Mennonites and Orthodox converse

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READING, Pa.—More than 50 Mennonite and Orthodox clergy and laypeople met March 5-6 in Reading for “Traveling the Tradition: An Orthodox-Mennonite Conversation.”

Orthodox priest Father Joseph Gibson described his search for meaning through agnosticism, Eastern religions and charismatic Christianity and culminating in coming to Orthodoxy. He pointed out that the Bible is “an Eastern book” and that the “founding communities of faith were Eastern.”

Roy Hange, a Mennonite pastor from Charlottesville, Va., and former Mennonite Central Committee worker in the Middle East, said that Orthodoxy gives a broader sense “that Jesus is more than somebody who just saved me from my sin, that overwhelming presence of the Spirit as being in our midst, as working through the body of Christ in the community to call us toward a closer relationship.”

Father Demetrius of Reading expressed a desire to learn from Mennonites’ ability to work for social justice.

Ray Reitz, a Mennonite pastor from the Lancaster, Pa., area, said, “This [meeting] exceeded our wildest expectations.”—Kenton Glick

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