Road Signs on the Journey

Book

Road Signs on the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA. by Conrad L. Kanagy. Waterloo, ON: Herald, 2007

Reviewer

Ed Janzen, chaplain, Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, ON

Conrad Kanagy’s profile of Mennonite Church USA is a good addition to earlier similar studies of Mennonites in 1972 and 1989. Preferring biblical to sociological categories of analysis, Kanagy presents the data as “road signs and guideposts” in order to help Mennonites find their social, political, spiritual, and theological location, and to help Mennonite churches consider the direction of their further “journey toward the reign of God” (24).

The first two chapters set a reading of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah as the base for Kanagy’s data analysis. These chapters test the data for evidence of a missional intention and vision in Mennonite church life. Succeeding chapters profile Mennonite Church USA; explore church structure, polity and self-understanding; test consistency and orthodoxy of belief and ritual; survey management of resources; review recent disruptions of Mennonite “Christendom”; and assess the relation between the church and greater society.

The author’s summary conclusion shares the testimony of respondents as they reflect on the quality of congregational life and challenge the church toward greater missional identity and activity.

Kanagy’s prognosis for Mennonite Church USA is disquieting yet hopeful. While the author predicts a “bleak future” (57), among “Racial/Ethnic Mennonites” he discovered signs of growth and renewal. Other signs of hope include relatively high rates of giving, marital stability, strong beliefs about Jesus, active personal piety and greater support of women in ministry (183ff.).

At least two issues emerge that deserve greater discussion and thought. The first is how to refer to the diversity of ethnic and racial groups comprising Mennonite Church USA. Throughout the report Kanagy uses the generic term “Racial/Ethnic” to refer to African-American, Hispanic/Latino, diverse Asian, and various Native American congregations and members. Yet “Racial/Ethnic” would also apply to the various Caucasian groups comprising the church.

One of the challenges in working out the tension between the margin and middle of Mennonite church has to do with how we refer to one another. The tendency to reduce our ethnic diversity to one generic category, or an implicit us/them polarity, is a pernicious problem with no easy solution.

This problem is endemic to descriptive sociological summaries, but even more, it bespeaks the difficulty that Mennonite church organizations have in dealing with an ethnic diversity that refuses to be ‘settled.’ I wonder if this reflects the broader influence of theories of assimilation as opposed to theories of ethnic pluralism in the American context.

It seems to me that one of the significant challenges in combatting racism in the church is to celebrate our chaotic ethnicity in all its glorious detail. This will demand imaginative justice in reconfiguring current structures of privilege. Our commitment to such justice will help us find better, more expressive, language with which to understand the multi-ethnic fullness of Mennonite Church USA.

The second challenge concerns Kanagy’s exile hypothesis. This hypothesis interprets the changes Mennonites have undergone as assimilation to a broader society; that is, that Mennonites as exiles in American culture and society are losing their true identity and becoming more like their host society. This interpretation might be more cogent if Kanagy had presented comparative data from a larger control group than conservative Protestants (171).

Increased levels of education, wealth, professional vocation, and urban living, together with changes in various beliefs, support “the argument that Mennonites are becoming more conforming to the values and attitudes of the larger society” (170, 171). However, Anabaptism has looked more educated and urban before.

Putting a slight twist on Kanagy’s question of exile, the data may be suggesting that Mennonites are finally returning from an almost 200-year exile in rural America. The changes Kanagy traces may be instances of increased biblical fidelity. Engagement with surrounding society, however messy that might be, could be a truer expression of Anabaptist peoplehood than the isolationist posture of most recent memory.

It may be necessary to resist and even critique assimilation theories based on the deeper resonance between Mennonites and various values of American society and culture, such as freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and participatory governance of group life. The isolationist interpretation of Mennonite life from the 16th through the 18th centuries has had something of a privileged status and may need to give way to a more socially engaged and integrated understanding of Mennonite life as normative.

This may be why Kanagy is so firmly convinced that the future of Mennonite Church USA lies with congregations comprising various minority racial and ethnic groups. Indeed, it may be impossible to find future vitality in the church without following such leadership into social engagement.

For observing these provocative issues in such a way as to raise further discussion of the future of Mennonite communities, we can be grateful to Kanagy for an insightful analysis of Mennonite Church USA.