CGR Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring 2003)

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

The Sensus Fidei and Mennonite Theology

Jeremy M. Bergen

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003)

In Roman Catholic theology, the sensus fidei is a doctrine about the role of all believers in expressing the truth(s) of the Christian faith. The sensus fidei, literally the “sense of faith,” has an important place in Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council (1962- 65), which marked a change in Roman Catholic ecclesiology towards a more active role for the entire church, including the laity, in the proclamation, authoritative teaching, and application of the gospel. It recognized more explicitly that the tradition, which mediates God’s self-revelation, includes the living witness of ordinary people of faith. It enabled conversation about the “teaching authority of all believers” in virtue of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. My paper asks whether Mennonites may fruitfully appropriate the conceptual framework of the sensus fidei in order to talk about our own living tradition.

Before proceeding further, I propose this working definition: Sensus fidei is “the capacity to recognize the intimate experience of adherence to Christ and to judge everything on the basis of this knowledge.”[1] It is an experiential way of knowing and understood to be a gift of the Holy Spirit. While some writers use sensus fidei and sensus fidelium interchangeably, those who note a distinction describe the latter as the content or expression of what is actually believed and the former as the gift enabling such belief.[2]

Sensus Fidei in the Roman Catholic Church

Under a “siege mentality,” the Counter-Reformational Roman Catholic Church approached ecclesiology and revelation as questions of jurisdiction. The Roman Church, specifically the bishops and pope, asserted the authority to define doctrine (over against the sola scriptura of the Reformers). As the Papal States themselves were under physical attack, the First Vatican Council (1870) concerned itself with the jurisdiction of the pope vis-à-vis the bishops, and concluded that when the pope speaks ex cathedra, his statements are “of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.”[3] In this scheme, the value of a theological statement, nearly always a proposition, derived more from its source than from its content.[4] Such a view implied a sharp division of labor between the ecclesia docens (teaching church) and the ecclesia discens (believing church) with the clergy, especially the episcopacy, constituting the former and the laity the latter. For nineteenthcentury theologian J.B. Franzelin, the teaching church plays the active role whereby bishops and pope propose, explain, and protect the faith. The sensus fidei of the believing church is strictly passive. It says “Amen” to authoritative teaching.[5] However, already at Vatican I a view which was to prevail at Vatican II, one that rejected a “pyramid” in favor of an ecclesial model of “concentric circles” which begin with the faithful, was gaining ground.[6] The dominant image of the church between the councils — “the mystical body of Christ” — was indicative of this more organic ecclesiology.

The ecclesiology of Vatican II was less concerned with polemics and
jurisdictions than with mission in the world. It defined the church itself as a sacrament (rather than an institution which dispenses the sacraments), a mystery, a communion, and as the “people of God.” This latter image, the title of chapter 2 of Lumen Gentium, recognized that the church is not only a sacrament of grace but a recipient as well. Thus, the holiness and faithfulness of the church is not a static essence but the fruit of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Whereas the church as the “body of Christ” risks denying the sinful element of human community, as the “People of God” the church recognizes itself as a community elected by God for a covenantal relationship.

Accordingly, Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (1965), defined revelation as God’s self-disclosure, “in order to invite and take [human beings] into fellowship with himself” (article 2). Revelation is not the communication of propositional truth but a constitutive dynamic of God’s relationship with God’s people. Joseph Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum puts it this way: “The Council desired to express again the character of revelation as a totality, in which word and event make up one whole, a true dialogue which touches man in his totality, not only challenging his reason, but, as dialogue, addressing him as partner, indeed giving him his true nature for the first time.”[7] The People of God is the addressee and transmitter of God’s self-communication. Revelation and church are thus mutually implied in the concept of People of God.

The above discussion on the church and revelation sets the context for discussing infallibility, the most proximate concept within which the sensus fidei is located. Infallibility is a major ecumenical hurdle, not to mention a contentious issue within the Roman Catholic Church, because it immediately evokes papal infallibility. Yet, even Pastor Aeternus, the Vatican I document which defined the infallibility of some papal statements, placed such exercise within a larger framework of infallibility which Vatican II articulated well: the church (the People of God) is the recipient of the Holy Spirit’s promise of preservation from fundamental error. Infallibility was a charism granted to the prophets, evangelists, and apostles who preached and recorded the Word of God in what we now know as Scripture. John 14:16-17 says that this Spirit of truth abides with the church. The church adheres to that foundational selfcommunication of God (Scripture) through interpretation and expression (Tradition) by the power of this same Spirit. This does not mean either that the church does not make mistakes, that its members are always faithful, that the Spirit’s work is limited to the church, or that its work is obvious. Modestly, it affirms that the church is not just a social reality but also a spiritual one. Without denying the failures of social groups and of individuals within those groups, infallibility speaks about the Spirit’s abiding role in a covenantal reality: “[T]he Church’s continued fidelity to the gospel is dependent on the prior fidelity of God to the Church.”[8]

Infallibility in the first place attaches to the entire believing church — the church called into being in response to God’s self-communication. Only secondarily, and only insofar as it defines and expresses the faith of the believing church, does infallibility attach to the teaching church, the bishops, and the pope (and, in various derivative ways, theologians). Patrick Hartin notes that even though Vatican I denied that papal statements are strictly dependent on popular or even episcopal assent, it affirmed that a pope cannot proclaim a new dogma but is limited to defining what already exists in the faith and life of the church; and thus, one interpretation goes, has an obligation to consult the faithful.[9] The acceptance or “reception” by the church of such a definition does not establish the truth of the statement but confirms the charism of infallibility.

The combination of more organic ecclesiology, historical consciousness about the development of doctrine, attention to the church’s mission in the world, an increasingly active laity, and emphasis on the entire church as the recipient of the Holy Spirit’s promise was the framework for a renewal of the concept of the sensus fidei leading up to Vatican II and beyond.[10] In the chapter, “People of God,” and in an article (12) on the participation of the church in Christ’s prophetic office, Lumen Gentium gave this theology of the sensus fidei:

The body of the faithful as a whole, anointed as they are by the Holy One (cf. 1 Jn 2:20, 27), cannot err in matters of belief. Thanks to a supernatural sense of the faith [supernaturali sensu fidei] which characterizes the People of God as a whole, it manifests this unerring quality when, ‘from the bishops down to the last member of the laity,’ it shows universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. For, by this sense of faith [sensus fidei] which is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, God’s People accepts not the word of men but the very word of God (cf. 1 Th. 2:13). It clings without fail to the faith once delivered to the saints (cf. Jude 3), penetrates it more deeply by accurate insights, and applies it more thoroughly to life. All this it does under the lead of the sacred teaching authority to which it loyally defers.

Although it highlights an active role for the laity, it does not necessarily structure the laity over against the hierarchy. As John Burkhard points out, neither is it intended as a “pious exhortation to obedience on the part of the faithful” as might be suggested by the reference to loyal deference to teaching authority.[11] Rather, it enjoins specific actions such as prayer, study, discussion, commitment, and application to life that give doctrines specific content “from below.” A specific interdependent relationship of hierarchy and laity is thus envisioned. James Heft suggests that a review of how the Church came to define the Marian Dogmas of 1854 (Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary) and 1950 (Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) shows a “dynamic process of faithful give-and-take between the bishops and the rest of the church.”[12] In important (though not uncontroversial ways), the popes involved consulted the “faithful” and found these dogmas to be part of their faith in spite of ambiguous testimony in Scripture and the Tradition. The papal role was thus one of defining the de facto faith and piety of the church.

John Henry Newman claimed that in the preservation of orthodoxy against a majority of Arian bishops, “the divine dogma of our Lord’s divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved far more” the believing church than the teaching church.[13] A more negative and controversial example is the authoritative but not “infallible” prohibition of artificial contraception in Humanae Vitae (1968). The question is whether the fact that a majority of Roman Catholics do not agree with and/or follow this prohibition in practice[14] — that it has generally not been “received” — is indicative of a deficiency in the teaching. The professors at Catholic University subject to Vatican inquiry for their views on Humanae Vitae argue that the sensus fidei, including the sense expressed as dissent, is an important balance to “an exclusive teaching prerogative in the hierarchy,” and, as a potential correction of error, is “an intrinsic element in the total magisterial function the church.”[15] Controversy itself does not necessarily disqualify a doctrine from the competence of the sensus fidei. Since truth, not majority opinion, remains the key criterion, it is possible that prophetic words come to the church through an instinct of faith expressed by a minority.

Commentators seem to agree that concerns to which the sensus fidei
might especially apply are those of immediate pastoral and practical concern. The “popular faith” of Marian devotion, for example, is discerned to contain an important theological insight about human response and cooperation with God’s grace.[16] Yves Congar speaks of the value of what “Christians declare by their behaviour.” This refers both to everyday practical judgments as well as the witness of the Spirit of truth through martyrdom.[17] Burkhard argues that Lumen Gentium’s specification that the sensus fidei is concerned with application to the circumstances of life means that activity in the workplace, politics, economics, education, medicine, counseling services, etc. are as authentic channels as sacraments or preaching through which the Spirit proclaims the gospel.[18]

Who are the faithful are who are said to have this “sense”? While Congar speaks of sensus fidei “tend[ing] towards a consensus,” unanimity is not necessarily its defining mark, since human grasp of truth is always partial.[19] The idea that polling members may be a way of gauging the sensus fidei is suspect, especially since it is difficult for such a method to determine whether the opinions expressed are rooted in secular culture or in a sense of faith. While it makes assessing the sensus fidei qualitatively more difficult, Avery Dulles maintains that “we must look not so much at the statistics, as at the quality of the witnesses and the motivation for their assent.”[20] One quality of great importance is nurture and life in Christian community. On one hand, this criterion of “quality of witnesses” and emphasis on community life can lead to Thomas Dubay’s assertion that only those accepting the teaching of the magisterium are the faithful.[21] On the other, Leonard Swidler uses the concept of sensus fidei to argue for the democratization of the Roman Catholic Church based on the sanctity of the individual conscience.[22]

Catholic discourse about the sensus fidei includes ecumenical
considerations of the reformative power for the Church itself and for the
enhancement of ecumenical fellowship. Incorporation of the Protestant
emphasis on lay reading of the Bible may be an example of the former.
Possibilities for the latter may be exercised on the basis of Vatican II statements which recognize the ecclesial quality of non-Roman churches, and which, according to Heft, enjoin the Roman Catholic church to take more seriously what other churches hold and to consult them in good faith before promulgating doctrine.[23] On the issue of contraception, he speculates, the official teaching is too “culturally bound” to medieval ideas of sexuality and ought to be modified by “the thinking and teaching of most of the rest of Christianity.”[24] More positively, “the faithful” ought to be understood as all Christians, the entire People of God. The Spirit’s preservation of this body from fundamental error is not limited by denominational boundaries. Such an understanding would move the concept of infallibility further from a juridical definition (limited to Roman Catholic hierarchy) and towards the expression of the lived faith of
the entire believing community.

Sensus Fidei in the Mennonite Church?

The language of the sensus fidei might stimulate Mennonite theology andpractices in creative ways. As should be apparent, the sensus fidei is not a precisely defined instrument but rather yields a witness only in time and after thoughtful reflection. Thus, the immediate benefit may not be the expression of specific content, sensus fidelium, but rather new self-understandings realized in attempting the search. I will briefly mention four benefits from using this language, while also addressing potential concerns.

The sensus fidei turns our attention to the witness of the Holy Spirit, an important theological corrective for a Christocentric tradition. If we really mean that the Holy Spirit is at work, then we would benefit from this rich language in which to talk about it. We hold, for example, that baptism is public testimony about the Holy Spirit’s work in an individual which at the same time incorporates the individual into a new humanity. While not denying the personal element, Mennonite theology would do well to reflect further on how it takes the promise of the Holy Spirit, especially the Spirit of truth, to abide with the church. Does it imply some notion of infallibility? Is the meaning of the promise “spiritualized”? Are the results inscrutable? Is there visible manifestation?

The difference in the practice of authority between Roman Catholics and Mennonites would greatly affect Mennonite appropriation of sensus fidei language. For Roman Catholics, the sensus fidei operates within a potentially dialogical polarity of laity and hierarchy, authority and conscience, or, more precisely, the faith of the entire People of God and those whose teaching office calls them to express, clarify, and define that faith. In the absence of clearly authorized persons over doctrinal matters, it may still be meaningful for Mennonites to talk about expressing the lived faith of the church in a decisive way. Here, I suggest that if we are neither Catholic nor Protestant, then a congregational style of authority which resides in face-to-face discernment among disciples who are also priests is amenable to sensus fidei concepts, while transforming them. Nevertheless, we can also ask whether Mennonites have an implicit “magisterium.” What is the relation between doctrinal authority and the ability of the church to hold particular beliefs and practices qua church? What would an analysis of the way in which H.S. Bender’s expression of the “Anabaptist Vision” caught fire and was owned broadly within the church say about “authority” and “reception” in expressing the lived faith of the community? What is the relation of scholarship and authority in Mennonite practice? Sensus fidei vocabulary may stimulate new reflections on these issues.

A third benefit has more direct implications for Anabaptist-Mennonite scholarship: closer attention to the “lived faith” of actual church practices and beliefs. Neither contemporary “authoritative” statements nor the writings of the sixteenth century necessarily express what is held at the concrete congregational level. While not ignoring those sources, discernment of the sensus fidei would push scholars to give more attention to accessing and expressing lived faith in a disciplined way (neither simply sociology nor pure subjective experience). Attending to worship formats, church outreach programs, justice initiatives, and baptismal candidates’ confessions of faith are examples. Such expressions are not only the result of Bible reading and instruction but embodied judgments about the relationship of God-humanity-world which cannot be deduced from concepts and texts alone. Thus, they are a crucial source for theological reflection.[25]

Fourthly, ecumenical benefits to which I have already alluded would be relevant too in our appropriation. The insights of other Christian traditions and our own particular witness may be mutually commended on the basis of the sensus fidei rather than through denominationally negotiated statements. This would suggest that a Mennonite approach to ecumenicity properly moves from the grassroots to (possible) high level discussions rather than vice-versa. Mennonite theology must ask how the spiritual resources of another Christian tradition, translated into our own distinctive key, may enhance the conception and practice of our own living tradition.

Notes

[1] Zoltán Alszeghy, “The Sensus Fidei and the Development of Dogma,” in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, vol.1, ed. Rene Latourelle (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 147.
[2] For example, James L. Heft, “’Sensus Fidelium’ and the Marian Dogmas,” One in Christ 28/ 2 (1992): 112; Patrick J. Hartin, “Sensus Fidelium: A Roman Catholic Reflection on its Significance for Ecumenical Thought,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 28 (1991): 76.
[3] Pastor Aeternus, chapter 4.
[4] Daniel J. Finucane, Sensus Fidelium: The Use of a Concept in the Post-Vatican II Era (San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1996), 243.
[5] John Burkhard, “Sensus fidei: Meaning, Role and Future of a Teaching of Vatican II,” Louvain Studies 17 (1992): 22.
[6] Charles E. Curran, Robert E. Hunt, et al., Dissent In and For the Church: Theologians and Humanae Vitae (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1969), 96.
[7] Joseph Ratzinger, “The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 172.
[8] Richard R. Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium of the Church (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1997), 142.
[9] Hartin, “Sensus Fidelium: Ecumenical Thought,” 79
[10] Cited in Avery Dulles, “Sensus Fidelium,” America 155 (1986): 241. John Henry Newman, whose ideas posthumously influenced Vatican II, had discussed historical instances of the sensus fidei including the defense of Christ’s divinity against the Arians, the confession of Mary as theotokos, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
[11] Burkhard, “Sensus fidei: Meaning, Role, Future,” 26.
[12] Heft, “’Sensus Fidelium’ and the Marian Dogmas,” 110.
[13] Cited in Heinrich Fries, “Is there a Magisterium of the Faithful?” in J.B. Metz and E. Schillebeeckx, eds., The Teaching Authority of Believers (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1985), 87.
[14] “A recent survey claims that nearly 77% of Catholic wives were practicing birth control, 94% of whom were using methods condemned by the Church. It is reported elsewhere that only 29% of the lower clergy believe that artificial contraception is morally wrong. . . .” Joseph A. Komonchak, “Humanae Vitae and the Its Reception: Ecclesiological Reflections,” Theological Studies 39 (1978): 221. Statistics like this are contested by those who draw distinctions in such surveys in the degree of “commitment” to the church (i.e., “practicing Catholics”).
[15] Curran, et al. Dissent In and For the Church, 86-87.
[16] Heft, “‘Sensus Fidelium’ and the Marian Dogmas,” 117.
[17] Yves Congar, “Towards a Catholic Synthesis,” in Who Has a Say in the Church? eds. Jürgen Moltmann and Hans Küng (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1981), 74.
[18] Burkhard, “Sensus fidei: Meaning, Role, Future,” 30.
[19] Congar, “Towards a Catholic Synthesis,” 74.
[20] Dulles, “Sensus Fidelium,” 242.
[21] Cited in Finucane, Sensus Fidelium: The Use of a Concept, 393.
[22] Finucane, Sensus Fidelium: The Use of a Concept, 324-30.
[23] Heft, “’Sensus Fidelium’ and the Marian Dogmas,” 119.
[24] Hartin, “Sensus Fidelium: Ecumenical Thought,” 85-86.
[25] There has been a surge in interest on “church practices.” See Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life, eds. Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church, eds. James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); Reinhard Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you . . .” (1 Cor. 11:23)

Joel Schmidt

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003).

Among the heirs of the Anabaptist movement, discussions on the role of “tradition” in the life of the church have tended to be framed in antagonistic terms. The polemic of Scripture over against tradition has deep historical roots in our movement, and continues to exert an influence in discussions of ethics, worship, and christology. The passage 1 Cor. 11:23-26, from which the excerpt above is quoted, may help to bring into focus a number of relevant variables related to a contemporary discussion of the role of tradition in Anabaptist worship and theology.

The Relationship between Scripture and Tradition

In the sixteenth century, there were at least two alternatives available within Protestant circles for imagining the relationship between Scripture and tradition. On the one hand, Andreas Karlstadt argued that faithfulness to the biblical word of God demanded the rejection of all inherited ecclesiastical traditions not explicitly affirmed in Scripture. On the other, Martin Luther argued that all those traditions not explicitly condemned in the Bible were lawful for Christian faith and praxis. Karlstadt and Luther parted ways due to disagreement over the use of traditional forms of worship in non-Roman churches. The liturgical ramifications of this decision can today be observed by comparing most Lutheran and Anabaptist worship services.

In opposition to all variations on the Protestant theme of sola scriptura, the Roman Catholic Church articulated a quite different understanding of the significance of its inherited ecclestiastical traditions. In opposition to the strenuous Protestant assertion of the sufficiency of Scripture, at the Council of Trent the Roman Church formulated what later came to be interpreted as a “two source” theory of divine revelation. In this understanding (which has frequently been rejected by contemporary Roman Catholics as a distortion of Trent’s teaching), in addition to the explicit words of Scripture, there exists within the church a fund of information that is either undocumented or documented in non-canonical sources, upon which the hierarchy may later draw to promulgate authoritative doctrines. Within Roman Catholicism there was a formal acknowledgement that the two sources could not contradict each other, but to many watching Protestants by means of this position the Roman Church seemed simply to issue itself a carte blanche to develop new traditions in whatever direction required by the exigencies of power politics, Aristotelian philosophy, or Marian piety.

More recently, the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has come up with its own description of the nature of Christian tradition. According to the 1963 WCC document “Scripture, Tradition and Traditions,” debates about the authority of tradition are best framed in terms of “Tradition,” “traditions,” and “tradition.” In the first case, “Tradition” refers to “God’s revelation and self-giving in Christ, present in the life of the Church.”[1] This “Tradition” may be understood to be substantially equivalent to the revelation in Christ provided in Scripture; or, as in the case of the Orthodox, it may also include the tangible forms by which the Christian faith itself has been passed down through time.[2] Later we read that “the content of Tradition cannot be exactly defined, for the reality it transmits can never be fully contained in propositional forms.”[3] In contrast to the “Tradition” are those “traditions” which, in the diversity of forms of expression found in different communions, to varying degrees faithfully transmit the “Tradition.”[4] Finally, “tradition” refers to the traditioning process per se, the means by which particular traditions, and through them aspects of the “Tradition,” are transmitted from generation to generation.

In terms of contemporary Anabaptist reflection, John Howard Yoder’s
view of the role of tradition deserves mention. As Yoder recognizes, the
question of tradition cannot be resolved by a simple rejection of any postbiblical development in Christian self-understanding, such as biblicism in a Karlstadtian mode, since the Bible itself affirms the reality of ongoing revelation in the Christian community (John 14:12-26; 16:7-15), and gives evidence of the attempts of first-century congregations to manage this reality (1 John 4:1ff; 1 Cor. 12:1ff.). Yoder affirms that

There can very properly be forms of change to which the “biblicist” would not object, if they have about them the organic quality of growth from seed, faithful translation, or fecundation. . . . What is at stake is not whether there can be change but whether there is such a thing as unfaithfulness.[5]

Yoder uses the image of a vine to assert the adequacy of Scripture to adjudicate the faithfulness of later developments in Christian tradition. Just as a vine may have branches growing in different directions, so too can there be legitimate diversity in the post-biblical development of Christian traditions. If, however, these branches are allowed to grow in whatever direction they please, the result is a choking of the vine and a reduction in its fruitfulness. Scripture may thus be asserted to be the root by which the church is able to judge when and where the pruning of a branch of tradition is necessary. “This renewed appeal to origins is not primitivism, nor an effort to recapture some pristine purity. It is rather a ‘looping back,’ a glance over the shoulder to enable a midcourse correction.”[6] By taking this position, Yoder does not assume that the church will at any point exhaust the import of the Scriptures for the church’s life. Rather, as new questions are raised and put to Scripture, the texts yield new perspectives. Yoder cites the development of liberation theology as one example of how posing new questions to the biblical texts allows “the same old data” to disclose new information.

This paper takes Yoder’s understanding of the role of Scripture in adjudicating the faithfulness of ongoing revelation as its starting point, and seeks to apply this method to contemporary Mennonite understandings of the Lord’s Supper in light of 1 Cor. 11:23-26. Since Yoder’s approach requires discernment in each particular instance of the tradition’s faithfulness to biblical concepts and trajectories, we shall try to determine whether new questions being raised in biblical studies confirm or problematize contemporary Mennonite eucharistic understanding.

Contemporary Mennonite Perspectives on the Lord’s Supper

What, then, is the “contemporary Mennonite understanding” of the Lord’s Supper? There is no such unified position, nor could we reasonably expect one, given the absence of a unified ecclesiastical authority in the Mennonite churches.[7] For our purposes it is adequate to note two opposing tendencies within contemporary Mennonite eucharistic theology.

Probably the most prevalent understanding of the “traditional” Mennonite position on the Lord’s Supper may be summed up as “Zwinglian memorialism.” A number of sixteenth-century Anabaptists argued strenuously against any notion of a “real presence” in the Supper. Some did so on the basis of Ulrich Zwingli’s exegesis (adopted from Cornelius Hoen) of the words of institution to mean “This signifies my body,” while others leaned more heavily on the observation that, according to the biblical record, Jesus in his post-resurrection humanity is seated at the right hand of God. The memorialist view finds a contemporary analogue in the article on communion in the Mennonite Encyclopedia, where one reads that “communion . . . has always had only a symbolic meaning for the Anabaptists and Mennonites. . . . It was a memorial to the death of Christ
and a means of the closest fellowship of the believers in Christ.”[8] As in the
sixteenth century, the article supports this interpretation of the Supper with the claim that it restores “the Biblical practice” of communion, presumably in contradistinction to the “un-Biblical” eucharistic views of the Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans, among others.

A different contemporary view, existing in considerable tension with
the one just expressed, is found in the 1995 Confession of Faith in a
Mennonite Perspective published by the now unified Canadian General
Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church in North America.
While the memorial view remains represented within the twelfth article of
this confession, one also finds the assertion that believers “relive” the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection by celebrating a common meal together. Furthermore, the claim is made that “the supper re-presents the presence of the risen Christ in the church.”[9] Surprisingly, no biblical rationale is provided to support this concept of the Supper “re-presenting” the presence of Christ.

Of course, it has been commonplace within certain ecclesial traditions to assert the reality of such a Christic presence in the Supper, based on a literal exegesis of Jesus’ words of institution and on some of the postresurrection experiences of Jesus experienced by his disciples, e.g., the road to Emmaus story. In Mennonite circles, however, the phrase “do this in remembrance of me” found in 1 Cor. 11:23-26 and Luke 22:15-20 has generally been seen to provide a kind of trump card in discussions of the “real presence” (or rather absence) of Jesus in the Supper. It is precisely on this point of intersection between the claim for Jesus’ “real presence” in the Eucharist, and the apparently biblical view of the celebration of communion in psychological “remembrance” of Jesus Christ, that the role of Scripture and tradition will now be examined.

“Do this in remembrance of me . . .”

In 1 Cor. 11:24-25 the word generally translated as “remembrance” is the
Greek word anamnesis, which word in turn is related to the Hebrew noun
zikkaron, derived from the root zkr. As one commentator has observed,
“there is probably no other single Hebrew word which has engendered so
much debate among Christian sacramental and liturgical theologians in the
second half of the twentieth century as the noun zikkaron, or rather its Greek equivalent, anamnesis.”[10]

The groundwork for the important role which the term anamnesis has recently acquired in ecumenical and scholarly reflection was laid by a number of authors, especially Joachim Jeremias among biblical scholars and Gregory Dix among liturgiologists, but French Protestant theologian Max Thurian was chiefly responsible for its entry into ecumenical discussion through his influential book, L’eucharistie: mémorial du Seigneur, published in 1959. According to Thurian, anamnesis does not refer to a merely psychological act of remembering, such as seems presupposed in the framework of Zwinglian memorialism, but it is rather a term loaded with theological significance. In his view, anamnesis is used to describe a phenomenon by which past events are actualized in the present for the benefit of contemporary believers. For the Jewish people, this is what occurs during the Passover celebration and is the reason why in the modern seder one is told that “Every man in every generation is bound to look upon himself as if he personally had gone forth from Egypt.”[11] It is this word, generally translated “memorial” by biblical scholars, that gives both the Passover seder and the Christian Eucharist their distinctive meanings. In the seder, the meal is given the meaning of an “actualization” of the deliverance of the people of God; in the Eucharist, it is Christ’s sacrifice which is “actualized,” with the result that Christ himself is made present in his sacrifice.[12]

Thurian’s work has received fairly widespread support from biblical specialists such as P.A.H. de Boer, Willy Schottroff, and Brevard Childs. For example, Childs defines actualization as “the process by which a past event is contemporized for a generation removed in time and space from the original event.”[13] This does not mean that Israel again experiences the Exodus, for this was a once-for-all event, but rather that by means of her tradition Israel is able to enter “the same redemptive reality of the Exodus generation. . . .Because the quality of time was the same, the barrier of chronological separation was overcome.”[14]

It is just this notion of “actualization,” (or “re-presentation” as noted in the Mennonite Confession above), that has been enthusiastically embraced by a great many scholars and church leaders from a variety of denominations, and that was very influential in formulating the 1982 Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry (BEM) document by the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission. As a result, the notion of “memorial” articulated by scholars such as Thurian and Childs has already played a large role in overcoming ecumenical impasses concerning the relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and the Eucharist. Furthermore, a conviction exists that if agreement can be reached that the memorial of the Supper is “the living and effective sign of [Christ’s] sacrifice,” then there is hope that a shared understanding of the nature and significance of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist may yet be possible. This is an extremely ironic turn of events for churches adhering to a “memorialist” understanding of the Lord’s Supper, as they find that the passage and terminology they have been using to protect against a notion of the “real presence” have become the means by which other traditions are affirming just such a presence.

Nevertheless, the view of memorial actualization first presented by Thurian has not achieved universal acceptance within the scholarly community. Robert Brawley has questioned it for several reasons, including his doubting that the Lord’s Supper was actually instituted during a Passover meal, and that in the LXX mnemosunon rather than anamnesis is used to translate zikkaron.[15] Thus, Brawley does not dispute the notion that in certain contexts zkr may involve actualization of the past, e.g., in the context of the Passover seder, but he does dispute claims for such an understanding of anamnesis in the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper. In addition, he rallies Markus Barth[16] in support of his skepticism of an apparently too-easy, and politically-driven, consensus on the meaning of anamnesis.

Unfortunately, the critiques of Brawley and Barth lose their force in light of observations by their colleagues. First, a large number of scholars affirm the significance of the Passover as a setting for understanding the significance of the Lord’s Supper, quite apart from any direct historical linkage.[17] Also, even without a direct link to the Passover, anamnesis could carry a notion of actualization within the NT institution texts due to the cultic nature of the Supper, and the association of the actualization concept with cultic acts in the OT in general. Second, it is not significant that in the Septuagint mnemosunon rather than anamnesis is used to translate zikkaron with reference to the commemoration of the Exodus, since the terms seem to function as synonyms.[18] Finally, Barth’s arguments against a conviction in the “real presence” fail to engage the specific arguments of those linking the notion of “actualization” with that of anamnesis, and do not present a developed alternative to such an understanding of this term.

In this regard, the Jewish scholar Lawrence A. Hoffman presents a greater challenge to the “actualization” interpretation of anamnesis than do either Brawley or Barth. On the basis of an involved examination of postbiblical rabbinical, and to a lesser extent OT, writings, Hoffman establishes a carefully argued alternative to the view proposed by Thurian. Hoffman’s view may be summarized as follows. The word normally translated as “remember” is better rendered as “to point out,” and God’s memory is thus actually God’s attention being drawn by a variety of pointers, some of them liturgical.[19] From the human side and in the context of a liturgical celebration, these pointers remind the gathered congregation of God, his nature, and his deeds of salvation. From the divine side, they function as reminders for God, signposts to direct God’s attention back toward God’s own essentially merciful nature, and the promise of salvation implied therein.[20] Hoffman uses the charming simile of humanity being like children in a busy household, who use the liturgy as a means of obtaining and directing the attention of their busy parent. The end result of drawing God’s attention in this way are effects in line with God’s gracious nature, namely salvation and deliverance.

Hoffman draws the implications of his view for the Christian celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In his view, Jesus’ “Do this in memory of me” are words meant to accompany a ritual act, which as a whole functions as “a pointer to a pointer.” Eating the bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus points to Jesus, who is himself the primary pointer, directing God’s way toward merciful redemption. In the celebration of the Supper, Hoffman finds liturgy “as the Rabbis understood it, liturgy as zikaron, liturgy as memory, or better, as pointer, drawing God’s attention to what matters.”[21]

Roman Catholic scholar Fritz Chenderlin focuses on the meaning of the phrase “Do this in remembrance of me,” or as he renders it, “Do this as my memorial.” He argues that this phrase carries a sense of “reminding God,” as well as reminding people. Very similar to Hoffman, he states that one aspect of meaning of “memorial” is “that of a symbol — a word or thing
or act — that is so said or placed or done as to attract the attention of the one who is meant to read it and thus turn his attention to the matter symbolized.”[22] In the biblical texts cultic memorials are indeed thought to exert a “pressure” on God to act, but this is not magic or theurgy but “reminders of pressures God was thought to have put on himself, as by covenant.”[23]

Thus, in the central cultic act of the Christian faith, the elements of the Lord’s Supper must be seen to have the aspect of “reminding God” that the term “memorial” carries throughout the biblical narrative. The elements of the Supper remind God of his promises in Jesus Christ, who is portrayed in Paul’s writings with concepts such as ransom, martyrdom, akedah, mercy seat, scapegoat, and sacrifice.[24] All of these images would be suitable ways of articulating the “reminding God” aspect of the Supper, but in the later tradition this Godward aspect came to be expressed exclusively in terms of sacrifice. This development represented a narrowing of the biblical concept of “memorial” and a reduction in the number of options available to the liturgical imagination by which to obey the Lord’s “memorial” command.[25]

Chenderlin also addresses Thurian’s concept of “actualization,” apparently accepting Childs’ definition of actualization as the “contemporization and making relevant older traditional materials.”[26] Thus, there are forms of literary actualization in which one generalizes from the original biblical stories and makes the lessons from the original situation applicable in the present.[27] This kind of actualization can be safely assumed and universally recognized in contemporary Jewish and Christian communities, and in the biblical texts themselves. Therefore, the reality of the concept of actualization is not the issue. Rather the question is whether, apart from more commonly accepted forms of actualization such as literary actualization, the Scriptures provide evidence that “the later cult in Israel was not actualizing in any specially “cultic” way.”[28]

Chenderlin suggests at least four kinds of cultic actualization may be supported by appeals to the biblical witness: (1) a “merely experiential” form, whereby humans are reminded of God’s power, previous involvement, and promises, and these are made relevant to a contemporary situation; (2) a “faithengaging” form, whereby God is reminded of his previous covenant promises, and implored to implement here and now his commitment to save; (3) a “faithproducing” form, namely the neo-orthodox concept of the Divine enkindling of faith, “which thereby manifests in its very being the saving power the text proclaims”; (4) a “reality-producing” form, which further engages and specifies the content of salvation, “recognizing that we are speaking here of realities other than that of any ontological reality faith itself might be seen to constitute.”[29]

The main point of interest here is that Chenderlin found it necessary to affirm a view of “memorial” both as actualization and as a “pointer” to God. Thus, these two positions may not represent competing options but may rather be complementary perspectives on the single, multi-faceted reality of the biblical concept of “memorial.”

Future Directions in a Mennonite Theology of the Lord’s Supper

What conclusions may be drawn about the significance of post-biblical traditions for understanding the Lord’s Supper?

To begin, the controversial notion of the Supper being a “sacrifice” will deserve another look by Anabaptist theologians, when seen in light of Hoffman’s view of the Supper functioning as a “pointer” to Jesus Christ. According to his notion of liturgical pointers, it would be entirely appropriate to speak of the elements of the bread and wine “re-presenting” the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to God, with a view to reminding God of his own essentially merciful nature, and beseeching that the mercy publicized in Jesus’ sacrificial death be made effective in the here and now. This would in no sense constitute a repeated sacrifice — Christ’s death was once and for all. But it would constitute a memorial to that sacrifice, which is seen to have an important role in the personal approach of the believer to God, at the very least by providing a request to which God desires and is able to respond.

In addition, the notion of the “real presence” of Christ in the Supper will require further reflection. Scholarly opinion is admittedly not unanimous in supporting Thurian’s equation of the biblical concept of memorial with “actualization” or “re-presentation.” Even for scholars who grant the validity of actualization in explicating the biblical concept, questions may remain about what it was the memorial actualized — a past event, an encounter with God, the promise of salvation, or something else.

Nevertheless, the possibility that the Lord’s Supper “re-presents the presence of the risen Christ in the church” cannot be definitively excluded. If the symbolism of the Supper is seen to represent both Jesus Christ and the prayerful yearning of the congregation for union with its Lord (along lines alluded to in the “bread of heaven” discourse in John 6); and if, as Chenderlin states, a central feature of “memorial” in both the OT and the NT is a personal approach to God[30] ; and if the memorial of the Supper is a memorial to the living Lord and not a dead hero, it becomes very unclear why one would not speak of encountering Christ in the Supper. At the very least, the phrase “Do this in memorial of me” may not be understood to preclude the possibility of such a presence. Furthermore, once one affirms an encounter with Christ in the Supper, the questions of the nature of this presence and the relationship of this presence to the elements of the Supper are unavoidably raised. Does the resurrected Christ retain his humanity, and if so, can it ever be spoken of as separated from his divinity? If not, one must then affirm that any encounters with Christ in the Supper are an experience of the whole Christ, human and divine. Is it then possible to speak of Christ’s glorified but still human flesh and blood being present in the Supper?

Future Directions in the Role of Tradition in Mennonite Scholarship

I affirm both the value of disciplined theological reflection and the necessity of this reflection to move, both linguistically and cognitively, beyond the content of the biblical texts themselves while remaining rooted in and accountable to them. This is what I believe the majority of authors within the history of the Christian “tradition” have sought to do, and it behooves us as Anabaptist- Mennonite scholars to become much more familiar with the avenues of questioning they have pursued. However, this affirmation raises the issue of distinguishing between faithful and unfaithful forms of tradition.

In discussing the reversal of opinion within the Christian church on the issue of violence around the time of Constantine, Yoder had this to say about identifying faithful tradition:

A change has taken place which must be described as a reversal rather than an organic development. This case shows that when the issue is whether change has been faithful or unfaithful, then the reason the reformers challenge some usage or idea is not that it is not in the Scriptures, but that it is counter to the Scriptures; not that it is an ancient idea insufficiently validated by ancient texts, but that it is a later introduction invalidated by its contradicting the ancient message.[31]

In the instance examined in this paper, it appears as though that strand of Mennonite eucharistic theology which has understood “memorial” solely in terms of its horizontal aspect represents just such a later introduction, one that is invalidated by its contradicting an ancient biblical message. In this case, it seems that the “tradition” has preserved important biblical insights about the role of Jesus’ self-instituted memorial for the community of faith.

But if the tradition of the church can sometimes function to preserve, rather than obfuscate, important biblical perspectives, how are we as Anabaptists to understand the role of tradition in our theological reflection? Karlstadt’s view represents a denial of the Bible’s own witness to ongoing revelation, and as such is inadequate. The WCC proposal is good as far as it goes, but fails to define criteria for distinguishing between faithful and unfaithful tradition. What of the Tridentine two source theory of revelation? Does the retention, in this particular case, of a version of the biblical understanding of memorial in the church’s liturgy lend credence to the notion of a repository of orally-transmitted truths within the “apostolic” churches?

To this I would say no. However, I wonder whether there is not a need to take the reality of ecclesial cultures and traditions much more seriously, and the undocumented “information” such cultures and traditions may carry.

In the present case, it is widely acknowledged that the lex credendi of eucharistic theology was determined by the lex orandi of the liturgy, itself shaped by patterns of thought and worship inherited from Jewish and Hellenistic sources. Of course, the biblical materials themselves are the product of tradition, but perhaps in this instance the liturgy of the church retained a sense of the significance of the Lord’s Supper which only now has become available to the tools of contemporary biblical scholarship.

Conclusions

I would largely affirm Yoder’s grapevine “root and branch” model as an
appropriately Anabaptist approach to tradition. It preserves the Anabaptist
concern to be “a biblical people” without rejecting the possibility either of ongoing revelation or that ecclesial cultures may preserve important biblical perspectives by means of their accumulated traditions.

Consequently, what is required in the future of Anabaptist-Mennonite
scholarship is a self-conscious commitment to seek to integrate the resources of our own, and other, Christian traditions in our contemporary theological reflection. To some extent, this may require a shift from fundamental suspicion of non-Anabaptist ecclesial traditions to openness — perhaps even an openness limned with optimism. Such an openness requires a commitment to becoming thoroughly familiar with the resources which have been handed down to us, both within and outside of our particular movement. If space permitted, it would be fascinating to explore here the potential for fruitful interaction between the writings of sixteenth-century Anabaptists whose works point to something beyond a strictly “memorialist” understanding of the Supper, and those within the Roman Catholic Church who wrote of a “real presence” from within the symbolist stream of eucharistic theology. In these and other areas, only if we are familiar with the accumulated theology and liturgy of our own and other Christian communions shall we be able to gauge which branches
of tradition need to be pruned, and which ones may be left as faithful, organic developments from the root of Scripture.

Notes

[1] Günther Gassmann, ed., Documentary History of Faith and Order: 1963-1993 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993), 11.
[2] Ibid., 13-14.
[3] Ibid., 16.
[4] Ibid., 11.
[5] John H. Yoder, “The Authority of Tradition,” in The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 67.
[6] Ibid., 69.
[7] John Rempel, in The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism (Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 1993), has provided a relatively detailed review of contemporary Mennonite articulations of the significance of the Lord’s Supper; see esp. 205-209.
[8] Harold S. Bender, and C. Henry Smith, ed., Mennonite Encyclopedia, vol. I (Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1955), 651.
[9] General Conference Mennonite Church, and Mennonite Church, Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (Waterloo, ON/Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995), 50.
[10] Paul Bradshaw, “Anamnesis in Modern Eucharistic Debate,” in Michael A. Signer, ed., Memory and History in Christianity and Judaism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 73.
[11] Theodor Gaster, Passover: Its History and Traditions (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1962), 63. For the original see Mishnah, Pesah 10.5.
[12] Max Thurian, “The eucharistic memorial, sacrifice of praise and supplication,” in Max Thurian, ed., Ecumenical Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1983), 91.
[13] Brevard S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel (London: SCM Press, 1962), 74.
[14] Childs, 74-5.
[15] Robert L. Brawley, “Anamnesis and Absence in the Lord’s Supper,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 20 (Winter 1990): 140-41.
[16] Markus Barth, Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1988).
[17] Ray C. Jones, “The Lord’s Supper and the Concept of Anamnesis,” Word and World 6.4 (1986): 441; R. T. Beckwith, “The Jewish Background to Christian Worship,” in Cheslyn Jones et al., ed., The Study of Liturgy (London: Oxford University Press, 1992), 77; Fritz Chenderlin, “Do This As My Memorial” (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1982), 185; Richard J. Ginn, The Present and the Past (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1989), 24.
[18] Chenderlin, 121; Ray C. Jones, 435; and Robert A. D. Clancy, “The Old Testament Roots of Remembrance in the Lord’s Supper,” Concordia Journal 19 (January 1993): 37.
[19] Lawrence A. Hoffman, “Does God Remember? A Liturgical Theology of Memory,” in Michael A. Signer, ed., Memory and History in Christianity and Judaism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 42.
[20]Ibid., 53.
[21]Ibid., 66.
[22] Chenderlin, “Do This As My Memorial,” 116.
[23] Ibid., 71. 
[24] Ibid., 198. 
[25] Ibid., 240. 
[26] Ibid., 248. 
[27] Ibid., 261. 
[28] Ibid., 248.
[29] Ibid., 252. (For both of the immediately preceding quotations.)
[30] Ibid., 92.
[31] Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, 76.

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

Mennonites, Gender, and the Bible in the 1920s and ’30s

Jennifer Graber

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003)

Halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, Vinora Weaver and Vesta Zook threw their bonnets overboard.[1] The two young women were sailing for Turkey, where they would join the burgeoning ranks of Mennonites serving as overseas missionaries. Their new opportunity exemplified the social and religious changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that brought Mennonite women into new spheres of church activity.[2] Women taught in Sunday schools, and enrolled in higher education; they became missionaries, and started women’s groups to raise funds for overseas relief. In the Mennonite world, as in the rest of American religious life, such challenges to traditional women’s work did not come without community disruption. Eventually, these gender matters would come to a head in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s and ’30s.[3]

During this time of religious conflict, Mennonites relied on the Bible to guide their response to women’s new activities.[4] Articles in the denomination’s official paper, Gospel Herald, reveal that Mennonites labored to maintain their concept of biblical authority amidst an onslaught of ideas about gender from the wider American debate.[5] The Mennonites’ biblicism did not result in a systematic notion of the proper role of women, but articles in the Herald on topics ranging from plain dress and motherhood to Bible heroines illustrate how they oriented their debate about gender around their understanding of the Bible’s normative demands.

While Mennonites responded to changing gender norms, they certainly noted the rising tide of Fundamentalist speech against women’s expanding role in religious and cultural life.[6] Fundamentalists sought to strengthen the church by calling men back to powerful leadership, and by questioning women’s ability and authority to move beyond the duties ascribed to them in the Victorian cult of domesticity.[7] Mennonites did not share the Fundamentalists’ ideological position on women. But the Herald printed some articles from conservative Protestant sources on motherhood and fashion, at least partly because these sources invoked an emphasis on scripture which the Herald editors appreciated.

While Mennonites were significantly influenced by conservative Protestants, they also encountered liberal ideas on gender. Protestant liberals justified their call for women’s full participation in society based on thematic readings of the Bible that focused on Jesus’ relationship with women in the Gospels and strong female characters throughout scripture.[8] Mennonites writing in the Herald sometimes sympathized with this liberal notion of biblical womanhood. However, these writers never went so far as to argue for women’s authority to preach, because of Pauline injunctions against women’s leadership.

Mennonites faced many religious and cultural challenges in the 1920s and ’30s. Editors and readers of Gospel Herald debated the issues, including the question of proper gender norms. Articles on gender in the Herald served two purposes: (1) Mennonites positioned themselves in relation to changing gender ideals in American Protestantism, and (2) Mennonites dealt with more immediate community problems, including some women’s rejection of the bonnet. Mennonites dictated plain dress to support community nonconformity, not because modern fashions posed a danger to men. They imagined motherhood as a special role of Christian nurture, with mothers of the Bible serving as the ultimate models; and they posited Christian womanhood as a possibility for heroic and faithful action by Mennonite women — as long as it did not call for the unscriptural practice of a woman’s speaking in church. In the end, Mennonites circumvented the ideological positions on gender typified in Fundamentalist ire and Modernist emancipation. But the articles in the Herald also betray how difficult and messy a community’s search for strict biblicism in gender concerns could be.

The Conservative Influence: Mennonites on Motherhood and Fashion

The Herald of this period featured several articles on motherhood and fashion that seemed to embrace the Fundamentalist’s concern with reestablishing Victorian gender norms.[9] Mennonite writers and contributors borrowed many of these articles from outside sources, including conservative Protestant magazines and secular newspapers. Only a small number of articles appeared, and the editors placed them on the “Family Circle” page, not on pages dedicated to doctrine and church news. This placement seems directed at women readers and detracts from the paper’s more egalitarian comments on dress found on other pages.

Changes in the early twentieth century threatened to upset the idea of the woman as the “angel in the home.” In response, Fundamentalists argued that a mother should use her education to bring up righteous children, lead her husband to faith, and suffer like Christ for the sake of her family.[10] Mennonites followed Fundamentalists in their effort to defend Victorian notions of motherhood.

Articles on motherhood in the Herald may come as a shock to the modern reader. A survey of them might lead to the strange conclusion that Mennonites believed there was no better mother than a dead mother. During the period of study, articles on motherhood appeared in more than ten percent of the issues, with an overwhelming number of them on those departed. Predominant were articles containing popular Victorian language praising a dead mother’s self-sacrifice, saving qualities, and religious influence.[11] A submission by John D. Burkholder from Harrisonburg exemplified this sentimental turn: “It was mother who nursed me in my infancy, mother who guided me in my youth, and it was mother who gave me safe counsel as I was growing old. It was mother’s hallowed influence that guided me into the safest paths, and it was her influence that called to me when I went astray.”[12]

The Herald also featured many articles on a mother’s physical and spiritual sacrifices for her children. While most articles depicted the daily sacrifices required to raise children, some carried the physical sacrifice even further. In one Herald piece reprinted from the Protestant interdenominational magazine, Illustrator, a mother burns her arms in an effort to save her baby from a crib on fire.[13] Answering her daughter’s question about the incident, she replies, “In rescuing you from the flames I was burned, as you see. I carry these scars because I loved you.”[14]

Although Mennonites participated fully in the sentimental language about mothers available in Protestant culture, they also added biblical content to their understanding of motherhood.[15] Mennonites writing for the Herald extolled the bravery of Moses’ mother, Hannah’s prayers for Samuel, Lydia’s faithful household, and Mary’s ideal motherhood as examples for all women.[16] Mennonite authors also focused on the duties of children to honor their Christian mothers. Although these articles touched on the biblical command to obey parents, they strongly reflected popular language about respecting a mother’s sacrifice. From Detroit, Anna Smucker wrote of a child’s duty, “Never forget where your mother lost her freshness and youthful beauty — it was in self-denying toil and suffering for your sake.”[17]

The Herald also printed stories about flappers and fashion that signal a conservative Protestant influence. Fundamentalism’s ascendancy coincided exactly with the emergence of the flapper, the dangerous young woman who smoked, drank, and led men down the path to perdition.[18] To respond to her threat, Fundamentalists labeled her immoral and a sign of the end times.[19] Although Mennonites did not spill as much ink as Fundamentalists on the subject, the presence of articles on the flapper and her fashions denotes the community’s concern over these women who crossed gender boundaries and followed fashion’s dictates. Like the articles on motherhood, writings on flappers and fashion appeared on the Herald’s “Family Circle” page, most likely directed to women readers.

Herald editors included several articles that decried the flapper’s propensity for breaking down necessary social distinctions. In an article reprinted from the Mennonite Brethren in Christ’s Gospel Banner, the writer called for long hair because “purity and morality can never be maintained except there be a distinct line of demarcation between the sexes.”[20] Not only did the sexes need to be distinct, dress should denote a person’s character. Herald editors included a newspaper article on dress reform efforts in New York City that stated the ultimate problem: “There was a time when the bad woman could be told from the good woman by her dress. For the last few years this distinction has been made impossible because sweet, pure girls have thoughtlessly adopted the same dress as the woman of the streets.”[21] For Mennonites, modern dress posed a danger to a community’s ability to rely on dress as a marker of an inner reality.

Fashion, flappers, and Victorian mothering ideals featured prominently on the Herald’s “Family Circle” page throughout the period of Fundamentalist- Modernist debates. Yet the number of articles on fashion and flappers paled in comparison to the number about plain dress and nonconformity on other Herald pages. But when confronted with changing ideals about motherhood and fashion in wider culture, Mennonites borrowed articles from other sources more often than they produced their own. It is clear from the ongoing presence of these articles that many contributors and readers found these conservative ideas compelling.

The Liberal Influence — Mennonites on Womanhood

While Mennonites continued printing articles that borrowed from conservative sources, they also began featuring original articles based on a more liberal idea of Christian womanhood. Protestant liberals shirked traditional readings of the Bible, which determined gender roles according to Paul’s epistles. Instead, they looked to female characters in the Bible and Jesus’ interaction with women to support their claims for women’s emancipation.[22] Mennonites in the Herald never called for women’s preaching or leadership, for that would contradict their sense of scripture. Yet, these writers, most of whom were women, did develop a concept of biblical womanhood that reflected more liberal claims and determined women’s worth apart from their relationship with men.

As early as 1920, Mennonite women wrote reflections for the Herald on the positive contribution of biblical women. Some pointed to the women called by Jesus. Margaret Johns wrote, “When Jesus was upon the earth He recognized woman as a being capable of good works and large enough to live that fullness of life which He alone can supply.”[23] Contributors called Mennonite women to model biblical characters, including Mary and Martha, Hannah and Miriam, Dorcas and Priscilla.[24] The Herald also offered numerous Bible studies and Sunday School lessons on the lives of women in the Bible, including Deborah, Esther, Ruth, Hannah, and Martha.[25]

In the end, Herald editors printed articles that hinted at liberal uses of
Scripture under two conditions: that they avoid claims to woman’s authority to lead, and that more traditional claims about womanhood provide a balance to this liberal understanding. At the same time, these articles on womanhood undoubtedly met a wider readership, as they were not limited to the “Family Circle” page. Editors evenly spread them between the family page, Sunday School lessons, and other church news. Some even appeared in the Herald’s most prominent section, the “Doctrinal Page.” These articles on womanhood, like those on motherhood and fashion, complicate our understanding of how Mennonites used the Bible to determine proper gender roles and how wider cultural disputes influenced the Mennonite debate.

Distinctive Mennonite Concerns: Plain Dress and Coverings

The Herald included many articles on gender that borrowed ideas, if not actual words, from both Fundamentalists and Modernist sources. But readers encountered a far greater number of pieces that touched on the distinctive concerns of the Mennonite community and revealed a form of biblicism unknown to their Protestant peers. These articles appeared primarily on the Herald’s prominent “Doctrinal Page.” There, Mennonite writers argued that nonconformity and biblical authority demanded that both women and men dress modestly and that women observe the New Testament ordinance of the devotional head covering. In these articles Mennonites displayed what historian Theron Schlabach has called their different set of fundamentals, a strict biblicism embodied in a nonconformed community.[26]

“Dress is the most talked about subject in existence,” wrote Herald editors in 1925.[27] A survey of articles shows that, among Mennonites at least, this truly was the case. Herald articles reflect that Mennonites understood how their commitment to distinct dress was unpopular with Christians on both sides. Debates in Fundamentalist magazines and the secular press focused on the immorality of women’s dress and its ill effects on society. This danger was an afterthought for Mennonites. Writers in the Herald asserted that a biblical standard of dress for both men and women measured each member’s willingness to live within a biblical, nonconformed community.

Herald articles consistently affirmed a biblical mandate for plain dress. Some writers touched on God’s creation of clothing and how dress signaled a relationship to the Lord in the Old Testament.[28] Numerous articles emphasized New Testament restrictions and instructions for dress.[29] Others showed how the Bible stood firm against ornaments and fashion.[30] An article on the “Bible Principles of Attire” made the choice between Bible and the world quite clear: “The people of the world think we are foolish to dress as we do. We think that the people of the world are foolish to dress as they do. Which is right? If the Bible is right, then we are right.”[31]

In the Herald, Mennonites stressed biblical standards of dress for all because the entire community’s nonconformity was at stake. Mennonite revivalist George R. Brunk defended the practice of plain dress in a questionand- answer article. He asked, “What is the use of so persistently advocating dress regulation when nearly all the professed Christian world ignores it?” His answer: “For the same reason that we testify against war, secretism, life insurance, etc., because the unpopularity of a subject does not release [us] from our obligation to ‘declare all the counsel of God.’”[32] Some Herald writers reminded readers that dress regulation and nonconformity were not limited by gender. Alice Miller of Orrville, Ohio recalled a sermon on dress, directed at sisters, in which the preacher claimed that the “Bible doesn’t say much to men.”[33] In response, Miller called all Mennonites to nonconformity and challenged men to let their clothing identify them. “Brother, if you want men to know you are in business for your King, why not put on a uniform to show to the world, what your life work is?”[34]

Mennonites also displayed a distinctive approach to biblical authority in their discussion of the devotional covering, or prayer veil. Earlier in the century, Herald editor Daniel Kauffman listed the covering among the biblical ordinances necessary for right church practice.[35] As a result, most of the dialogue in the Herald focused on the biblical foundation for women’s head covering. In one of several columns on this subject Herald editors gave the standard reason for the practice: “The believing Christian woman should wear a devotional covering because it is plainly commanded in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16.”[36] Contributors to the Herald wrote about how the covering manifested certain claims of scripture, particularly nonconformity and the order of creation. Some writers extolled it as a sign of “separation from the world” and of being a “peculiar people.”[37] Others determined that the covering ordinance required plain headgear, not a fashionable bonnet. A few writers focused on the order of creation found in 1 Corinthians.[38] Articles appearing repeatedly in the Herald reinforced the affirmation of women’s veiling as a biblical ordinance and sign of distinctiveness.

Herald articles on plain dress and coverings reflected a particular biblicism that set Mennonites apart from the wider American religious scene. Both liberal and conservative Protestants overlooked the mandate for coverings found in 1 Corinthians, and conservatives applied dress standards only to women. While Mennonites could abide some conservative and liberal thought on motherhood, fashion, and womanhood, they had to establish their own position on dress in order to maintain the biblical posture that made them distinctive and expressed their commitment to nonconformity.

Conclusion

In the 1920s and ’30s, conservative Protestants agonized about flappers who flirted and smoked. Liberals worried that church and society wrongly restricted women’s God-given gifts. But Mennonites had much more limited concerns: young women were throwing their bonnets overboard, and that act defied Mennonites’ understanding of themselves as biblical, nonconformed people. Articles on gender in the Herald offer a helpful vantage point for considering several questions about the Mennonite experience in the twentieth century.

First, it was difficult, yet possible, for Mennonites to maintain their particular form of biblicism in the midst of heated debates about the Bible’s inspiration and authority. As the Herald articles on gender show, Mennonites allowed for some encroaching ideas, mostly from the Fundamentalist side. But the vast majority of these articles affirmed a particular Mennonite hermeneutic.

Second, the Herald articles provide clues to how Mennonites dealt with changes in the lives of real women. In the 1920s and ’30s, Mennonite women increased their participation in higher education and church publishing.[39] But in other areas, church leaders began to restrict women’s activities, particularly in the case of single, women missionaries and women’s groups raising funds for them; leaders referenced 1 Corinthians as they curtailed women’s activities that crossed the line.[40] Mennonites lacked the particular gender ideologies of their conservative and liberal Protestant peers. The issue for them was not to push all women back into the home or out into public life.[41] Instead, they measured every activity against their sense of biblical authority and nonconformity.

Third, an analysis of the Mennonite response to gender questions in the midst of the religious conflicts of the period can shed light on other periods of conflict.[42] The 1970s and ’80s presented another era of American religious controversy in which gender questions became a flashpoint.[43] It would be interesting to see how Mennonites both borrowed from and resisted rhetorical resources from the wider conflict, and how a Bible-centered reading of gender norms established in the 1920s and ’30s fared throughout the rest of the century.

Finally, the Herald articles show us the dynamics of Mennonite borrowing from outside cultural and religious resources. Mennonites could not avoid questions presented by the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, nor could they escape answers provided by their conservative and liberal peers. In the Herald, we can see that Mennonites were willing to borrow, but they did so selectively and sometimes constructively. They resisted both conservative Protestant ideas about women’s moral incapacity and the liberal assertion that women had the right to preach. They borrowed Victorian ideas about motherhood, but gave them an added biblical content. In the end, the Herald debate shows us that these gender matters in the early twentieth century provoked Mennonites to consider what they were willing to borrow from the outside world and what they needed to produce for themselves. The resulting rhetoric on gender would shape the lives of Mennonite women for decades to come.

Notes

Abbreviations: GH – Gospel Herald; MQR – Mennonite Quarterly Review

[1] Vinora Weaver Salzman, Day by Day – Year by Year (n.p.: James Juhnke, 1982), 26, 17-18; quoted in James Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, War: Mennonite Identity and Organization in America, 1890-1930 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1989), 251.
[2] Sharon Klingelsmith, “Women in the Mennonite Church, 1900-1930,” MQR 54 (July 1980): 163-207.
[3] See Betty DeBerg, Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) and Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
[4] Mennonites in the early twentieth century trusted the Bible “as a guide to salvation and the true knowledge of God,” according to C. Norman Kraus, “American Mennonites and the Bible, 1750-1950,” MQR 41 (October 1967): 316.
[5] “‘Maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ have meant different things to different generations of American Protestants . . . even while the language of gender has provided a remarkable constant framework for understanding the progression from sin to redemption that is the grand narrative of Protestant experience”: Susan Juster, “The Spirit and the Flesh: Gender, Language, and Sexuality in American Protestantism,” in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 335.
[6] Although Fundamentalists and Modernists were subsets with the larger groups of conservative and liberal Protestants, I use the terms “Fundamentalist” and “conservative” interchangeably. I do the same with “Modernist” and “liberal.”
[7] See DeBerg, Ungodly Women. See critique of DeBerg by Michael S. Hamilton, “Women, Public Ministry, and American Fundamentalism, 1920-1950,” Religion and American Culture 3 (Summer 1993): 171-96.
[8] Carolyn De Swarte Gifford, “American Women and the Bible: The Nature of Woman as a Hermeneutical Issue,” in Feminist Perspectives in Biblical Scholarship, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), 11; Kathi Kern, Mrs. Stanton’s Bible (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 78-82.
[9] DeBerg, Ungodly Women, 13-58.
[10] Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 129-32.
[11] Ibid.
[12] John D. Burkholder, “It was Mother,” GH 28, no. 7 (May 16, 1935): 150.
[13] The group that also published the popular International Sunday School Lessons series out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania printed the Illustrator.
[14] “This Is My Blood,” GH 13, no. 6 (May 6, 1919): 122.
[15] My preliminary research shows that Mennonites writing on motherhood differed from Fundamentalists in this respect.
[16] Salena Wade Miller, “A Mother’s Responsibility to her Daughter: How Win her Confidence,” GH 12, no. 5 (May 1, 1919): 78; Ruth Rohrer, “Mother in the Home,” GH 15, no. 2 (April 13, 1922): 38; Anna Loucks, “The Ideal Christian — In the Home,” GH 20, no. 5 (May 5, 1927): 99; Anna Smucker, “An Ideal Mother,” GH 26, no. 11 (June 15, 1933): 230.
[17] Anna Smucker, “An Ideal Mother,” 230.
[18] DeBerg, Ungodly Women, 117.
[19] Ibid., 123.
[20] “Who Started this Hair Bobbing?,” GH 28, no. 42 (January 16, 1936): 886. Herald editors printed this piece, submitted “by a sister in Parnell, Iowa,” with this editorial note: “It will be seen that the writer is not antagonistic to the fashions of this world, but objects to prevailing styles because of their indecency. Those who have made the matter a study will find in this an added reason for opposing fashion domination among Christian people.”
[21] Wallace Farmer, “Indecency in Dress,” GH 12, no. 9 (May 29, 1919): 155.
[22] Jennifer Graber, “The Life of Jesus as Critical Norm in Nineteenth Century Women’s Literature of Christian Protest,” 1998; author’s copy.
[23] Margaret Johns, “Women of the Bible and of Today — In the Church,” GH 15, no. 23 (September 7, 1922): 442.
[24] Sadie Brubaker, “How About Martha and Mary?” GH 16, no. 14 (July 5, 1923): 278; John L. Horst, “Meditations on Ruth’s Decision,” GH 18, no. 22 (August 27, 1925): 142; Martha E. Hostetler, “The Place of the Christian Woman in the Church,” GH 24, no. 43 (January 21, 1932): 918; Minerva Kauffman, “Mary,” GH 26, no. 4 (April 27, 1933): 86; D. E. Cripe, “Naomi,” GH 26, no. 29 (October 19, 1933): 614.
[25] “Esther Saves her People,” GH 15, no. 18 (August 3, 1922): 343; “Deborah,” GH 26, no. 14 (July 6, 1933): 279; “Ruth,” GH 26, no. 17 (July 27, 1933): 359; “Hannah,” GH 26, no. 18 (August 3, 1933): 375; “Martha,” GH 28, no. 19 (August 8, 1935): 423.
[26] Theron F. Schlabach, Gospel Versus Gospel: Mission and the Mennonite Church, 1863-1944 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1980), 114-15.
[27] “Present Day Issues and How to Meet Them,” GH 18, no. 2 (April 9, 1925): 33.
[28] E. J. Berkey, “Bible Teaching on Dress,” GH 16, no. 28 (October 11, 1923): 576.
[29] See Susie Hess, “Why Modest Apparel is Fitting with the Christian Spirit,” GH 15, no. 6 (June 11, 1922): 123; E. J. Berkey, “Bible Teaching on Dress,” GH 16, no. 28 (October 11, 1923): 576; J. B. Gehman, “Bible Principles of Attire,” GH 26, no. 47 (February 18, 1932): 1010; T. E. Schrock, “Standards of the Word on Dress — Suggestions on How These May Be Maintained,” Gospel Herald — Christian Doctrine (July 18, 1935): 358; and P. Hostetler, “The Dress Question Analyzed,” GH 28, no. 30 (October 24, 1935): 651.
[30] L. C. Schrock, “Bible Teaching on Dress,” GH 16, no. 20 (Aug 16, 1923): 402-03.
[31] J. B. Gehman, “Bible Principles of Attire,” GH 26, no. 47 (February 18, 1932): 1010.
[32] George R. Brunk, “The Bible and Dress,” GH 12, no. 18 (July 31, 1919): 330.
[33] Alice Miller, “The Dress Question,” GH 30, no. 20 (August 12, 1937): 445.
[34] Ibid., 445.
[35] Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, War, 115-16.
[36] “Scripture Light on Oft-Repeated Inquiries,” GH 18, no. 12 (June 18, 1925): 243; see also D. L. Miller, “The Prayer Veil,” GH 13, no. 3 (April 15, 1920): 50; Ira Landis, “Prayer Head Covering,” Gospel Herald — Christian Doctrine (July 2, 1927): 377; and “Christian Ordinances,” Gospel Herald — Christian Doctrine (October 10, 1935): 610.
[37] “Why the Bonnet?” GH 26, no. 4 (April 27, 1933): 81; see also “Report of Y[oung] P[erson’s] B[ible] Meeting Program on the Devotional Covering — The Questions and Their Answers,” GH 20, no. 16 (July 21, 1927): 384; and S. B. Wenger, “That Beautiful Bonnet,” GH 28, no. 1 (April 4, 1935): 10.
[38] “Our Young People — Devotional Covering,” GH 12, no. 21 (August 21, 1919): 391; John F. Bressler, “The Devotional Covering,” GH 15, no. 29 (October 29, 1922): 562; and “Christian Ordinances,” Gospel Herald — Christian Doctrine (October 10, 1935): 610.
[39] Klingelsmith, 163-207.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Michael Hamilton has shown that conservatives and mainline Protestants did not always stay in step with their rhetoric about gender. Fundamentalists accepted certain kinds of women’s ministries, while the more liberal wing of mainline Protestantism often failed to live up to their speech about women’s emancipation. The disconnect between speech and action is a fruitful source for historical reflection.
[42] See Stephan Ainlay and Fred Kniss, “Mennonites and Conflict: Re-Examining Mennonite History and Contemporary Life,” MQR 72 (April 1998): 121-39 and Fred Kniss, Disquiet in the Land: Cultural Conflict in American Mennonite Communities (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
[43] DeBerg argues that Fundamentalists in the 1970s and ’80s inherited their language about gender from arguments created during the Fundamentalist-Modernist debates. See DeBerg, Ungodly Women, 153.

hared witness to the way of peace.

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

Does the Ballot Box Lie Outside the Perfection of Christ?

David Kratz Mathies

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003)

Three typical ways of resolving conflicts in this world include negotiation, violence, and voting. Now, granted that voting is actually a form of negotiated settlement, I think it has certain aspects about it that warrant separate treatment. Notice that violence, and especially killing, is the ultimate way of privileging one’s own values. Negotiation, by contrast, may often take the other’s views into account to varying degrees. Negotiation offers a wide range of possibilities, much of which involves coercive power, or at least advantaged positions.

Voting is a relatively peaceful form of conflict resolution, but as the 2000 and 2002 American elections make clear, voting is still about resolving conflicts, or at least deciding between conflictual partners. For, as we have often heard, reasonable people differ. And they differ first and foremost about their vision of the ideal world and how we ought best to get there. So to participate in an election, in a modern, stable democracy, is to take part in a (relatively peaceful) power struggle to define a nation’s vision and path for getting there.

But I should like to make three points before I turn again to voting. First, while violence privileges one’s own values, standing aside likewise privileges the values of the violent. This is important to consider if we have values of our own that we wish to advance in the public marketplace of ideas or a vision of the world that we wish to further. Second, I do not wish to imply that I am advocating relativism. On the contrary, I think it is entirely possible and advisable to accept the fact of pluralism, respecting and appreciating our differences, while remaining committed to our values in a way that is both humbly open to reconsideration and intelligently opposed to the notion that all values are equally matters of taste.

Third, when conflict leads to violence, especially in the form of war, it is invariably the winners who think they have justice and indeed just cause on their side, believing that they are being responsible in their actions. Invariably, both sides of any conflict think this to be the case, the winners as well as the losers. Newsweek recently reported that Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, has a plaque on his desk that reads, “Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.” One astute reader responded, “Maybe Osama bin Laden has the same plaque on his desk. Some sport!”[1] It ought to be troubling to anyone that both sides of any war think their actions justifiable, and more than likely, if they are religious, that God is on their side. If nothing else, this should give us universal grounds for a prima facie bias against violence and war.

But it is to voting that I will now turn. Does the ballot box lie outside the perfection of Christ? This is not a question Mennonites ask themselves. Apart from no longer thinking in terms of “the perfection of Christ,” participation in republican government has become an assumed practice of the modern [American] Mennonite. Yet this is a very important question for us to be asking at this juncture in Mennonite history.

Four modern trends make this discussion timely: humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, democracy, integration of Mennonites into surrounding society, and non-ethnic Mennonites with increasingly diverse cultural (and religious) background understandings. The first two of these have done much to erode our traditional position on peace and government respectively. Divided on the role of government, the more optimistic of us think the state can have real Christian values, supporting human rights and opposing the death penalty. The pessimists think the state is not to be “Christian” at all but rather a realistic force in the world, and therefore they do not criticize the state for employing lethal force in international affairs, even to advance narrowly nationalistic interests or to enforce the law locally by employing capital punishment. These pessimists we can identify with “Two Kingdom” ethics, most notably of the Schleitheim Confession of 1527; the optimists advocate a more universal understanding of ethics, both public and private.

Probably the most important text for defining the Anabaptist understanding of God’s will in the world, at least with regard to violence and the state, is the Schleitheim Confession. The author Michael Sattler and those who met with him believed that the witness and model of Christ Jesus, as attested to in Scripture, called them to a different way of understanding the world and a different way of relating to others. This revolutionary way of being in the world involved setting aside violence as a means of relating to others or settling disputes. They went so far in following Jesus’ admonitions that they would not take others to court, since that involves an adversarial coercion in asserting one’s own will.

Still, wanting to be faithful to the full biblical record, they attempted to find a way to accommodate the seemingly contradictory witness of passages such as Romans 13, where Paul’s admonitions include the apparent claim that God intends the government to employ violence on behalf of justice. Article Six of the Confession thus reads, “The sword is an ordering of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and kills the wicked, and guards and protects the good. In the law the sword is established over the wicked for punishment and for death, and the secular rulers are established to wield the same.” On the issue of Christians being rulers, the Confession makes clear that Christ was asked to rule as king, but fled instead and taught his disciples to follow his example. It adds, “the rule of the government is according to the flesh, that of the Christians according to the spirit.”[2] This neatly divides Anabaptist ethical understandings into two kingdoms — the state, and the reign of God as exemplified by the community of believers.

In the history that followed, a contrast has often been made between effectiveness and obedience. What deeply troubles me is what the emphasis on effectiveness inevitably does to diminish the gospel of peace, and what the reality of obedience has historically (and quite ironically) meant for the compounding of injustice in the world. According to one sociological study of Mennonites published in 1994, “As political participation rises, support plummets for nonresistance, for peacemaking, and for activism.”[3] So much for effectiveness. As for obedience, an earlier study found that “although 87% of MC members believe a Christian should take no part in war, only 50% denied that the Vietnam War was necessary. . . .”[4] Presumably, their separatist understanding led far fewer than that to actually oppose the war in any way other than performing alternative service. Again in the 1994 study, the authors found that Mennonites of all denominations, in both Canada and the United States, vote overwhelmingly conservative.

Again, reasonable persons will (and obviously do) differ on the propriety of this [pattern], but for our purposes we could benefit from an examination of what it means concretely. In the United States, it means a majority of Mennonites vote for the Republican Party. The platform most commonly advanced by Republican candidates has normally included (or even emphasized) support for the death penalty and a strong military, in addition to various pro-business policies and a bias towards tax cuts for the wealthiest 20 percent of the population. Republican candidates also tend to have a poor record in enacting or enforcing environmental protections. Picking out just the issue of the death penalty, it troubles me that the secular humanist organization Amnesty International has done more than the aggregate body of voting Mennonites to oppose the gross injustice of the death penalty as it is applied in the United States.

Yet, on the face of it, this voting record is entirely in keeping with the Two Kingdom understanding from Schleitheim forward. Those governing are obliged by the necessity of ordering the fallen world to employ weapons to defend and penalties to punish. It seems, however, that both sides of the Mennonite response run the real and manifest risk of losing our witness to the gospel of peace in relativism and irrelevance. As we emphasize effectiveness, the witness is lost in the realism of Just War arguments; and as we emphasize personal obedience, that either eschews or does not impinge upon our political involvement, that obedience becomes just one more personal choice in a world where freedom of choice is more important than substance of choice. If your ethics are not applicable to my world, why should I listen? Or worse: If even you don’t apply your ethics to the world (except in your personal life), you are contributing to the relativism that fails to take ethics seriously as an obligation rather than a lifestyle choice.

By way of comparison, consider the Jains of India. The strictest observers take their principle of “ahimsa” or non-harming to an extreme that does not merely prohibit violence against people but adheres to such a strict vegetarianism that they will not personally farm because of the violence done to the worms, the plants, and the soil itself. They sweep the ground in front of them, wear masks to avoid accidental inhalation of insects, and do not boil their own water because of the microbes they would be killing. Yet, they seem to have no theoretical difficulty with someone else doing these things for them. They will drink the boiled water and eat the farmed produce. These things do not hinder the spiritual purity — in their terms, the clarity of their karma — that they need for their eventual release from this world of suffering. The question, of course, for ourselves, is whether our Jesus ethic is merely a personal way of keeping our hands clean for our own salvation. If not, then why do we not apply our nonviolence more directly to our engagement with the world?

Recall the argument of Schleitheim: Though violence is necessary for the state to maintain order and enact justice, our personal faith understanding of how God wants us to relate to one another prevents us from participating in that necessary violence. This reasoning has kept all but a very small number of Mennonites from holding political office — and most of those have not remained in the church because of that decision.[5] What seems less clear is the relation between voting and the actions of officeholders elected by the ballot, despite the prominent rhetoric of “government by the people.” The sentiment quoted by John Roth in Choosing Against War seems now to be exceedingly rare: “‘One of the responsibilities of the president is to serve as commander in chief of the Armed Forces,’ one member stated. ‘If I could not in good conscience serve in that position, how can I then cast my vote of support for someone else to serve in my place?’”[6] But for those who hold a strong Two Kingdoms view, this argument should be considered much more compelling than it is normally taken to be.

Restating the argument, we have: (1) Violence is necessary to the just function of government. (2) The example and teaching of Jesus Christ call his followers to a life of nonviolent, loving relations with others in all cases. Or, in other words, Christians cannot participate in violence. (3) Therefore, Christians cannot participate in government. The argument as stated is obviously valid, so to avoid the conclusion one would need to either deny a premise or construct a secondary argument distancing voting from actual participation in the violence of government. I am quite certain that the majority of voting Mennonites who might be bothered by the prospect of participation in government vote on the basis of some unarticulated form of the distancing argument; I am also quite convinced that this is an uncomfortably hypocritical stance to take, making those opposed to personal involvement in violence ultimately complicit in the approval of it.

Taking the other approach of denying a premise, those who wish to privilege effectiveness need only deny that Jesus taught an absolutist nonviolence — or alternatively deny that Jesus’ teachings are normative. Those who wish to privilege obedience need only deny that violence is necessary to justice in this fallen world. My contention is that the traditional Anabaptist interpretation of God’s intent for human relationality as exemplified by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is exactly correct and is universally normative. I therefore deny the first premise — that violence is necessary.

I have, however, one final argument to consider concerning pacifists voting before I continue on to a closing discussion on the notion of responsibility and necessity. As noted above, voting is a form of negotiated settlement. To use a social-contract concept, those voting have a conflict they want resolved (specifically there are various parties competing for an elected office), and they therefore agree to the binding arbitration of a vote. There is a definite element of promise implicit here: if all parties did not agree to be bound by the decision, there would be no point in voting to determine the resolution. This is why, despite much bitterness and rancor, Al Gore and the Democrats conceded the results of the disputed 2000 elections when the process had run its full course. They did not set up their own government and try to implement their vision for the nation. In the same way, one who participates in an election is bound by the results, including the decisions made by those elected, whether the voter cast a ballot for the winner or the loser. For those of us who then anticipate encountering laws we cannot in conscience follow, such as draft registration or war taxes, fundamental issues of integrity should arise.

Returning finally to the question of necessity: the main support for the notion of effectiveness and indeed for all Just War thought is the supposition that violence is sometimes necessary. But this begs the very important question, Necessary for what? This is not the categorical necessity of the laws of physics; it is rather a hypothetical necessity, which we can formulate something like the following: If (that is the hypothetical) you want to be responsible, violence is sometimes necessary. But “responsible” here must be further drawn out: How are we to define responsibility? And can it be defined in a way that both sides will agree to? Any definition given would most likely contain within it the conclusion that the side defining it would like to reach — either accepting violence as an inevitable part of being responsible or excluding violence from the realm of responsible acts.

I want to stress that I agree with the need for our ethic to be effective and aware of consequences. Those who think violence to be necessary privilege their desire for a certain end state of affairs (which might even be a peaceable world). I prefer to privilege the peaceable means. Moreover, we are both confronted with the same empirical data in our world experiences and the history we read. Yet, unlike the naive hermeneutics of Luther’s sola scriptura and the early Anabaptists’ “literal biblicism,” we know that scripture does not interpret itself, nor is it interpreted in a vacuum. And neither do we understand the world apart from the paradigm we bring to it.

The dominant paradigm for understanding the world today tells us unequivocally that violence is effective. We see it happen all the time; it is all throughout our history. A small, but revolutionary voice says that nonviolence can also be effective, from Gandhi’s “satyagraha” to the American civil rights movement.[7] We could go on at length, listing the many ways we can be effective in nonviolent, socially responsible action, from MCC to VORP to Christian Peacemaker Teams, from fair trade marketing to microlending, but it will never be enough to convince the self-identified realist who thinks that there will always be legitimate need for violence as a last resort.

And violence taken is never truly done as the last resort. The problem with the Just War tradition is that the last resort is always interpreted by those who still hold the world’s vision of “necessity” and the violence used itself perpetuates the culture of violence, the system that breeds violence. John Roth is correct to point out that there is nothing distinctly Christian about the Just War criteria.[8] Not only did the roots of the Just War formulation come from the pre-Christian, Latin thinker Cicero, but the Chinese Confucian tradition has historically also recognized a need to limit the use of military force to the minimum necessary for order. Moreover, we have real reasons to question the ultimate effectiveness of violence. J. Denny Weaver reminds us that since the effectiveness of violence depends upon winning, it is effective only half of the time, since both sides presumably intend to be effective at something.[9]

Violence may indeed create better results in certain instances, but the violence we think we need to protect innocents is arguably a symptom of injustice in our society or in the world as a whole. Indeed, we must also take into account the damaging injustice caused by maintaining that standing army and the culture of militarism that is not usually included in the calculation for the single, isolated event. We need to ask how effectiveness is being measured, what other priorities the money spent on military might better serve, and what the long term effects of our governments’ various expedient alliances will be. The bandage approach of applying material resources to remedy injustices is itself highly commendable and effective, but systemic injustices require political and structural remedies of the sort that historically Mennonites have not publicly advocated.

Our Two Kingdom ethics obstructs us from articulating to the rest of the world an alternative vision for living, and we no longer fulfill the role of living that vision in separate communities of withdrawal. If our interpretation of Jesus is correct (both who he was and what he meant), then his ethic is normative for all humanity, not just for those who choose our interpretation. If we take seriously the example of Jesus, the way to catalyze the world’s paradigm shift is to do as Jesus did: to teach repentance, to embody humility, to live love for our neighbor, to speak truth to power, and to overturn temple moneychangers’ tables where necessary. We fail as followers of Jesus unless we articulate an alternative vision for human relations that we can both live out in justice and speak in the halls of power.

Notes

[1] Sept. 30, 2002: 19.
[2] The Legacy of Michael Sattler, trans. and ed. by John H. Yoder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973), 39-40.
[3] Leo Driedger and Donald Kraybill, Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1994), 236. I have omitted the correlation number from the quotation.
[4] J. Howard Kauffman and Leland Harder, Anabaptists Four Centuries Later: A Profile of Five Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Denominations (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1975).
[5] Driedger and Kraybill, 191.
[6] Choosing Against War: A Christian View (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2002), 191.
[7] See for example, Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000).
[8] Roth, Choosing Against War, 49.
[9] “Responding to September 11-October 7 and January 29: Which Religion Shall We Follow?” Conrad Grebel Review 20.2 (2002): 92-93. Weaver here makes an excellent case against the effectiveness of the world’s realism.

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona during the Confessional Age.

Reviewed by Werner O. Packull

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003)

Michael D. Driedger. Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran
Hamburg and Altona during the Confessional Age. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2002.

Michael Driedger’s work concentrates on Mennonites in the Hamburg-Altona region of Germany during the second half of the seventeenth century. These Mennonites had become “ethno-confessional,” consisting “almost entirely” of people born into the “Flemish” Mennonite community of Hamburg-Altona. Since Hamburg was officially Lutheran, Mennonites were barred from participation in its political life and forbidden to build churches. A more tolerant attitude prevailed in the adjacent Danish enclave of Altona. Although here, too, religious non-conformity meant a “precarious legal existence,” the economic contribution of Mennonites was welcome and they were permitted to meet for worship in Altona. Some entered the lucrative whaling market and prospered, controlling for a time 50 per cent of its proceeds. In 1675 the first church was built in Altona. The cemetery which followed suggested a new permanency and, according to Driedger, set a new benchmark in the “institutional history” of the Altona congregation, which by the late seventeenth century claimed a membership of 250 baptized adults. Congregational governance permitted all baptized males to participate in the election of the leadership. Ordained elders performed marriages and baptisms, and presided during the Lord’s Supper.

The book’s second chapter delves into the mid-seventeenth century Dompelaar schism. Seventeen members left the Altona congregation, insisting that baptism should be by immersion, and that the Lord’s Supper be held in the evening with unleavened bread and only after a foot washing ceremony. While attempts to resolve the dispute failed, immersionists eventually underwent a metamorphosis into non-denominational pietists and dissolved.

The third chapter deals with the “confessionalist strategy” of Altona’s church leaders caught in the “war of the lambs” between Zonists and Lambists. The Zonists advocated a stricter confessionalism and had Thielemann Jansz van Braght, compiler of the Martyrs Mirror, on their side. In addition to the Apostolic Creed, van Braght included three confessions approved at the Synod of Leiden, chaired by him, in the Martyrs Mirror. While van Braght insisted on confessional orthodoxy, the eloquent representative of the Lambists, Galenus Abrahamsz de Haan, sought to retain a less dogmatic ethical piety. The Altona church was drawn into the Zonist confessionalist network, thanks in part to its influential preacher, Geeritt Roosen. Nevertheless, Abrahamsz was permitted to preach in the Altona congregation. Driedger implies that confessionalism constituted a qualified accommodation to mainstream trends while permitting the preservation of unique Mennonite identities; hence the numerous Mennonite confessions during the second half of the seventeenth century.

Chapter 4 initiates readers into the growing historiography of confessionalism which Driedger has mastered. He describes the paradigmatic shift from “absolutism” to “confessionalism,” and how this shift broadens the historical investigation to “the linkages between religion, society, politics, economics and culture” (77). Viewed in this larger context, Mennonites maintained religious nonconformity but became increasingly part of the established order, accepting its legal norms, including their own “subordinate position” (81). In this view, “self-directed . . . preemptive social discipline” exercised by the Mennonites served those interested in obedient subjects and in the maintenance of the existing political-social order.

The last three chapters deal with nonresistance, oath swearing, and mixed marriages. Driedger notes that activist peacemaking would have seemed absurd to early modern Mennonites; “non-resistance” remained the ideal, but it was undermined by economics. Mennonite merchants and ship owners required armed protection against pirates. If they did not outfit their own ships with cannons, they accepted the protection of armed convoys. Some were involved in the arms trade (122). Others, like the Roosens, prominent members of the Altona church, had for generations produced gun powder. Thus economics led to strange bedfellows. The issue of oath swearing, personalized by the story of Hans Plus, illustrates additional difficulties. Plus came to the attention of Hamburg’s authorities because he refused to swear the common oath. His case became politicized when the city of Hamburg was accused of harboring Anabaptists. At the trial before Germany’s High Court, Hamburg’s lawyers argued that Mennonites were not Anabaptists (sic!) and that Plus had sworn an alternative oath, “by the truth of men” (Mannen Wahrheit), in a ritual with all the trappings of a normal oath swearing ceremony. The trial petered out when Plus moved to Russia.

Driedger documents that relations between Hamburg’s administrators and Mennonites continued on a relatively cordial trajectory and that increasing tolerance led to increased interaction with outsiders. “Mixed marriages,” initially perceived as a threat to the religious-ethnic purity of the community, increased. Interestingly, the most stubborn resistance against intermarriage came from Mennonite oligarchs primarily interested in protecting family businesses. Leaders who sought to prevent mixed marriages on purely religious grounds faced an increasingly difficult task.

Driedger’s study captures the dynamics of Mennonite interaction within the larger context. His study suggests that collective identity and ethno-religious purity are more likely to be maintained under persecution. Readers will find a mine of information in Obedient Heretics. Appendices provide the names of preachers and deacons, and offer information on marriages, on conversions (in or out), and on discipline administered. Driedger’s book invites discussion and debate. His meticulous scholarship and even-handed interpretation reveal him to be a scholar par excellence. Mennonites are fortunate to have such talent and dedication interested in their history.

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

Crowned With Glory and Honor: Human Rights in the Biblical Tradition.

Reviewed by Wilma Ann Bailey

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003)

Christopher D. Marshall. Crowned With Glory and Honor: Human Rights
in the Biblical Tradition. Telford, PA: Pandora Press US, 2002.

Christopher Marshall begins this 119-page treatise with a brief review of the origins of the idea of human rights from its emergence in eighteenth century Western secularism until its flowering in the twentieth century. Marshall has two abiding interests: (1) to find the ideology that undergirds human rights; (2) to promote an understanding of human rights grounded in community and paired with responsibility.

Marshall notes that the earliest thinking about human rights was primarily concerned about limiting the rights of oppressive governments. Then theorists formulated ideas that focused on positive goods such as a living wage. Later additions included issues related to economic and ecological justice. As rights thinking evolved in the West side-by-side with individualism, much attention began to focus on individual rights. This is problematic for cultures that are community and family oriented. In their view, some ideas about human rights undermine their value systems.

The author believes that the ideological base for human rights is found in the Bible. Human rights ideology, he argues, is grounded in a theology that affirms human beings as created in the image of God. He points to the first article of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which “states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (46). He insists that such a belief is not compatible with religions “that believe human existence is determined by the karma accrued in previous lives, so that people are not born equal in dignity, rights and freedom” (46). Therefore, he concludes that Article 1 reflects an idea that is specifically Christian (and Jewish).

Marshall identifies six themes that set the theological foundation for human rights: Creation, Cultural Mandate, Covenant, Christ, Church, and Consummation (54-115). Humans are created in the image of God as relational beings. They have worth and also responsibilities because they are the representatives of God on earth. Christians have an obligation to care for the environment (ecological rights), not just for the sake of future generations but also because it is God’s creation. Noting that the Apostle Paul was more interested in inner freedom than outer freedom, the author suggests that Christians should, from time to time, voluntarily accept a limitation of their human freedom for the sake of a greater good.

Marshall frequently uses the phrase “right to life,” which currently has the very specific meaning of opposition to abortion. However, he uses it differently in much of the book to oppose capital punishment and mutilation, for example (74-75). At the end of chapter 7, he writes that it is essentially a question of “the rights of the woman versus the rights of the unborn child” (106). He concludes, “An ethos of duty would recast the debate in terms of the relative responsibilities of the parents to the unborn child and the wider community to the parents and the child” (106). The reader is left with the feeling that the “right to life” language was used as a subliminal code to prepare for the punch line, which is opposition to abortion.

Following Paul, Marshall implies that slaves and women living in patriarchal and slave-holding cultures can submit to the oppressive structures of their society, knowing inside that they are free and equal before God (100, 96). While this may be a coping mechanism adopted by some, no one should find it acceptable to be free and equal only on the inside. Marshall fears that calling on governments to enforce human rights will lead to “a new kind of totalitarianism . . . . It also permits governments to infringe virtually any right in the name of supporting other rights . . . .” (105). He is also uncomfortable with secular notions of human rights. He writes “the biblical emphasis on duty and obligation should cause us to question the wisdom of casting so many of the issues of modern social life solely in terms of rights. Rights and responsibilities are complementary and indivisible in the biblical tradition . . . .” (117).

Marshall is right to balance notions of human rights with those of obligation, in stressing the need to set rights in the context of community, and in unearthing the foundation of human rights in Western religion and specifically, I would argue, in Jewish as well as Christian theology. (Marshall does not give enough credit to the earlier Jewish traditions from which Christianity developed.) This provocative and informative study is particularly well suited to college courses in ethics or Bible, or to adult Bible study groups.

Table of Contents | Foreword | Articles | Book Reviews

The Church on the World’s Turf: An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University

Reviewed by David Seljack

The Conrad Grebel Review 21, no. 2 (Spring 2003)

Paul A. Bramadat. The Church on the World’s Turf: An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Mennonites and others who attended a Christian college affiliated with a larger secular university will find a way of understanding their experiences by reading this enlightening and useful book. Written from a social scientific perspective, The Church on the World’s Turf studies the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) at McMaster University, a group of about 200 members (almost exclusively white, seventy percent female) at a large, culturally diverse, secular university of some 14,000 students in Ontario’s industrial heartland.

Given the myriad studies on conservative Christian groups in the United States and Canada, it is amazing that this is the first social scientific study of an evangelical student group. The majority of such studies employ the “churchas- fortress” metaphor. According to this model, conservative Christian groups or institutions serve as a fortress against liberalism and modernity, with their individualism, materialism, and loose sexual morality.

While Bramadat accepts that the ICVF operates as a fortress against secularism for these students in some cases, he balances this idea with the metaphor of IVCF as bridge. He argues that the Fellowship allows students to reach past their smaller, denominational identity to other Christians and to their secular counterparts, and provides a means to negotiate with the secular university. So, for example, students learn not to interrupt biology classes on evolution with their ideas on creationism. Instead, they treat the theory of evolution as “one theory among many,” learn it, describe it on tests and papers, but distance themselves from it intellectually and psychologically. On the social side, they participate in student activities and do not segregate themselves. However, they refuse to participate in the “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” culture that dominates much of student life. They use the ICVF to facilitate contact with other students on their own terms (at least as much as possible). Bramadat emphasizes the freedom and creativity behind these negotiated contracts and the myriad ways that individual students and the ICVF work out their relationships with others.

Anyone who has attended a Christian college at a secular university could easily apply this model to their own experience. When I attended St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, my friends and I were very much open to what the secular university had to offer. Still, St. Mike’s provided a space where we were allowed to nourish and celebrate an alternate worldview with its unique values, practices, and beliefs.

What issues separate IVCF students from their secular counterparts? Some are obvious. Christians attend a university in which the dominant culture disputes or dismisses some of their most important truth-claims. For example, one cannot claim the existence of God as a “fact” in a secular university in the way one can at a Bible college or church school. But in formal subjects, most students do not feel that their beliefs are challenged. It is usually only in classes where topics such as evolutionary biology, sexual and social ethics, and philosophy are discussed that any conflict is felt. Bramadat shows how students negotiate that tension in a variety of ways. His students report that they are not alienated so much from the curriculum as from the youth culture as it is expressed in student life. Sexual promiscuity, swearing, and parties marked by heavy drinking are all features of life on campus, especially in residence. Conservative evangelicals establish a parallel social network through ICVF, for example, organizing social events without alcohol.

While some tensions are resolved rather easily, others are more difficult. For example, conservative Christians steadfastly maintain a “different but equal” stance on woman’s rights. Men are to hold the leadership positions in society, church, and the family. Given that seven of ten IVCF members are women, how do they negotiate between their traditional beliefs about the role of women and the challenges to those beliefs posed by liberal individualism and feminism? Bramadat argues that, through IVCF, women have developed complex, innovative, and empowering strategies that allow them to remain loyal to evangelicalism and, in their words, ‘stretched’ by the liberal educational institutions that more and more of them are deciding to attend” (101).

The strength of this book is its “postmodern” ethnographic approach. Bramadat takes on the role of participant/observer and befriends his subjects, listening to them patiently, interviewing them endlessly, questioning them gently, and noting their responses responsibly. Through this method of non-judgmental and patient observation, Bramadat can learn how the IVCF functions for these students without rushing to the conclusions of deprivation or social control theory.

Bramadat’s tolerant and patient style is challenged by his subjects’ sometimes exclusivist claims and chauvinistic attitudes. For example, many IVCF members believe that adherents of the world religions are mistaken or, worse, misled by Satan. Even other Christians are dismissed because they do not use the special vocabulary of the conservative evangelicals, that is, they don’t have a “personal relationship” with Jesus as their “Lord and Savior.” So Roman Catholics, encountered in great numbers during an IVCF mission to Lithuania, are not Christians. While Bramadat finds some of their attempts to convert him condescending, he is also moved by their genuine concern for his spiritual welfare. Still, he criticizes their judgment on world religions as well as their ignorance of fundamental facts about life in Lithuania. One wonders if Bramadat could not have applied this humanistic critique to other elements of conservative Christian belief. Is evangelical Christianity compatible with the freedom and dignity of women willed by God? Christian feminists will wonder why the author does not pursue this question more aggressively. Moreover, Bramadat fails to mention, never mind critique, conservative Christian attitudes to alternative sexual orientations. Surely this is an issue that separates conservative Christian students from their peers and one that would be open to his humanistic criticisms.

The Church on the World’s Turf would make an excellent text in a “Religion in Canada” or sociology of religion course. Administrators and supporters of religious colleges will also learn much about themselves, their institutions, and their students from this interesting, accessible study.