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?