Conversations

from Thomas C. Goodhart

Some years ago I attended a weekend conference in Washington D.C. entitled “Food, Faith, and the Farm Bill.” Sponsored by the Washington Office of the Mennonite Central Committee, the three-day event included a variety of speeches, lectures, and educational trainings about what the aforementioned title suggests as well as bible study, worship, and lobbying our senators. There were probably about a hundred attendees from all over the United States—a grandfather and dairy farmer from Pennsylvania, a youth county agent from Colorado, a retired Mennonite missionary in Africa now residing in Virginia, a recent college grad becoming a CSA vegetable farmer from Minnesota, a pastor from Kansas, a grain farmer from South Dakota—and all of them were Mennonites except for me. Being the lone non-Anabaptist however, I could still keep up with them in their own name-bingo games: Yoder, Miller, Mast, Hershberger… More importantly, they showed me great hospitality. And let me add, I’ve never been in corporate worship where the four-part hymn singing was so beautiful. I made some great friends that weekend, and obviously connected on the level of our passions and interests on food, faith, and politics, but much more so in our shared identity as Christians.

I love me some Anabaptists and truly appreciate what they bring to the larger “Christian table,” but nonetheless, am not one myself. So while with them, I wanted to hear from them, what did it mean to be a Mennonite? My conversations were certainly limited, but consistently brought up three themes. Firstly, they resonated with the wider “evangelical” church in that their faith taught them the importance of a personal response to Christ. (Menno Simons would probably be proud.) Secondly, however, they felt there was a movement among many Mennonites to too easily be “absorbed” in the wider evangelical movement—almost becoming “generic” Christians—and they expressed feeling that some of their churches were loosing some of the faithful and worthy distinctions of what it meant to be Anabaptist, particularly the practices and teachings of being peace churches and simplicity. Finally, they recognized in their Mennonite tradition that there was a counter-cultural identity—counter to their national cultures, counter to a sometimes “Christian” culture, and counter to the left/right liberal/conservative dichotomy of the wider world. These sentiments of clearly wanting to retain an Anabaptist flavour were especially strong among the younger people present.

This was only a quick snapshot taken in a limited three-day conference almost 8 years ago that in and of itself may well have been slanted in a particular “activist” direction. And that said, hardly am I an adequate sociologist. I’m sure I heard things that I particularly wanted to hear.

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