Where is Mennonite Church USA going?

In The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. King writes: “I remember saying that so often the church in our struggle had been a taillight rather than a headlight. The church had so often been an echo rather than a voice.” How true and prophetic are the words of Dr. King as I think not only of the whole church but specifically of Mennonite Church USA. Not only does our church seem to echo the leading of our popular culture, but we often parrot its rhetoric. As I reflect on the history and struggles of the past,
I cannot help wondering where we as Mennonite Church USA are going today.

Last year at this time (February 2010, page 46) I asked, “Where are we Mennonites going?” The question was meant to stir a sense of lament and wonder in the reader to reflect on the progress of race relations within Mennonite Church USA. Little did I know that I would be embroiled in searching for answers to that very question because of the passage of Arizona’s SB1070 and the selection of Phoenix, Ariz., as our 2013 convention location. Since April 2010 our church has wrestled with the question of “Where are we Mennonites going?” For most of us that question has only pertained to the location of our 2013 convention, but I hope, dare I say dream, that the question goes deeper than that.

Dr. King had a dream, a prophetic vision about racial equality in the United States of America. It is a dream that for the most part has come true. I am not naïve enough to believe that racism does not exist in our society or in our church. I understand that our world is far from perfect, but unlike the children of Israel, who refused to see the promises of God because of a few giants, I refuse to overlook the great changes that have occurred since the civil rights movement because of a few racists. Call me a dreamer, but I have chosen to see the hope and blessings that are before me.

My reality is that I can sit, eat and work at places that 50 years ago would have been off limits to me. My children attend schools and live in neighborhoods with whites, Africans, Asians, Latinos and many other ethnic groups. Their circle of friends is as diverse as the United Nations. In Mennonite Church USA, the racial and gender diversity of our leadership continues to shift to include more women and more people of color. We still have obstacles in our path, but in some ways the mountains look more like molehills, and the molehills have begun to resemble speed bumps.

Great change has happened in our nation since Dr. King’s time. I feel a bit uneasy making that observation because I’m only 41 and have not endured the hardships or struggles faced by those who fought for civil rights. In fact, I live a pretty good middle-class life, although I grew up in a modest all-black neighborhood. I am a child of the promises of God, a testament to the good work of others. My perspective on race is based on what I have read and heard from history. Yet as I study history, I understand that when true change has come into our world, it has been because of the people of God.

In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote: “There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.” I hear Dr. King saying that something should not become an issue on CNN before it becomes an issue for prayer and action in Mennonite Church USA. The way we live out our witness as Mennonites should not be tied to our political affiliations or to ideas promoted by professional pundits. We must lead by God’s Spirit and prayer, not by polls and surveys.

February is Black History Month in the United States, but the history of African-Americans in this country holds lessons for the future of our nation and our Anabaptist churches. The black church and its leadership were instrumental in bringing about social change in our society because it was morally and spiritually necessary. Yet there was always a desire from people of color to have the white church join the struggle for racial equality in greater numbers. Almost 50 years later, we hear members of Iglesia Menonita Hispana expressing the same desire. Like the disenfranchised Negro of the 1960s, immigrants of the 21st century are calling out to the church to leave its silos of isolation to become a beacon of healing and hope, as the popular society looks on.

At times in our Mennonite history, conflict has been brought to our doorsteps. Franklin Yoder writes: “Perhaps no event affected the Mennonite church during the 20th century as profoundly as World War II. At every level of the church, from churchwide organizations to local communities, World War II forced changes that fundamentally reshaped the church and its relationship to the surrounding society. Like almost all Americans, Mennonites suddenly found themselves in a maelstrom of events that pulled them in even when they preferred to remain on the fringes and out of the spotlight.” (See www.mcusa-archives.org/MHB/YoderWWII.html.)

One conclusion we can draw from the reflections of Menno­nites who experienced threats and challenges during World War II is that if the church does not lead and speak to the ills and discontent of society, society itself will knock on our door. While some Mennonites lived in isolated silence, more than 4,800 Mennonite men served in Civilian Public Service. Surely the draft was a motivating factor, but serve they did.

After the trials and tension of World War II ended, the Mennonite church was again challenged by the Civil Rights Movement. In his paper “Mista Midnights: Mennonites and Race in Mississippi,” David Swartz reflects on the experiences of Mennonite historian and social ethicist Guy F. Hershberger, who embarked on a month-long tour of the South in 1963:

“By the early 1960s, Hershberger had maintained a regular correspondence with Martin Luther King Jr. for several years and was coming close to siding with King’s program of nonviolent resistance to racism, though previously Hershberger had derided even nonviolent resistance as a form of class warfare. Unlike his previous sojourns to the South, Hershberger came this time not to strengthen ecumenical ties with King, civil rights organizations and African-American churches but to see how our Mennonite people were responding to segregation in the Deep South. Preaching and leading discussions about race relations, he saw much about the Mennonites in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana that pleased him. In Macon, Miss., he found a father and son, Perry and Thomas Miller, Mennonites who had moved the year before from Middlebury, Ind., already deeply involved in community development, employing large numbers of coloreds and teaching many to read. In Boone, N.C., he found a thriving Menno­nite Brethren colony, which, he reported, was all Negro and consists of four or five congregations at various points within the county.

“But Hershberger also discovered much that disturbed him. Too many southern Mennonites, he thought, were misbehaving. In Atmore, Ala., Hershberger felt that the leadership has absorbed too much of the spirit of rank-and-file Southern whites … characterized by a uniformly familiar ring of an unhealthy, unchristian anti-Negro attitude. In Macon, Miss., he heard troubling statements by Mennonites about niggers, including a considerable amount of complaint about their slovenly ways, without a sympathetic understanding of what makes them that way. … After his tour of over a dozen Mennonite congregations, he concluded that some appeared to defend segregation almost with desperation. Thus in the course of one month in 1963, Hershberger had encountered a staggering variety of positions on racial belief and practice in a religious movement that preached racial egalitarianism, though this ideal remained largely theoretical and widely untested on the ground.” (See www.goshen.edu/mqr/pastissues/oct04swartz.html.)

Now in the 21st century, we quiet Menno­nites are again challenged with a variety of issues. Short of war, what will it take for us to heed the words of Menno Simons? “True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all people.” What issues today can we as Mennonites deem important enough for us to speak out against the government as those politically charged founders of the church did when they were dubbed radicals? Is it immigration? Is it institutional racism, human trafficking, homosexual marriage? Will we be guided by the popular media or will something greater be our guide? How quickly we forget the lesson we learned from our past. History is shouting at our church to either find a way to change the world or have the world change us. Where did this acceptance of Menno­nites as “quiet in the land” come from? That is not how I understand the history of our church.

We have chosen as our vision: “God calls us to be followers of Jesus Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to grow as communities of grace, joy, and peace, so that God’s healing and hope flow through us to the world.” This vision screams to the heaven that we “Can’t Keep Quiet” and that we will take on the pain and despair of those in our world who have lost hope. In our purpose statement we confess that we are “Joining in God’s activity in the world, [and] we develop and nurture missional Mennonite congregations of many cultures.”

I am still dreaming that our Mennonite congregations and members will continue to move from rhetoric and theory to the practical application of our faith. I am still dreaming that the radical Anabaptist spirit that compelled me to join the Mennonite church will move from the history pages and into the hearts and minds of our people. I am still dreaming that people will forget that Mennonites were once yoked with the title of quiet in the land, and we will be extolled as bringers of hope, makers of peace and the living embodiment of the gospel of Christ.

Glen Alexander Guyton is associate executive director of constituent resources for Mennonite Church USA.