May 2015 – Thinking Pacifism

Ted Grimsrud—May 26, 2015

The question of how to understand the peaceable message of Jesus in relation to less than peaceable pictures of God in the Bible and in the Christian tradition has challenged ethically concerned people of faith almost since the very beginning.

The arch “heretic” Marcion in the second century after Jesus infamously jettisoned the Old Testament and much of the New Testament in his effort to sustain an authentically Christ-centered faith. Though Marcion’s proposed solution to the problem probably made things worse, his impulse to support a coherent view of God and Jesus together is understandable and perennial.

The spiritual descendants of the 16^th century Anabaptists certain have a stake in this on-going conversation. By lifting up Jesus’s life and teaching as normative and by accepting high claims for the authority of the Bible, we really can’t avoid questions about how to harmonize what seem to be powerful tensions among the various sources of information about God.

In recent years, the broader Christian community has seen an uptick in interest in revisiting these themes. Prominent writers such as John Dominic Crossan (How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis to Revelation) and J. Denny Weaver (The Nonviolent God) are very recent examples of dozens of books that have been written in the past two decades that struggle, often very helpfully, with the theological (as in doctrine of God) implications of interrelating the peaceable impulses of Christian sources with the more violent aspects of how the tradition has presented God.

A welcome contribution to an important conversation

For those, like me, who welcome this conversation and think we still have a ways to go to achieve a genuinely faithful resolution, Bradley Jersak’s new book, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel (Pasadena, CA: CWRpress, 2015), will be seen as a singular contribution. Jersak does significant original thinking. Perhaps even more importantly, he writes accessibly in a book aimed at a broad audience. Jersak writes about deep issues in a clear and lively style reflecting the combination of his academic training (a PhD in theology and present vocation as a professor) and two decades work as a pastor and church planter. His own varied ecclesial journey (early life as a conservative Baptist, a stint as a Mennonite pastor, current connection with the Orthodox Church) is seen in his empathetic and inclusive sensibility. Continue reading “Should Jesus determine our view of God?” →

Ted Grimsrud—May 12, 2015

The word “end” is kind of cool, because it has two common and very different meanings. It can mean something like “conclusion” (“the game ended in a tie”) and it can mean something like “purpose” (“to gain one’e ends”). So, “end” can lend itself to use in headlines with double meanings—such as my headline for this post.

I suspect that if Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) is in its final days, at least as the institution we have known these past 15 years (and I sincerely hope it’s not), it might be in large part because of lack of clarity about its purpose. And this lack of clarity about purpose has made it much more difficult for leadership in the denomination to find ways to negotiate recent controversies and pressures.

An ambiguous vantage point

Probably everyone who is following the drama and has some stake in its outcome has personal memories and emotions linked with the fate of this manifestation of the Mennonite tradition in North America. I certainly do. When the Executive Board (EB) of MC USA released the text (with introduction) of a resolution it will present to the delegate body at the MC USA delegate assembly in Kansas City this summer, some of my memories and emotions bubbled up to the point of demanding some written reflections.

I offer these thoughts from a somewhat ambiguous vantage point. I am an ordained Mennonite pastor who served for about ten years in congregational ministry and now about twenty years as a theology professor at a college owned by MC USA. I am a member of a congregation that belongs to the Central District Conference of MC USA. I have been a member of a number of MC USA congregations in Oregon, Arizona, South Dakota, and Virginia for well over thirty years. So, I am definitely a stake holder.

On the other hand, it has been twenty years since I last attended one of the delegate assemblies. I won’t be going this year. I have found myself moving ever gradually toward the status of “interested observer” (as opposed to active participant) in denominational politics. I would love it if my thoughts were noticed by people in power in the denomination, but I don’t anticipate they will be. So I’m not writing as a means to affect what happens in a couple of months. I’m not quite sure why I am writing. I guess mostly I write because the thoughts are in my head and seem to be wanting out.

The memories and emotions evoked by the EB’s resolution, “On the Status of the Membership Guidelines,” are painful. I think of two in particular that go back about a quarter of a century. Continue reading “The “end” of Mennonite Church USA” →