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2008-03-18 issue:

Mennonites and Lutherans keep talking

Two issues remain unresolved: baptism and relation of the church and state.

by Everett J. Thomas

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Leaders from Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) held a joint conversation Feb. 21 in Elkhart, Ind. The meetings—designed to help both groups with “right remembering” of the Protestant Reformation—included a capacity lunch-time crowd during a forum at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The event also made it clear that both groups have some challenges ahead if this ecumenical impulse is to reach more broadly into congregational life.



Paul Schreck (left), representing the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and John D. Roth (right), representing Mennonite Church USA, at a Feb. 21 meeting in Elkhart, Ind. Photo by Mary E. Klassen.

In the fall of 2006, ELCA passed an extensive declaration on the condemnation of Anabaptists. In it, Lutheran leaders said, “We express our deep and abiding sorrow and regret for the persecution and suffering visited upon Anabaptists during the religious disputes of the past.”

In response, MC USA executive director James Schrag wrote a letter in April 2007 expressing appreciation for the declaration and said, “We are especially moved by the expression of ‘deep and abiding sorrow and regret’ for past persecutions of Anabaptists,” and called for a blessing on “future collaboration between our two churches.”

The “future collaboration” at the Feb. 21 meeting included a report from John D. Roth about the challenges ahead for Mennonites in this dialogue. Roth, a Goshen (Ind.) College history professor, and Paul Schreck, executive assistant to the ELCA Secretary, coordinated the Feb. 21 event, entitled “Unbinding Each Other: New Possibilities in Mennonite-Lutheran Relations.”

Roth listed four challenges as the Lutheran repudiations are communicated to MC USA congregations, pastors and members:

• The impulse toward vindication that would reinforce our smugness and arrogance: “We were the true Christians being persecuted, and now 500 years later we are being vindicated.”

• Moving on: “This now finally allows us to leave the past behind and get on with the business of being good, generic American Protestants.”

• Mennonites have appropriated a martyr pathology: “When someone says, ‘I’m sorry,’ can we give it up?”

• Ecumenism and narcissism: “It’s relatively easy to start conversations with people who are quite different. The much, much harder thing is to initiate conversations with those groups who are just a little bit different. … For Mennonites, it’s Beachy Amish and Old Order Amish and Conservative Conference. Freud called this ‘the narcissism of minor differences.’ ”

Schreck noted that two differences remain unresolved, however, in the ongoing Lutheran-Mennonite dialogue: the relationship between the church and the state, and baptism.

“A breakthrough point for us,” said Schreck, “was the discovery that in the Mennonite ministers manual, Lutheran baptism is not automatically invalid. This is very important to Lutherans.”

Roth, who also represents MC USA in the international dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and Mennonite World Conference, listed several challenges for MC USA in the future.

“The ELCA has a greater clarity about doctrine as formulated and who is responsible to speak on behalf of the church in an official way,” said Roth. “For Mennonite Church USA with its congregational polity, it’s been more difficult to know on whose behalf we are speaking—even at a global level.”

This issue is particularly difficult around the unresolved issue of baptism.

“Lutherans would deeply appreciate a statement,” Roth said, “that baptism practiced in Lutheran context … would be fully recognized in all MC USA congregations. For reasons of polity, we don’t have the authority to tell a congregation to do this.”

Informal conversations between Mennonite and ELCA leaders began in 1986. The first formal meeting of representatives was held at Goshen (Ind. ) College in February 2002.

André Gingerich Stoner, director of interchurch relations for MC USA, said there are no specific next steps planned for the dialogue. But one possibility is to gather information and do an inventory of collaboration that already exists in areas where large numbers of Lutherans and Mennonites live in the same area. Gingerich Stoner also said another possibility is for representatives to be invited to each other’s national assemblies.—Everett J. Thomas

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