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your Board be better?
"“Crisply written and highly practical! Offers consis- tently sound commonsense advice on the real-life problems and challenges of nonprofit board service. Doing Good Better! could serve independent direc- tors of a Fortune 500 company as well as it does the board of any of our nation's more than one million nonprofits.
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Doing Good Better! How to Be an Effective Board Member of a Nonprofit Organization by Edgar Stoesz & Chester Raber
Well-meaning individuals become board members, but few are given adequate instruc- tions about how to do their job well.
In this personably-written manual, two veterans of many boards lucidly address the ideal relationship between a nonprofit organization and its board. They candidly cover the realities that often threaten that relationship—weak board leadership, overly zealous staff, ill-informed board members, and more. Then, from their lifetimes as staff, consul- tants, and board members, Stoesz and Raber suggest strategies for overcoming these common difficulties.
Stories from their vast experience weave through their explicit guidelines and sugges- tions.
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exploring the ar. iaitiand culture of Mennonite peoples
on the cover...
Winter 1994
FesrvaL
i 2T, No. 1
Quarterly __
Selections from Howard Zehr’s photographs of prisoners with life sentences, entitled “The Meaning of Life.”
Howard Zehr Merle Good
J. Nelson Kraybill John M. Drescher Dorothy Friesen
Peter J. Dyck
David W. Augsburger James & Jeanette Krabill Katie Funk Wiebe
FEATURES 7 Photography and a Life Sentence
12 Bedru Hussein: Gentle and Intense 14 The Devil in College Chapel
17 Parents’ Last Great Opportunity 19 The Untouchable
23 “Anniversary Scrapbook” NEWS
25 Publishing Notes
32 Quarterly News
34 Did You Know That? COLUMNS
24 Borders
ih Communication By-Line
Bie Americans Abroad
36 Reclassified COMMENTARY
§ Editorial
oY. Comment
CRITIQUE
26 Mennonite Books in Review
ahs Film Ratings
INDEX
38
FQ Articles from Winter 1993 (Vol. 19, No. 4) through Fall 1993
(Vol. 20, No. 3)
Festival Quarterly 3
ae Pr» CN AY SfFrom the pens of our sisters...
CRY ; DANK CAN Prayers of an Omega:
4 A Facing the Transitions of Aging by Katie Funk Wiebe
Wednesday is Humpday
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun. (Eccles. 1:9)
God of all eternity, I didn’t need to look at the calendar to tell me it is Humpday. Monday and Tuesday move by on snail’s feet. Usually there’s little or no mail. People don’t call.
Then comes Wednesday. It’s like the hump on a camel. Crawl over it and you slide off the end. Until Wednesday comes I’m climbing toward the hump, waiting for the weekend, for when people have time to call, and for going to church and maybe going out to eat.
Paper, $6.95; in Canada $9.60.
Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes?
Finding God in the Everyday by Melodie M. Davis
When the children were small, they enjoyed a wonderful Sesame Street book featuring the tireless Cookie Monster. In it Cookie Monster frustrates a character who finally exclaims, in a nonsense kind of line, “Oh, why didn’t I just raise radishes?”
It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times when frustrated with parenting. However, there are countless other times I rejoice that I’m not just raising radishes, but wonderful, God-created little human beings.
Paper, $7.95; in Canada $10.95.
Traces of Treasure:
K\ Quest for God in the Commonplace by Joanne Lehman
fr Inner Sanctum: The kitchen table checkered cloth has cookies baked lin oven’s off. Dripping faucet ga humming fridge
tea is steeping
lift the lid. 6) Mugs are hanging << W Sy
on the wall. DER
y NN Sip the tea % till it is all. Oy
Think your thoughts
PREIS dream your dreams a kitchen’s more
\f CAS than it sometimes seems. Available through your local bookstore or by calling 1 800 759-
pee P $7.95; (WS es mon tio: ) L¢\ 4447; in Canada call 519 746-2872 (Provident Bookstores—MC, a A OX Visa, Discover). — aS (OE ® Herald Press Herald Press
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FestTraL,
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Festival Quarterly (USPS 406- 090, ISSN 8750-3530) is published quarterly by Good Enterprises, Ltd., at 3513 Old Philadelphia Pike, Intercourse, PA 17534. The Quarterly is dedicated to exploring the culture, faith and arts of various Mennonite groups worldwide, believ- ing that faith and the arts are as inseparable as what we believe is inseparable from how we live.
Copyright © 1994 by Good Enterprises, Ltd., Vol. 21, No. 1. All correspondence should be addressed to Festival Quarterly, 3513 Old Philadelphia Pike, Intercourse, PA 17534.
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Editor—Phyllis Pellman Good Publisher—Merle Good
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Contributing Editors—David W. Augsburger, Kenton K. Brubaker, Peter J. Dyck, Jan Gleysteen, Keith Helmuth, James & Jeanette Krabill, Emerson L. Lesher, José Ortiz, Mary K. Oyer, Jewel Showalter, Carol Ann Weaver, Katie Funk Wiebe.
Phyllis Pellman Good, Merle Good |
EDITORIAL
Are Sociologists Equipped?
How should we in the church chart our future? Most Mennonites would suggest discernment by spiritual lead- ers who are in touch with the people. This involves prayer, Bible study, a sense of history, and a creative view of the future.
Lately, in North American circles, there appears to be an increasing reliance on sociologists to conduct “studies” to help us see where we’re headed. But this approach may not be as objective and helpful as is commonly assumed. Recent experience suggests that the tools sociologists use may be largely subjective and vulnerable to manipulation.
Perhaps it would be helpful to ask ourselves a few questions about these studies by sociologists:
1. Who is sponsoring the study? Do they have any vested interest in its outcome? (To use a vivid example from the larger world, why is it that “stud- es” by the tobacco companies can never seem to find a link to cancer?)
2. Are the sociologists who are cho- sen to conduct the study sympathetic to the premise?
3. What is the selection process for choosing the individuals who are to be studied? Many subtle prejudices affect the “scholars” at this point.
4. Which persons or groups (or con- gregations) choose not to participate? Does the sponsor’s address or image influence certain groups to drop out? Many times this only skews the num- bers in favor of the premise. (If the study is testing attitudes toward Mennonite colleges, for instance, per- sons who don’t support Mennonite colleges may choose not to participate in the study; this has the effect of mak- ing the numbers from the study look more favorable toward the colleges. But is the conclusion from the study then reliable?)
5. To organize the study, the sociol- ogists need to create categories of attitudes to test. Another highly sub- jective situation. The results of the study are heavily influenced by the selections of these categories. But the charts and tables make it all look very objective!
6. Most subjective of all are the questions. The prejudices of the soci- ologists and the vested interests of the
premise both influence the choice of questions, the vocabulary, the tone, and the nuance. The use of one word instead of another can throw the results dramatically.
7. The final imperialism in this process presents itself with the orches- tration of the interpretation. Without a smile or a wink, these sociologists present their conclusions as though they are objective and beyond dispute. But the interpretation of data is at best a smorgasbord process. Pick this response and contrast it with that answer, and we have verification of the premise of the sponsors!
Sadly, some Mennonite leaders act as though sociological studies are more objective than the Bible itself.
Does this mean sociologists have no role to play in the church? Of course not. But certainly it seems unfair to both the sociologists among us and to the church itself to grant so much authority to their work. Perhaps their contribution to charting our future should be equated to that of the psy- chologists, farmers, artists, parents, and business persons among us.
Two recent examples suggest that sociologists may not be as equipped to help us find the truth about ourselves as is often assumed:
1. There has been a strong push from certain sponsors during the past decade to merge (“integrate”) the Mennonite Church with the General Conference Mennonite Church. An analysis of the language employed, the groups not included, the vested inter- ests, and the less-than-candid tactics involved could fill a book.
The latest chapter unfolded during the past year when the Integration Exploration Committee sent a packet and a video to all the congregations, asking them which of two models they preferred: a) Continued Cooperation or b) Integration.
But the response form had no place for congregations to say that they pre- ferred Continued Cooperation! (As in, “Choose your ice cream, raspberry or chocolate? Oh, sorry—no chocolate!”)
Never mind. There was almost no response. Congregations representing only 3.5 % of the membership returned these one-sided forms. But the com-
continued on page 6
Festival Quarterly 5
continued from page 5
mittee engaged two sociologists from one of the sponsors most loudly pro- moting Integration to produce a 35-page analysis of the tiny response! Even though the “Continued Cooperation” option was eliminated from the form, only 56% of the respon- dents favored Integration soon or eventually. But the sociologists pro- claimed victory and the church press obliged by splashing stories and head- lines across their news pages.
2. The recent “study” on Mennonite peacemaking is another unfortunate example of sociologists using the cloak of “science” to prooftext their premise (see page 26). The way their cate- gories are structured, questions are designed, and interpretations slanted makes clear that another group of “scholars” could come up with very different conclusions. Yet many in the church treat these studies as though they are objective!
Perhaps it’s time to recognize that sociologists may not be equipped to be the miracle mirrors some expect. Discerning the will of God is a bit more complex than commissioning sociolo- gists to do another “study.” —MG
Warm and Practical
If I Were Starting My Family Again, by Joyn M. Drescher
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6 Winter 1994
z fess
“Remember, in the other version they had a pea-green boat, and here they re using public transportation. s!
Jom M Drescher
John M. Drescher has spent most of his life talking and writing about the issues Surrounding
family life and par- —
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(You can receive a 20% discount on this book by using the FQ Readers’ Book Service on page 29!)
Drawing by M. Twohy; © 1993, The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
and a Life
text and photographs by Howard Zehr
Sentence
At the recent opening of a show at The People’s Place Gallery, Howard Zehr reflected on photographing men and women sentenced to life imprisonment. These comments are adapted from that address; the photographs are from that project.
am currently interviewing and making portraits of men and women in Pennsylvania prisons who are serving life sentences without possibility of parole. The subjects are people; the prints are black and white.
This project brings together two major themes in my life. First, I have had a long-standing concern about how punitive our society is and how much we rely on prisons. Over the past two decades I have worked as a criminal justice specialist, involved with victims, with offenders, with victim-offender reconcil- iation, with the concept of “restorative justice.” I have come to believe that we are so preoccupied with punishment that we have missed the point of justice. In doing so, we have ignored the needs of victims as well as offenders. In fact, we have overlooked the real meaning of crime.
One of my goals is to help “demystify” crime—to remove it from the language of symbols and politics and to return it to the realm of real experience.
Crime is a violation of people by people.
Second, this project represents my commitment to photography. Photography has been a way for me to go beyond rational, linear ways of knowing, a way to get in touch with the intuitive. My training in graduate school developed the rational and, I think, suppressed the emotional and intuitive. Photography
has been an important way for me to cultivate other essential ways of knowing.
I have found that photography can both address and communicate issues. I believe that visuals are an essential element in changing minds. Words alone can’t do it.
Try this simple test. Think of some memory—from childhood of a loving encounter or of something that frightened you. Chances are you are seeing an image, likely a still image and not a moving one. We remember in images, especially in still images.
Not only are images the building blocks of memory, they are also carriers of emotions. Painter/photographer Ben Shahn says it like this, “Not only do almost all images, to a greater or lesser degree, have some emotional coloration, but so do emotions exist in image form. And I believe that emotion cannot exist free of image.” We cannot neglect this dimension in our efforts to communicate.
I have come to believe that photographs—visuals— are an important element in changing people’s minds. Usually we need to combine photographs and words since photos by themselves may be too ambiguous. They need words to set a context. “The Meaning of Life” project has allowed me to bring the two together.
On one level, “life” is a life sentence. I wanted to
Festival Quarterly 7
“Those parables about the lost sheep, the lost coin, the one about the son who squandered his inheritance, are very much what we’re talking about with lifers. Many of us are lost sheep. Many of us are lost coins. And many of us are that son who just went away and squandered everything on lavish living. We'd like to go back and work in the garden as a laborer. Very often our fathers would have us back. But our brothers don’t want us back. We’re asking our brothers to forgive us and to take us back.” Kenneth Tervalon
(Soon after this interview, Kenneth Tervalon became one of the very few lifers in Pennsylvania whose sentences have been commuted by the governor. He is now on parole.)
Winter 1994
explore, with those experiencing it, what it means to be locked up for life with little or no possibility for release. But I also wanted to hear reflections on life itself from people who have had to think very seriously about life— more seriously than most of us, probably, because of the difficulty of their life circumstances and because of the life they took.
Lifer Irvin Moore says, “Life to us has two meanings. Life is a life, the generic term—being alive, waking up every day, seeing the sun. Life is ‘also a sentence to serve. In Pennsylvania, life is to be served until you die.” I wanted to explore these two dimensions of life with people who had thought deeply about them.
In Pennsylvania, lifers have all been convicted of involvement in murder in some way, either directly or indirectly. These people epitomize our fears and stereotypes. In reality, though, lifers are some of the most mature prisoners and least likely to repeat their crimes. They often provide crucial leadership inside prison. So lifers are a group with whom we can challenge and explore our own stereotypes.
I have been motivated in this project by three specific goals. First, I wanted to confront our stereotypes by showing lifers as individuals through their words and portraits. I also wanted to explore the meaning and implications of life sentences as social policy. Finally, I had a dream of using the process of interviewing and photographing as a way to empower and heal.
I became interested in the situation of lifers when I learned to know some of them in the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) which I help lead at Graterford Prison. I began doing photography of families visiting at Graterford. I worked with several lifers who staff the Family Resource Center for children who are visiting, making prints of fathers with their children to hang on the walls of the visiting room. The lifers who selected these photographs wanted to provide visual models of fathers interacting with their children.
When I learned that the Commissioner of Corrections wanted to talk about VORP I showed him some of these photos and outlined my idea for this project. He gave his permission, asking that I include other prisons besides Graterford.
Having received the system’s permission, I met with the inmate board of Lifers, Inc., the lifers’ organization at Graterford, and outlined my ideas. They were enthusias- tically supportive, made some suggestions, and agreed to identify participants and help with logistics. I was pleased since I would not have wanted to proceed without their support and collaboration.
What style of photography should I use? I considered doing a candid, journalistic style of “environmental
The language and metaphors that we use in photography are profoundly disturbing: we “shoot” a picture; we “take” a photo; we “aim” a camera.
portraits” in the prison setting. But I have noticed how often photographers focus on the bizarre features of prison life. I was aware of how the barren and formidable settings of prison trigger our stereotypes about prisoners. If 1 were photographed in that setting, I would probably look like a stereotypical prisoner, too. So I decided on more formal portraits against a muslin background. The plain background, combined with a “looking-at-the-camera” style of portrait, would force the viewer to confront the subject as a person rather than a symbol. I would use a medium format camera that would create sharp images and smooth tones, contributing to a dignified style. I asked that the inmates be allowed to wear street clothes rather than uniforms for their pictures.
I spent about an hour with each person. First I did the interview, which helped to establish rapport; then we did the photograph. For each person I made one roll—12 images. As much as possible, I let them pose themselves. Lynette Meck, the director of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S., accompanied me when I interviewed the women.
I gave each participant a matted 8 x 10 print in return for the help each gave me. Most shared these with friends or loved ones. With the help of designer Judith Rempel Smucker and with the editorial assistance of lifers Tyrone Werts and Bruce Bainbridge, we created an exhibit which we presented to the lifers’ organization at their annual family banquet. They, in turn, presented me with an award which I value a great deal.
Tyrone and Bruce incorporated some of the quotes into the printed program for the banquet. Mohammed, one of the lifers whom I knew through VORP said to me, “Howard, I read this great quote in the program. Then I looked at the bottom of the page and saw that I said it!” I had given Mohammed a gift of a photograph and a chance to reflect on his life. He, in turn, gave me a gift. That leads me to my next point.
The language and metaphors that we use in photography are profoundly disturbing: we “shoot” a picture; we “take” a photo; we “aim” a camera. Cameras are often designed and handled like guns, and in ads they are often presented as such. The language of photography is predominately aggressive, imperialistic, acquisitive, the language of the hunt.
This vocabulary is not inevitable; I am interested in reconceiving photography in another way. The images we photograph actually consist of light reflected back from the subject which we receive. Photography can be understood, then, as a gift, something received from the subject. It is an exchange between subject and photog- rapher. An attitude of meditation is more appropriate
Festival Quarterly 9
than a hunt; an attitude of receptivity is required.
Photos like these of the lifers are usually “taken” by researchers as grist for their study mills. Instead, I wanted this project to be subject-oriented. I wanted them to participate and even to feel empowered, valued, treated with respect. I didn’t want to take but also to give something back. If possible, I wanted to contribute in some small way to their own self-insight and maybe even healing.
Several years ago I conducted a similar project in a New Orleans housing project. Considered by some to be one of the worst in the country, it frequently receives negative coverage in the press. Working in the style I have outlined, we eventually had an opening of the exhibit inside the housing project itself and presented the residents’ council with their own version. Residents say that not only did the project help others to see them in more positive ways, it helped the residents themselves to have new appreciation for their community. My hope is that the “Meaning of Life” project can do likewise.
There are a number of photographers who are seeking to work in this spirit of receptivity and collaboration.
John Running in Pictures for Solomon expresses it this way:
“... the pictures I take are an exchange with the people I photograph. This book is really a collection of gifts... . Making a photograph is usually a collaboration between the photographer and the subject. It doesn’t matter if the subject is a landscape, a still life, an animal, or a person.
“There is a responsibility that comes with making photographs, an obligation to the subject and to the pictures that result from our collaboration.”
10 Winter 1994
“I was in my 40s when I came in. I’m 67 now. I was a practicing psychiatrist and I’d like to get out of prison and contribute. But if I can’t, I hope that I’ll do as well here as I can in any community: contribute and not make life intolerable for myself or others.” —Lois June Farquharson
Photography should be a way of respecting the subject, and that belief undergirds my landscapes as well as my portraits.
Albert Renger-Patzsch, a German photog- rapher who worked earlier in this century, put it another way: “It [photography] seems to me better suited for doing justice to an object than for expressing artistic individuality.”
I find “doing justice” to the subject a wonderful way to conceive my mission! I have learned from listening to victims and to offenders that story-telling is vitally important, and that self-insight can come through sensitive questioning and feedback by another. Insight can also come from seeing one’s image in photos, or so some of the lifers told me after seeing their pictures. So I have wanted to use interviewing and photography in a way that contributes to empowerment and healing.
I have struggled in my criminal justice work to understand and communicate why the injury of crime is so traumatic. I am concluding that the violation of crime is fundamentally an attack on meaning and that justice and healing have to do with regaining meaning.
As Robert Schreiter has written in the book, Reconciliation: Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order, we construct our sense of identity and safety to keep from feeling vulnerable. We do this by creating symbols of space and events and preserving them in narratives and stories, about who and what we are. These are our “truths.” They are the source of our sense of safety and identity.
Suffering—whether we are victims or oppressors—is essentially an attack on these narratives, an erosion of meaning. To heal, then, we have to recover our stories or create new narratives that take into account the awful things that have happened. The suffering must become part of our memory, part of our stories.
We cannot recover this sense of meaning without expressing our pain. For many, it is essential to retell the “narrative of violence” repeatedly. This allows us to ease the trauma and to begin to reconstruct a new narrative, to put boundaries around our story of suffering, to be victorious over it.
This need to tell our stories and truths is important in a process like victim-offender reconciliation, where we listen to victims and offenders telling their stories to us and to each other. In a small way, that is also what I hoped to accomplish here by interviewing and photographing and exhibiting the results. I wanted to contribute to the construction—or reconstruction—of meaning and identity for those who participated.
In fact, the search for meaning is one of the themes that often emerged in these interviews. Some expressed it as an effort to make some good come out of the bad. (This, by the way, is a common theme among victims, too). Many of the lifers I interviewed are involved in programs to assist others and /or to prevent young people from getting into situations like they experienced. It is their way of making restitution and creating good from bad, to regain meaning.
Others express their search for meaning in their need to make each day count. Several lifers suggested that, perhaps more than those of us on the outside, they have to consciously work to do something worthwhile each day. Otherwise, given their bleak futures, life might be without meaning.
Nearly all look for hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. Many spoke of their concern for victims, even though I did not ask about this. Questions of guilt and forgiveness were on their minds. And I heard many stories of inner journeys: of midlife crises, stages of adjustment, struggles for identity and self-worth. Many, like Robert Hagood, talked about the importance of religious faith: “Like all living beings, a lifer learns to adapt and to survive. But some of us go a little farther. We contemplate our lives and the way we live them. We contemplate on such things as God, life, death, heaven, hell. If you’re fortunate, you will find something to believe in other than yourself. Faith is now a part of my every-day development.”
I asked lifer Gene McGuire what he was proudest of in his life. Here is his answer: “I think the one that stands out is the realization that I have the ability to make decisions good and bad. I have the ability in me to make good decisions and right decisions and I don’t need anyone else to live my life. I don’t need to blame anybody else for the choices I make. I can make good choices and I can make bad choices. I guess I never thought about that before.” What a profound lesson to learn in an environment where the range of personal choice is so limited.
All of this has affected me significantly. I am still involved with the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program at Graterford. And I recently completed a stint as artist-in- residence at Graterford (with men) and Muncy (with women), teaching and doing photography with lifers. Support for my expenses is provided by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
I think about these people often. I sit on my deck sipping espresso and I think, “They will never do this.” I go into a restaurant, I run to the store, I go for a walk, and the
“I find myself wanting to tap all the potential that I have to do something with my life. Getting in touch with my spiritual side and constantly pur- suing that through practice has really helped me.”—James Taylor
realization hits me: “They will never do this small thing.”
My experience has also helped me to rethink the purposes of art. Suzy Gablik in The Reenchantment of Art characterizes the traditional view of art like this: “We have been taught that art is supremely individualistic, oriented to the creation of a product; individuals and individual art works are the basic elements. Art is a matter of radical autonomy that deemphasizes connections to the community.”
She goes on, however, to suggest a new mission and vision for the artistic impulse: “Community is the starting point for new models of relatedness, in which the paradigm of social conscience replaces that of individual genius. In the past, we have made much of the idea of art as a mirror (reflecting the times); we have had art as a hammer (social protest); we have had art as furniture (something to hang on the walls); and we have had art as a search for the self. There is another kind of art, which speaks to the power of connectedness and establishes bonds, art that calls us into relationship.”
That is my commitment: to photography that speaks to the power of connectedness, that calls us into relationship—relationship with other people, with the environment, with our Creator.
My hope is simply this: that my work does justice to the subject.
Dr. Howard Zehr is a writer and consultant on criminal justice issues. Since 1979, he has served as director of the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office on Crime and Justice. He was instrumental in developing the first Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) in the U.S. and has helped many other communities to start similar programs.
BEDRU HUSSEIN:
Gentle and Intense
by Merle Good
AM seventh-grade Ethiopian boy was play- ing with his friends during recess when the wind blew several pieces of paper across the school yard. Young Bedru was drawn to one which had English words on it.
He took the paper in to his teacher and asked what it meant. The teacher (it was a government school) wrote the words on the board, but no one understood them. The quotation was: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.”
No one could explain it. Then an elderly man who had come to school late in life raised his hand and said it was from the New Testament. He explained about the gates surrounding Jerusalem, one of which was called Eye of the Needle. He told the class how a merchant had to unload the camel, stoop down, drag the goods to the other side, then pull the camel through and finally remount in order to enter the city.
“That stayed in my heart a long time,” Bedru remembers. The old man told the class about Jesus and his practice of illustrating spiritual realities with physical examples. It was a vivid experience.
Bedru Hussein is now Executive Secretary of the Meserete Kristos Church, the Mennonite Church in Ethiopia. He has come a long distance from his Muslim childhood.
Bedru was the first in his family to become a Christian. His decision brought opposition and difficulty. “One day I saw a friend in the cafeteria at school with an unusually bright face,” he remembers. “I was in grade 12 and I had a great spiritual hunger, but there was no one to tell me.”
Bedru’s friend was a Pentecostal Christian and he invited him to a youth center in Addis Ababa to see a film. He felt drawn in by the event. “Tears were flowing
es Winter 1994
The growth in the Mennonite church in Ethiopia has been unusual, but other evangelical groups are growing too.
And so are the Muslims as people leave the Coptic Church.
down my face, and I accepted Jesus as my Savior that night.”
These new friends told him about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and “I said, ‘If God gives to me, why not?’ So the next evening at dusk we went to an empty football field and we started to pray (there were five of us). And as soon as we started praying, I got filled! It was a glorious experience for me.”
Everything changed for Bedru. “I started to love people—that was a change. And I knew Christ was in me.”
His father opposed him. “He would not talk with me or eat with me for three solid months. He was very angry. He said I may have to leave the house.”
Bedru’s mother gradually listened to his testimony and started to believe. Bedru’s brothers and sisters began to attend his church also. His father was in the military and had to go on assignment for six months. Bedru wrote to him to explain his new faith. At one point his father replied, “Pray for me, that I may come to the light.”
Bedru hoped to become a doctor. While studying biology at the university, he also sang in the choir of the Pentecostal church begun by the students. He started to preach and witness, and people responded to his ministry.
Years later, after he had learned to know the Mennonites and when the Mennonite church had to go underground, he looked back on these student days as times of great instruction. His first imprisonment came in 1972 when an informer infiltrated their group. The military police came to their place of worship, and 21 were arrested and put in prison. Three of them were placed in a special cell where the police beat them.
“T felt like I was beaten by a sponge. It was the grace
he | wa
of God—I remember it very clearly.” The beating was severe, but Bedru suffered no bleeding or broken bones.
Later they were put on trial for illegal assembly, charged a small fine, and released with the warning not to meet again. But after a month, they resumed meetings, underground, meeting early in the morning or late at night for four years.
Months later he and his wife were both imprisoned along with 200 others when they attended church in Addis Ababa. After two weeks in prison, they were released on bail with a requirement of reporting to the court monthly. But there were to be no more meetings or they would automatically go to jail for two years without trial. Bedru believes the Orthodox Church encouraged the military police in its policies.
By now Bedru was a high school biology teacher, but he was also learning that he enjoyed being a Bible teacher. In 1976 he moved with his family to Nazareth where he would teach at the Nazareth Bible Academy operated by the Mennonites. “I knew Mennonites in university, but this was my first association with them.”
Over time Bedru became an elder and started to work with the leadership of the Meserete Kristos Church, which had about 3,000 members at that time. He joined the Executive Committee and helped with leadership training for Mennonites as well as other denominational leaders.
“The revival grew at the same time that the com- munist movement was growing,” he recalls in a voice at once gentle and intense. Tension and struggle charac- terized these years, “but the groundwork for the later underground church was being laid.”
Then in 1982, the church and the school were nation- alized. Six prominent Mennonite leaders were imprisoned. The money in the bank was frozen. Bedru became director of the Nazareth school for the balance of the year, but then it became a Marxist school. “We had to hand everything over to the government. Meserete Kristos Church seemed especially targeted because it was attracting so many young people.”
Bedru moved to the capital city with his family (Bedru and his wife Kelemwork Belete have three sons and one daughter) and joined a health research institute. He worked there for eight years. He became deeply involved with the underground church. “I felt a stronger and stronger call. I could not resist it. I became a full-time minister in 1990.”
The Institute issued an attractive offer to Bedru to go to Michigan State University for his master’s degree. “What should I do? I told my wife that if God and the church call me, I will serve the church and ag not go to the States.”
That’s when Bedru was called to
his current position of Executive Secretary of the Mennonite church in Ethiopia. Two years later in May, 1992 the Marxist government fell, and as the church resurfaced, they discovered that they had grown from 5,000 members before they were forced underground to 50,000 members (ten times as many). Their current membership is more than 54,000. The church has spread from two regions to all parts of the country. Their budget from local resources has grown from $2,500 (U.S.) before nationalization in 1982 to $362,720 (U.S.), while the budget from external resources has dropped from $70,000 (U.S.) to $14,100 (U.S.). A remarkable story, to say the least.
Bedru enjoys his work. “I believe in corporate leadership in the church, and I appreciate the support of my brothers and sisters.”
The growth in the Mennonite church in Ethiopia has been unusual, but other evangelical groups are growing too. And so are the Muslims as people leave the Coptic Church.
Bedru advocates more church-to-church relationships for Mennonites around the world. Leadership training has become one of his top priorities for the church. And his Muslim roots continue to underlie his concern that Ethiopia may become an Islamic state as the Muslims gain ground. Yet his faith is secure in a future buoyed by the grace of God.
- The Devil in College Chapel
A Missionary Confesses the | Sins of His Youth |
bv |
| J. Nelson Kraybill
14
Winter 1994
Chapel attendance was mandatory at Mennonite colleges in 1974, and students who sought refuge from the daily dose of piety had little recourse but to doze through the exercise or face formal charges from the Dean’s office. Once in a great while, though, the fettered imagination of a thousand students seemed to converge on one creative spot, and a prank erupted during chapel—a sparrow turned loose, a firecracker on a slow- burning fuse, or a whoopie cushion on the speaker’s chair.
Such harmless gestures were a welcome reminder of Anabaptist commitment to free choice, but scarcely seemed equal to the gravity of the situation. It should be possible, my roommate said, to design the Chapel Prank of the Decade, something that would inspire a whole generation of free- thinking young people to celebrate their nonconformist roots. In one great windfall of serendipity, early in our brainstorming, we hit upon the notion of a pie-throwing catapult.
During the next several days we solved a series of technical problems and began to build. The device consisted of a wooden base about three feet long, with a sturdy vertical superstructure at one end. The catapult arm rested on top of the base, fastened by sturdy hinges. Between the arm and the superstructure stretched a hefty spring. A stiff wire lay over the catapult arm when it was loaded, holding it down like a mousetrap.
We did some experimenting with the timing mechanism and finally settled on a wind-up alarm clock. Two keys protrude from the back of such a clock, one to wind the time and another the alarm. We cut a slit into the end of a thread spool, and shoved it onto the alarm key. The spool revolved steadily when the alarm sounded, winding in a string attached to a greased metal pin inserted through two screw eyes. When the pin slid out, it released the wire that held down the catapult arm and voila! We had action.
For reasons of conscience we avoided blueberry pie as ammunition (it stains) and went with apple pie. To be certain of a
direct hit we needed to make a few practice shots, which required a dummy pie of exact weight. A copy of the college’s “Guidelines for Our Life Together,” wrapped in a bath towel, served admirably. We were ready for the operation.
Only three conspirators were privy to the plans so far, but now we needed help to get access to the scene of the crime. The chapel building at our college is a modern, circular structure that seats over one thousand—and always is locked at night. The podium is near the center of the room with benches on three sides. A balcony (usually locked during chapel in those days) runs the full circumference of the room. On that balcony we needed to plant our little surprise.
Reluctantly we revealed our plan to a former employee of the college maintenance department. He proved sympathetic to our cause and produced a key that would get us into the building. All that remained was to choose the occasion, and that became obvious with one look at the schedule of chapel topics. Demonology! No kidding, on Tuesday of the following week a professor from the nearby Mennonite seminary was speaking on demons. Satan and his minions were popular that year. The Exorcist was playing in many theaters.
At 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, while the night watchman enjoyed coffee in the mail room, my roommate and I spirited our contraption across campus. Inside the cavernous building we worked with dim flashlights, placing the catapult on the balcony behind the podium. After several practice shots the book and towel hit the podium every time, and we knew we had a winner. We attached a cardboard devil face to the catapult arm so it would appear to hover above the balcony rail when the deed was done. With the apple pie loaded and the alarm set to go off at 9:10 a.m., we went back to bed.
Chapel services were broadcast live over college radio that year. Tapes were available for purchase, and I have had occasion since 1974 to relive the events of that morning.
BASIC PIE-THROWING MACHINE
hefty spring Isfks
alarm ¢leck pulls reased 4g screws
Listening to the tape, I am reminded that the speaker was a cut above the average fare we heard in daily chapel. He had read more than two hundred books about the devil and even wrote one himself. As I got absorbed in the flow of his talk that morning, it suddenly occurred to me this guy doesn’t deserve what’s coming! It was too late.
At 9:10 a noisy alarm disrupted the solemn assembly. The seminary professor paused with a puzzled look on his face. Is that a fire alarm? his expression seemed to say. Nobody moved, but all eyes lifted to the balcony at the front. The professor cleared his throat and restarted the paragraph he had interrupted. Before he reached the end of his sentence, a ripping mechanical sound burst from the
wis String,
pin out from two
uthich when
eyescrews
balcony as springs and hinges leaped into motion. An apple pie was in free flight, sailing in a high trajectory above the pipe organ. The projectile passed through its apogee, gathered speed on the downward leg, and struck the hapless speaker square between the shoulder blades.
In slow motion the professor wheeled around to meet eyes with the only person behind him—the provost of the college. As he turned, the pie slid off his back, down a pant leg, and onto the floor. The stern expression of the provost left little doubt he was innocent.
Now the gathered assembly had a full view of the leering devil head, high above the podium and still swaying from the launch. The professor could not see the offending apparition and gamely
This wire flies v
in sides out 0 Celeasin cata pult arm liKe a Mousetrap
2 CSCreUS 4
started the same paragraph for a third time. Silence in the audience gave way to a titter of whispers and snorts, then swelling laughter. Two administrators slipped out of the auditorium and stationed themselves at the locked doors of the balcony, determined to catch perpetrators of this outrage as soon as chapel was over.
With all eyes focused above and behind him, the professor realized he was up against competition. He leaned forward, glimpsed the wicked face, and let out a hearty laugh. It was merry, devil-may-care laughter, the kind of spontaneous grace sometimes absent in our solemn assemblies. Scarcely missing a beat, he completed his prepared remarks and gave a closing prayer. On the cassette tape of the service, just a second before the
Festival Quarterly 15
The remorseless inventor with his machine.
radio station shut down the microphone at the end of the prayer, you can hear the professor whisper in a surprised tone, “It’s a pie!”
Half a year later, I had lunch with the college president. The night before someone (not me!) had dumped detergent into an outdoor water fountain, creating a mountain of suds. The topic of pranks came up, and the president said, “By the way, were you in chapel last spring when the devil visited?” With the most innocent voice I could muster, I answered, “Why? What happened?”
The president leaned forward and in a conspiratorial undertone described how the catapult worked.
16 Winter 1994
“Wouldn’t you know,” he said with a chuckle,“ the pie hit him!” The only response I could manage was to ask if the administration ever caught the culprits. “No,” said the president, “but we pretty well narrowed it down to East Hall.” East Hall was a small housing unit for a dozen seniors; I lived in a dormitory at the other end of campus. I shook my head slowly and expressed my shock that anyone would do such a thing toa visiting speaker.
Ten years later I was a Mennonite minister and attended a leadership training event. Our speaker that weekend was the same seminary
professor, this time dealing with some topic other than demons. At the last meal of the conference I shared a table with the man, and we talked on a variety of topics. Then I gathered some courage and said “Brother, what did it cost to dry- clean a suit back in 1974?” I pulled out my wallet and laid several dollars on the table. He gave mea blank stare, and I repeated, “What did it cost to dry-clean a suit in 1974?”
A flash of recognition crossed his wife’s face. She pushed her chair back from the table, pointed at me, and started laughing. “The pie!” she cried, “the pie!” Then the professor started laughing, a devil- may-care belly laugh, and offered a handshake. “I wondered all these years who did that,” he said, as he refused the money. He divulged that he took the catapult back to the seminary where he taught, and displayed it to students. His adult son got the device and took it home. A while later there was a fire in his son’s house, and the catapult went up in smoke. The devil retakes his own, I thought with a shudder.
The statute of limitations on college pranks is twenty years, and with the professor’s forgiveness I’m definitely in the clear. A few years ago I served on the Board of Overseers at the college where we launched the pie. On one occasion I even spoke in chapel and treated another generation of student to something much less compelling than demonology. I half expected to hear an alarm in the middle of my talk, but the hour passed without event. If there is any justice in this world, though, a pie awaits me somewhere in the future. All I ask of the devils who deliver it is, do it with imagination!
Nelson Kraybill lives in England, at a safe distance from his alma mater in the American Midwest, and works with Mennonite Board of Missions as Programme Director of the London Mennonite Centre.
Parents’ Last Great
Onportumt
by John M. Drescher
Middle childhood—when children are between ages six and twelve—is a stage often swept over too quickly by parents and educators because it is so calm compared to the storm of adolescence. If children will ever be good, they will be good during these years.
And so parents assume that all is going rather well during this time because the child, on the whole, seems cooperative, wants to please, and loves to be with the family.
It is not overstating the situation to think of this period of childhood as “the last chance.” It is the time to do many things with and for your children which you will not be able to do in the same way or to the same extent again.
Holding Your Child
Middle childhood is the last good chance to hold your child close. Most children up until the ages of eleven or twelve love to be held and respond lovingly to a hug or kiss from parents. A child basks in the warmth of parental love. A child needs the assurance of being loved deeply and the security of feeling at ease in the arms of parents. An adolescent is unlikely to feel close and cared for by parents if the warmth of love and togetherness is not experienced prior to the turbulent teens.
In the middle years, the child’s most important reason for wanting to be good is not fear of punishment or disapproval, but the love of parents. When love is lost or not felt, a child has little reason to be good.
This means relationships must be relaxed and comfortable. Love in the early years has a lot to do with being held close. The child must feel loved in spite of failure and even wrongdoing. Especially in times of failure and wrongdoing, love must come through.
Spending Time With Your Child
Middle childhood is the last good chance for children and parents to spend quality and quantity time together. In adolescence the child craves time primarily with others of the same age. During middle childhood the child loves to do things with its parents and family. And this togetherness builds feelings of belonging. But togetherness takes time—planned time and special time.
Giving ourselves is not easy. It takes purpose and planning. One father, after his son was beyond the time of persuasion and punishment, said, “I planned to go out with my boy and be his companion, when I had time. I hoped to interest him in young people’s activities, when I had time. I promised I would talk with him like a father should with his son, when I had time. But for over twenty years, for every one thought of my son, I had a hundred thoughts of my business.”
If we as parents do not give loving attention during this stage, the child will get angry attention from us by misbehaving.
Instilling Values
By the age of thirteen, the average child is said to have asked five hundred thousand questions. This is the Creator’s way of providing opportunity for our children to learn the answers to life’s questions before adolescence. And during these preadolescent years, we have a chance to share our beliefs with our children. That’s half a million opportunities to teach something about the meaning of life and to impart our values. These questions are all what, why, and how questions, which can stretch us beyond our own resources. These moments give us abundant opportunities to relate all of life to our basic values and outlook on life.
By adolescence, children know what their parents
Festival Quarterly 17
believe and think, and how their parents will respond to almost any given situation. They have either experienced a close parental relationship, or they have sensed neglect and distance, depending upon the responses which parents have made to their questions and needs. Their question at this stage is, “What will I believe and think, and how will I respond to what I have seen and heard?”
Reading to Your Child
Children in their middle years find reading to be one of their favorite activities. And they love to be read to. It is particularly important to read to the child stories which build emotional warmth, caring, and love, because it is through feelings that the child identifies, even more than through facts. Through emotions the child makes application to life, more than through careful reasoning. I cannot stress too much that the feelings generated through reading and contact with parents will guide and bless the child during the rest of life.
Bedtime is a good time to read to a child. It seems that God has put within children a hesitancy to go to bed, so that parents, if they will, can have a special time at the close of the day to spend with their children. We are told that a child awakens with much the same spirit the child had when going to sleep. Here is a great privilege and opportunity to not only give needed guidance, but also to meet the child’s basic emotional need to love and to be loved.
John Drescher lives with his eyes and ears wide open. It’s a practice that has resulted in his authoring nearly 30 books, most of them about living conscientiously.
“Practically everything I’ve written has come out of my own searching,” he reflected in a recent interview with Festival Quarterly. “When our children were small, not much was being published about families. I was invited out to camps to talk about raising children, so I’d put presen- tations together, get the audiences’ responses to what I said, refine it, then prepare it as a manuscript.”
It has been a natural process for a man who, for as long as he can remember, “just loved words.”
Yet the invitation to become editor of Gospel Herald (the official denomi- national weekly magazine of the Mennonite Church) in the early ‘60s caught him by surprise. “I was in my late 20s, a pastor and overseer in
|” .
things up
write editorials!”
as ever.
18 Winter 1994
T Get my Best Ideas When I Mow the Lawn’
Ohio. I would sometimes write little short articles for the paper—and I guess they were looking for someone in the church who wouldn’t stir
The job offered Drescher the opportunity to write regularly. “The thing I liked best was writing editorials. I always had a stack of them. The thing I missed most about leaving editing was not being able to
Drescher is still looking for more time to write. Although his active circuit as a speaker keeps him ever stimulated and in touch with audiences’ responses to his thinking, his list of writing ideas is as lengthy
When Your Child is 6 to 12 was on his mind for a long time before he squeezed out the time to write it. “I began to realize that I set my own standards during that time in my life about alcohol, about dating.”
Teaching the Facts of Sex
Middle childhood is the primary time to discuss sex freely and to talk about the issues involved in dating, courtship, and marriage. All the facts of sex should be shared before adolescence. It is now that the child can learn and accept all the facts of sex without emotional overtones or embarrassment.
We usually begin four to six years too late in giving our children specific guidance in dating, courtship, and marriage. It’s rather difficult to give instructions for dating to a teenager in the heat of that experience. It isn’t easy to try to set standards for boy-girl relationships for teens who are sure parents’ ideas are centuries behind the time. Standards are instilled very early.
Here, then, are several examples of “last things” we can do naturally with our children during their middle childhood years. These are the years of great possibilities for closeness, communication, and counsel. If we miss these opportunities to relate to and respond in the proper way to our child, the years ahead will be difficult ones. But if we seize these years when the child loves and longs for closeness with parents, the pattern is also set for closeness in the future years.
Excerpted and reprinted by permission of Good Books from the new book, When Your Child Is 6-12 by John M. Drescher.
His current life continually supplies him with book ideas also. “I’d like to write For the Love of Marriage in which I'd start each chapter with a different situation I’ve encountered in counselling.”
Then there is the whole matter of being parents to adult children. “When are children raised? You can’t really say. Many of my children’s peers are now, after 20 years of marriage, getting divorced. You have to come to a place where you say, they’re living their lives.”
Cultivating book ideas is a life practice that continues for John Drescher. —PPG
tHE UNTOUCHABLE
A short story by Dorothy Friesen
don’t think it was my imagination. A collective gasp
did ripple through the congregation when people saw our missionary, Anne Wiens, follow the casket of Schwester Wiens, the prophetess, into the sanctuary. Walking beside her was a small, very dark Indian man in a white shirt and ill-fitting suit and he held Anne’s elbow in a familiar way.
The body of Schwester Wiens had been found among the stacks of yellowed newspapers near her telephone on Christmas Day, but the funeral was delayed for two weeks so her adopted daughter, Anne, could travel to Winnipeg from her remote mission station in India.
Schwester Wiens regularly foresaw church splits, and she had predicted the Great Flood of 1950 an entire year before the Red River spilled over its banks. But her most persistent prophecy was that she would not die before the Messiah returned. No one really believed her, but no one wanted to run the risk of missing anything at the funeral. The Mennonite high school canceled classes, and the public school near the church might as well have, since the desks of the Mennonite students and teachers who comprised half the school were empty that day, too. Two hours before the service was scheduled to begin, the church was packed to capacity.
Cousin Julie and I, lucky to get seats in the front row of the balcony, leaned over the railing for a better view. Anne Wiens and the Indian man stood at the casket, which the funeral directors placed beside the oak communion table with the engraved words, Dieses tut zu meinem Gedaechtnis (Do this in remembrance of me.). “He’s shorter than she is,” whispered Julie. We were fifteen and both aware that the man is supposed to be taller than the woman.
ae years, Father and Mother had prayed for this woman every morning without fail, and so had I as soon as I learned to talk and could pronounce the name
of Anne Wiens. I was six years old the first time I actu- ally saw her, and I noticed then she had buck teeth. Though Anne was plain, the items she brought to the citywide mission conference were beautiful—bright red, gold, green, and purple cloth, masks, a golden wheel, wooden elephants and tigers, and a musical instrument that looked something like a guitar but gave out an eerie sound when the strings were plucked.
Before the children’s meeting began, Cousin Julie and I had circled the display table again and again, touching and smelling everything we could reach. When Anne Wiens needed a volunteer to hold an item, the two of us in identical blue velvet skirts and white blouses sat on the edge of our chairs, waving our arms in unison right from the sockets to make sure that she knew without a doubt that we really wanted to be the volunteers. Cousin Julie who is always loud, kept yelling, “Ask me, ask me!” but I just bored my eyes into Anne’s face, hoping to mesmerize her into choosing me.
That night the brightly colored cloth tangled around my body and a mask covered my face so I couldn’t breathe, and I gasped loudly for air. Mother, ever alert for a nightmare, was at my bedside with a glass of water and a cool hand for my forehead. But this dream was not terrifying like the usual nightmares of big black dogs running wild in the church basement. Most of the children had dreams after Anne’s talk, and the Mennonite mothers across Winnipeg began comparing notes during the closing days of the mission conference. I heard the Mission Board told Anne before they sent her back to India not to visit temples or palaces or festivals.
Vis Anne labored in the mission field, Julie and I located India on the globe at Julie’s house, and we read about the caste system and the untouchables who were so low in society that they weren’t even in the system. I imagined Anne eating with people whose very shadow others avoided.
Festival Quarterly 19
We all knew that Anne loved the people of India like God so loved the world, but here she was in our church sanctuary with a specific man.
A few years later Anne gave her report to the church (without bright cloths or strange instruments). She showed slides of rows of Indian men in white shirts standing in front of ugly cement or mud buildings. Once in awhile Anne’s figure appeared in the line of men, clutching a Bible to her breast, her sari giving the picture its only touch of color. She named different occasions for each slide—the Easter sunrise service, the Bible camp, the mission emphasis week, the leadership training—but the rows of men and Anne always looked the same to me.
We all knew that Anne loved the people of India like God so loved the world, but here she was in our church sanctuary with a specific man. How did she choose a particular one among the rows of men who looked so alike?
p aster Neufeld motioned the congregation to stand for the opening song and Julie flipped through the hymn book. “She must be over 40,” I whispered. Anne Wiens had streaks of gray in her hair. I didn’t think a woman with wrinkles and folds of skin devel- oping under her chin should have a boyfriend. Romance was for young people who engaged in courtship rituals like serving coffee and tea at wed- dings. The boy carries two steaming silver kettles; the girl holds the teacup to be filled. Julie and I often won- dered which boy would carry the kettles for us when we were old enough to serve at a wedding. When they were seated on the bench together, Anne was at least a foot taller than the Indian man, and I couldn’t imagine her holding out a teacup for him to fill.
I barely mouthed the words of the hymn, and I didn’t hear much of the sermon. My eyes, like everyone else’s in the church, were fixed on Anne Wiens and the man beside her. I thought about Anne’s talk to our junior girls Sunday school class a few years ago. It had been boring, and I stared out the window trying to imagine the golden wheels Anne had showed us in the past, turning around the sun until they
20 Winter 1994
became one with the fiery ball. When Anne asked if there were any questions, Julie was the first to put up her hand.
She brushed her absolutely straight brown hair behind her ear with her hand. “What do girls our age in India do?” she asked. “Some of them might already be married,” said Anne and started to describe domestic chores. Julie interrupted. “How do the boys and girls our age get together in the first place? And,” she stopped, “and what about men and women, you know, people your age who aren’t married?” The air was absolutely still in the little room. Anne stared at Julie and then turned away. I noticed that Anne’s hair, rolled up like a carpet, was stuck full of sparkly hair pins. Women in our church don’t wear sparkles in their hair. Anne finally said, “This is not a topic for Sunday school. Are there any other questions?” None of us could think of anything after Julie had crossed the invisible boundary. The bell rang and we all filed silently out of the room.
Before I knew it, the funeral service was over and the casket was closed and wheeled up the aisle. It was bitterly cold that day, so only the pastor and immediate family went to the cemetery for the burial. The rest of the congregation and visitors from across the city milled about in the basement, waiting for the family to return so we could eat. No one minded the wait— there was plenty to talk about.
“Well, she’s no spring chicken,” I heard one man say to an all-male group gathered near the exit. “Is she still a missionary?” asked someone. “Well, I’ve always wondered about the Mission Board. Maybe we should hold back our tithes. We could use the money to build more Sunday school rooms,” said someone else.
ale he Ladies’ Missionary Society had wrapped the long tables with white paper tablecloths and set them with plain cups, small plates, knives and spoons. Dishes of homemade dill pickles sat ready in the refrig- erator and platters of fluffy zwieback buns and rhubarb
ochwester Wiens regularly foresaw church splits, and she had predicted the Great Flood of 1950 an entire year before the Red River spilled over its banks.
platz were on the counter, covered with large tea tow- els. Mother motioned me to the kitchen and told Julie and me to put the little bowls of sugar cubes on each table.
“Why would she do this now?” asked one of the Ladies’ Aid members. I asked for a drink of water so I could linger.
“Why did the pastor let them in for the funeral?” asked one woman, rubbing her hands on her gingham apron. “He’s a Christian,” said the pastor’s wife. I never heard Mrs. Neufeld say anything before. She was just the pastor’s wife, who sat near the front of the sanctuary every Sunday morning. “Well, you know what I mean,” said the woman. I didn’t know. Was Mrs. Neufeld saying her husband was a Christian or the man from India was a Christian? Rev. Neufeld had conducted the service so he must have thought everything was in order. I know Father and Mother were proud the Mission Board had sent someone from our local congregation—it was almost as though we ourselves were in India.
“How come we didn’t know and we have been supporting her all these years?” asked one woman who was cutting the butter into squares. “This kind of relationship can’t last. The Mission Board should know that.”
“How could she bring him to her own mother’s funeral? Schwester Wiens treated her like a daughter,” said the gingham apron.
Mother gave me a look and I knew it was time for Julie and me to get out of the kitchen with the bowls of sugar cubes. We had just finished setting out the sugar when the double doors underneath the red exit bulb pushed open. There stood Anne. By her side were the Indian man and the pastor.
The buzzing basement came to a standstill. No one moved, no one talked. This was our missionary. This was the woman for whom members had prayed for over 15 years. This was the adopted daughter of Schwester Wiens, who had prophesied the Messiah
would return in her lifetime and begin the 1000-year reign of peace and justice. In the formality of the funeral service, the staring had not been noticeable.
The minute hand on the industrial-size clock on the wall near the kitchen jumped along the small black lines between the numbers several times, and still no one moved. Finally Rev. Neufeld broke the spell, “When everyone is seated,” he announced, “I’ll pray so we can start the meal.”
Rev. Neufeld escorted Anne and the Indian man to the head table and motioned to the kitchen for his wife to join them. Others slowly took their seats, leaving a wide berth of empty tables surrounding the head table. Cousin Julie and I easily found a seat where we could get a close-up view of Anne and her man. “Maybe we’re not supposed to sit here,” I said. We were the only ones at the table. “Nah,” said Julie, “if someone wants us to move, they’Il have to come and tell us.”
jee Rev. Neufeld finished his prayer, he readjusted the microphone. “Thank you for your presence,” said the Indian man. He spoke slowly and with what sounded like a British accent. “One person’s loss is everyone’s loss. We are each other’s mother, each oth- er’s child, each other’s brother and sister.”
The basement buzzed again. Maybe people at the other tables were saying, “Please pass the zwieback,” but I think they were probably asking each other what Julie asked me, “How can one person be a sister and mother and child and brother all at the same time?”
“T don’t know, Julie. Maybe it’s like a parable,” I said.
“Or maybe he doesn’t know English very well and he got nervous talking in front of so many people,” said Julie.
I kept my eyes on the head table. The Indian man put four lumps of sugar in his tea and held the cream pitcher over his cup for a long time. He ate zwieback; two, in fact. I wasn’t sure he would like our food. Anne wasn’t eating anything, but the Indian man
Festival Quarterly 21
No one had come to the head table to shake Anne’s hand or meet the man from India.
gently broke open the double-decker bun, buttered it, put a slice of cheese on it, and placed it on Anne’s plate.
He and the pastor exchanged a few words, so he must have known English pretty well because Rev. Neufeld had never been to India. Anne barely talked at all. She dabbed her eyes a few times and I saw the Indian man take a handkerchief from his suit pocket and press it in her hand.
I thought of the day Julie, her friend Mark, and I had seen Anne three years ago. When we boarded the bus, Mark had held out his Old Dutch potato chip bag and then snatched it out of Julie’s reach. I looked up from slipping my quarter in the fare box to see the entire bag of chips flip over and spill across the aisle of the bus. Mark ground the scattered chips into the floor with his heel. A woman in an old-fashioned coat and an oversize wool cap, stared at the chips, and it looked like she might slip out of her seat to pick up each crushed crumb. She bit her lip and stared out the window. That is when I noticed the buck teeth.
I leaned toward her. “Hello. Are you Anne Wiens?” She nodded. “Welcome to Winnipeg,” I said for lack of anything better that came to my mind. The years of repeating the name of Anne Wiens welled up in me. I wanted to say something to bridge the gap between India and Winnipeg, but no words came out of my mouth. The bus jerked to a stop and Julie had yelled, “What are you waiting for? This is our stop.”
looked again at Anne and the man from India at the next table in our church basement. Members of the Ladies’ Society had already been around twice, offering tea and coffee. Some people were scraping their chairs, making moves towards leaving. No one had come to the head table to shake Anne’s hand or meet the man from India. ‘Julie, I think we should go and talk to Anne,” I said. “Why would we do that?” asked Julie. “Well, we could find out what his name is,” I said.
22 Winter 1994
Julie grabbed another zwieback before a Ladies’ Aid member whisked the plate of buns off the table.
“Do you think the Messiah could come from India?” I asked.
“You think that little guy is the Messiah?” Julie wiped the zwieback crumbs from around her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Well hardly anyone recognized Jesus the first time he came,” I said.
“Are you crazy?” said Julie. “Even if I might believe that stuff, which I don’t, Schwester Wiens said he was coming in the clouds. You told me that yourself after you talked to her, remember? This guy arrived after Schwester Wiens died. Use your head.”
“He flew here. That’s like coming through the clouds. And Schwester Wiens did predict the Great Flood, even though she was a year early. Sometimes her timing was off, but some things are right, even if the details are wrong. Like remember, you told me in grade one that a woman gets pregnant when the guy gives her an egg and it cracks open in her stomach. You were partly right. There’s an egg involved,” I said.
“T can’t believe you’re saying this,” said Julie. “Come on, let’s go talk to Mark and his friends.” She pointed toward the hallway where groups of teenage boys were circling.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll catch up.” I felt I had to say something to Anne Wiens, our missionary. But as I pushed back my chair, Anne and the Indian man did the same. They got up, shook hands with the pastor and disappeared quickly through the double doors under the red exit sign. I sat back down on my chair and watched the doors close.
Dorothy Friesen is a writer from Chicago, Illinois.
7Oth ANNIV BRS AR |
SAM PLE ER
Festival Quarterly was first published in the Spring of 1974. In celebration of our 20 years of publication, we will reprint one article from an earlier FQ in each issue of our 20th anniversary year.
Are Mennonites Choosing The Wrong Kind of Leaders?
It you are serving on a major churchwide board or committee you Owe it to the church to ask yourself a few serious questions: “Am | perceived to be the kind of person who would affirm, with a hand on the Mennonite Yearbook, to (1) say nothing nasty about the Board of Missions, (2) read the obituaries in the Gospel Herald regularly, and (3) “rock no boats” on the floor of the General Assembly after an “issue” has been “prioritized” for calm and deliberate discussion there? (4) Was I selected to do maintenance—or to provide vision? The Mennonite denomi- nation, as institutions are prone to do, is presently moving into a sociological maintenance phase. And be aware that prophetic vision is seldom recognized or appreciated during an institution’s maintenance phase.
Dreams are not often recognized as a word from the Lord. Our Josephs are seen as unrealistic visionaries, people with a handicap, organizationally inept, hardly the kind of persons we’d want on a committee to set the salary policy for church workers. Why? Have we, to eliminate the risks, made eunuchs of the prophets? Yet we must know that “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18, KJV), and when the prophets are depreciated, creeping institutionalism quickly fills the gap.
Can we image a Martin Luther King appearing on the capitol steps before a crowd of people to confess, ashamedly, that in spite of his better judgment, he did, in fact, have a dream? No, it is the dreamers, the responsible Josephs, who save us from the drought of our pusillanimous conformity. It is the dreamers who can show us a clear picture of what God says we can become. But we must let them.
by Arnold Cressman
Better, we should encourage potential dreamers to come out of the closet and make their gifts available to the church.
Some day at General Assembly we may listen to something akin to political campaigning, in the very best sense of that word. We will hear two or three persons, women or men, articulate a vision for the church. They will say, “If elected, I will do my best to lead the church toward these specific denominational dreams.” Then the rest of us will decide which program is most surely what God intends and will choose our leaders on that basis. As it is, we have little idea what the dreams of our likely leaders are or whether, indeed, they have any. Candidates are expected to appear exceedingly humble. If they say anything at all before the election it is to mumble about how unworthy they are. Thus we get persons elected who have promised nothing, intend little, and dream mostly about “peace in our time.”
Usually we settle for benevolent maintenance, satisfied that deficits will not increase by much until the next election.
An institution in a maintenance phase develops immense respect for the gift of management and its co- partner, organization. In our kind of world, the church certainly needs great strength in both of these efforts. But can’t we add to the mix the prophetic gift as well? Jesus had a wonderful opportunity to organize his program. He could have made each disciple the head of a “commission” with instructions to meet semi-annually, if budgets permitted. Instead he gave his disciples an easy organizational yoke and a powerful dream. The Kingdom of God was coming! We tend to depreciate our dreamers and lionize our organizers.
A corollary to the leadership question is the problem of matching tasks with the right set of gifts. Here we have often been horribly unmerciful. Why do we put preachers in a position where they must make business and financial judgments for the church far beyond their experience and competence? It is as if we expected business expertise to be endowed at the moment of ordination.
It is worse when ordained persons actually begin to believe that business expertise came with ordination, although it did not. These are the persons who never think of calling in good business resource persons so that they can make wise decisions.
Business and economic illiteracy is no sin. The sin is in putting unequipped people in places where they must make major economic judgments. It is not that we are asking too much from preachers; it is rather that we are asking them, sometimes, to exercise gifts they do not have. Fortunately the gifts of businesspersons are being recognized more often than they were. We must begin fishing in the whole pond for our leaders. Otherwise we will deprive ourselves of some deep-water catches that would greatly enrich the church. There are businesspersons, dreamers, passionate people, women and men, who would easily and willingly help us out of our maintenance mode. The alternative is too disquieting to dwell on.
When he wrote this article, Arnold Cressman, Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, worked with programming at the Laurelville Mennonite Church Center. He is co-founder of Tour-Magination.
Reprinted from the November, December, 1980, January, 1981 issue of Festival Quarterly.
Festival Quarterly 23
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24 Winter 1994
When the Cold War Heated Up
by Peter J. Dyck
Borders or boundaries can be a real hassle. I’ve crossed them in less than a minute, and I’ve also been detained for hours. But imagine being held for 52 hours!
The time was 1949 and the country was Poland. Meet our five intrepid Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) volunteers with their convoy of three vehicles—a jeep, a truck, and a station wagon. Their work in Poland was over—not finished— because the government was pushing all the volunteer agencies out of the country. “We can take care of our own needs, thank you” was the expla- nation they received.
The real reason for wanting Americans out of Poland, however, was political. The Cold War was heating up. Behind the scenes was the Soviet Union. As many as 40 MCC volunteers had served in Poland. This is the story of the last five arriving at the border. Alton Horst remembers:
“Our relief supplies were to be left with the Ministry of Welfare and other Polish organizations. They would not extend our visas. We had to get out. We left Warsaw on Saturday, drove all night, and got to the border on Sunday afternoon, May 15, the day our visas expired.
“The officials informed us that we were not allowed to take undeveloped film out of the country, so we had to open our cameras and surrender our films. Then we had to unload all three vehicles. They began to inspect the baggage. Even the spare tires, gasoline cans, and antifreeze. Everything that was loose had to be unloaded. Everything had to be opened and all contents had to be removed. Finally, they did a body search.
“By now it was midnight. They asked me to turn around, load all the files onto one vehicle, and go back to the nearest town. A police car with three security agents led the way. At 4 a.m. we arrived at the Security Headquarters where we were ushered into a room and waited until 10 a.m. An officer questioned us briefly but disappeared again.
“At noon we were brought into another room where a number of offi- cials were inspecting our stuff. Now and then they asked us to explain a letter or a photograph.
“At 2 o’clock they escorted us to a restaurant. We were famished, not having eaten for 24 hours. Then they took us to a hotel and for the first time left us alone. Promptly the next morning they were there, taking us back to police headquarters. By now they had sorted through everything and organized it into stacks labeled A, B, C, D, etc. Then they askediirsme number all pages. We got so tired we could hardly keep our eyes open any- more. We begged them to let us sleep, but they refused.
“Then they drew up an official doc- ument listing everything they had confiscated and asked us to sign it. We said we would, on condition that they give us a copy. They refused. We begged and we insisted. They responded, ‘Sign here.’ We were so exhausted and frustrated that we finally signed the document. Then they walked us to the door and said we could go. Just like that.
“When we got to the Czech border, the officials were all smiles. They had seen our vehicles held up for three days and were sorry for us. At least that’s the impression we got.
“Then they began telling us about the many people who were fleeing Czechoslovakia. They were tighten- ing border security to keep their people from leaving!”
The Poles had their reasons for making passage difficult at their bor- ders, and the Czechs had their own reasons. The differences had become nearly immaterial to those of us who simply needed to pass through!
Peter J. Dyck has spent a rich life shuttling refugees to new homelands, overseeing
relief programs, and telling wise and witty stories. He and his wife, Elfrieda, live in Akron, PA.
PUBLISHING NOTES : a
¢ Silent Labourers is written by Doris Dube and published by Matopo Book Centre, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It is a collection of stories about Zimbabwean and Zambian Brethren in Christ (BIC) women who labored tirelessly and _ often anonymously in their churches and communities. From the story of Maria Tshuma, who once worked out a peaceful settlement between two high-ranking BIC churchmen locked in a dispute, to the story of Ethel Sibanda, a much sought after public speaker, the women of Doris Dube’s book are a testament to the strength of womanhood in Christian com- munity. To obtain copies of the book, write to Baptist Publishing House, Box 8241, Belmont, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
¢ Mennonites who have a lifelong love affair with Low German will be interested in The Story of Low German and Plautdietsch: Tracing a Language Across the Globe by Reuben Epp. This well researched volume addresses many of the questions and misconceptions people have about this language of some of our foremothers and forefathers. Epp points out that Low German was recognized and widely used long before English. Published by Reader’s Press, Hillsboro, Kansas.
* In a new title from Herald Press, Family Violence: The Compassionate Church Responds, Melissa A. Miller examines the difficult questions of congregational response to internal violence. Miller guides readers through such concerns as survivors’ healing, power dynamics, and faith questions. A resource for laypeople and discussion groups as well as church leaders.
¢ In Traces of Treasure: Quest for God in the Commonplace, Joanne Lehman reflects on common exper- iences, finding in each a spiritual dimension. After attending the auction of her grandparents’ things, cycling with friends, or buying groceries, she records her impressions and searches for spiritual meaning. Published by Herald Press.
¢ Mennonot is an opinion/arts newsletter for “Mennonites on the margins.” The editors, Sheri Hostetler and Steve Mullet, grew up in the
middle of the world’s largest Amish and Mennonite community, Holmes County, Ohio. The purpose of their newsletter is to provide a forum for ideas and discussion not normally found in other Mennonite publications. Three to four issues a year are planned.
¢ Family, Church, and Market: A Mennonite Community in the Old and the New Worlds, 1850-1930 by Royden K. Loewen focuses on the efforts of the Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites who came from Russia to the Plains states and provinces to “safeguard what it saw as the essence of life in an increasingly urban, industrial society.” Loewen interprets Pilemallvedmexpetiences: ol this denomination. Published by Univer- sity of Toronto Press.
¢ Elaine Sommers Rich has edited Walking Together in Faith, The Central District 1957-1990. An updated history sole thes Central District Conference (GC), the book has fourteen chapters by various writers, including Steven R. Estes, Mark Weidner, J. Howard Kauffman, Cornelius J. Dyck, and Donna Lehman. For more information, write to Central District Conference, 103 W. Elm St., Bluffton, OH 45817.
¢ The relationships between Baptists and Mennonite Brethren provide the context for Mennonites and Baptists— A Continuing Conversation, edited by Paul Toews. Eight of the eleven articles are historical, one examines Baptist interpretations of Anabaptist history, and two are theological. Commissioned by the Historical Commission of the General Confer- ence of Mennonite Brethren Churches, the study aims to promote ecumenical dialogue and to understand how Baptist influence has affected the Mennonite Brethren Church. Published by Kindred Press.
¢ Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad is the author of Fine Black Lines: Reflections on Facing Cancer, Fear and Loneliness. Through journal entries, poetry, and reflective essays, Hjelmstad captures the many emotions of one woman facing the challenges and losses of breast cancer. Published by Mulberry Hill Press, Englewood, Colorado.
* Evangel Publishing House, Nappanee, Indiana, recently published A Wing and a Prayer by Paul Hostetler. From “Teachers Who Touched My Life” to “All I Know About Women” to “Convention Fun and Folly,” this collection gathers incidents and observations from Hostetler’s own life and experiences.
¢ Samuel L. Horst wrote one of the articles in the Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, published in 1993 by Simon and Schuster. Horst’s entry deals with the Mennonite experience in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War. He tells the story of Mennonites who were opposed both to slavery and to participating in the war which raged over their farmsteads and around their homes. Horst is professor emeritus of history at Eastern Mennonite College.
¢ Translated from German by Al Reimer and John B. Toews, The Molotschna Settlement by Heinrich Goerz was published jointly by Canadian Mennonite Bible College and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society in 1993 as one of the Echo Historical Series works. Himself a member of the Molotschna community, Goerz wrote, “I have taken pains to give a continuous, systematic account of the history of Molotschna in simple, compre- hensible language,” in his 1950 foreword to the book. The Molotschna Settlement was first published by Echo Verlag, Steinbach, Manitoba, in 1950.
¢ A collection of true stories of concientious objectors who served in the forest service during World War II has been self-published by Asa Mundell, Beaverton, Oregon. Static Lines and Canopies: Stories from the Smoke-Jumpers of 1943-45 Civil Public Service Camp, Missoula, Montana is of particular interest to those who served in Civilian Public Service.
¢ “Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice: Interacting with Rene Girard” is the latest paper in the New Perspectives on Crime and JusticesSerres. 9 Writtensby Vern Redekop, it is available from Mennonite Central Committee.
Festival Quarterly 25
MENNONITE BOOKS IN REVIEW
Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism, Leo Driedger and Donald B. Kraybill. Herald Press, 1994. 344 pages,
$14.95. Reviewed by Merle Good
If one has reservations about a book, but one of the authors is a good friend, how does one review that book?
Gingerly, I guess.
Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism attempts to chart the histor- ical development of the changes in Mennonite attitudes toward peacemak- ing. The writers selected various tables and graphs from The Mennonite Mosaic study to verify the trends they see.
The authors are unabashedly enthused about their belief that this book documents “the dramatic shift among Mennonites from passive non- resistance to active participation in the political order.” This premise is repeated over and over throughout the book. At times the study seems more intent on prooftexting the premise than in looking at the whole picture.
This reader was uncomfortable with the breathless, jazzy quality of the lan- guage. At times the book reads more like a tract, a series of victory speeches for activists, a celebration of the destruction of nonresistance. One winces when liberals throughout the book are called “forward-looking,” “courageous,” and “faithful,” while more communally-oriented Menno- nites are labelled as “critical,” “reluctant,” and “entrenched.” All ina sort of breezy, flippant socio-chat.
We are left with some difficult ques- tions:
1. Do the authors realize how much their prejudices show?
2. Has the change from the “meek and mild” to modern activists been as “sweeping” and “dramatic” as the authors contend?
3. Why is the term “Anabaptist” reserved for causes aligned with the political left? All others are called “Fundamentalists.” Why not call con- serving, Mennonite positions “Anabaptist” and label the modernist sympathizers as “Liberal/New Age”? Do such stark categories prove any- thing at all?
4. The book asserts repeatedly that nonresistance and the two-kingdom view have “crumbled.” While there may be some validity to their enthusi- asm, it is interesting to note that in
26 Winter 1994
: : From Quietsmn to
| Leo Driedger & Donald B. Kraybill
Table 4-2 of The Mennonite Mosaic, 92% of Mennonites appear to subscribe to the two-kingdom view. Why is this question not part of the peacemaking index?
5. The outcome of any study is heavily influenced by the categories, the questions, the wording, and the interpretation. Does this study give us an accurate barometer on Mennonite peacemaking? It’s difficult to be sure. Campaign speeches intersperse data that seems partial. Dualisms are estab- lished to disprove Mennonite dualism. Increased political involvement is praised as a vindication of progressives, but the fact that that involvement is largely conservative is barely noted.
6. And what about abortion? Why is it excluded from the peacemaking index? If Mennonites oppose owning stock in companies producing war goods, they score high on the peace- making index. If they oppose abortion as the destruction of life, it doesn’t count. It hardly takes a brilliant person to see why many Mennonites in the pew feel as though the political/theo- logical left has tried to hijack both the peacemaking self-description and the blessing of “Anabaptist” for them- selves.
Studies are subjective. One wishes for less bias and more open-minded- ness on such an important aspect of our faith-life.
Merle Good is publisher for Festival Quarterly and for Good Books.
FQ price—$11.96 (Regular price—$14.95)
Doing Good Better!, Edgar Stoesz and Chester Raber. Good Books, 1994. 150 pages, $9.95.
Reviewed by Wally Kroeker
The U.S. has more than a million nonprofit organizations but many are serious under-achievers, say Edgar Stoesz and Chester Raber. Too often the initial vision dims, stagnation sets in, and great effort is poured into administering second-rate ideas.
That’s sad, say Stoesz and Raber. Nonprofits can be an enormous force for good. They enable us to do together what none could do alone. They are “a part of God’s ongoing work of creation.”
Here’s a useful (and readable) “board member handbook” that could breathe new life into tired organi- zations. It’s full of ways to moni- tor and improve board _ perfor- mance so that nonprofits can become vital organisms: How should boards §& ber operate? What makes them sick? How can they get better? How can a nonprofit board stay young at heart?
There’s plenty of nuts-and-bolts advice on preparing agendas, running good meetings, and leading a “mental walkabout” (brainstorming). The authors expose landmines that can explode a board’s best intentions, from the perils of meddling to the risk of liability. They also offer counsel on how long you should serve and how to “leave right” when your time is up.
Concluding “exhibits” include a checklist for orienting new members, job descriptions for various board functions, and tools to appraise the performance of the CEO as well as the board itself.
If you’re on a nonprofit board, buy this book. Next time you’re stuck in a board meeting that drags, pull it out and see what went wrong.
How to be an Effective Board Member of a Nonprofit Organization
Wally Kroeker, Winnipeg, Manitoba, is editor of The Marketplace a publication of Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA).
FQ price—7.96 (Regular price—9.95)
MENNONITE BOOKS IN REVIEW
A Pilgrimage of Faith, The Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia and North America, 1860- 1990, J.B. Toews. Kindred Press, 1993. 376 pages, $11.95. Reviewed by Levi Miller
On one level this book is a history of the Mennonite Brethren (MB) Church with its beginnings as a renewal movement within the Men- nonite church in Russia in the 1860s. From its humble birth in the Ukraine, the MBs have grown to 44,000 mem- Derseine the U.S. and Canada. Membership outside North America, thanks to an active mission program, is even larger. J.B. Toews tells the story of their growth, transitions, and encounters with modernity.
On another level, it is old Jacob toward the end of his life calling his children together,
Fe: Maevont. Bren Cherk BCG:
naming them, N | and __ blessing A ) KI Chemin fact, a ae key word which Bey
appears through- out this book is identity, as in identity crisis. The MB children of Israel are losing their identity of faith and obedience.
This is not conscious “apostasy” says Toews; it is rather the well-inten- tioned efforts of a Christian people reaching out in evangelism and remov- ing boundaries for church growth. Toews seems to think MBs were not equipped to deal with modernity. He calls for repentance and a return to Anabaptist Mennonite biblical Chris- tianity. It is finally a “spiritual crisis,” he says.
Non-MB Mennonites, many of whom have their own identity losses, can learn much from this book. They can learn the social history of a related denomination and the faith history of how the most urbanized of North American Mennonite churches is struggling to be, in biblical parlance, “in but not of the world.”
Levi Miller, Scottdale, Pennsylvania is director of the Congregational Literature Division of the Mennonite Publishing House.
FQ price—$9.56 (Regular price—11.95)
Amos and Susie: An Amish Story, Merle Good, illustrated by Cheryl Benner. Good Books, 1993. 24 pages, $4.95, paperback; $12.95, hardcover.
Reviewed by Joanne Ranck Dirks
Here is a child’s-eye view of what it is like being Amish. In this picture book it means having a playmate and many occasions for get-togethers.
Rhymed couplets describe the full- page illustrations as the book takes children and their adult readers through the year in an Amish family. In winter Amos and Susie ice-skate and Susie goes to a quilting. In spring they help plant garden and have their school picnic. Summer is the time to harvest and can peaches. Amos and Susie attend a wedding in November, and Amos learns his lines for the school program in Dec-ember. At the end of the book, there is a fuller descrip- tion of activities month by month within the Amish community.
For my children the year wasn’t long enough. Each picture looked like something they’d like to do. Which makes me think growing up Amish would be fun.
Cheryl Benner’s illustrations are happy and full of energy. And with few, but well chosen words, Merle Good’s rhymed couplets celebrate the joy of being part of a family and com- munity. The brief text also gives children and grown-ups time to explore the pictures together. I’d rec- ommend trying this book on toddlers who love looking at pictures and lis- tening to the music of rhyme.
Joanne Ranck Dirks, Akron, Pennsylvania, is mother to three children who love when she reads to them.
FQ price—$ 3.96, paperback; $10.36, hardcover
(Regular price—4.95, paperback; 12.95, hardcover)
A Mennonite Woman’s Life, pho- tographs by Ruth Hershey (1895-1990), text by Phyllis Pellman Good. Good Books, 1993. 91 pages, + FES bog
Reviewed by Eve B. MacMaster
When it was still a novelty, a cam- era was often called a “magic box.” For Ed Huddle, a box stuffed full of little envelopes containing photo- graphic negatives proved to be, like the camera that took the pho- tographs, an instrument of magic. When Huddle, a professional photog- rapher himself, enlarged his grandmother’s pictures, he “was sud- denly able to understand Grandma Hershey with new eyes.”
The result is a window into the world of Lancaster County farm women of two generations ago. It was a world of unending child- care and housework where family visits and church provided the only social life and recre- ation. Ruth Hershey escaped from that world through her little Kodak box camera, literally disappearing “into a wedge of a closet under the front steps in the hallway to develop her own film in complete darkness.”
Out of that darkness came the enlightening record of a marriage, a family, and a community as Ruth’s magic box captured her world for our understanding. Among those she photographed were Mennonite “girl crowds,” some passing tramps, a group of plain but fashion-conscious maidens, Fresh Air children, and Mennonite men enjoying Sunday afternoon cigars.
An interpretive essay by Phyllis Pellman Good provides historical and sociological context, as well as family stories about Ruth Hershey and her magic box.
A Mexyontre Woman's Live
Eve MacMaster is the author of the Story Bible Series and editor of Voice, the monthly publica- tion of the Women’s Missionary and Service Commission of the Mennonite Church.
FQ price—$9.56 (Regular price—11.95)
Festival Quarterly 27
- MENNONITE BOOKS IN REVIEW
Today Pop Goes Home, a play by Merle Good. Good Books, 1993. 93 pages, $6.95.
Reviewed by John J. Miller
Today Pop Goes Home is a play writ- ten a number of years ago by Merle Good. At one point I played the role of Charles. Reading the script again was refreshing. Merle has a sensitiv- ity to the theater which makes his pieces very believable. His sense of timing for the stage is outstanding.
Pop is the story of taking care of our aging relatives. It is also a story about relationships within the family, about caring and trust. It is the story of the rearrangement of everything we work so hard to make dear: the land, loved ones, jobs and family.
Charles Snavely is a widower liv- ing with his son Lewis, his wife Esther, and their family on the farm where he
HOME had been born.
Charles contin- Sag MOBI SON case: ues to get Cy reminders of his ogi Nant age and his inability to cope. Esther has had so many tensions in her life and Charles only adds to them.
Lewis decides to leave his job, sell the farm to a developer, and send Charles to “Golden Hills.” Lewis’s siblings think he is brazen and uncar- ing, but do nothing to help.
Since the time I performed in Pop, my family has had to decide what would be best for my father. And I hear the story repeated frequently. Today Pop Goes Home is timely.
And now in this form you have a very usable script. One only hopes Merle will consider publishing all his
plays.
John J. Miller teaches music at Lancaster Mennonite High School.
FQ Price—$5.56 (Regular price—6.95)
TODAY POP GOES
28 Winter 1994
Colossians, Philemon (Believers Church Bible Commentary Vol. 4), Ernest Martin. Herald Press, 1993. 341 pages, $17.95.
| Reviewed by Charlotte Holsopple
Glick
Pastors frequently seek resources for Bible studies, sermon preparation, and ethical discernment. Biblical stu- dents look for materials that relate systematically and thoroughly to the text. Social scientists encourage us to assess scriptural analysis for adequate attention given to the cultural, social, and economic dynamic of the society in which the material was written. Leaders in local communities of the Believers Church tradition often eval- uate commentaries from _ the perspective of peace and social justice awareness. Readers of scripture desires atomebe engaged by inter- pretive remarks that span the cen- turies and offer insights into ways to be faith- ful in today’s complex environ- ment.
Ernest Martin appears to have had all these “users” in mind as he weaves together the themes and the tone of the letters written to Colos- sians and Philemon.
The supremacy and sufficiency of the cosmic Christ in Colossians and “the power of the gospel to transform messed up relationships” in Philemon are the predominant themes high- lighted by the author.
Martin successfully shows the rela- tionship of the biblical text to everyday experiences through his interpretive remarks, but more explic- itly through carefully constructed outlines, diagrams, and sketches of the text.
BELIEVERS CHURCH BIBLE COMMENTARY
COLOSSIANS PHILEMON
Charlotte Holsopple Glick is Conference Regional Minister of Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference.
FQ price—$14.36 (Regular price—17.95)
Acts (Believers Church Bible Commentary Vol. 5), Chalmer E. Faw. Herald Press, 1993.6 335upaces S195:
Reviewed by Wilma Ann Bailey
Chalmer E. Faw, a missionary and former professor of New Testament at Bethany Theological Seminary, has written a fine, readable, conservative layperson’s commentary on the book of Acts.
The commentary follows the pat- tern set for the Believers Church Bible Commentary Series. After a foreword from the editors and a brief author’s preface, there is a very helpful section providing background material on the nature of the book, author, date, pur- pose, sources, literary characteristics, the use of the narrative form, particu- lar interests, the greatest empha- sis, the plan and outline, and how to use the com- mentary.
ActSs1Sethen divided by chap- ter and verse into twelve parts, and commentary is provided for verses in the order found in the bibli- cal book. The commentary on the text is followed by a complete outline of the book, a series of essays that study particular issues in greater depth (such as the Greek text of Acts, the Holy Spirit, and speaking in tongues), maps, a bibliography, and suggested resources for further study.
Faw does not ignore difficult ques- tions such as whether Judas hung himself or whether Paul did (Acts 9:26-28) or did not (Galatians 1:18- 23) meet with the apostles following his conversion. However, he usually tries to harmonize (perhaps too facilely) varying accounts of the same incident.
The commentary is enriched by Faw’s insight, anecdotes gleaned from Anabaptist history, and his experience on the mission field.
Wilma Ann Bailey is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Messiah College.
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30 Winter 1994
COMMUNICATION BY-LINE
Shoofly Mystery Solved by David W. Augsburger
Abstract: History is mystery. Puzzles, problems, curiosities, and conundrums abound. This monograph at last resolves the cultural-theological puzzle of the origin and name of the essential Anabaptist confection, the Shoofly Pie.
For centuries, a perplexing problem has plagued historiographers puzzling over their morning piece of shoofly pie. What is its origin? What is the meaning of its name? Why is it tra- ditionally served at breakfast? What is the significance of its cov- \" ering of crumbs? At last these questions can be answered satisfacto- rily.
The classic and often cited insect- trap hypothesis can now _ be conclusively refuted. The preposterous theory that this mouth-watering pie was not meant to be eaten but served only as a decoy, a lure to attract flies
from better baked goods (H.S. “&
iwenecer ety 22; |.C. Bender,
1945) is theologically indefensi- ©
ble since it involves both deceit and waste. Besides, the crumb surface pro- tects the sweet and sticky interior. The answer is not found through such rational theories of humble pie, but in historical reality.
It all began with Menno (Menno Simons 1496-1561). Early on a Sunday, Menno was preaching to a for- bidden assembly of Anabaptists meeting in a barn. His platform/pul- pit was an upended hogshead of molasses. The men of the congrega- tion stood protectively around the walls. The women sat, as was custom- ary, in the center surrounding the preacher. An interrupting shout from an alert scout warned them of the sheriff and posse without. In his haste to leap down and escape, Menno accidentally kicked in the end of the hogshead and sank to his knees in the gooey stuff. Seeing that he would leave a telltale trail or be glued to the floorboards, the men blocked entry while the women all came forward and each took a mouthful of molasses from his shoes and leggings. When the last lick left him clean, the word was exul- tantly echoed across the crowd. “His shoes are free! His shoes are free!”
(German: Schuh frei; Dutch: Schoen vrij) In celebration of Menno’s escape, a molasses pie, to be eaten on Sunday mornings and covered with crumbs to symbolize shaking the dust off his feet as he left the inhospitable territory, was instituted as sacred ritual. It was named Schuh Frei Pie. We eat it in
)\
drawing by Cheryl Benner
remembrance of Menno and of his fly- ing to safety. The translation into English has altered the pronunciation (only the Japanese and Korean Mennonites say it correctly), but the meaning is unmistakable. It is a shout of victory, a cheer of pride and com- mendation to the resourceful women of this radical movement, and a cry of gratitude for the gift of tongues.
Dutch Mennonites cite this well- known historical account in explana-
tion of the proverbial Mennonite sweet tooth (which is virtually a tusk in most) and infer genetic transmission of a molasses obsession which broadened to include all candies (I.B. Horst, [950 me aneethitee, oteatest Dutch chocolate producers—Drooste, ver Kade, van Houten—are all Mennonite. The North American Mennonites pro- duced the number one chocolatier —Hershey (Gleysteen, 1993). “Culture is the form; theol- ogy is the content,” Paul Tillich taught. Shoofly pie is the form;
Schuh frei pie is the content. The celebration of deliverance, of safety from persecution, is the theolog- ical reality beyond the recipe.
This historical breakthrough opens further hypotheses for research. What is the relationship of this molasses event to the practice of footwashing in public worship? Were black stock- ings required for plain dress of women as a replica of Menno’s dark
molasses leggings? If Mennonite women are genetically sweet- tongued, does this help explain the male fear of allowing them right to the pulpit? What
r impact on the role of ue ) Mennonite men is their
2 task of blocking entry? If
we serve seven sweets and seven sours at every meal, what else was on Menno’s shoes? Slowly, slowly as it has been com- ing, perhaps a new generation of scholars will stick to the molasses mys-
tery.
Bibliography Horst, I.B., If You Ain’t Dutch, You Ain’t Much. New Holland: Simple Simon Press, 1994. Lapp, John A., Where the Shoofly Lands. Akron: Pants Press, 1995.
Martin, Enos, Heeling the Sole: The Mennonite Foot Fetish. EEE-town: Tiptoe Press, 1996.
Miller, Marlin, Mann ist was er Isst. Elkhart: L’ambs Press, 1997.
Smucker, Marcus, With a Name Like Shoofly Its Got to be Good. Bird-in-Hand: Two in the Bush Press, 1998.
David Augsburger has entered the Anabaptist missionary corps by becoming professor of
pastoral care and counseling at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA.
Festival Quarterly 31
QUARTERLY NEWS
photo by Jim Bishop
Kenneth Nafziger (left) and Bernard R. Martin, a Harmonia Sacra enthusiast and songleader, inspect a copy of the new 25th edi- tion of the Harmonia Sacra.
Rich Musical Tradition Stays Alive
A 25th edition of The Harmonia Sacra has been published by Good Books, Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Eastern Mennonite College (EMC) and Seminary contributed funds toward the printing, which was coordinated by James Nelson Gingerich, Goshen, Indiana. Kenneth Nafziger, professor of music at EMC, was among those who assisted Gingerich with revisions on the newest edition. The Harmonia Sacra was first released in 1832 by Joseph Funk in Singers Glen, Virginia. Used in most early Mennonite singing schools, it has sold more than 100,000 copies to date.
Harmonia Sacra sings are held annually at a num- ber of settings, particularly in the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia. The 25th edition had its debut appearance at two such singing services held New Year’s Day, 1994—one at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, and the other at the 92nd annual Harmonia Sacra Sing at Weavers Mennonite Church near Harrisonburg, Virginia.
The latest edition restores the hymnal to its dis- tinctive oblong shape which had been dropped at the release of the 23rd edition in 1972. It contains a preface by well-known church musician Mary Oyer and 470 selections, including about 50 which have not appeared since the earliest editions of the hymn book’s existence.
Mennonite Woman Prepares United Nations Exhibit
Throughout 1993, Phyllis Ressler, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, joined with Mennonite artists, Dennis Maust and Pat Augsburger, to prepare an exhibit for the United Nations’ “International Year of Indigenous People.” Ressler had done other exhibits for the UN, typically using only photos and text. She approached the United Nations Center for Human Rights with the idea to invite members of indigenous groups from all over the world to submit actual
fiber works for the exhibit.
Ressler, who had also worked for SELFHELP Crafts of the World, remem- bers the skepticism which greeted her idea. “How can you do this? Won’t it be impossible to have a representative sampling from the more than 5000 such
groups?”
Because of SELFHELP’s extensive connections, Ressler felt it would be pos- sible, so she said, “Watch us.” Once she had the green light, it became a matter of “calling old friends” and making lots of contacts looking for funding. Alternative Trade Organizations, such as SELFHELP, provided majority fund- ing. Other sources included UNESCO in Paris and the Canadian consulate in
New York.
Once the 47 pieces representing 33 indigenous groups from every continent in the world were collected, the task of putting together an exhibit remained. Maust, Augsburger, and Ressler, along with Mao Moua, a Hmong craftswoman who lives near Lancaster, created four 8’ x 8’ montages. The exhibit, which also included 70-some photographs and lots of text, was on display at the
Detail of one 8’ x 8’ montage.
United Nations from October 14, 1993 through the end of January, 1994.
After declaring the 1990s “The Decade of Indigenous People,” the UN recommended Ressler’s project become a traveling exhibition. The UN redid the exhibit at its expense, reducing the panels so they could travel with the montages. “Common Threads” is being scheduled to appear in universities, Alternative Trade Organizations, and various other sites around the
world.—LS
a2 Winter 1994
photo by Louise Stoltzfus
FQ/Kenneth Pellman
Rachel T. Pellman, curator of The People’s Place Quilt Museum, discusses one of the antique Amish quilts with Lucille Metzler, Manager of The Old Country Store.
New Exhibition of Antique Amish Quilts
A dazzling new exhibition of antique Amish quilts opened at The People’s Place Quilt Museum on March 5. “Amish Quilts of the Midwest” features masterpieces from the collection of Bryce and Donna Hamilton. The exhibit showcases 41 antique quilts, including 17 antique crib quilts.
According to Rachel Pellman, cura- tor of the exhibit, Amish quilts of the Midwest have distinctive characteris- tics that set them apart from the quilts of the large eastern Amish set- tlement in and around Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. “Midwestern women used solid-colored fabrics from the whole spectrum of available colors, a wide variety of quilt patterns, and most often worked their designs in a series of patchwork blocks. Lancaster women used only half the colors on the color wheel, avoiding bright reds, oranges, and yellows. They tended to piece their quilts with large geometric shapes, often using a central medallion format.”
Pellman also noted that midwest- ern quilters worked primarily with cotton fabrics, while Lancaster Amish women used wool with greater fre-
quency. Located in the village of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, The
People’s Place Quilt Museum will host “Amish Quilts of the Midwest” through October 31, 1994.
QUARTERLY NEWS AMERICANS ABROAD
New Light on African-Amish Raeious by James and Jeanette Krabill
Fatesineloos thesAmishshit.the press for the fourth time during the past fifteen years here in Cote d’Ivoire. The first was in 1978 following the Jonestown massacre when several reports appeared featuring America as the breeding ground for religious fanaticism. Various groups were cited as illustrations: Mormons, Children of God, snake-charming Pentecostals, and... the Amish.
We got our second glimpse in 1984 when a group of Ivoirian journalists traveled to America to—as they put it—“spy out the Land of Promise.” Driving through Pennsylvania, they met the Amish, and later filed their report based on tourist brochures they collected off the streets in Lancaster County.
Most intriguing to these journalists were Amish sorcery practices, particu- larly the magical signs found painted on buildings throughout the area. One reporter even sketched a few in his notebook to export back to Cote d'Ivoire. In general, though, the jour- nalists were unimpressed with Amish magic, for “these people remain very poor, no tractors, no electricity, lag- ging far behind the average American farmer.” In short, Amish were “fasci- nating people,” but in the end held little “hex appeal,” as it were.
In more recent years, the Amish have come to Cote d’Ivoire twice again, in 1986 through the movie Witness which filled theaters and review columns for weeks on end, and in 1993, through religious news reporting of the group’s historic return visit to Europe in connection with their tricentennial activities.
It is difficult to summarize the wide spectrum of comments concerning the Amish we have encountered here. The most common reaction, however, is simply one of incomprehension or downright disbelief. In an economi- cally developing country, every available ounce of energy is exerted to eradicate the hard realities of rural existence and gain access to the elec- trical appliances, motorized vehicles, and communication systems which promise a more bearable life for all. When such things as paved roads and
telephones are finally acquired, there is great rejoicing for what are perceived as God’s blessings descending gra- ciously from on High.
We experienced this on Christmas Eve in 1984 when electricity first came to our village. The congregation had assembled at 11:30 p.m. for the mid- night worship service. The preacher announced his text from John 8:12 where Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.”
Then came the sermon. “Dear friends, for many years we have groped helplessly in darkness. But on this night while the angels sing and God’s Light, Jesus, is born into our world, we too will have the light of life, never to walk in darkness again.” At that very moment—zappo!—the ceiling lights burst on, for the first time ever in Yocoboue’s history. Talk about liturgi- cal drama!
Several weeks later, the 1984 jour- nalists’ report appeared in the newspaper, describing Amish life with- out telephones, cars, and electricity in—“the Land of Promise.” We shared the story with a village friend who, in turn, pumped us with questions. “What’s with these people, are they Sick came NO seem GlAZV7 2 asNO. | abhen what is their problem?” he persisted.
It is our impression that, not only Amish, but also most Mennonites working in similar settings to ours, are considered slightly crazy when they arrive on the scene with strange talk of “simple life styles” and “appropriate technology.”
Becoming the worldwide People of Light is no easy task. To live faithfully in today’s seductive world, we will need light from every source possible. African light. Amish light. But mostly, THE Light, without which we will certainly pass each other in the night.
James and Jeanette Krabill live with their three children, Matthew, Elisabeth, and Marie-
_ Laure in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Festival Quarterly 33
photo by Jim Bishop
e Esther Kk Washington, D.C. inspects the sculp- ture she created, after its installation
Augsburger,
adjacent to the new Eastern Mennonite Seminary (EMS) building in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Her bonded marble piece, entitled “Love Essence,” stands on the hill next to Martin Chapel. Augsburger’s sculp- ture seeks to “engage people in the seminary’s purpose, that of calling persons to the spirit of Christ.”
The commission to do the piece resulted from a birthday gift pre- sented to Joseph Lapp, president of Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary. Upon receiving one of the small models of a piece Augsburger installed in, W937 ual Union Theological Seminary in Pune, India, Lapp recommended asking her to do a similar piece for EMS. Augsburger also installed a version of this sculp- ture at ServiceMaster Corporation, Chicago, Illinois, in 1992.
¢ To help celebrate an important rite of passage in the lives of several young church people (turning 16 and acquiting a “driver's “Mcense)- Community Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Virginia, held a “litany of dedication” during its January 30 worship service. Jane Peifer led the litany which was writ- ten by Duane Sider. After a prayer, Peifer gave each teen a keychain that
34 Winter 1994
also contained a quarter, “To use if you ever need to call home.” The litany follows:
Leader: You are the ones we meant, when we said that children grow up fast these days. We looked away for a minute, it seemed, and you changed into young adults, taking responsibility for your lives, taking the wheel. We admire you . . . and sometimes wish it was us again.
Parents: You are the ones we meant when we wondered how it would feel to have our children grow up, leave the house, follow life, and come home to park the car for the night and get gas money. We love you... and are only beginning to know how much.
Teens: You are the ones we meant when we hoped someone would travel with us, point us in the right direction, show us the road signs and the ditch, but let us steer. We need you ...and want you never to forget it.
All: Down the road things will change:
Teens: Someday we'll have to be responsible for others;
Parents: Someday we’ll need help and understanding;
Leader: Someday we’ll be gone, and you'll be in our place.
All: Then, let us remember this day: when we pledged to journey together, and trusted God to guide us, keep us safe, and bring us home.
*-On sJantlary 92078994 a) ean Smallwood (Neufeld) opened a showing of her oil paintings at Mennonite Heritage: _ Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Entitled “Funeral of a Frozen Woman and Other Paintings,” the exhibit high- lights work inspired by various family photos. Among the old family pictures was one photograph depict- ing a winter funeral near Plum Coulee, Manitoba, in the early 1900s. Continues through April 20, 1994.
¢ C. Norman Kraus, former profes- sor of religion at Goshen College, has been named a fellow for the 1994 spring semester at the Young Center for the Study of Anabaptist and Pietist Groups at Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
DID YOU KNOW THAT? ;
Kraus will research the international peacemaking efforts of Mennonite Central Committee while in resi- dence. He has written or edited eleven books.
¢ The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. recently exhibited ten of the approxi- mately twenty paintings credited to Judith Leyster. A 17th century Dutch artist, Leyster is thought to have been Anabaptist. Many of Leyster’s paintings were attributed to Franz Hals and have only been redis- covered in the 20th century. The exhibit which opened in the fall of 1993 closed on April 3, 1994.
¢ Hedda Raschka Durnbaugh, a Church of the Brethren hymnologist and language teacher, attended the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. Among the many opening activities held in and around Lillehammer on the eve of the Winter Games was a special ser- vice at the Luthéran Churchaa featured the singing of the Olympic hymn written by Svein Ellingsen and composed by Egil Hovland. Durnbaugh translated the hymn from Norwegian to English. At the festi- val service, the hymn was sung in Norwegian, German, and English (using Durnbaugh’s translation). Born in Vienna, Austria, Durnbaugh met her husband, Donald, through his work with Brethren Service in post-World War II Austria. She is a member of the International Fellowship for Research in Hymnology and has a particular interest in Norwegian hymnody. The Durnbaughs live in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
° “Yo! Yes?”, a children’s book written and_ illustrated by Christopher Raschka, was one of five books named Caldecott Honor Books by the American Library Association in February 1994. Each year one children’s book receives the Caldecott medal as that year’s most distinguished picture book. Several others are then named Honor Books. Raschka is the son of Donald and Hedda Raschka Durnbaugh.
Above the Rim—Good-hearted story! Inner-city basketball player torn between drugs/quick money and college. (5)
Angie—Melodramatic study of an unmar- ried pregnant girl who’s caught between romance and parenthood. So-so. (4)
Bad Girls—Four prostitutes in the wild West fight oppression and seek revenge, riding high with bimbo pistols swinging. Cliches with lipstick. (4)
Blank Check—A lark of an idea—an 11- year-old is given a blank check and cashes it for a million dollars. Funny, but the fantasy runs thin. (4)
Blue—A stunning portrait of a young widow who tries to find a reason to live, a way to be free, after tragedy. Superb. In French. (7)
Blue Chips—Fast-paced, gritty drama about college basketball and a coach caught between dishonesty and victory. (5)
Brainscan—A brain-dead science fiction horror film about simulating death. A waste. (1)
8 Seconds—An engaging film about real- life hero, world champion bull rider Lane Frost. Rodeo as a paradigm of life. Some great moments. (5)
Fiorile—Is cowardice hereditary? Do some families always choose personal advantage over sacrifice for others? This Italian film etches a multi-generational saga with poignant if inconsistent strokes. (6)
Four Weddings and a Funeral—One of the funniest films in years about a young man who can’t make commitments. Very
witty script. (7)
The Getaway—A flop. No comparison to the original. Outlaw couple on the run. (2)
Guarding Tess—Amusing entertainment. Former First Lady drives her Secret Service agent insane. Superficial, but has some laughs. (4)
The House of the Spirits—A sad failure, considering all the talent involved. Tries too much. No unifying glue. A family epic, caught in South American politics. Lacks spirit. (4)
In the Name of the Father—As a charac- ter study of a young Irish prisoner and his father, the story is superb. But the film is marred by sermonizing. Nevertheless, topnotch. (7)
Major League II—Embarrassing sequel about inane baseball players. Wouldn’t qualify for the cellar of the farm league. (1)
My Father, the Hero—A totally stupid yarn about a father who’ll do anything to please his alienated teenage daughter. (1)
Naked—Dark, violent study of a drifter in seedy London. Brittle intelligence can’t redeem the sewer. (3)
The Paper—A delicious romp of a film about 24 hours in the life of the staff of a big city newspaper. Beneath the comedy breathe genuine struggles to maintain a marriage, save the paper, and cling to a sense of ethics. Superb entertainment. (8)
The Ref—An odd film about a kidnapper who gets caught in the web of a dysfunc- tional family. Hilarious. (4)
Romeo Is Bleeding—Potboiler about a
(iacsacople s*Place presents
“GOING PLACES”
A new play by Merle Good Directed by Kenneth Pellman Produced by Merle Good and Phyllis Pellman Good
Eight special performances:
August 11, 12, 13 and 14 (Thursday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m.)
August 18, 19, 20 and 21 (Thursday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m.)
Fine Arts Center, Lancaster Mennonite High School Lancaster, PA
The play which premiered to large audiences and favorable review at “Philadelphia '93” will now be performed for the general public. These are the only performances of “Going Places” planned for 1994.
For tickets or more information, write to “Going Places,” The People's Place, P.O. Box 419, Intercourse, PA 17534. Reservations: 717/768-7171
gorgeous gangster who seduces a cop, then double-crosses him. Overwrought. (3)
The Scent of Green Papaya—Saigon in the 1950s, through the eyes of a poor ser- vant girl. Evocative, with all the details of a middle-class household and its prob- lems. Unforgettable. In Vietnamese. (7)
Schindler’s List—A masterpiece about a good bad German during the Holocaust. Turgid black-and-white photography com- bines with crisp characterizations to illumine ambiguous morality in the hellpit of brutality. Only fault is flawed ending.
(9)
Sirens—Forget it. Bohemian 101 does not make a movie. No story. Only super- ficial facade. The church tries to censure an artist. (1)
The Snapper—A loveable film set in Dublin about an unwed, pregnant 20-year- old daughter and her family’s reaction, especially that of her father and her neigh- bors. Funny and tender. (7)
Sugar Hill—An above average story about two brothers in Harlem, born to drugs, now lords themselves. One wants out, the other smells the big deal. Lacks epic dimensions. Thoughtful and engaging. (6)
Surviving the Game—A brutal yarn about a sadistic club of hunters who trick human losers to be their prey in the wilderness. (1)
Threesome—A superficial look at sexual- ity among three college students who live together. Pretentious and shallow. (2)
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Festival Quarterly 35
~~ RECLASSIFIED
You Bet We’re Special
by Katie Funk Wiebe
In a preadolescent boys’ Sunday school class in the Hyattsville Mennonite Church in Maryland, the teacher was describing the threefold division of the ancient Jewish taberna- cle—an outer court for Gentiles or non-Jews, a second court only for Jews, and the Holy of Holies for special peo- ple. “Can you guess who these special people might be?” asked the teacher. “I think it was the Mennonites,” replied a seven-year-old boy confi-
dently. —J. Winfield Fretz North Newton, Kansas
Well-known Bible colporteur C.N. Hiebert never liked to preach at the same service with his brother, N.N. Hiebert, especially if the latter was seated on the platform right behind him. The reason? “Everytime I made a grammatical error he’d kick me, and everytime he kicked me, the Holy Spirit left me.”
C.N. occasionally joked about young ministers who had received an ade- quate education but no experience. One youthful Bible school graduate was asked to preach his first sermon in his home church. He began by saying, “The Apostle Paul greets you.” Stage fright overcame him, and he repeated the same phrase again. And again. And again. Whereupon his father, who had been proudly expecting a great per- formance from his son, shouted exasperatedly, in Low German, “Gruess am wadda” (Greet him again). Apparently the Holy Spirit had also left both son and father.
— from C.N. Hiebert Was My Father by Esther Horch
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36
Winter 1994
Twenty teens spent five weeks at the University of Wisconsin at Superior studying acid rain with a National Science Foundation Young Scholars program. Represented among them were eight religions—Jewish, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Methodist, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, and Lutheran. On the first day, one girl mentioned that she had nine brothers and sisters. “Oh, are you Mormon?” asked another girl who was herself Mormon. Shocked, the first girl replied, “No, I dress normal!” She thought Mormon was the same as Mennonite, and the only thing she knew about either religion was that Mennonites did not, in her opinion,
“dress normal.” — from Newsweek September 20, 1993
Several years ago a young Mennonite woman enrolled at Oklahoma State University. She gave her religious preference as Mennonite and asked for a single room. The sin- gle rooms were all spoken for, but at the first cancellation the dean of women made an administrative deci- sion and gave Rose the room. She
Or Septem
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cautioned the other coeds “to be nice” to this new student, for she would be different. Two months later, one of the girls asked Rose, “Why were we sup- posed to treat you differently?”
A little girl insisted that her father read The Three Little Pigs to her every night. She loved the story and did not tire of it, but he did.
Being a busy and efficient man, he put it on a tape cassette so that she could listen to it while he used his time in other ways. This worked for a while. But one evening she brought the book to him and begged him to read it to her.
“Why don’t you just listen to it on the tape recorder?” he wanted to know.
The little girl protestegay Bae Daddy, the recorder doesn’t have a lap.”
ite reported by Elaine Sommers Rich in Mennonite Weekly Review
Katie Funk Wiebe, author
of many books and articles, is a freelance writer living
in Wichita, Kansas.
1011 Cathill Rd. Sellersville, PA 18960 215-723-8413
Love and Death
At a family dinner a while back, my cousin Burt and I were talking about the brevity of life. We were eating at my aunt’s old place, which is now the apartment of Burt’s daughter—a place where I would come to visit as a kid, where Burt had come to meet his in- laws, where relatives now gone would ask me trick questions, where I was known as “Richie,” where there used to be kept a tin of marbles for me and my sister to play with when we got bored with adult conversation. This place was like our _ family Smithsonian—a repository of a few artifacts and many memories. Burt referred to an old relative, now dead, who had come to America from Russia. “I could have been a revolutionary,” Burt quoted him as saying, “but I got a cup of tea instead.”
I laughed. Burt laughed. He was a new grandfather, an overwhelming event that had rushed upon him like a wave. It had come from nowhere. One moment he was the young naval officer whose picture my aunt used to keep in the apartment, and the next he was holding tiny Cyrus, whose birth just several days before was a wonderful, happy event, but melancholy too. The entrance of Cyrus on this stage meant that someone had to go. Not right away, mind you, but in due course and with biblical certainty. Cyrus, with his affecting newborn’s cap and his crinkly face (cute kid!) was like one of those clock alarms that you can turn off for 10 minutes more sleep before it buzzes again. His entrance here, in this apart- ment, sounded the arrival of a new generation and the aging of another. When did we have that tea?
My mother had heart surgery in September. She is 83. My father is 85 and a bit wobbly. For some years now, I’ve been studying him, watching him age, looking for clues on how it’s done. This is sexist on my part, I know, since in some ways I’m more like my mother than my father, but he and I are both men, father and son, bonded by innu- merable backyard games of catch, nights at the ball game, a sense that he is always showing me the way. I query and I probe: What’s it like? Old age, I
by Richard Cohen
mean. Are you depressed? (“No.”) How do you spend your time? The answers are specific, but I find them vague. I cannot distill the essence of the experience.
After taking my mother out of the hospital, I spent some days at my par- ents’ condo in Florida. I studied their photos, especially the ones of them. I cannot account for their aging. My mind was clotted with cliches—life is brief, etc.—but also with questions.
I have had people tell me stories about their love affairs, about abandon- ing this person or that for a safer, maybe wiser, choice. Sometimes they were married. Sometimes the other
I wondered if my father knew what I was doing. I wondered how he could not.
person was. I know of a man, now dead, who cried as an old man for the woman he would not leave his wife for. I’ve heard people regret time not spent with their children. I know a great lawyer, who once worked in govern- ment, who told me how he never saw his son grow up. He was always work- ing. At the end of the day, what matters most—the love you didn’t have, or the pain you didn’t inflict? At the end of the day, what matter most—the min- utes stolen from a child, or the flourishing career? The young are con- fused about this or that, the complexity of life and how you are never experi- enced enough for your experiences. But the old too have their questions and they have to do with accounting, with making it all add up. It’s impor- tant that if you have that cup of tea, the last drop is not a tear.
When my father turned 85, I wanted to write about him. I wanted to say, “I love you, Dad,” but that was more about me than it was about him. I wanted to say something about his life, his principles, the impeccable way he
has conducted himself—his ethics, his morals. In that regard, he is very nearly perfect. But everything I wrote smacked of an obituary. It was dis- eased by the past tense, by the unmistakable signs of finale. I wanted to avoid that. And so I wrote nothing.
While my mother was in the hospi- tal, I took my father to dinner. “Tell me about the orphanage,” I asked. “What was it like to have been put in an orphan asylum?” He told the story once again—about his mother dying, his father unable to support the family and coming to visit only occasionally. My grandfather spoke only Yiddish, my father only English. My father’s older brother would translate. I posed my questions carefully, nonchalantly, in my best reporter style. Hide your intentions. Don’t let the interview subject know when he’s said some- thing explosive. Don’t let him know what you’re getting at.
If it were me, I think I would go to bed every night afraid I would not wake up in the morning. Would I think always of death? My father never let on. I thought once again he was show- ing me the way, how this thing was done. I remembered one time when he had been in the hospital, but he never complained and he always kidded and smiled. I had come to visit without warning and caught him writhing in pain. But my mother, my sister had never seen him that way. A lesson for you, son.
Now he teaches me yet another les- son. He instructs in silence, by example and inadvertence; he is only being who he is. He and my mother rejoice in the birth of Cyrus, yet they know they will never see him become a man. They both must wonder where the time went, but they are better at their aging than I am at watching it. That cup of tea Burt mentioned—I lift it in a toast to them.
Copyright © 1994, The Washington Post Writers Group. Reprinted with permission.
Festival Quarterly regularly offers essays and speeches from the larger world that, because of their subject, sensitivity or wisdom, are of interest to our readers.
Festival Quarterly 37
INDEX
This Index covers issues of Festival Quarterly from Winter 1993 (Vol. 19, No. 4) through Fall 1993 (Vol. 20, No. 3).
BY AUTHOR
Augsburger, David
Faces in the Mirror, 20:2, p 37
Meditation for Any National Holiday, 20:1, p 24
Brenneman, Jewell Gross
A World in Clay, 20:3, p 14
Brubaker, Kenton
The Electric Bathroom Dryer Dilemma, 20:3, p 35
Carey, Art
His Feat of Math Has World in Awe, 20:2, p 20
Dyck, Peter J.
Driven by Fear, 20:3, p 36
A Mennonite Buffer State, 20:2, p 30
When Does Justice Become Revenge?, 19:4, p 21
Ferraro, Susan
Name-Dropper, 20:1, p 39
Garcia, Raul
Are Mennonites Still Missionaries?, 20:1, p 13
Good, Elaine W.
Reconciliation with Creation: New Urgency, New Resources, New Hope, 20:2, p 24
Good, Leon W.
Reconciliation with Creation: New Urgency, New Resources, New Hope, 20:2, p 24
Good, Merle
Amazing Grace, 20:3, p 22
Are You a Closet Old Order?, 20:1, p 12
The Gift of Doris and Jethro, 20:2, p 19
The Growth of Islam Raises Concern, 20:2, p 15
How is the General Council of MWC Comprised?, 20:2, p 16
Ideas for Families: A Sampler,
20:1, p 16 The Illusion of Growth, 19:4, p5
Interdependence?, 20:2, p 15
Issues Facing the Mennonite World Peoplehood, 20:2, p 13
Many Languages, 20:2, p 17
Mennonite Leaders Ask: “What Does Anabaptism Mean to Us?”, 20:2, p 14
Pastor with a Lost Childhood, 20:3, p 12
An Update on the Village Extension, 20:1, p 23
We Need More Stories, 19:4, p5
Will North America Choose to Go to India?, 20:2, p 14
Women in the Church, 20:2, p 14
Good, Phyllis Pellman
Are You a Closet Old Order?, PAV AL joy 172
“Call-ees” and “Call-ers”, 20:2, p5
Does Mutual Aid Have a Future?, 20:3, p 8
38 Winter 1994
The Growth of Islam Raises Concern, 20:2, p 15
How is the General Council of MWC Comprised?, 20:2, p 16
Ideas for Families: A Sampler, 20:1, p 16
Interdependence?, 20:2, p 15
Issues Facing the Mennonite World Peoplehood, 20:2, p 13
Many Languages, 20:2, p 17
Mennonite Leaders Ask: “What Does Anabaptism Mean to Us?”, 20:2, p 14
Two Concerns Among Fellowships in Zimbabwe, 20:2, p 18
Will North America Choose to Go to India?, 20:2, p 14
Will We Feel Betrayed If They Are Happy?, 20:1, p 5
Women in the Church, 20:2, p15
Greenfield, Jeff
Pro-Life Movement Can Learn Much from the ‘60s Radicals, 20:2, p 43
Haas, J. Craig
Becoming a Mennonite: A View from Left Field, 20:1, p7
Gathering the Light—a Look at Missions Activity Among Mennonites, 20:3, p 17
Helmuth, Keith
Farming and the Money System, 20:3, p 25
Garlic Cloves and Apple Blossoms, 19:4, p 31
Too Much of a Good Thing, 20:1, p 33
Holland, Bernard
When Audiences (Cough, Cough) Get Into the Act, 20:3, p 39
Jantzi, Beryl
A Daddy Wanna-Be, 20:1, p 8
Konrad, Anne
She Cooked, 20:1, p 18
Krabill, James & Jeanette
Elisabeth’s Field Trip, 20:1, p 34
Spiritual Lessons from the Bat’s Bottom, 20:2, p 40
Too Much of Not Enough, 19:4, p 20
Lesher, Emerson L.
The Anabaptist Wait, 20:2, p 7 New Year’s Resolutions for Mennonites?, 19:4, p 24
Nolt, Steve Becoming a Mennonite: A
View from Left Field, 20:1, p7
Regier, Robert W.
Canadian Tundra and Kansas Spirea, 19:4, p 8
Roth, Glen A.
Baptism, For All the Right Reasons, 20:3, p 10
Two Roads to College, 20:3, p 6
Schlabach, Sue V.
Baptism, For All the Right Reasons, 20:3, p 10
Two Roads to College, 20:3, p6
Showalter, Jewel
An Andy-Over House, 20:1,
p 26
Quilters Are Warm People, 19:4, p 22
Sider, Arbutus
The Recovery of Hope Controversy: The Status of Marriage Among Mennonites, 20:2, p9
Sider, Duane M.
Healing the Wound, 19:4, p 14
Sider, Ronald J.
The Recovery of Hope Controversy: The Status of Marriage Among Mennonites, 20:2. p 9
Stoltzfus, Louise
One Mennonite Cartoonist, 20:1, p 10
Woldemar Neufeld Paints His Life, 19:4, p 10
You Can Go Home Again, 20:3, p5
Suderman, Elmer
The Old Men of Kalona, Iowa, 19:4, p 19
Thomas, M. Janelle
Grandma’s Covering, 20:3, p 16
Weaver, Carol Ann
Prophetess, 20:3, p 24
Wiebe, Katie Funk
Another Verse of “606,” 20:3, p 38
The Frugal Mennonite, 20:1,
p 38
Living by the Word, 19:4, p 36
One- and Two-Handed Mennonite, 20:2, p 42
Zuercher, Melanie A.
Jazzing Up the Mennonite Musical Tradition, 20:2, p 27
BY SUBJECT
Aging
The Old Men of Kalona, Iowa (Elmer Suderman), 19:4, p 19
Amish and Mennonite Culture
Are Mennonites Still Missionaries? (Raul Garcia), 20:1, p 13
Are You a Closet Old Order? (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:1, p 12
Anabaptism
The Anabaptist Wait (Emerson L. Lesher), 20:2,
p7
Mennonite Leaders Ask: “What Does Anabaptism Mean to Us?” (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 14
Church Issues
The Challenge is to Love (Elizabeth Weaver Kreider), 19:4, p 17
Healing the Wound (Duane M. Sider), 19:4, p 14
Women in the Church (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 15
Interdependence? (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 15
Community
The Challenge is to Love (Elizabeth Weaver Kreider), 19:4, p 17
9 a
Reconciliation with Creation: New Urgency, New Resources, New Hope (Leon W. Good & Elaine W. Good), 20:2, p 24
Drama
Amazing Grace (Merle Good), 20:3, p 22
Guatemala
Pastor with a Lost Childhood (Merle Good), 20:3, p 12
Historical Preservation
Reconciliation with Creation: New Urgency, New Resources, New Hope (Leon W. Good & Elaine W. Good), 20:2, p 24
An Update on the Village Extension (Merle Good), 20:1, p 23
Humor
Becoming a Mennonite: A View from Left Field (Craig Haas and Steve Nolt), 20:1, p7
One Mennonite Cartoonist (Louise Stoltzfus), 20:1, p 10
India
Will North America Choose to Go to India? (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, pl4
Islam
The Growth of Islam Raises Concern (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p15
Lent
Healing the Wound (Duane M. Sider), 19:4, p 14
Marriage and Family
A Daddy Wanna-Be (Beryl Jantzi), 20:1, p 8
Ideas for Families: A Sampler (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:1, p 16
The Recovery of Hope Controversy: The Status of Marriage Among Mennonites (Arbutus and Ronald J. Sider), 20:2, p 9
Math
His Feat of Math Has World in Awe (Art Carey), 20:2, p 20
Mennonite World Conference
The Growth of Islam Raises Concern (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p15
How is the General Council of MWC Comprised? (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 16
Interdependence? (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 15
Issues Facing the Mennonite World Peoplehood (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 13
Many Languages (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 17
Mennonite Leaders Ask: “What Does Anabaptism Mean to Us?” (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 14
Will North America Choose to Go to India? (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 14
Women in the Church (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 15
Mission
Are Mennonites Still Missionaries? (Raul Garcia), 20:1, p 13
Gathering the Light—a Look at Mission Activity Among Mennonites (J. Craig Haas), 20:3, p 17
Music
Amazing Grace (Merle Good), 20:3, p 22
Jazzing Up the Mennonite Musical Tradition (Melanie A. Zuercher), 20:2, p 27
Mutual Aid
Baptism For All the Right Reasons (Sue V. Schlabach & Glen A. Roth), 20:3, p 10
Does Mutual Aid Have a Future? (Phyllis Pellman Good), 20:3, p 8
Two Roads to College (Sue V. Schlabach & Glen A. Roth), 20:3, p 6
Nature
Canadian Tundra and Kansas Spirea (Robert W. Regier), 19:4, p 8
Poetry
Grandma’s Covering (M. Janelle Thomas), 20:3, p 16
The Old Men of Kalona, Iowa (Elmer Suderman), 19:4, p 19
Short Story
She Cooked (Anne Konrad), 20:1, p 18
South Africa
The Challenge Is to Love (Elizabeth Weaver Kreider), 19:4, p17
Zimbabwe
Two Concerns Among Fellowships In Zimbabwe (Phyllis Pellman Good), 20:2, p 18
The Gift of Doris and Jethro (Merle Good), 20:2, p 19
Visual Arts
Woldemar Neufeld Paints His Life (Louise Stoltzfus), 19:4, p10
A World in Clay (Jewell Gross Brenneman), 20:3, p 14
Women
Grandma’s Covering (M. Janelle Thomas), 20:3, p 16
Pastor with a Lost Childhood (Merle Good), 20:3, p 12
Women in the Church (Phyllis Pellman Good & Merle Good), 20:2, p 15
Will We Feel Betrayed If They Are Happy? (Phyllis Pellman Good), 20:1, p 5
BY COLUMNS
Americans Abroad
(James and Jeanette Krabill)
Elisabeth’s Field Trip, 20:1, p 34
Spiritual Lessons from the Bat’s Bottom, 20:2, p 40
Too Much of Not Enough, 19:4, p 20
Borders
(Peter J. Dyck)
Driven by Fear, 20:3, p 36
A Mennonite Buffer State, 20:2, p 30
When Does Justice Become Revenge?, 19:4, p 21
Comment
Name-Dropper (Susan Ferraro), 20:1, p 39
Pro-Life Movement Can Learn Much from the ‘60s Radicals (Jeff Greenfield), 20:2, p 43
When Audiences (Cough, Cough) Get Into the Act (Bernard Holland), 20:3, p 39
Still America’s Most Segregated Hour, 19:4, p 37
Communication By-Line
(David Augsburger)
Faces in the Mirror, 20:2, p 37
Meditation for Any National Holiday, 20:1, p 24
Energy Watch
(Kenton Brubaker)
The Electric Bathroom Dryer Dilemma, 20:3, p 35
Expressions in Music
(Carol Ann Weaver)
Prophetess, 20:3, p 24
Family Creations
(Jewel Showalter)
An Andy-Over House, 20:1, p 26
Quilters Are Warm People, 19:4, p 22
Farmer’s Thoughts
(Keith Helmuth)
Farming and the Money System, 20:3, p 25
Garlic Cloves and Apple Blossoms, 19:4, p 31
Too Much of a Good Thing, 20:1, p 33
Now What?
(Emerson L. Lesher)
New Year’s Resolutions for Mennonites?, 19:4, p 24
Reclassified
(Katie Funk Wiebe)
Another Verse of “606”, 20:3, p 38
The Frugal Mennonite, 20:1, p 38
Living by the Word, 19:4, p 36
One- and Two-Handed Mennonites, 20:2, p 42
EDITORIALS
(Phyllis Pellman Good, Merle
Good, and Louise Stoltzfus)
“Call—ees” and” Call-ers” (PPG), 20:1, p5
The Illusion of Growth (MG), 19:4, p5
We Need More Stories (MG), 19:4, p 5
Will We Feel Betrayed If They Are Happy? (PPG), 20:2, p 5
You Can Go Home Again (LS), 20:3, p 5
BOOK REVIEWS
The Amish and the State (Edited by Donald B. Kraybill), 20:3, p 30
Applesauce (Shirley Kurtz, llustrated by Cheryl Benner), 20:1, p 29
Called to Care: A Training Manual for Small Group Leaders (Palmer Becker), 20:2, p 34
Climbing Down the Ladder (Linden M. Wenger), 20:1,
p 30
Doors to Lock and Doors to Open: The Discerning People of God (Leland Harder), 20:3, p 29
Family Games (Anne Konrad), 20:3, p 28
Food, Sex and Salmonella: The
Risks of Environmental Intimacy (David Waltner- Toews), 20:2, p 33
Growing Toward Peace (Kathryn Aschliman), 20:2, p 33
Ideas for Families: Ideas for Conscientious Living (Phyllis Pellman Good and Merle Good), 19:4, p 26
Inquiries (Jeff Gundy), 20:1, p29
Justice That Heals: A Biblical Vision for Victims and Offenders (Arthur Paul Boers), 20:1, p 30
Letters of the Amish Division: A Sourcebook (John D. Roth, editor and translator with Joe Springer), 20:3, p 29
Life After 50: A Positive Look at Aging in the Faith Community (Katie Funk Wiebe), 20:2, p 32
The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament (Willard M. Swartley), 19:4, p 26
The Meaning of Peace (Perry B. Yoder and Willard M. Swartley, editors), 20:1, p 30
The Mennonite Starter Kit: A Handy Guide for the New Mennonite (J. Craig Haas & Steven Nolt), 20:2, p 32
No Permanent City: Stories from Mennonite History and Life (Harry Loewen), 19:4, p27
Nonviolent America: History Through the Eyes of Peace (Louise Hawkley and James C. Juhnke, editors), 20:2, p 33
Peace Theology and Violence Against Women (Elizabeth G. Yoder), 20:1, p 28
Proclaim Salvation, Preaching the Church Year (David Ewert), 19:4, p 27
A Quiet Strength: The Susanna Ruth Krehbiel Story (Amelia Mueller), 19:4, p 27
Readings from Mennonite Writings, New and Old J. Craig Haas), 19:4, p 28
Reuben and the Fire (P. Buckley Moss, Artist; Story by Merle Good), 20:3, p 30
Sarah of the Border (James D. Yoder), 20:3, p 30
Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches (Carolyn Holderread Heggen), 19:4, p 28
Shared Burdens (Sue V. Schlabach & Glen A. Roth), 20:3, p 29
Sleeping Preacher (Julia Kasdorf), 19:4, p 28
The Transfiguration of Mission: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Foundations (Wilbert R. Shenk), 20:1, p 29
Waters of Reflection: Meditations for Every Day (Sandra Drescher-Lehman),
20:1, p 28 What on Earth Can You Do? Making Your Church a Creation Awareness Center (Donna Lehman), 20:2, p 34 When Your Child Is 6 to 12 (John M. Drescher), 20:3, p 28
FILM REVIEWS
The Adventures of Huck Finn (e203 p37, The Air Up There (6), 20:3, p 37 The Age of Innocence (8), 20:2, p 41 American Heart (6), 20:2, p 41 Amos & Andrew (6), 19:4, p 35 Another Stakeout (3), 20:2, p41 Benny & Joon (8), 20:1, p 37 Blink (6), 20:3, p 37 Born Yesterday (4), 20:1, p 37 Boxing Helena (3), 20:2, p 41 Carlito’s Way (5), 20:2, p 41 Chaplin (5), 19:4, p 35 Cliffhanger (4), 20:1, p 37 Cool Runnings (8), 20:3, p 37 The Crush (1), 20:1, p 37 Damage (3), 19:4, p 35 Dave (7), 20:1, p 37 Demolition Man (3), 20:2, p 41 Dennis the Menace (7), 20:1, p 37 Especially on Sunday (3), 20:2, p41 Falling Down (3), 19:4, p 35 Farewell, My Concubine (4), 20:3, p 37 Fire in the Sky (4), 20:1, p 37 The Firm (6), 20:2, p 41 Flesh and Bone (5), 20:2, p 41 Free Willy (5), 20:2, p 41 The Fugitive (9), 20:2, p 41 Geronimo: An American Legend (4), 20:3, p 37 Gettysburg (8), 20:2, p 41 Groundhog Day (7), 19:4, p 35 Grumpy Old Men (6), 20:3, p 37 Heart in Winter (Un coeur en Hiver) (6),20:2, p 41 Heaven and Earth (4), 20:3, p 37 In the Line of Fire (7), 20:2, p41 Indecent Proposal (5), 20:1, p 37 Indian Summer (5), 20:1, p 37 Indochine (5), 20:1, p 37 Intersection (2), 20:3, p 37 Into the West (8), 20:2, p 41 Iron Will (6), 20:3, p 37 Jack the Bear (3), 20:1, p 37 The Joy Luck Club (9), 20:2, p41 Judgment Night (2), 20:2, p 41 Jurassic Park (7), 20:1, p 37 Life with Mikey (3), 20:1, p 37 Like Water for Chocolate (7), 20:1, p 37 Mad Dog & Glory (5), 19:4, p 35 Made in America (4), 20:1, p 37 Malice (4), 20:2, p 41
Manhattan Murder Mystery (7), 20:2, p 41
The Man Without a Face (6), 20:2, p 41
The Match Factory Girl (3), 19:4, p 35
Menace II Society (7), 20:1, p 37
Mister Jones (5), 20:2, p 41
Mrs. Doubtfire (7), 20:3, p 37
Much Ado About Nothing (9), 20:1, p 37
My Life (7), 20:2, p 41
Olivier, Olivier (5), 20:1, p 37
Passion Fish (8), 19:4, p 35
The Pelican Brief (6), 20:3, p6
A Perfect World (5), 20:3, p 37
Peter’s Friends (6), 20:1, p 37
Philadelphia (7), 20:3, p 37
The Piano (4), 20:3, p 37
Posse (6), 20:1, p 37
The Program (5), 20:2, p 41
The Remains of the Day (8), 20:2, p 41
Rich in Love (5), 20:1, p 37
Rising Sun (7), 20:2, p 41
Rookie of the Year (4), 20:2, p 41
Rudy (6), 20:2, p 41
Scent of a Woman (7), 19:4, p 35
Searching for Bobby Fischer
(6), 20:2, p 41 The Secret Garden (9), 20:2, p41
Shadowlands (9), 20:3, p 37
Short Cuts (4), 20:2, p 41
Six Degrees of Separation (8), 20:3, p 37
Sleepless in Seattle (9), 20:1, p 37
Sliver (1), 20:1, p 37
Sniper (2), 19:4, p 35
Sommersby (7), 19:4, p 35
Stolen Children (8), 20:1, p 37
Strictly Ballroom (7), 20:1, 37
Striking Distance (3), 20:2, p41
The Temp (3), 19:4, p 35
This Boy’s Life (3), 20:1, p 37
Tombstone (2), 20:3, p 37
Tous les Matins du Moude (All the Mornings of the World) (8), 19:4, p 35
True Romance (5), 20:2, p 41
Two Mikes Don’t Make a Wright (4), 20:2, p 41
Undercover Blues (2), 20:2, p41
Untamed Heart (5), 19:4, p 35
Used People (2), 19:4, p 35
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (9), 20:3, p 37
What’s Love Got To Do With It (6), 20:1, p 37
Festival Quarterly 39
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“Coming to America” 7
A little bit of country...
Plain and Amish:
An Alternative to Modern Pessimism by Bernd G. Langin “Langin has been among us off and on for many years; has attended our church services, weddings, singings, and social gatherings; and has interviewed many of my close friends and also myself. Statements and information contained in this book are as accurate, true, and real as you will find anywhere.”—Chris Graber, member and servant of the Old Order Amish, Grabill, Indiana “From the first page, this book is fascinating.”—-G. K. Epp, in Der Bote, Winnipeg, Manitoba “Langin begins his enjoyable and accessible study by making it clear that he is a ‘man An Alo active of the world who has drifted into the company of the devout.’”—Publishers Weekly to eet) Fesenen Paper, 416 pages, $15.95; in Canada $22.75.
32 pages of color photographs.
Mennonite Country-Style Recipes and Kitchen Secrets:
The Prize Collection of a Shenandoah Valley Cook by Esther H. Shank “Fairly bursts with unpretentious recipes and kitchen tips, a boon for novice or busy cooks. Hearty, appetizing dishes reflect . . . simplicity, thrift, moderation, and common sense.”’—Publishers Weekly
“Warm in style, easy to use in organization, and a gold mine of information.”—The Richmond News Leader Spiral, 680 pages, $18.95; in Canada $27.25. Hard, 680 pages, $32.75; in U.S. $22.95.
Katie and the Lemon Tree
by Esther Bender
This is a true-to-life story about pioneer days in the mountain valleys near Grantsville, Maryland. As Katie and Daniel Miller leave Germany for America in search of free land and religious freedom, her mama says, “Keep the faith, Katie!” Katie came for a promise of freedom. She found room for a dream. For children ages 8-to-12. Joy Dunn Keenan, illustrator.
Paper, 88 pages, $4.95; in Canada $7.10.
Available through your local bookstore or by calling 1 800 759-4447; in Canada call 519 746-2872 (Provident Bookstores—MC, Visa, Discover).
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exploring the Spring/Summer 1994 I. 21, No. 2&3
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p. 16 p. 36 p. 46 p. 50 FEATURES NEWS 8 Minding Psychology J. Craig Haas 51 Publishing Notes 12 On Clear Nights, Geese, and Television Bob Regier 57 Did You Know That? 14 A Refreshing Dip in the Anabaptist 58 Quarterly News Music Pool Jim Bishop 16 Modern Mennonite Dilemmas in COLUMNS Zaire Phyllis Pellman Good 50 Energy Watch Kenton Brubaker 19 “Us” and “Them” Together David Leaman 60 Borders Peter J. Dyck 61 Expressions in Music Carol Ann Weaver ae TURNS 20 62 Farmer’s Thoughts Keith Helmuth God Never Visits an Empty Space Charles Christano 63 Now What? Emerson L. Lesher bi Could Our Faith Survive Life in 64 Americans Abroad James and Jeanette Krabill Outer Space? J. Lawrence Burkholder 66 Reclassified Katie Funk Wiebe 25 The Computer and the Cookstove Keith Helmuth 26 How Lena Got Set Back Sara Stambaugh COMMENTARY 28 On Losing a Political Race Frank H. Epp 5 Editorial 29 How to Eat Loaches Yorifumi Yaguchi 6 Letters 29 Praying Mantis Yorifumi Yaguchi 67 Comment 30 Cultivating All the Land David Luthy 31 A Neglected Group: The Olde Field CRITIQUE Mennonites Emerson L. Lesher 52 Mennonite Books in Review 32 “Jacob, why did you do this to us?” James Krabill 65 Film Ratings 34 Should I Travel When the World Is Starving? Arnold Cressman 35 IHad to Leave Jerry Derstine 36 Making Peace With the Artist in Myself Eva Beidler On the cover... 39 The Opinion of One of Us Rainer Wiebe, Conny Wiebe-Franzen ’ 40 These Words Are For You, The People’s Place Drama Thceneas Grandmother Jean Janzen premieres Coming to America 42 The Central Issue Is Faithfulness Theron F. Schlabach (see page 59 for story) J 44 Primary Prevention Lawrence Hart 46 Tips for Cross-Cultural Eating Luann Habegger Martin Photo by Kenneth Pellman
48 “Serve with the Weakness You Have Received from God...”
Festival Quarterly 3
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In this personably-written manual, two veterans of many boards lucidly address the ideal relationship between a nonprofit organization and its board. They candidly cover the realities that often threaten that relationship—weak board leadership, overly zealous staff, ill-informed board members, and more. Then, from their lifetimes as staff, consul-
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Copyright © 1994 by Good EMeenpeises, Lid., Vol. 21,No. 2 & 3. All correspondence should be addressed to Festival Quarterly, 3513 Old Philadelphia Pike, Intercourse, PA 17534.
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‘ Q / : Phyllis Pellman Good, Merle Good
EDITORIAL
One More Editorial About Peace
I know of two good reasons not to write about peace. What new is there to say? And, there are official church insti- tutions who receive money to keep the issue alive for the rest of us.
So FQ readers and official peace-ten- ders—relax. What I’m about to say falls into the realm of personal confession, not a new editorial trend or an ambush on any organization’s, chief agenda. (I might, however, need a peace advocate till I’m through with this!)
World events, plus a few things closer home, have suddenly made me live night and day with thoughts about peace.
I admit to having a streak of cyni- cism about the subject of peace. On second thought, I’m not cynical about peace; I’m just a little sarcastic about the way we’ve packaged it lately. It’s become a pet, a department, tended by qualified agencies and spokespersons.
Peace is still a cherished part of who I am, as in “I am a peace-loving person from a peace-loving tradition.” I have noticed that sometimes I lean more heavily on my tradition than on per- sonal practice.
For instance, I do alright on the big things. I applaud MCC’s Peace Section (what do they do, anyway?), favor Peace Study majors in college (if they’re not Mickey Mouse curricula that border on being a fad), give my support to the World Peace Tax Fund, and have a warm spot for peaceful demonstrators (providing they’re moved by conviction
rather than a zest for showmanship).
So what’s bothering me? All this organization lets me put on peace like a hat and gloves. It’s possible to dress up in it, while hiding some personal viciousness.
As a driver, I can be a bear on the road. Or, if someone abuses something of mine, it’s a little hard for me to for- get. If anyone takes advantage of my 3-year-old, I’m inclined to make them sorry. And although I believe the Iranian “students” have a right to clob- ber Americans in lieu of the Shah, I wanted to sneak off and cheer when Canadian diplomats helped outfox the militants, and Carter showed a little muscle in his State of the Union address. I just wanted the satisfaction of a little squeak of joy (“we showed
m”); then back to being peace-loving again.
I’ve begun to wonder if all the talk about peace and all the statistics and all the promotion have made me only a “subscriber” to the idea.
You see, last week I faced up to the likelihood that my daughters will have to register for the draft. It’s probably been the best thing that’s happened to my peace principle. I’ve coasted but they can’t.
My life may change for all this. I need some help in my journey toward peace. —PPG
This editorial first appeared in the February, March, April, 1980 issue.
Articulation?
There is a growing gap among us about whom we consider articulate.
Many among us articulate through their lives; many others articulate with increasingly complex words. All of us do some of both.
The concern here is that North American Mennonites in general appear to be putting more and more stock in words, position papers, and profes- sional degrees. Some whose living speaks clearly are considered “inarticu- late” because they can’t explain it in professional terms.
This development causes the most alarm when church conferences, sup- posedly for all of God’s people,
increasingly take on the trappings of professional articulation. Someone with a deep concern is taken seriously by many in the church only if she or he an “present a paper” on the matter. In the past, in some parts of the church, one needed to wear a plain suit in order to speak. It now seems required in numerous circumstances that one have a professional degree in order to speak at, or even to attend, many Mennonite meetings.
Is articulation by word superior to articulation by life? Are we losing our understanding and perspective? —MG
This editorial first appeared in the Fall 1988 issue.
Festival Quarterly 5
The following letters are a sampling of those we have received in response to our invitation to comment about Festival Quarterly on the occasion of the magazine’s 20th anniversary.
Thank you for your review of Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism (Festival Quarterly, Winter 1994).
You are to be commended for (1) arresting our attention about some of the changes in attitudes toward our philosophy/theology about peacemak- ing; (2) daring to provide a critique of what appears to be some lopsided thinking; (3) again challenging what seem to be inconsistencies in our peace witness. More attention needs to be given to a holistic and biblical peace position which would address the implication of moving from “quietism” to activism.
Harvey R. Sider, Moderator of the Brethren in Christ Church
Grantham, Pennsylvania
This is in response to the editorial of the Winter ’94 issue, as well as the book review on page 26, both of which brought out in bold relief the sad expe- riences we had (First Mennonite, Newton) when we availed ourselves mistakenly of the “expertise” of these so-called Conference “Sociol- ogists” to help us solve our problem.
The Integration problem, as well as the tendency to “water down” our Anabaptist tenets, only helped to add confusion to our problem.
Had we just gone about our business in our own way, we would still have our pastor today, and much pain and sor- row could have been spared.
John D. Wiebe Newton, Kansas
I really liked your article “Will We Feel Betrayed if They Are Happy.” I had a happy childhood and good relation- ships with men and have been blissfully unaware of how much suffering and abuse there is, except what I’ve read about recently.
I can’t imagine how it would be for my sons and daughters growing up with some of the more brutal images that are currently being portrayed. Of course we have to warn them of things I didn’t know existed when I was young, but there has to be some bal- ance.
Wendy Pradels
Strasbourg, France
6 Spring/Summer 1994
For a long time I have wanted to express my appreciation for the “Film Ratings.” I resent the false expecta- tions I have gotten from many reviews, but have found those in Festival Quarterly most reliable. I really appreci- ate that. Only thing is—-we get the ratings too late! Some of the good or worthwhile movies have come and gone before I get your ratings.
A testimony for your magazine: I don’t save papers or magazines, but | do believe I have every Festival Quarterly you have published—or at least since I have subscribed.
Delsie Bartel Sioux Falls, South Dakota
I like the great variety of articles you provide. I find the magazine stimulat- ing and interesting. I look forward to every new issue. One thing impresses me very much: your sensitive inclusion of our “faith brothers,” the Amish and Old Order Mennonites. You have writ- ten about them in a very sensitive and intuitive way. We do have much in common and much to learn from each other. Festival Quarterly has embraced the whole Anabaptist family in a way that no other publication has. Keep up the good work!
Sarah Yoder Scott Newark, Delaware
Keep up the good work. I especially appreciate the movie reviews and am looking forward to receiving your “Guide” this fall.
Dwayne and Sandy Schrag Ft. Worth, Texas
We have enjoyed each issue of Festival Quarterly that has reached us. Thank you very much. The feature arti- cles on Mennonite history are helpful to me especially. We are pleased to rec- ommend it to others.
Lawrence Klippenstein
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Festival Quarterly plays an important role among Mennonites of various branches, all over North America and beyond, with leanings toward or inter- est in the arts. It is one of the few places in which serious Mennonite artists can
see and hear about the work of their peers. Yet the creative work that is pre- sented and treated in the magazine often seems bland and predictable to me, trading heavily in nostalgia and quaintness. Sometimes it seems that only the most traditional and unthreat- ening artists—or the most traditional works produced by versatile artists—are represented in the magazine.
I would like to see Festival Quarterly be more adventurous, more open to experimental creative work. Ezra Pound once said “Artists are the anten- nae of the race.” I believe, also, that the artist’s enterprise involves discovery, disturbance, struggle, as well as affir- mation and celebration. This is a yeasty and exciting time for Mennonite artists, but it is hard to get that impression from Festival Quarterly. Other journals, such as Mennonite Life, Journal of Mennonite Studies, and now Mennonot, seem to show a much wider spectrum of Mennonite writing.
Truth be told, I’ve more or less stopped sending poems to Festival Quarterly, partly because it’s never done any good and partly because it takes so long to hear back. My explanation, if people ask, is that my poems tend to be too quirky, jittery, and lacking in the essential Mennonite markers: no cover- ings, quilts, or zwieback. But then, here I am at this General Conference school on the far west side of Ohio, without a buggy in sight. Am I too far away from Lancaster and even Holmes County to be a “real” Mennonite?
For this matter, I’d like to see more work from within the Amish and con- servative Mennonite communities in Festival Quarterly. Those groups are heavily represented in your magazine and your other enterprises, of course, but mostly by outsiders, academics, and so forth. There must be Amish writers beside David Kline.
Things I like: creative work (fiction, poems, essays) by Mennonites (not necessarily identified as such by plain coats/quilts/martyrdoms). Inter- views/features on working Mennonite artists, writers, intellectuals, trends in the Mennonite artistic community. Columns by Keith Helmuth and Kenton Brubaker.
LETTERS |
Things I could do without: articles of dubious relevance reprinted from other sources—four pages on the solv- ing of Fermat’s theorem? Gloomy editorials about the perils of integra- tion. A review section that seems, at times, an extension of the advertising section. Oversized mug shots dominat- ing a page.
All this is just because you asked, and will, I hope, be taken as an attempt at honest feedback from the point of view of one would-be Mennonite, poet, writer, teacher, father, human being. With all my grousing, I’m still glad that Festival Quarterly exists and hope it will continue for a long while.
Jeff Gundy, Bluffton College
Bluffton, Ohio
The Festival Quarterly has long been one of my favorite magazines. It addresses the arts which were long ignored in the Mennonite church. I pass my issues along to a friend who uses drama in our worship at Trinity Mennonite in Morton Illinois. The photography, sketches, humor, and articles are informative and interesting.
The only criticism I share is a per- sonal one—that is, the anti-union of the Mennonite and General Conference churches as expressed in Merle’s article on the subject. It makes me sad because I can’t understand the theology of disunity. I was not always a Mennonite but like their respect and cooperation with each other.
Keep the Festival Quarterly coming— an informative, attractive arm of the Mennonite church.
Arlene Egli Goshen, Indiana
I can’t get along without your film ratings. They are the surest guide I have found to quality films. Thank you. Don’t drop them. I look forward to receiving the video guide.
Leanne Schertz Peoria, Illinois
What we especially like about Festival Quarterly is a chance to see where the cutting edge of the arts is and who are the cutters. We enjoy all the regular columns and the irregular ones, too. And all the advertisements! I’ll bet you could even find more car- toons if you tried real hard. Don’t drop any of the regulars; maybe even add a few.
One segment of the arts that you have ignored are the artists who sup- port the artists and are truly artists in their own rights. Such people, I guess, as myself—a full-time piano tuner- technician-restorer who also restores pipe organs, reed organs, harpsichords, etc. Now, I did also have nearly 40 years of technical support to the music industry and have prepared instruments for many fine artists who would have been absolutely lost without the artistic tuning, voicing, regulating that I gave them. Or the old pipe organ that received a voice that was mute for decades, or restoring the old harmo- nium that Anton Dvorak played in Iowa, or supplying harmoniums for the Minneapolis Symphony and the Omaha Symphony and many others. Even bringing back to life an old autoharp for the MCC Crowded Closet to sell.
Some other people in this group would be the glass blowers who work in labs, the people who make quality custom papers, paint makers, framers, furniture restorers: the people who get their hands dirty so the “artists” can do what they do best. Our Mennonite roots are very much with this latter group.
I admit this group would be hard to come by; they seldom get the credit they deserve, seldom from the artist
him- /herself. As an example I restored an old tracker pipe organ for a Unitarian church. At the dedication the organist and string quartet got lavish praise; nothing for the technician/artist. As my son remarked: “In those circles you are blue collar.”
‘Nough said. Keep up the good work.
John and Becky Bixler
Iowa City, Iowa
I especially like the articles that include a cross-section of Menno- nitism; also, the listings of new books that I’d not seen offered anywhere else.
Anne Bergey Boston, Massachusetts
The editors welcome letters. Letters for publi- cation must include the writer’s name and address and should be sent to Festival Quarterly, 3513 Old Philadelphia Pike, Intercourse, PA 17534. The editors regret that at times the volume of mail necessitates publishing only a representative cross-section. Letters are subject to editing for reasons of space or clarity.
S———— ee
“Dad, can you read?”
Festival Quarterly 7
Drawing by P. Steiner; © 1990, The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
VIINDING PSYCHOLOGY
by J. Craig Haas
s it possible that Mennonites have too much psy-
chology? Why, when one person in ten has some form of mental illness, should that question arise? We all know that stress abounds. We understand, further, that those who suffer emotional or childhood or rela- tional difficulties need professional psychologists; some problems ought not to be entrusted to amateurs. (I myself spent a few months in counseling for depression several years ago.) A therapist may help us sort things out.
Therapy, on the other hand, is not meant to become a way of life, and the patient should hope to function without the help of the counselor in time. Nevertheless, psychological language and concepts are seeping increasingly into our everyday speech and thought. Psychological terms show up in conversations among people who have no awareness of their origins, except, perhaps, through the self-help articles they’ve read in supermarket magazines. Midday and late afternoon television yield a feast of talk shows featuring anybody’s quirk, hang-up, obsession, or perversion—for all to see.
Mennonites who swim in this ocean of “openness” have absorbed not only the dogmas, but the language of the psychological currents. In addition, spirituality is popular again, as Mennonites “process” their “inner feelings” and “dialogue” about “faith issues” in “share groups.” In some corners, the Sunday sermon may be pushed aside in favor of more sharing time. As the microphone is passed Oprah-style, the congregation “affirms” and “supports” the speakers, and inner healing begins.
Much of this, of course, is simply pop psychology. Reputable, professional psychology has also made its mark among Mennonites, often for good reasons. In fact, the respect for sound psychology is probably one reason pop psychology has caught on with such strength.
Why Mennonites Love Psychology
How did Mennonites come to so esteem psychology? Something in Mennonite spirituality attracts us to psychological subjects. We are heirs of the subjective turn in religion produced by the Protestant Reformation. Luther, with his watchword of “justification by faith,” raised the believer’s own inner conviction above anything so crassly objective as the visible church, sacraments, or good works. What counted most was on the inside, invisible, known only to oneself and to God.
8 Spring/Summer 1994
Our Anabaptist forerunners sometimes developed highly subjective and individualistic theologies which denigrated anything “merely outward.” Most, however, tried to hold the inner and outer aspects of life together, although they carefully distinguished between them. Faith began within, but produced visible fruit; spirit became flesh. But the work of God always began within the individual. It was first sensed by the individual, rather than by others through observation. Despite Jesus’ words that “by their fruits you shall know them,” the inner witness of the heart and conscience has generally been the real evidence for Mennonites that one is at peace—inner peace—with God.
The adoption of Pietism by many Mennonite communities during the late 17th and 18th centuries sealed the subjective approach to spirituality. Pietism was concerned with spiritual techniques designed to produce a warm, emotional devotion of the heart. Pietism had risen in the state churches as a reaction and antidote to sterile intellectualism and formalism. Reason was traded for emotion; the logical gave way to the psychological. One kept track of oneself by introspection, searching the heart’s depths for unrepented sin, wicked motives, unsubjected thoughts.
The Pietists paid a great deal of attention to themselves, and Mennonites paid attention to Pietism. Both traditions shared a preoccupation with the interior correctness of the soul, which conscience alone could reveal. Mennonites who adopted Pietism, to one degree or another, often welcomed insights about the self which needed to be crucified. Psychology provided such insights and encouraged inner explorations.
Protestantism, to which Mennonites are, alas, indebted, contributed to the demand for psychological help outside the religious setting. It abolished the confes- sional where one could come clean about sins and errors and receive counsel and hope. While ten “Our Fathers” cannot by themselves take away sins, the opportunity to reaffirm one’s faith, within the hearing ofa spiritual counselor, can offer hope, assurance, and strength. Under Protestantism, believers are much more on their own. The “priesthood of all believers” has usually meant that no believer is a priest. The church is more often a gathering of lonely hikers, than it is a pilgrim community.
The evangelical, who might fairly be called an “extreme” Protestant, is guided by individual interpre-
Something in Mennonite spirituality attracts us to psychological subjects.
tation of scripture, personal faith in a personal Savior, and the conscience within. Assurance of salvation is a matter of conscience alone. Evangelicalism has great faith in the self.
From the earliest years of Anabaptism, Mennonites were not satisfied simply to be good; they had to be right. This perfectionist ideal is frequently accompanied by anxiety. Since there are many ways to go wrong, and only one right way, the church has carefully regulated the conduct of its members to ensure continuance on the straight and narrow path, enforcing agreed-upon behavior with the threat of discipline. Mennonites who grew up during the earlier decades of this century often felt the force of law more than the power of grace. They tended to fear the wrath of a watchful judge, more than love the one who first loved them.
For some, this controlled environment gave clarity, certainty, and meaning, and continues so today. Others experienced the rigor of nonconformity to the world, conformity to the church, or both, as oppressive. Anger, denial, and guilt were the fruits of these circumstances, yet the church lacked theological resources to offer any relief beyond submission. For these people, psychology was the long-awaited gospel.
Mennonites are also drawn to psychology for a happier reason—service. Mennonites are attracted to the practice of psychology and social work because, while helping and healing, they can find fulfillment in putting things right, in bringing order from chaos.
So What’s The Problem?
In part, what makes psychology so dangerous is its claim to be scientific. 1 am emphatically not suggesting that science is an enemy of religion. Like the scientist, I do not suppose that any theory represents science’s final word. In fact, it is the nature of science to develop better and more refined models of explanation. For example, in the seventeenth century the physics of Aristotle were replaced by a mechanistic model of nature. The universe was believed to be a vast machine, composed of lesser machines, such as the bodies of living things. At first, the mind was considered a “spiritual substance” rather than a physical one. Over time, the mind came to be viewed as a production of the brain, a part of the mechanized universe.
The physics of the mechanistic universe are Newtonian physics (named for the English physicist, Sir Isaac Newton). In this system the world is closed, or self- contained, with no surprises. Everything runs like a perfect clock, whose movements can be carefully relied upon and predicted. It is a deterministic world from “Left Brain,” which freedom has been banished. Every event can be carved drawing on a clay tile, by Sandy Zeiset Richardson.
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explained from other events; nothing is unaccounted for. The universe, including human history, unfolds according to the pattern established in the first moment of existence, for it cannot be otherwise. Once a perfect clockmaker starts the perfect clock, the position of every part is strictly determined for all time.
Psychology became a science at the time science was Newtonian and mechanistic. Psychology, therefore, tends
“Right Brain,” carved drawing on a clay tile, by Sandy Zeiset Richardson.
10 Spring/Summer 1994
to understand human choices and behavior as caused by preceding events, some of which are themselves choices or behaviors. Every event has a cause which explains and determines it. If one looks hard enough, one can discover why someone acted as he or she did. For indeed, the person could not have acted otherwise.
The problem with such a view should be apparent: when responsibility for choices and actions lies in events outside the agent, personal responsibility evaporates. An agent is not free to initiate a new series of events which are unaccounted for by previous events. Personal choice and responsibility are mere illusions because the sources of our actions lie beyond us. How can Mennonites maintain the practice of personal accountability in such a world? This picture of the mind is a moth which eats away the fabric of community life.
Fortunately, in the twentieth century, physics has undergone another revolution which might enable us to keep the mind within nature, without subjecting it to determinism. This change has come through the discovery of quantum theory. In quantum physics, events occur within atoms without apparent predictability. They seem to happen from no prior cause, as if bubbling up from nothing. The occurrence of such events in atoms cracked open cause-and-effect determinism. There are surprises in nature. Freedom is possible, for if nature is not wholly seamless, human choices and actions, too, could be spontaneous events. The mind may be studied within nature without being bound to the clockwork. If the mind is more free than once thought, psychology will need to be modest in its predictions and prescriptions.
A Preoccupation with Feelings
There is a second problem (in addition to the personal responsibility question) with psychology for Mennonites. It is the use of psychological concepts and language to such a degree that there is an increasing emphasis on feelings, rather than motives.
A preoccupation with feelings undercuts the fundamentally ethical character of biblical faith. The aim of genuine spirituality is not to accept one’s vices, but to change them. Psychology, like superstition, may substitute ritual for repentance—and thereby reduce or eliminate the guilt of the supplicant—but fail to deal with God’s expectations.
Theology has been invaded by psychology. Our own inner experience and spiritual-formation-via-technique becomes our focus, rather than God’s good news. Spirituality, expressed in the language of therapy, is becoming an idol.
Two Responses
One way Mennonites can balance psychology’s emphasis on emotion is to rediscover the rational life of the mind. For over two millennia, Western civilization believed that the rule of the emotions by reason was a condition of happiness. With the development of Romanticism 200 years ago, that notion was inverted. Reason was made to serve passion; truth gave place to personal conviction. And since no two people share exactly the same feelings in the way they might share the
From their earliest years, Mennonites were not satisfied simply to be good; they had to be right.
same ideas, individualism took hold.
It may seem odd and downright un-Mennonite to suggest a return to a life of reason. The heirs of Reformation traditions have generally regarded reason as the antithesis of faith. The “rationalist” is the incarnation of unbelief. Didn’t Luther call reason a “whore”? Weren’t the Anabaptists primarily unlearned people who confounded scholars? Haven’t a lot of Mennonites been wary of education?
The fact that the Anabaptists used argument to advocate their beliefs suggests that they did not despise reason outright. Instead, they complained that others mis-employed reason to search out excuses for their error. As a result, reason was labelled “rebellious.” But Anabaptists met these excuses with counter-arguments. They understood reason to respect an individual’s ability to come to his or her own decisions.
A return to reason will respect the freedom of individuals. The message must then appeal to persons as agents who may choose. People are not to be manipulated by an appeal to their passions, whether of hope or of fear, of pity or of contempt. Sermons which are overly sentimental or threatening are as out of place as an organ rehearsed to rise to a crescendo when the evangelist appeals for funds.
On my first occasion to teach a college class in logic, a student remarked, “This course has ruined television for me. I can’t stand to hear commercials any more.” She saw how shamelessly advertisers manipulate the audience by appeals which are wholly irrelevant to the products and services they offer. Attention to reason brings much of the seduction of culture (“the world”) into the light, exposing it.
The Bible encourages the pursuit of wisdom. Preachers have quickly noted that this wisdom is divine, not human. But what can this distinction mean? Perhaps reason is to be assigned to human wisdom, while divine wisdom is mystically available to the few. Divine wisdom is often seen as something other-worldly, poured out upon the seeker like celestial gravy. But when God “gave” Solomon wisdom, it turned out to be a talent for insight and the ability to speak wisely about natural objects— matters open for public and scientific investigation. Wisdom from God is the gift to see the world aright; “human wisdom” refers to the abuse of that gift through rebellious cleverness.
But the most important way Mennonites should respond to psychology is to rediscover the therapeutic