Why we can be hopeful about the future of the church

In classical Greek tragedy, the driving force of the story often hinges on a conflict between two incompatible moral obligations. Both obligations seem equally compelling, yet they are fundamentally irreconcilable with each other.

Once the moral conflict becomes clear, the characters in a Greek tragedy are locked into an unfolding story line whose only possible outcome is an agonizing, irresolvable moral conflict—in other words, a tragedy.

There are times when it feels like Mennonite Church USA is in the midst of just such a drama. For some, the question of full LGBT inclusion in the church—be it marriage or ordination—is the civil rights issue of our day.

If the church cannot extend love, compassion and full acceptance to LGBT individuals, it denies the gospel and becomes complicit with the mean-spirited, fear-driven bigotry of the larger culture.

For others in the church, the pressure to redefine marriage and traditional sexual ethics, especially in the larger context of the sexual revolution, has become the bright-line test of biblical authority.

Yielding on this point feels like a capitulation to disordered desire—an ethics based on personal experience and the idolatry of western individualism.

In light of the conflicting trajectories of various Mennonite conferences, the passion of convictions expressed in social media and the painful experiences of other denominations who have attempted to resolve this issue, it would be easy to conclude that we have become actors in a Greek tragedy.

All that remains now is for each of us to play out our roles, following with earnest conviction the logic of our own moral obligations. But the outcome—a future of anguish, Pyrrhic victories, resignation and division—is not really in doubt.

As a historian of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition and a person committed to the unity of the church, I struggle almost every day with the temptation to read our current circumstances through the lens of tragedy. Yet as a Christian, I know better. For Christians, the appropriate lens for interpreting our times is not tragedy but apocalypse.

Though we generally associate the word “apocalypse” with end-time scenarios of destruction, the more appropriate meaning of the term is “revelation” or “disclosure of something that is hidden.”

In the biblical tradition, the book of Revelation is sometimes called the Apocalypse of John. At a time when Christians were facing the overwhelming and brutal force of Roman imperial power, John offered an alternative lens for interpreting the times.

His “revelation” made it clear that despite all visible evidence to the contrary, God was ultimately in control of human history. Though the immediate experience seemed otherwise, John recognized that history was moving toward a day when the rough places would be made plain, the lamb would lie down with the lion, and people from every tribe and nation would gather around the throne of God, joining their voices in praise.

To read history apocalyptically rather than tragically is a spiritual discipline. Like all spiritual disciplines, it begins as an act of will—a conscious decision that gets easier with practice as we become more attentive to the presence of the Spirit and the patient providence of God in human history.

An apocalyptic reading of this moment in the history of Mennonite Church USA calls for the discerning insights of many. So what follows is only a provisional beginning, a few thoughts that have emerged for me in my personal quest to resist the seduction of tragedy.

First, an apocalyptic perspective recognizes that the Spirit is often present precisely when we are most vulnerable. At one level, we know that vulnerability—particularly within the covenant of marriage or a trusting group of friends—is a path to intimacy and joy. Yet we often avoid vulnerability at all costs. Especially in times of cultural upheaval, the absolute certainty of conviction—on either side of the issue—provides a welcome sense of security.

Yet our tradition is littered with the wreckage of well-intended groups whose moral clarity led to endless fragmentation and division; or, at the other extreme, with groups who sought to resolve conflict by retreating to the safety of spiritualism and the invisible church and simply disappeared from history altogether. If a tragic perspective on the future offers the security of predetermined outcome, an apocalyptic perspective calls us to live into the vulnerability of the unknown, trusting that the Spirit can work in ways that none of us can fully anticipate.

Second, an apocalyptic perspective on this moment in our history reminds us that the God we worship is not coercive. The gospel invites, but it does not compel. For those of us in the free church tradition, this means that the decision to remain in fellowship with other Christians, like the decision to follow Jesus, is voluntary. The authority the church, and the basis for our unity, is anchored not in our structures or policies—important though they are.

Rather, the church’s authority ultimately rests on our testimonies of healing, the transparency of honest confession, the practices of hospitality and the daily rhythms of repentance and transformation in response to the gift of God’s grace. This commitment to a noncoercive testimony does not mean that we back away from the clarity or depth of our convictions. But it does suggest that we hold those convictions with a posture of gentle intensity; that we pursue Truth with humility; that we hunger for God’s righteousness first and foremost in our own life; and that irresolvable disagreements end in a spirit of lament and confession rather than anger.

Finally, an apocalyptic perspective recognizes that throughout history, the body of Christ has taken on many different expressions. For most of the 20th century, the Menno­nite church in North America organized itself in congregations that related to the denomination through membership in a local conference or district. The denominational institutions that emerged helped congregations support the work and witness of the larger church in areas like education, mutual aid, publications, missions, service and relief projects. In recent decades, support for those institutions has waned.

In the face of these changes, it is tempting for some of us to anxiously defend those structures or the particularity of our identity, confusing a particular model of being the church with the kingdom of God. But the opposite impulse—retreating to the local congregation, ignoring the accountability of a collective witness, rejecting all structures and boundaries—suggests an idolatry of a different sort. So we live, apocalyptically, in the dynamic tension of the Incarnation.

John D. Roth is professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College, director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism and editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review.