Telling Our Stories II - The Ones We Have Told

In the previous posting, I emphasized how and why we as Mennonites have not told our stories. However, that is not entirely true, as I alluded to there.  In fact, our early history from the 16th and 17th centuries is well and tragically recorded in the large volume known as The Martyrs Mirror. In fact, next to Fox's Book of Martyrs, which gruesomely recounts stories of martyrs for the Christian faith from earliest times onwards, this is probably one of the most prominent such collections. Somehow, and perhaps this speaks to the suppression of our storytelling, we had a volume of the latter at home, which I read in as a child, but not the former! I must confess that I still have not read the former. It can be an inspiration to others to see how people were willing to die for their faith, particularly as it documents many of their testimonies prior to and as they were dying. These were not just the educated or radical leaders either. They included very average people such as housewives and mothers.

However, as I indicated, that persecution led to the suppression of our storytelling. It was not until we began to move from the USSR to other parts of the world beginning in the late 19th century, but especially after the Russian Revolution and World War II, that we Mennonites found ourselves in environments where we were more free to tell our stories. The result has been a fairly large outpouring of stories of individuals, families, and our leaders. Their suffering in the USSR and elsewhere and how they saw God at work in leading them out of these situations are dominant themes in many of these books. Others, including a couple of my uncles, have written about how they saw God move in their own lives and their work in this country and elsewhere in this century and the last.  There are also now books written by and about the spiritual leaders of our faith where we ethnic Swiss/German/Dutch-origin Mennonites mostly have found ourselves in North America. However, I do not think many of them are no one much beyond our own circle. 

Of course, we must now always keep in mind that because of our missionary efforts around the world, telling us that our storytelling has not been suppressed as much in some parts of the world as it is where we come from, there are more non-ethnic Swiss/German/Dutch Mennonites in the world by far than in the former and original category. Yes, with some of the religious freedom given in Russia and subsequently in North America, missionaries began to go out in the 19th century. Others actually also went from the Netherlands, where the Mennonite church was still quite active prior to World War II. Sadly, since then, along with much of the church in Europe, as people questioned where God was through all of the horrors of 2 world wars, the Mennonite church in the Netherlands is very much on the wane. that has been a stronger presence maintained, although to a small degree, in Switzerland, where are movement began. In Germany, with the advent of many Mennonites moving there who escaped from Russia/the USSR, during and after World War II, there has been somewhat of a revival of Anabaptism, although some of it very conservative and not that true to some of the original teachings and values.

Another form of storytelling, if we can call it that, that has become very prominent in Mennonite circles is collecting family trees and genealogies. However, too often, the majority of these volumes are taken up by pages and pages of schematic diagrams of who descended from who and who married who etc. I always have to think of a scriptural quote from Titus 3:9 in connection with this: "But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain." (KJV) What the writer is referring to here is a point that we need to keep in mind. We can say all we want about the wonderful faith of our forefathers, but if we do not make it our own, it loses its value for ourselves.  So, as much as I like to know my genealogy, and have even worked on it, I always have the thought at the back of my mind, that this interest is not something we should overdo. I have always wished that GE's genealogies contained much more of the space stories of the members whose names are on those many pages. That would have so much more meaning and hopefully impact on the descendants who even bother to look at those volumes nowadays. For too many of our Mennonite descendants, many of whom still like to call themselves Mennonite even though they openly say they are not members of a Mennonite church, these genealogies may pique their interest in determining their roots, but they don't really care about the faith stories either.

It is the faith stories that I am more interested in.

Telling Our Stories I - or - Why We Don't Tell Them

This morning's devotional in our Mennonite Church publication Rejoice urged us to tell our stories as witnesses where God has acted in our lives. This is something that I have also frequently talked and perhaps written about. Indeed, I have even given related sermons. Indeed, there are writers in society at large to mourn the decline of storytelling. Like so many things in our world, including music and sports, storytelling is something that is relegated to professionals as in movies and novels.

There are those in our Mennonite circles who have written and continue to write about where God has acted in their lives. Much of this has focused on their deliverances from untenable living situations in the USSR. Many of those storytellers are passing on, and many untold stories with them.

Sometimes stories are not told because the telling is too painful. At other times, it is because we think our stories are such that no one else would be interested in hearing, or understanding them. Some people are not sure they have a listener.  When it comes to we as Mennonites telling our stories, we have sometimes talked about how this function has declined in our circles because, in order to live peaceably, we agreed, in essence, at various places and times in our history, as we moved about to escape persecution, not to tell our stories, at least not to those beyond our circles.  The larger world and the dominant church in the world in those days in particular, meaning either Catholic, Reformed or Lutheran  denominations, was not interested in our version of how God worked in the world and in our lives.  So, we became known, amongst ourselves at least, as "Die Stille im Lande,"  "The quiet in the land."

In our Western society today, with its emphasis on pluralism and tolerance, religious freedom and separation of church and state etc., telling such stories continues to be frowned on. It is one thing to have one's own belief, and that is accepted, but it is not accepted to tell others about it, particularly if there is a motive of wanting them to convert to your religion. We often hear the expression in our society that religion and politics are 2 topics that are kept out of polite conversation. Indeed, in many parts of the world, such activity is outlawed and Christians are put to death for breaking those rules. 

A prominent Canadian lawyer recently epitomized the view in Canada when he clearly stated, as a well-trained lawyer would do, that in Canada we accept the right of people to believe what they want. However, when it comes to acting on those beliefs, the laws of the land supersede because those actions might impinge negatively on others. He was speaking about a recent situation in BC where Trinity Western University (TWU) continues to fight for the freedom to educate professionals in a Christian setting where they are requested to abide by certain covenants that govern behavior. The one in question here was to refrain from homosexual activity. A number of lawyers and provincial law societies do not want TWU-trained lawyers to be able to practice simply because their training is in a school where that is part of the code of conduct. As representatives of the school have said, that does not mean that homosexuals cannot attend their school, and indeed due in graduate. 

This lawyer's attitude, in my mind, illustrates a basic misunderstanding of the role of religion in a person's life. Indeed, sometimes I think we should leave the word religion to refer to certain faith-based practices, rituals and celebrations, that the religious can do amongst themselves, without really at risk of infecting others. Indeed, sometimes these aspects have come to be seen as more cultural and accepted as expressions of that, then arising from religion.  For such reasons I have sometimes said that we really should not use the word religion when we are talking about our faith and way of life.  

True religion, as we Anabaptists know, includes a way of life. That was one of the big differences between our spiritual ancestors and the church at the time. There was little emphasis on living a life of discipleship as Jesus taught. Some have pointed to how the accepted creeds of the day fostered this by referring to the Trinity, God is creator, then Jesus' miraculous birth at the beginning,  before jumping to refer to his death and resurrection, saying nothing about the years in between and all of his actions and teachings and what the meaning of all of that was.