In my last post, I noted 5 things I miss about not belonging to a traditional Mennonite community. After reading that list, you could be forgiven for wondering why we ever left.
But wisdom means recognising and embracing complexity. Most decisions aren’t about comprehensive solutions, but trade-offs.
True, we had to bid farewell to many wonderful things when we left the Mennonites, but it is also true that we gained in other areas. As with so many complex realities, you can’t reduce it down to, “Leaving the Mennonites is good” or “Leaving the Mennonites is bad.” Forced into making tradeoffs either way, we ultimately decided our reasons for leaving outnumbered our reasons for staying. And grueling as the decision process has been, here are 5 advantages that resulted from it, again not in a conscious order of importance.
Faith. I remember hearing from a family member who left the Mennonites around the same time we did that it was either he who had to leave or his faith. While I might not have put it that baldly, I see his point. Admittedly, there was a relatively gentle approach to God and Scripture in the group I belonged to most recently (known as the Beachy Amish), more so, certainly, than in the previous subset I was with during my formative teenage years.
In both groups, however, everything was shrouded in fidiestic, nearly impenetrable God talk. People got cut off at the knees if they voiced doubt or approached the faith from a different angle. And I get it: every social group has its unalienable defining characteristics. But aren’t social groups fundamentally dynamic? And although there is a danger of calling evil good, isn’t there an equal danger of calling good evil?
Amid the raw emotions of leaving, I cynically told someone our decision came down to the 3 Fs of Fundamentalism: the First chapter of Genesis must be interpreted as a Britannica-style retelling of natural history; the Fires of Hell will punish most of humanity forever in conscious torment; and Females must never be in positions of leadership. (And the fourth F is F you if you disagree.) Today, I can take a step back and see there is too much snark and aggression in an answer like that. I now think it’s better simply to say that some people need space to wrestle with their questions in order for their faith to survive.
Marriage. I got married, and that was easy; I remain married, and that is difficult; I am trying to grow as a person in my marriage while encouraging my wife to do the same, and that requires all available resources.
While traditional Mennonite communities are great for kids (see my previous post), they are dependent on firm boundaries. Sometimes God gives people the near supernatural capacity to honor those boundaries while also delving into the complex human realities outside the idyllic community. For whatever reason, God did not give us that capacity. We needed more space to question, to probe, to come to a deeper understanding of how reality works. We also needed more freedom to allow husband and wife roles and personalities to grow naturally. Marriage is a dynamic relationship and always in flux. Manmade rules and community expectations that cut off access to resources for personal growth will suck the oxygen out of that marriage faster than you can say ordnung. Where there is no personal growth, there is no growth in marriage.
Christian liberty. I admit that a big part of our decision really did come down to freedom. I have always found it sanctimonious to say things like, “God led us out of the Mennonite church.” Once, I asked my dad why he joined a somewhat more modernised Anabaptist church, and his answer was, “Because I wanted to drive a car instead of a horse and buggy.” His reason was refreshing because some of his peers making the exodus claimed all kinds of spiritual revelations and new-birth experiences. Deep down, most onlookers probably sensed that owning a car was the real reason anyone leaves the Old Orders (the most traditional Amish).
If I am honest, it has to do with freedom in my case too. I want to go to the cinema, wear what I want to, shave when and where I want to(!), and pursue any interest I want to–unshackled from arbitrary manmade dictates. That probably sounds hyper-individualistic, yet I would meekly point out that the New Testament has a thing or two to say about Christian liberty. (“For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience?” 1 Cor. 10.29).
Culture. (Weak point, pound pulpit hard.) I know–so much of mainstream culture is lame at best and nefarious at worst. But it’s still great to watch The Green Mile without a niggling sense of guilt, and enjoy all the other awesome stuff that we awesome humans create.
I admit that I don’t know if I always have an adequate moral compass now that I have left the “training wheels” of Mennonite ordnung behind. I will, however, make two brief observations and leave it at that. First, never underestimate your conscience–it is a powerful guide if you nurture it; and second, sometimes we are changed more by the example of the Christians we associate with than by the rules they lay down for us.
Cultivating an openness to risk. We tried to leave the Mennonites long before we actually took the plunge. The thing that always ended the discussion was, “It’s too risky.” Among other risks, our social network and financial stability were at stake, and indeed we have experienced lean times in both of those areas. But God has always provided for us, sometimes in unexplainable ways. Maybe God has provided for us despite our choices, not because of them, but either way I don’t see how you could read the Bible and deny that the life of faith is a life of taking risks. Of course, the naysayers would say not all risks are equally worthy of our emotional energy, yet isn’t some measure of irrationality an inherent element of taking risks?
In the end, leaving the Mennonite community–with all its gloriously impossible paradoxes of uncomfortable security, its strong sense of identity and belonging that we could nevertheless not fully embrace, its imperfect perfection—it was all a risk, a tradeoff, and an excruciatingly complicated decision which, in many ways, the jury is still out on.
But if one is granted one more increment of peace than before, that is not nothing. I believe it as my Muslim friend says: at some point we must stop asking God for help in making a decision and ask God to bless our decision. This is, more or less, what we have sought to do.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Thanks for taking the time to articulate all of this, Gideon. It must not have been easy either to live it or to write about it. I’m still sad that you chose to leave the Mennonites, but I admire your willingness to keep following Jesus with your whole being.
You mentioned a lack of access to resources for personal growth within our culture. As someone who has chosen to stay Mennonite, I’d like to hear your thoughts on what resources should be available to women in order for them to thrive here. Could you define that?
Hey Jen, good to hear from you. My primary goal in writing the 2 posts was not to convince anyone to stay or leave, but to evaluate our decision 3 years on. RE: What resources should be available to women in order for them to thrive – it depends who’s asking. I think of it as a tree. Some trees have fences/walls around them and they still grow into the tree they were intended to be. For other trees, the fences and walls have to be removed to allow the tree to grow into the natural outcome that the tree’s seed has envisaged.
There are boundaries in traditional Mennonite churches. Only certain professions are allowed/socially acceptable, especially for women. The same is true for clothing and physical appearance, leadership roles, marriage roles, ways of dealing with conflict, and more. When I say resources, I mean that when some people, specifically women since that’s who you ask about, come up against those boundaries, the church doesn’t engage them because it sees the boundaries as unalienable defining characteristics. I see that as a lack of resources.
I know that’s still not getting into specifics, so I’ll mention a few, with as little as resentment as possible. What if a woman feels the need to alter her physical appearance in order to flourish into the tree she was meant to become, to return to my perhaps awkward analogy. Is there a platform where a woman can have honest representation in how she wishes to dress/look? What if a woman wants to address power abuses, past or present? Again, does the system have resources built into itself to address that? What about questions around doctrine? What about who defines certain cultural expectations such as how household duties and decisions are shared (I know that one can be worked out in individual marriages if both parties are agreeable).
I’ll assume you’re asking your question in the spirit of honest inquiry rather than challenge, but I would welcome your pushback on how I might have rephrased the post. I was trying hard to respect our many friends who choose to stay, but also pushing back against the ways in which the system failed us and even perhaps some inherent dysfunctions in the system. I also think some of the more open-minded Mennonite churches are becoming aware of the need to share power between women and men (perhaps yours included?), but then at what point are they no longer traditional Anabaptist? I was very pleased to see the recent interview Anabaptist Perspectives did on churches dealing with trauma – with a woman.
May God have mercy on us all:)
thanks for your answer, Gideon. Yes, my question was an honest inquiry. I’d love to think women have what they need to thrive within our Mennonite framework of belief, so I was curious what your ideas are about that issue. Thanks for explaining. I don’t have answers to your questions, but I trust that Jesus is present in our denomination as well as others, and is always doing his good work.
Amen to that. Thanks again!
I had the misfortune of bumping into a secret Catholic sect a few blocks from where I grew up. Very similar to conservative Amish Mennonites in many ways, and unclouded it’s impossible not to see the positives. They would say, “if you’re not catechised by the church, you will be catechised by the world.” What they meant was, “we’re better than them, and if you leave, you will be bad like them”. They were saying this to control people and reinforce group loyalty by instilling fear of departure. While this was manipulation, there is actually something to what they said. If it was Japan, or China, or Indonesia, or a normal Asian country, yeah they wouldn’t really have a point, but when it comes to the kind of life non-elites can expect, western societies have come to me to look increasingly shaky. I think conservative Christians including Mennonites, and these Catholics, are a bit deceptive though – they kick out and hide away their members who fall into the human frailties – unwed pregnancy, divorce, drug abuse – to keep up with the pretense. Or let them stay and make them feel like Dalits in Brahmin territory for the rest of their lives. You did it the right way Gideon, stay when young, get the benefits it offers, then leave when it’s time to ougrow. Still, there is something uhealthy about the way intimate relationship is viewed in western society, and it is a worry for me with kids in it.