Real Families

Real families in our community (and in yours, no doubt) are picking up streams of wisdom, cultural practices and strands of diverse faith traditions that rarely intertwined with such intensity at the local level until recent times. Some people have the zeal of converts, turning away from paths that no longer nurtured them in vital faith, placing their trust in Jesus Christ and eagerly sharing this witness with others. Some move in other directions, treating familiar Christian pathways as passé, more fascinated by exotic elements elsewhere.

In my boyhood rural church community, someone who married a person outside our circle of Mennonites (a Methodist or Catholic), was regarded as having left the faith. Now within a five-mile radius from our home in a fairly conventional small-town corner of U.S. society, real families are engaging the complexities of world religions and some of the powerful forces of emergent global culture. One household blends Brethren, Buddhist and Quaker wisdom. A recent wedding brought together traditions of Japanese, Latin American and more recent Mennonite congregational cultures. An Iranian peacebuilder spoke with moving tribute at the Eastern Mennonite University graduation in Harrisonburg, Va., combining the regalia of her academic achievement at a Christian university and the artful veil of her Persian Islamic heritage. Another calls herself a Muslim-Mennonite.

Previous generations had to venture halfway around the world to encounter lively communities of other faiths in vivid splendor. Now the temple on the other side of town may well be Hindu; the latest storefront group may be Buddhist. The upcoming wedding in the neighborhood may be partly Jewish, partly Caribbean, partly Greek.

The children on the school bus may speak Farsi or Kurdish or Armenian at home. The corner convenience store sprouts language and garb from India or Jordan or Iraq.

The faith of our neighbors, our colleagues at work, even our children and their children, has become more colorful and variegated than anyone in days of yore might have imagined. These traditions can challenge us, provoke discernment and pose new questions to ponder. They may also have aspects we can learn from, calling us to deepen our own faith understandings and commitments.

As families deal with this complexity of religious pluralism and our young adults explore it, we will all need to work on fresh theological understanding to engage these dynamics. Students shaped in this new environment pose new kinds of questions to our heritage as followers of Jesus. It has become important in this cultural context to meet the challenge to frame faith and seek understanding amid the realities of religious pluralism with clarity, gentleness and respect.

Pastors, teachers and parents alike must do new homework to be honest in our witness. Staying true to who we are must also involve paying careful attention to the truth of who others are.

Our neighbors in a multifaith context will need to know we do not teach contempt for their traditions. They will wonder whether we can sustain our peaceable witness amid the clamor of competing worldviews without caving in to the fears and suspicions preached by strident voices in popular culture. They will also want to count on the same disarming approach that has served Mennonites well in crossing many divides, moving toward conflict zones in the confidence that the God we serve is larger than our human fears and insecurities.

It is the God we know in Jesus Christ where we put our ultimate trust, where we find our true security. From that steady place we can welcome the wonderful array of diverse peoples God is bringing together in our families and communities.

In that welcome, what new, fascinating truths will we learn about God, ourselves and how God has been at work in many cultures and religions? The biblical vision gives us a glimpse of God drawing all people together: “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb … saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ ” (Revelation 7:9ff.).

Years after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, my students researched the experience of Muslim neighbors in our community and learned of a memory many found moving. Amid the fears that stirred many local Muslims and their neighbors, some feared going out in public visibly identified as Muslim. Women wearing traditional garb were reluctant even to shop for groceries. But some of them hit on a solution. Some miles into the countryside surrounding our minor city they found the food supplies they needed at a rural store serving the Old Order Mennonite community.

Offering shelter, safety and respect to each other across divisions and distress in the wider society is a mark of God’s people at work in a complex, multifaith world. For more and more of us, this happens not only in distant countries but in our own families and neighborhoods.

Gerald Shenk teaches at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Va., and works with an Abrahamic initiative for faith-centered peacebuilders at Eastern Mennonite University.