Carl Bowman's new blog

A few weeks ago, Brethren sociologist, Carl D. Bowman, started blogging about the 2006 Brethren Member Profile, among other things. Check it out: Brethren Cultural Landscape

Recovering the Love Feast

by Brian Gumm

The seminary careers of Paul Stutzman and myself overlapped for one year at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. He was finishing up his last year of an MAR degree while I was starting my dual degree project at the seminary and Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. So now two years later, his master's thesis work has been picked up and published by Wipf and Stock, and it has profound relevance for Brethren!  Check it out...

Recovering the Love Feast: Broadening Our Eucharistic Celebrations
by Paul Fike Stutzman

The foreword is by Eleanor Kreider, who has done considerable work on worship practices at the London Mennonite Center and is now - with her husband, Alan - at the "other" (to me, I say that lovingly) Mennonite seminary, AMBS. The endorsements include a word from Bethany president, Ruthann Knechel Johansen; Brethren sociologist, Carl Bowman; and Brethren historian (and my mentor and former pastor), Jeff Bach!

Paul said it should be available directly off the Wipf and Stock website linked above, and on Amazon within a few weeks. Definitely on my list...

[Note: Cross-posted on my RT blog.]

For the irreverent among you

In my non-existant free time I started a video blog companion to my personal blog, the first installment of which I used to (somewhat satirically) describe substitutionary atonement.  If you're interested, here's the link to the video on YouTube.

A pastiche tribute to Art Gish

by Brian Gumm

Fellow Brethren folk may be interested to see my attempt to honor the life of Art Gish over at the Restorative Theology blog: A pastiche tribute to Art Gish. I'm basically trying to honor him by channeling his social-technological critique found in Beyond the Rat Race and focus it on the digital age. Here's the closing paragraph:

From top to bottom, pledging allegiance to the digital age comes with serious implications that most people are not even remotely aware of. A consistent post-Christendom critique of this system in the tradition of Yoder and Hauerwas exposes it as a neo-Constantinian political-economic industrial complex. The poor rarely have voice in this system, as the economic and educational barriers to entry are high. Christians of means are lulled into a slumber by the flashing lights and excited voices, deaf to the despairing cries of a fallen world, deaf to even the cries of those closest to them. If what Gish states is true (and I think it is), that “(u)ncontrolled technology helped us get us into our mess and shows no sign of getting us out” (p. 118), then where to from here?

Is the Mennonite Church USA doomed? Should Brethren care?

by Brian Gumm

One of my friends from seminary just made a post on Eastern Mennonite Seminary's new blog, "Work and Hope," that asks a few tough questions for the Mennonite Church USA:

Is MCUSA Doomed? (And Does it Matter?) - by Jeremy Yoder, editor

• Do we know what it means to be Mennonite or Anabaptist?
• Are we really committed to following Jesus?
• Is MCUSA prepared to be an urban denomination?
• How Serious Are We to Sharing the Gospel?
• So is MCUSA doomed?

As a Brethren sojourning with Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley, I'd be interested to hear some Brethren reactions to these questions, especially from Bethany folks. What are some of the similar realities facing the Church of the Brethren? What are some that differ?

How many post-Christendom theologians...?

by Brian Gumm

This here blog has been a bit too quiet. I have some Brethren-related posts in the hopper, but in the meantime here's a topic on my personal blog that some folks here might get a kick out of. What happens when you ask some Christian scholars the question:


How many post-Christendom theologians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Find out here: Post-Christendom theologians and the craft of lightbulb-changing

If you Brethren folks have something to add, please drop them in the comments after the link!

In support of Earl's sermon

by Nick Miller Kauffman

Since we're talking about it, the text to Earl Fike Jr.'s sermon is here.

Ironically, before Earl Fike Jr.'s sermon, I commented to my friends that I'd sure like someone to actually say something prophetically risky from the pulpit during Annual Conference.

I have to confess a feeling of bored dread as I listened to Earl's message.  At the outset, it seemed to me it was going to be a drab, slow-paced sermon.

I was in for a surprise.

Being extremely frustrated with the climate of church politics relating to LGBT issues, when I heard Earl say, "But as [Jesus] moves amongst us, we see him look into a nearby tree at a person who wants to know him and be known by him; a person whom many find unacceptable," and I made a comment to those next to me about how the exception to this would be a queer person.  Because we, the Church of the Brethren, having created God in our own image, were not about to tell ourselves a parable that critiqued our treatment of queer people.

Maybe if I knew Earl Fike Jr. I would have known better.  But I did not, and so I sat like a deer in the headlights while, as if deliberately proving me wrong, he went on to say:

And Jesus says, "come down, I’m going to your house for dinner today." And the response of the crowd, our crowd, is painfully familiar. "Look, he has gone to be at the home of a homosexual sinner." 

I was floored.  This was the prophetic sermon I was looking for.  As I silently cheered (and occasionally vocally "amen"ed) he went on to deliver a scathing indictment of the Church of the Brethren's treatment of LGBT individuals.


For those who didn't hear or read the sermon, the solution Earl offered was forebearance.  Let's just give each other room, he said, to disagree about this, and meanwhile accept each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.


It's in no way surprising I was a fan of this sermon; Earl said pretty much exactly what I had been saying for the last few days.  "I don't need conservative churches to have gay pastors or perform same-sex covenant ceremonies," I said over beer at the Churchworks Brewery.  "I just need them to back off everyone else."*

Before I continue my argument, I want to address the two obvious criticisms of the sermon.  The first is that it identifies homosexuals as sinners, and the second is that it does not call for the denomination to be open and affirming.


I agree that any language that call homosexuality a sin is problematic.  It stems from harmful theology, it marginalizes queer people no matter how much we call for their acceptance, and it should, as a rule, be challenged.  I absolutely do not identify with such language.  But for the most part, it wasn't me Earl was preaching to when he said that.


The bottom line is, no sermon is going to convince fundamentalist** Christians that homosexuality is not a sin.  I'm not saying minds can't be changed, but I really don't see it happening from the pulpit; if Earl had taken this approach, he might have gotten cheers from those of like mind, but in his effort to change anything he would have been shouting at the wind.  His purpose was to move people to a position, and to accomplish that he had to try to speak to their theologies.

 As for the criticism of what it was that Earl was calling for, this one is difficult for me.  I do not want to accommodate beliefs that are harmful and oppressive for the sake of unity.  In Proverbs of Ashes, Rebecca Ann Parker describes the board meeting at which it was decided her church would become open and affirming.  One man said, "If we do this, some people will leave our church.  We will lose our relationship with them.  But if we do not, we will lose our relationship with Jesus Christ."

Yet the Church of the Brethren is not, and should not be, a top-down, disciplinarian church.  We have no doctrine of infallibility for Annual Conference. I hate--absolutely hate--that a slim majority decision from over twenty years ago is interpreted as instructive in such a way that a beautifully gifted friend of mine saw her license to ministry revoked for coming out as a lesbian.  I hate that a slim majority can cast my entire church in such a bad light, for though nearly half the delegates involved did not vote for the amendment, I must confess to outsiders that my church says same-sex relationships are unacceptable.


It is in light of these feelings that I say I cannot speak for others.  Annual Conference statements are not law (after all, there are plenty of congregations that won't accept a female pastor), and so they frankly need not be decisive.


What should our language on same-sex relationships be?  How about, "We are not of like mind, but we strive to love one another as the conversation continues."  What's wrong with that?  No statement will make gays and lesbians magically straight, nor will any statement make all congregations open and affirming.  We cannot force agreement; why must we pretend to have it?


I'll up the ante here by illustrating just how urgently I think we need to adopt this position: the Church of the Brethren cannot survive a forced and false show of unity on this issue.  If a 51 percent vote turns us overnight into an open and affirming denomination, we could well see a conservative split.  I'm fairly certain I read a threat of such in BRF literature at one point.  Yet if we maintain our position against same-sex relationships, we will die.  The progressives in our church may not have the cohesion to effect an organized split, but they will definitely leave, and our church will lose its relevance.  We will become yet another shattered has-been, for history always marches in a direction that grants rights to previously disenfranchised groups.


I believe the affirmation of same-sex relationships would be good and right, but as a reflection of where we stand as a church it would not be true.  Nor is our current position an accurate representation of what we believe.  What we need to do is just say, without fear, that we do not agree.  I'm with Earl on this one: forebearance is a step in the right direction, and it's the step we need.


But that step needn't mark the closing of the book.  We can (and will) continue our witness, not through the tyranny of the majority, but through honest and loving conversation.


*This is not actually what I said, but I think the point gets across just as well without swear words.

** Apologies if this is too loaded a word; I know both "conservatives" and "evangelicals" who are allies, so those words were out.

Ethnic diversity predictions for Brethren from 20 years ago

by Brian Gumm

Late this past spring I opened my campus mailbox at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and found three VHS tapes (!!) therein contained. No note was attached with these tapes and I still have no idea who gave me these (I'm guessing a seminary professor trying to reduce office clutter). They were labeled "Brethren in Transition," the name of a conference or symposium held at Bridgewater College. The date provided was October 3-5, 1991. My audiovisual gear situation was such that I couldn't even watch these tapes, so I took them to the Learning Resources Center folks at EMU and paid them $11 to get them all converted to DVD.  I was then able to weave these video resources into the syllabus for a directed study on Brethren Beliefs and Practices which I'm working through this summer.

So today, I popped in the DVD with my first assigned lecture, which was given by Donald Durnbaugh and entitled "Closing the Loop: Germantown and Philadelphia." Durnbaugh's historical look at Brethren in transition was focused through the lens of these two congregations and their lives through the late 19th and 20th centuries.

From the conclusions which Durnbaugh drew from this historical analysis, he moves to a number of implications for the Church of the Brethren at that point in history, nearly two decades ago. One such implication he describes as, essentially: "The Brethren will persist, but they will need to change." One potential area for change was ethnic diversity. He cites a Brethren pastor, Olin Mitchell (sp?), as having then-recently predicted that ethnic minorities in the Church of the Brethren, then (ca. 1991) comprising less than 1% of membership will increase to a full 50% by 2010." Mitchell's reasoning for this was based on his observation that the spiritual vitality he was seeing was happening in that less than 1% group, ethnic minorities. Durnbaugh immediately comments that he's not so sure of that prediction, but found it interesting enough to share.

Well it's 2010, so how are we doing in that department? I ask this question out of genuine curiosity. My experience in the Church of the Brethren has been limited to a rural Midwestern, vastly white backwater of the denomination (I don't say this disrespectfully). I didn't go to a Brethren college (not that there are a whole lot of Brethren at those to begin with) and I'm not attending a Brethren seminary. So I'm not trying to be flip or sarcastic by asking that question, which I'll ask again in closing, somewhat differently (and much more verbosely):

How well is the Church of the Brethren doing in terms of being a group of believers in and followers of Jesus Christ, who called into existence a kingdom not of this world, invited our participation in/hastening the coming of that kingdom, which transcends (doesn't necessarily erase) all manner of categories including ethnicity? Are we a group grasping the spiritual vitality to make such a staggering new reality more apparent in our world?

Earl's Sermon

by Anna Lisa Gross

While I was thrilled to hear sexuality being preached about directly, rather than alluded to surreptitiously, from the Annual Conference pulpit, I have a few frustrations with "Measurably New."

It certainly would not be possible to preach a single sermon that could speak to all 3000+ gathered at Annual Conference. But this sermon was clearly not aimed at me. I do believe that many in the room were moved by the message, and I am glad for that. But I'm frustrated that our conversations about sexuality are always so elementary.

First of all, Earl consistently used the term "homosexuality." While this is quite reasonable for his generation, younger people are much more inclined to talk about LGBTQ or queer folks. Homosexual does not apply to all the people whose sexualities are under scrutiny in these conversations. "LGBTQ" is a much more inclusive term, particularly for those who are uncomfortable with the term "queer."

Secondly, the scriptural grounding for the sermon located LGBTQ folks as sinners (even though I don't think that's what Earl intended to preach). So often we have used the story of the woman about to be stoned for adultery (and this time Zaccheus the tax collector) to discuss sexuality. The beauty of these stories is that they call for loving, respectful, humanizing interaction with "sinners." The danger is that they frame LGBTQ folks as sinners. If we consider a sexual or gender identity to be a sin, the only way to repent is to change a core part of one's identity. Some Christians say that the sexuality itself is not a sin, but sexual acts between people of the same gender are, and therefore only celibate LGBTQ folks are acceptable. So we either ask queer people to become fundamentally new people, or to deny themselves the fullness of love, sex and intimacy. This is horrendous, and I have much more to say about it at another time.

Thirdly, the conversation continues to be one between straight people about queer people. Earl never "spoke to" LGBTQ folks in his sermon. We fall into this faulty mindset continuously in the church, telling ourselves that straight is default, and forgetting that there are queer people in the pews right now, this moment. But fewer and fewer all the time when our language does not reflect this reality. Many people in the church talk about, but not to, queer people.

Fourthly, the sermon talked about only one aspect of sexuality - homosexuality. I can't believe that we continue to have conversations about the complexities of sexuality and spirituality that are so narrow. This allows straight people in the room, regardless of their perversions or poor behavior, to never be under scrutiny. In a society in which rape, child abuse, infidelity, prostitution, harassment, lack of enjoyment in sex, shame-filled sex, and many other unhealthy sexual experiences are rampant, why do we only talk about "homosexuality?"

I do appreciate Earl's bold sermon, and realize that he will be one of the most talked about people throughout the denomination in the weeks to come. Earl as an old, male, straight, white, educated and otherwise privileged person has the capital to spend on such a sermon, and I'm glad he used it.

Polity, prophecy, and the issues we don't like to name

by Nick Miller Kauffman

I've heard a few voices--usually moderate or conservative voices--saying the Church is "weary" of the "homosexual issue," or even that the matter is "settled."  It certainly isn't settled: the very fact that we continue to talk about it demonstrates that.  And in response to those who think we should just move on and deal with other things, I would only say that some of us do not have the privilege of being weary.

Riffing off this strong belief that this is something we need to talk about, and the special response conversations that will soon be going on across the denomination, I would like to see a few separate pieces addressing the queer rights/same-sex covenants issues in the Church of the Brethren, with special attention to responding to Monday night's sermon by Earl Fike, Jr.  I'm going to write something supportive of the sermon, and I think I have someone lined up to criticize it from the "left" (i.e. saying it doesn't go far enough).  I'd like to see someone critical of the sermon from the "right," and perhaps someone critical from a more moderate position (i.e. arguing that it was simply not constructive).  If you'd like to write a response and aren't on the authors list, comment on this post or send a message to kauffni (at) bethanyseminary (dot) edu and I'll add you.

Whither the digital Brethren at Annual Conference?

by Brian Gumm

I just noticed this on the page for Brethren Life & Thought:

Monday July 5, 9:00 - 10:00pm
Brethren Life & Thought/Bethany Theological Seminary Insight Session
Topic: When Brethren Tweet: Technology, Theology, and Community
Come and hear faculty, staff, and students discuss ways technology inpact the Brethren community and learn ways technology can enhance our witness.
See conference book for more details.

That's TODAY! Are any FWFS bloggers/followers going to that session? I was kind of bummed out that I wasn't able to go to AC this year but then I saw this and really got bummed out! There was an article on Brethren bloggers in Messenger a few months ago that I found to be a bit lacking, so would have loved this kind of session.

Also, I heard a few things were getting live-streamed/recorded at AC this year. Seems like this one would be a prime candidate.

Brethren & Mennonite attitudes toward the national anthem of the U.S.A.

by Brian Gumm

First, to all those who have been following FWFS and are suddenly wondering who this "Brian Gumm" fellow is, let me do a short introduction. Doing so will not only clue you in to who I am but also help contextualize some of the comments I'll make below on the named topic. I'm a licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren, studying at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the Seminary as well as the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. I've been following FWFS for about a month now and had recently put it up on the blogroll over at my blog: Restorative Theology. About three weeks ago, Nick mentioned that he wanted some more authors for this here blog and after a nice e-mail conversation I gladly agreed to contribute my voice. Now, with the 4th of July quickly approaching, we move on to the topic at hand...the national anthem! Yay! (Or boo?)

Earlier this year there was a flap in the Mennonite world (in the U.S. at least) when Goshen College decided to start playing the national anthem of the United States at sporting events. This led to all sorts of interesting media coverage, the most humorous (to me) being a blog post entitled: The Mennonites no longer hate America (from which the picture to the right was linked...no idea where that author got it from). There was almost an audible gasp on the campus here at Eastern Mennonite, and people all over the campus were registering, mostly, their discontent in various social arenas both temporal and digital. Facebook groups shot up both in favor of and against the decision, and I could watch as my Mennonite friends on Facebook fell into one of those two lines. The president of EMU even updated his statement on the matter and re-communicated it to the entire university community. This came in advance of EMU hosting a few NCAA Div-II basketball tournament games on campus, wherein the playing of the national anthem is an NCAA requirement. Even in the seminary classroom, in a believers church class this past spring this issue made for some stimulating discussion.

Meanwhile, in my Church of the Brethren circles, something entirely different was going on in respect to the national anthem. In my home district, the Northern Plains, my pastor's daughter has been singing the national anthem at sporting and civic events of all sorts for years now. From here in Virginia, I just got an e-mail from a recent Brethren EMS alum whose wife is competing in a national anthem singing contest, the winner of which would win money for their resident public school district. Quite a marked contrast from these two Christian movements that have historically shared much in common.

I need to offer a few provisos here. First, my personal stake in this is rife with ambivalence. I not only grew up singing the national anthem and not thinking twice to theologically question it, I also sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in high school all-state choir competitions...and it was my favorite song! Just the other day, I found myself quickly humming harmony to a recording of the anthem I heard while out and about in Harrisonburg. On the other hand, from my two years spent in a Mennonite institution of higher learning reading folks like John Howard Yoder, I've learned to have a healthy dose of theological and political skepticism about these exercises in national allegiance, celebration, and pride, not to mention their state-violence-legitimating undertones (sometimes not so "under").

My next proviso is linked to my being Brethren in a Mennonite institution of higher learning. My experience with Mennonites has been almost entirely academic (and only one school for two years) while my more-extensive Church of the Brethren experience has been almost entirely congregational. And not only congregational but limited to my home district, which represents only a small percentage of the denominational whole! (I vividly remember my schock at National Youth Conference in 1994 when the busses from Pennsylvania pulled up..and pulled up again...and kept pulling up, with a relative sea of youth pouring out of them.)

I'm assuming a mostly 1) Brethren and 2) academic audience here, so if that's safe let me ask the audience: Was the Goshen College thing on the radar? (Nice military analogy, right?) What was your Brethren upbringing like in relation to things like the national anthem?

Book reviews, atonement, and lots of crying

By Nick Miller Kauffman

I just finished reading Proverbs of Ashes for a book review, and I cried a lot.  Like, every twelve pages.  Not full-on sobbing, but brief, six-second bouts of tears.  I suspect this is not an unheard of phenomenon when reading this particular book.

The book, whose full title is Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for what Saves Us, by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, started as a desire to offer a feminist critique of Christian theories of the atonement.  That probably would have been a valuable but boring book.  Instead, they found their project transforming into something story-based and essentially autobiographical.  The critique is there, but it is incased in heart-wrenching stories of rape, shattered relationships, identity crises, and family secrets.

Where I probably differ from everyone else who cries while reading this book is I didn't cry at the tragedy. I was sad to read that Parker felt cornered into aborting a child whose presence initially evoked joy out of a desire to save her marriage, but I didn't cry.  Stories of rape and abuse leave me feeling confused and sickened, but I don't cry.

I didn't cry when Shadow fell into the pit near the end of Homeward Bound.  No, I'm the guy who cried when he finally came limping over the horizon, then ran to Peter's embrace.  I tear up when the music cuts in during Andrew Shepherd's speech at the end of The American President.  I cried, over and over, when Parker and Brock offered or quoted words that were magical in their profundity or astonishing in their healing.  Like when Brock, on her way out of the City of a Thousand Buddhas, emptied the jar of dirt that she had claimed years earlier from the front yard of the man who raped her when she was five:

"The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas could take care of one more hungry ghost.  Every day the monks put food in the garden to help all the ghosts bound in misery and pain find their way home.  I happily turned the job of taking care of Frank over to them and brushed the dirt off my hands" (Parker, Proverbs of Ashes, 209).

"One more hungry ghost" is one of those points at which I cried.  Now that you all think I'm strange, on to the theology.

I was intrigued to learn that neither Brock nor Parker--both Christians--participates in communion.  It's not hard to understand why, though, as they reject not just specific theories of the atonement, but the atonement itself.

Substitutionary atonement is problematic because it presents a God abusive towards his child and bloodthirsty in his demand for justice:

"The belief that the great Jehovah was offended with his creatures to that degree, that nothing but the death of Christ, or the endless misery of mankind, could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to the Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries.  The error has been fatal to the life and spirit of the religion of Christ in our world; all those principles which are to be dreaded by men have been believed to exist in God" (Hosea Ballou, Treatise on the Atonement, qtd. in Parker, Proverbs of Ashes, 30).

Further, with its identification of disobedience as the root human sin, the message here can be for victims of abuse to obey their abusers.  "A God who punishes disobedience will teach us to obey and endure when it would be holy to protest and righteous to refuse to cooperate" (Parker 21).

In the same chapter, Parker launches similar indictments against social gospel, the crucified people of God, moral influence, liberation theology, spiritualist, and crucified God theories of the atonement.  I was going to try to summarize them all, but I fear I'll lose everyone's attention and many of them are kind of similar anyway.

Ultimately, the message is that we should not make a horrific act of violence into something good, in any way, because to do so celebrates the violence.  Instead we must be free to grieve the death of Jesus as something bad.  Brock and Parker also argue that we can never be separated from God's love, and thus there is no need for atonement.

What saves us is truth, defense of the abused, and opposition of injustice.  These life-affirming qualities are where promise lies.

Things I want for this blog

1. Authors!  Authors!  Authors authors authors authors authors!  I'm SURE you--yes, YOU--have something to write.  Do it!  Not why I started this post, but it had to be included.

2. I want a cool banner.  Preferably something involving feetwashing and foursquare.  I know there are wonderfully talented photographers/photo-editors out there.

3. I want this site to have its own look.  My general lack of talent has left me limited to the default Blogspot themes.  If anyone thinks they can spice things up I'll be happy to bring on, say, an "artistic administrator."

How seminary is ruining church

After putting such a shocker post title I should start out by saying this isn't an indictment of theological education in any way.  I'm just talking about how studying Bible and theology is affecting my experience of worship.

"Cognitive dissonance" would be a top contender for seminary phrase of the year, if such a distinction existed.  It's certainly one of theology instructor Malinda Berry's favorites.  For me, it's one of those buzzword phrases that I use with a frequency not warranted by my level of understanding of what it actually means--you know, kind of like "exegesis."

Until now, that is.  According to Wikipedia, "cognitive dissonance" is "an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously."  Basically, theologically, it happens when we experience something contrary to our own truths.

I have a confession: I used to like praise music.  Actually, I used to love praise music.  It's why I learned to play the guitar.  Which I played in the praise band for Intercollegiate Ministries (ICM) at Manchester College.

Most praise music is now ruined for me, because I can't just sing and enjoy it.  No, now that I eat, sleep and breathe theology, I must deconstruct the theological claims present in the lyrics.  And I have to say, they do not nourish my theological intellect.  Most often it's just a lack of the song actually saying much, though there is the occasional bit of questionable theology.  Plus, at seminary I've become used to a lot of inclusive language type stuff (we're all "autumn wind" and "breath of giving" and such), and I get really distracted by songs that are loaded with "father" this and "lord" that.  In one way or another, though, I'm constantly finding myself evaluating the theology of our music.

The other distraction is that I now know too much.  This past weekend I was at a wedding in which both the pastor and the person reading the scripture identified Paul as the author of Colossians.  Now, while the authorship of Colossians is cautiously called "disputed," my understanding and belief is that it was written pseudonymously by one of Paul's later followers, not by Paul.

I squirmed in my seat.

I then picked up the pew Bible from in front of me and turned to the introduction to Colossians.  My Bible is a HarperCollins NRSV Study Bible and is chalk full of critique.  I sort of forgot that there were non-critical Bibles, and that pew Bibles were likely to fall into this category.  So I was surprised when I saw the introduction to Colossians uncritically discussing the circumstances under which Paul wrote it.

Okay, I told myself.  Maybe Colossians can be a gray area.  But what about the pastorals?  Scholarly consensus pretty much rejects Pauline authorship of the pastorals.

I turned to First Timothy.  Again, the introduction talked unquestionably about Paul as the author.  I felt some cognitive dissonance rumbling in me.

Why, though?  My personal faith favors speaking of things that may not be literally true, as if they are true.  I find it unlikely that Mary was a virgin, or even that Jesus turned water into wine.  Yet I have no problem telling these stories.

I think, for me, telling scripture is a statement of faith.  It is a story, and the truth it bears is inherent.  But when we talk about who wrote the letters that make up that scripture, we get into history and fact.  And it bothers me that we fudge over this in worship.  I do understand that for some--many--Pauline authorship, too, is a matter of faith, but I have to say that just isn't how I see it.  In fact, for me, talking critically about the Bible makes it all the richer and more valuable to me.

There has been some resistance, in our tradition, to theological higher education.  And I can understand the frustration of feeling like some priestly class (i.e. those with seminary education) is telling everyone else how to do church.  This is, after all, a Church that recognizes the priesthood of all believers.  Yet my solution wouldn't be to do away with seminary; it would be to open up the kind of discussion we have here to everyone.  Bring it more into our worship.  I was talking to a friend last weekend who noted that a year of seminary would be valuable to anyone who is the least bit interested in theology.

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein said, "When we pray, we talk to God.  When we study, God talks to us."  As I get deeper into theological study, I certainly find it to be where I can hear God.  And I won't go so far as to claim it's for everyone, but I would like to see more connection between those doing scholarship and those doing church.

Of course, then everyone would be distracted by having to evaluate the theology of our songs.  But I guess that's the price you pay.

-Nick Miller Kauffman

Anabaptist Fierce

...is what I'm trying to learn how to be at seminary right now.

In preparing for this friday's Voices of a People's History of Christianity joint worship service at Bethany and ESR (Earlham School of Religion), our professor Dawn Ottoni Wilhem gave some of us in her worship course feedback on our readings. We were preparing a service in which we would perform (in the best sense of the word) readings from Christoph Blumhardt, Meister Eckhart, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mary Ann Tolbert, who were/are all notoriously controversial prophets of their times.

The worship service, planned by my husband Parker, was inspired by our admiration for the late Howard Zinn's project, Voices of a People's History of the United States, in which Zinn gathers together some of the great actors of our time to enact and embody the words of many great prophets from US History.

Dawn was exhorting one of us to drop the normally cheery disposition it is culturally acceptable to operate in and switch to a more serious and provocative tone.

"Don't be Anabaptist nice," she said. "Be Anabaptist fierce."

That's it! I thought. What a perfect term for what I've been trying to embody this semester! Maybe Dawn didn't invent the term and maybe lots of cradle Brethren and Mennonites will tell me they've heard it from birth--which seems to happen to me pretty often as a convert--but I'm still impressed.

It seems to me that while the shift from Anabaptist nice to Anabaptist fierce may appear small, it takes a lot of work and makes a lot of difference.

For me, this semester it has meant working hard to be more and more honest about who I am and what I am thinking and feeling, which might sort of sound innocuous--but try doing it! I will tell you it is no easy task to unlearn 25 years worth of habits of closeting my thoughts and feelings and of only letting squeeze out a thin, filtered version of myself, in favor of becoming a more honest and open me.

More than once this semester telling the truth about my feelings or thoughts especially when it comes to sexuality, sexism and our bodies, has alarmed and offended my classmates, some of whom have even approached me in private to try to shame me into shutting up.

But thanks to the support of great friends and mentors in this community and the great witness of our Anabaptist-Pietist heritage, I am not shutting up. I am trying to pick up where my adopted ancestors and mentors left off and trying to learn the fierceness required to stand strong on who I am and what I know.

How can we live and experience fully God's presence in this world if we don't develop the fierceness it takes to be authentic? And I don't mean being offensive for the sake of being offensive, but genuinely authentic.

I've been quoting Bob Hunter a lot lately, and I hope he doesn't mind if I do it again, but he planted a very helpful and related seed in me at Bethany's Presidential Forum. In our small (and I do mean small) group discussion on racism at the forum, we were discussing why many Evangelical Christian associations would have lots more people of color than our very pale, liberal-leaning forum did. Bob cited a weak (or rather antithetical) version of non-violent theory he often hears from seminarians as symptomatic of the problem. Concerning Jesus' Sermon on the Mount commandment to "love your enemies" these seminarians want to claim that we have no enemies, which as Bob cited is not really nonviolent theory at all.

Only someone at the top of the food chain, with all kinds of privilege, could claim that we have no enemies. People of color (and other oppressed peoples), who in this country are faced with messages every day that often demarcate them as the enemy to "American" culture, know the point of that old labor song "which side are you on?"

And a kind of "peace church people" who want to pretend those demarcations are not there and that no matter what someone believes they are not working in opposition to us, will always seem frighteningly and dangerously out of touch with reality.

To be clear, to stand up for and on your convictions does not mean you have to be unchanging, uncaring and infallibly correct. It means you have to have the fierceness to say what you mean and mean what you say.

It doesn't mean we can't be in community if we disagree--in fact it means we've got to learn to love each other across enemy lines!

But community is not real if we're all pretending to be Anabaptist nice when we really disagree with each other vehemently. That's not community. That's a lie. Now there's a careful balance to loving each other while speaking truth, but we'll never get good at it if we don't first try on some Anabaptist fierce.

I know it was those peace church people who tried this fierceness on that drew me to fall in love with Stone Church and the Church of the Brethren to begin with.

So, when I stood up to perform a reading from Mary Ann Tolbert in Friday's chapel service, in which I would talk about sex, sexuality, and then call, with Mary, for the church, "all of us straight and gay, to come out of the closet about our bodies," I was a little nervous because I knew that there were quite a few in the community (and probably some in that room) whose bodies scare them and who just plainly disagree.

But, I wasn't nearly as nervous as I would have been at the beginning of the semester, when I was still trying to hide behind a mask of nicety. I could take solace in the knowledge that for us to be truly the community of believers God calls us to be, we need to be honest about where we are and what we believe.

And that disagreement is not something to sweep under the rug, but rather a great opportunity for growth, if we can find the courage to be Anabaptist fierce.

-Katie Shaw Thompson

What does it mean to be Brethren? Demonations, movements, and identities

Last weekend saw a who's who of Brethren (and Quakers and Mennonites) descend on Richmond for Bethany's Presidential Forum, "When Strangers are Angels."  I didn't participate much in the conference due to a fat work schedule and a thin wallet, but I did make it to a panel session of Brethren, Mennonites and Quakers discussing what it is that makes us Brethren, Mennonite, or Quaker: how do we know who is in and who is out?  And what do these identities mean to us?

In some ways, these questions are becoming more critical in the face of declining church membership, budget cuts, and what I would argue is the rise of post-Christianity (can I say that?).

I'll drop the incriminating details at the expense of making this paragraph vague and uninteresting, but in a recent worship service, someone did something that came across as overly enthusiastic and, frankly, a bit lame.  A former professor of mine leaned over to me and said, "Our church is dying, Nick."

Maybe I'm too young to be wringing my hands and fretting about the future of our church, but that's what I'm doing.  In my own short lifetime I've seen a visible drop in membership in my home congregation.  I've seen district and regional events draw smaller and smaller crowds, or even get scrapped altogether.  I've seen our denomination cut program after program that gives us relevance outside our own little community.  And all that has made me wonder, what's going to happen to the Church of the Brethren?


Scott Holland, one of my professors here, doesn't like the word denomination.  He prefers movement.  Within Christianity, there are Brethren and Quaker movements, each bringing their own interpretations and contributions to the broader context, and interacting with each other to weave a bigger story.

I think this idea of movement might be key to the future of our identity as Brethren.  I hate to say it, but the Church of the Brethren may not be able to survive as the institution of programs and missions that we've known it to be.  It's just a financial reality.  But when we have so long defined ourselves by the presence of a visible church, what will happen to our identity as Brethren when that visible church folds?

Institutionally, I can see us moving in a direction of increased interdependence with other groups--maybe the Mennonites or the Quakers--in a way not unlike the interdependence between Bethany Theological Seminary and the Earlham School of Religion.  Maybe the net will be even broader.  Or maybe we'll just find ourself, one day, without a church to belong to.  In any of these circumstances, how will we continue to be Brethren? 

The radical pietist tradition from which the Brethren emerged did not see the need to have a visible church, and we may be forced to learn something from that.  I, for one, am unwilling to give up being Brethren, whatever being Brethren may mean.  Even if my membership is in the United Brethren/Mennonite Church (or something like that), I'll still be very clear in saying: I am Brethren.

-Nick Miller Kauffman

Theories on life, the universe, and everything

(Re-posted from my personal blog)

I'm actually not at all a fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy."  But it is a good phrase.

I just saw this blog post passing along a brief lesson in life from Kurt Vonnegut.

I used to--and, to some extent, still do--seek the sort of life that would make a good movie.  Walking home from high school on a rainy night, after staying late to work on newspaper layout, I'd think how good my surroundings would be for some melodramatic montage, and I'd imagine the minor-key piano music and whining vocals that would accompany such a scene.

We all do this.  (By "we all," I mean "most of us, I think.")  We expect life to reflect entertainment.  After all, entertainment reflects life, right?  But entertainment reflects only the dramatic (and, at its best, the profound) in life.  It's a skewed look that uses semi-realistic people, relationships, events and themes to create unrealistic patterns and meanings.  We see this, and we expect our life to weave itself into natural plot lines; we expect people to exhibit the consistency and predictability of a well-developed character.

But people are not consistent, and life has meaning and story only through interpretation.  Out of this cognitive dissonance, we create the drama we expect to see.

Vonnegut:  "[B]ecause we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs.  So people pretend there is drama where there is none."

The blog author continues: "That's why people invent fights.  That's why we're drawn to sports.  That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.  We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale."