Preservings $20 No. 25, December, 2005 - Home at Plett Foundation

and sisters in Christ. Perhaps in time, they
may even join Mennonites in adopting and
embracing Christ and the Gospels as their
reigning paradigm. It’s not likely, but miracles
do happen. Much has changed in the Evangelical
movement in the last several decades that
once seemed impossible.
From the outside, the so-called Evangelical
movement sometimes looks like a giant cult,
where people surrender their intellect and reason,
becoming enslaved to a religious culture
and language comparable to that of Islamic
Fundamentalism. Often times so-called Evangelicals
are whipped into war hysteria or into a
feverish frenzy for some political cause which
can have erratic and dangerous implications
for world peace because of the political clout
in Washington of the religious right. This was
illustrated by the recent appearance of Pat Robertson
and Jerry Falwell on “Larry King Live”
in September 1998, frothing at the mouth over
the prospect of dealing a mortal blow against
their sworn enemy, President Bill Clinton. The
image of Baptist ministers coming on CNN
during the week of October 26, 1998, openly
encouraging the murder of pro-choice doctors
such as Bernette Slepian was spine chilling.
To the outsider, it often appears as if Evangelicals
are more concerned about expanding
the hegemony of their religious culture, by
whatever means necessary, than about living
the teachings of Christ. Too often Evangelicals
have been prepared to sacrifice truth in order
to advance their cause. For example, in the
past they have condemned my ancestors as
“unsaved”, a stark testimony to their ignorance
and arrogance.
The dictum seems to be, the cause is just,
the means do not matter. Many people have
been destroyed by the psychological terror
employed by some Evangelicals to control their
young and others within their domain.
This is not to suggest that we should not
love and appreciate our Evangelical friends and
neighbours, just as we do Catholics, Orthodox,
Lutherans and Jews. But I have yet to see any
particular advantage to associating with the
Evangelical movement.
Why would anyone want to switch over to
a religious culture which was responsible for
the slave trade, whose paradigm is based on
superficial “pop” culture, and which has been
about 100 per cent wrong in its prophecies over
the past century? In the converse, why would
anyone want to abandon a religious culture
whose tenets are just as valid today as five
hundred years ago?
Why not simply stay with the faith heritage
of your own ancestors?
Faith and Culture
The Interaction of Faith and Culture and its Implications
for Conservative Mennonites and Hutterian Brethren
Blue Ribbon Faith.
In 1995 a gravel contractor accidentally
dug up the unmarked graveyard of the village
of Schönfeld, East Reserve, just west of
Steinbach, Manitoba, founded by the wealthy
Groening family from Bergthal, Imperial
Russia, in August, 1874, see Carillon News,
May 3, 1995, page 1A, and May 31, 1995,
page 18A.
RCMP investigators and anthropologists
from the University of Manitoba studying the
skeletons were nonplussed by the ribbons still
clearly visible around their necks.
Conservative Mennonites were traditionally
buried in a white shroud with blue ribbons
around their neck and sleeves. The white
shroud symbolized the purity of the virgin,
ready to meet the Lord. It was the adornment
of the saints, the bride in her wedding garment
prepared to meet her bridegroom, Jesus in
eternity, Matthew 22:1-14.
But what about the blue ribbon? The
answer came recently while re-reading J. C.
Wenger’s Separated Unto God, page 16. In
a discussion of Old Testament teaching on
the topic, Wenger referred to Numbers 15,
37-40: “...put upon the fringe of each border
a chord of blue;. ...that ye may remember and
do all my commandments, and be holy unto
your God.”
The blue ribbon or chord was an allegorical
prefiguration of New Testament creed that
the teachings of Christ would be inscribed
in the hearts of His followers. The adorning
with blue ribbons of the neck and sleeves of
the white funeral shroud became a signature
manifestation of Mennonite religious culture.
It became a cultural ritual but one founded on
sound biblical teaching and exegesis.
The practice illustrates the issue of interaction
between faith and culture and the
questions that arise from its various manifestations.
Definition.
Faith is always expressed in some kind of
context. With our lives and actions we create
a culture. We do not think nor can we ever act
without a context. That contextual embryo and
the historical continuation thereof is culture.
Culture is defined as “the sum total of ways of
living built up by human beings and transmitted
from one generation to another” (Random
House, 2ed., page 488).
Faith relates to culture like wine in Biblical
wineskins. Culture is the clay vessel which
holds the wine, like the physical body which
holds the spirit.
This paper will review various aspects of
how faith and culture interact in the world of
many religious denominations and faiths and
explore the impact these manifestations and
dynamics may have for modern-day conservative
Mennonites and Hutterites.
Apostolic Church.
The Apostolic church quickly developed a
culture within a culture. Early Christians were
aliens in the world of the Roman Empire as
well as that of the wider Jewish community.
The Apostle Paul had an insight into the nature
of the Gospel in that he judged a believer
need not become a Jew through circumcism in
order to come to Christ. A gentile could come
directly to Christ.
And so the early church had Jewish Christian
communities as well as Gentile Christian
communities. The cultures which the two represented
did not interact or meet in the general
society. The blending of these Christian groups
created a culture unique for its day.
Even within the early Christian church
there were cultural differences between different
Gemeinden or communities. The Corinthian
Gemeinde, for example, was very much
a Roman/Gentile community and affected by
the immoral practices of temple worship in
Corinth. By contrast, the Jerusalem Gemeinde
was more focused on keeping the Hebraic Law.
James is reported to have kept the law more
rigorously than the Jews.
Reformation, 1517.
Differences in Biblical interpretation also
led to different churches or Christian Confessions
(Gemeinden) which developed their
own cultures. The Catholic Church became
dominant in western Europe (centred in Rome)
and the Orthodox Church in the east (centred in
Byzantium, later known as Constantinople).
When Luther broke away from Catholicism
in 1517 and started the Protestant Reformation,
he founded a new church community with its
own culture.
The same held true for John Calvin and the
numerous modern-day denominations tracing
their historical roots and spiritual ethos from
him. In France they were the Huguenots,
in Holland they were the Reformed, and in
Scotland the Presbyterians (John Knox). In
England the Calvinists were known as the
Puritans and those who abandoned hope of
reforming the Church of England were the
Pilgrims.
One of the results of the Reformation was
years of religious wars as the Protestant reformers
endeavoured to establish new churches
within their territories. The population of
Germany, for example, was reduced from 15
million to less than five million by 1648.
An important development in the Dutch
Reformed Church was the development of
Arminianism around 1600. Where Calvin
Preservings No. 25, December 2005 - 15