The Authority of the Church in the World:  A United Church of Christ Perspective, Rev. Dr. Susan E. Davies
 

Authority of the Mennonite Church in the World

Dr. Thomas Finger
Scholar in Residence, Bethany Theological Seminary 

To understand the Mennonite perspective, it will be helpful to distinguish two important usages of world (kosmos) in the NT.  In one use, world refers to the totality of natural and social environments in which humans live; or, more exactly, to the broad structures and processes basic to all human life.  The world, in this sense, was created by God, as the framework within which human potentialities would be actualized, and God’s purposes attained.  This world is, at least potentially, very good, and the object of God’s love (Jn 3:16-19, 2 Cor. 5:19, 1 Jn 4:14, etc.)  In its second use, however, “world” designates the collectivity, or collective momentum, of behaviors and values which oppose God (Jn 17:9-19, 1 Cor. 1:21, 1 Jn 2:16, etc.).  These operate, as all human activity must, within the created world’s structures.  Yet guided by values, motives and demonic forces which oppose God’s intentions, “the world” distorts and destroys human potentials.  In this essay, “world” in the second sense is enclosed in italics, while world in the first sense is not. 

The Bible highlights a third dynamic reality, the Kingdom of God.[1]  This, in my understanding, designates the collective momentum of behaviors and values operating according to God’s purposes, definitively actualized through Christ and the Holy Spirit.  God’s Kingdom opposes “the world” and works to actualize the world’s original, positive potentials.  We might picture the world as a mobile complex of basic, interacting structures and processes, and “the world” and God’s Kingdom as opposing force-fields operating within this complex.  The two force-fields develop their own structures and processes, but only by adapting and reconfiguring the world’s, or those of the opposing force-field, which were initially adapted from the world.   

The Reformation Era and its Impact

Mennonites trace their origins to a 16^th-century movement named after a practice which differentiated it sharply from European society.  While nearly all Europeans had been baptized as infants, this new movement baptized only those who consciously received and sought to follow Christ.  Consequently, their enemies derisively labeled them “Anabaptists,” or re-baptizers.  For over a millennium, the practice of infant baptism had meant that nearly all citizens in almost every political territory were also Church members.  Lutherans and the Reformed continued this rite, keeping the memberships of European States and their State Churches virtually the same.   

However, if baptism were received only by those who chose it, the membership of these two bodies would differ significantly.  Only some adult citizens, perhaps a small minority, would belong to the church.  To rulers in that turbulent era, Catholic and Protestant, it seemed obvious that such a church-state separation would gravely threaten the latter’s unity, stability and even its survival.  Anabaptism, accordingly, was outlawed-- usually as treason, not heresy.  Its adherents were jailed, dispossessed, and not infrequently drowned, burned and otherwise martyred.  It was mainly in these punitive contexts that early Anabaptists, who usually hailed from lower classes, encountered state and church leaders.  Not surprisingly, they often identified them and their institutions directly with “the world.” 

This identification was intensified by eschatological expectations, which pervaded the Reformation atmosphere, but ran higher among Anabaptists than most.  Evil, Anabaptists believed, was reaching its climactic form, wholly taking over governments and churches (e.g. Rev. 12, 13) before God’s Kingdom and its King destroyed and replaced them.  The more Anabaptists preached this, the more severely did state and church persecute them-- confirming, in their eyes, the truth of their message, and the identification of these institutions with “the world.”     

This extreme suffering, however, did not lure most early Anabaptists away from society.  Instead, their convictions energized mission activity throughout Europe.  Their eschatology, moreover, involved a strong “realized” element.  The very nearness of God’s Kingdom meant that it was already present in some significant way.  Anabaptists and their Mennonite descendants are perhaps best known for their literal application of Jesus’ teachings, including non-resistant love for enemies.  In Reformation times, at least, this behavior was inspired not only by ethical motives, but probably more by the conviction that it was possible because God’s Kingdom, energized by God’s Spirit, was already here. 

Reformation-era Anabaptists, then, contrasted two ways of living.  One, which pervaded earthly societies, belonged to “the world.”  The other, characterizing God’s Kingdom, was followed by people called out of “the world.”  Since all or most of these, they thought, had joined Anabaptist congregations, God’s kingdom, before the parousia, could be nearly equated with the true church.  It should be added, though, that even in that era at least five Anabaptist models of the church-world relationship existed, and not all made so sharp a separation.[2]  

Eventually, most Anabaptists survived by fleeing to remote regions whose rulers needed reliable, hard-working people, and protected and exempted them from military service in exchange.  Such rulers allowed Anabaptists, most of them called Mennonites by 1600, to practice their illegal religion, so long as they kept it to themselves.  As decades and centuries passed, Mennonites established and administered many small, relatively autonomous, often ethnically ingrown communities.  Though they lived within the world’s, or created order’s, basic framework, many Mennonites called their way of life, shaped by their vision of God’s Kingdom, “separation from the world.”  This separation was often literally geographic.  Mennonite communities, even in urban areas, frequently occupied different spaces.  The crucial contrast was between the church (themselves) and “the world,” with little sense that both inhabited a common world.                 

 Such church would hardly have any authority in what they understood as “world,” except authority to call people out of it by the gospel’s power, verbalized in preaching and made vivid in their lifestyle.  Anabaptists of the first two generations often exercised this kind of authority.  But the further Mennonites withdrew from society, the less often did this occur. 

More Recent Developments

Mennonites began to become aware of the world, though not by that name, through increasing contacts with other people.  Whenever Mennonites sold their produce to, or purchased items from, other folks in ways beneficial to both parties, they participated in structures common to their church, or Kingdom, and to those outside it; structures not wholly warped by “the world.”   

Sometimes, of course, Mennonites traded with people engaged in dishonest practices.  Over time, however, Mennonite habits of honesty and good workmanship could influence such folks.  For example, their dealings might influence one small town merchant to offer better products at fairer prices, and others might eventually follow suit.  These practices would benefit all nearby inhabitants, even if no one else became Mennonite.  God’s Kingdom would have become more active, and “the world’s” forces less effective, in structures outside Mennonite circles which overarched both the church and “the world.” 

Most Mennonites who settled in North America, beginning in 1688, were considered neither traitors nor heretics, and could mingle with other people.  Although Mennonites were slow to join the mix, involvement in society increased rapidly during the 20^th Century.  They have entered worldly structures mostly through service professions, such as health care, education and social work, with a strong bent towards the most disadvantaged.  Increasingly, Mennonites have worked through government as well as private institutions, apparently guided by a distinction, often implicit and unthematized, between government’s service and violent functions (which existed even at the Reformation).       

All along, however, and still today, Mennonites have been most reluctant to participate in government, largely because of its close, if not intrinsic, connection with violence.  At present some Mennonites do not even vote.  Others, though, are elected to local and regional offices, including mayor. 

The most common explicit Mennonite social strategy is to offer imaginative, constructive alternatives to malfunctioning institutions and processes, derived from their vision of God’s Kingdom.[3]  This can lead to establishing alternative institutions, such as local clinics. Their most distinctive contributions are probably in the swiftly-expanding field of conflict-resolution (Mennonites prefer “-transformation”), including programs like victim-offender reconciliation. 

In ventures like these, the imprint of an Anabaptist Christian vision is fairly visible.  Some other Mennonites seek to affect processes, such as national politics, which seem less open to this vision now, and less likely to be changed greatly by it.  They can work, say, towards reducing military spending without anticipating that it will be abolished.  Though pacifists, they need not be purists as to specific goals, but are content to nudge worldly structures in the direction of their vision. 

Mennonites involved in such processes and church leaders who call for this draw the sharpest criticism from others who implicitly associate such structures with “the world.”  This involvement, they protest, underestimates the corruption of these structures and/or diverts the church from its true mission.   

Mennonite efforts to impact these structures, directly or indirectly, owe much to John Howard Yoder.  While Yoder distinguished the authentic church and its lifestyle sharply from society’s, he also underlined the eschatological claim that Jesus is already Lord of all.  This implied that worldly structures, even those seriously warped by “the world,” must be open to some Kingdom influence.  The church, therefore, could articulate its mission in the world/”world” through middle axioms: ways of using society's language to recommend some approximation to the church's Jesus-centered vision.[4]   

But while he believed that the church could affect society at various points, Yoder insisted that its task is simply to bear witness in these situations, not to transform society as a whole.  To attempt that is to play God, Who alone will decide society’s ultimate fate.  Christians should be concerned only with faithfulness to Jesus and his call, and not overall results, or “effectiveness.” 

Today, some Mennonites challenge this distinction, arguing that faithfulness requires work aimed at real change, or effectiveness.  Some also soften Yoder’s contrast between church and world/”world,” arguing that Christians necessarily participate in culture and its development, whose basic structures I am calling the world.[5]  Still, Mennonites who recommend more direct involvement in these processes point to the distinctness of Jesus and his Kingdom as its basis. 

Kinds of Authority

Divine

Mennonites in general probably believe, in a general sort of way, in the kind of authority exercised by early Anabaptists: authority to go into “the world” and call people to live in a different sphere, the Kingdom of God.  Most Mennonites today probably think only God can grant such authority and power.  A difference is that “the world” and the Kingdom, for most of them, are no longer separate physical spaces.  They are alternative ways of life, which often operate, interact and even mingle in the same locations.  (This, again, is my own conceptualization: Mennonites seldom think in this theoretical way.)      

Example

Example carries genuine authority for a denomination which finds the world more thoroughly permeated by “the world” than do most other N.C.C. communions.  “The world,” in Scripture and for many Mennonites who think about it, is governed by demonic forces of some kind.  One of their main activities is deception.  They make “the world’s” patterns seem like the only possible way to live .  Injustice, dishonesty, violence, exploitation are everywhere.  Everyone, then, must adapt to, and effectively participate in, them. 

But by proposing and incarnating alternative ways of life, the church can break through this deception.  Example carries authority to dissolve this blindness-- to make God’s Kingdom, and the possibility of actually living differently, visible.  Concrete examples, personal and corporate, call the apparent necessity and virtue of “worldly” behaviors into question. 

To live this way, Mennonites draw chiefly on the Example of Jesus’ life, death and teachings, set forth in Scripture and further incarnated in their communities by the Holy Spirit (I am describing the ideal, of course).[6]  Despite the importance of the Bible and its teachings, the authority of example, precisely speaking, emanates not from these simply as written documents, but from their behavioral incarnations.       

Persuasion

Mennonites usually prefer to witness more through deeds than words.  This sometimes conveys impressions of their own goodness, but not that their lifestyle is available for others.  Example, while it can carry a certain authority, often requires activation by persuasion to be further incarnated.  Persuasion involves discussion.  But for Mennonites this should include exposure to, or involvement in, their concrete lives and ministries.  Persuasion aims at changing behaviors, not only ideas.  Mennonites tend to be less interested in advocating their views apart from context.      

However, those who promote involvement in government and socio-economic systems encourage discussion in the public square.  Mennonites are penning more articles, books and letters to Editors.  Yet I, who compose some of these, sometimes wonder how persuasive these are to people who know nothing else about us.  It often seems that words alone, apart from concrete images of their referents, make little impact in our image-oriented society.      

 Mennonites frequently persuade by proposing and pointing out how their Kingdom vision provides more sensible, meaningful ways of living.  They will usually dialogue at length with people who seem open to this, but avoid argument for argument’s sake.  Persuasion’s authority derives from the same source as that of example: Jesus’ life, death and teachings as found in Scripture and actualized in Christian communities by the Holy Spirit.  I am distinguishing example and persuasion because each can wield authority by itself.  In the Mennonite understanding, though, they usually complement each other, and ultimately flow from divine authority.