted” does not give us relief from the task of fundamentally discerning what the meaning and mission of the church is today.
In a post-this, post-that world, Christianity cannot be assumed as normative anymore. I think this is where Hauerwas sums up well what we are facing. He observes that “the challenge facing Anabaptists is to discover the implications of living in a world in which they have won.”[5] In this way, I believe we need to reexamine our Anabaptist identity in light of a new context and envision a new narrative that sustains the church through the process of disestablishment; a narrative that radically situates our distinctives within the particularity of Christian faith.
Now, I believe Anabaptism will be a tremendous resource for many in our post-this, post-that world, precisely because of distinctives like community, discipleship, and peacemaking. But for for all my Anabaptist/Mennonite homies out there, we need to learn to distinguish ourselves as Christians and move away from the practiced reflex of distinguishing ourselves from Christianity.
For some more thoughts along these lines, check out my friend's article in the Mennonite Weekly Review.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), xxiv.
[2] ———, "Whose Church? Which Future?: Whither the Anabaptist Vision?," in In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 73.
[3] Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg ; Fortress Press, 1989), 200-01. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997).
[4] Conrad L. Kanagy, Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2007), 193-94.
[5] Hauerwas, "Confession of a Mennonite Camp Follower," 521.
2 comments:
Brilliant. Write more.
thanks bro!
Hope to get more bloggin' done after the quarter is over and I am not drowning in school work.
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