Category Archives: Church

News and notes

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1. The launch of my book, This Hidden Thing, is about a week and a half away now. I expect that for a short time, at least, the book will have something of a life of its own, so I’ve given it a separate page, above. I’ll probably say something about the launch event here after it happens on May 19, but I’ll park reviews and other stuff related to it there. Already up, the news release Jonathan Dyck of CMU Press put together, the book flyer, and order information. 

2. I’ve agreed to serve on the advisory council for the Chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg for the next three years. This is a relatively easy and also pleasurable task, involving free lunch twice a year at the university and listening/responding to a report of what Royden Loewen, as well as students and other professors involved with the Chair are up to. They’re up to a lot, actually, including the planning of two conferences this year, one on Mennonites in Siberia which is taking place in Omsk, Siberia in June, and one in Winnipeg, Oct. 14-16, called “Mennonites, Melancholy and Mental Health: Historical Reflections.” I’m under no obligation to “do press” for the Chair, but some of the papers proposed for the latter (examples: “Madness in my Family’s Journey,” “Duke Ferdinand vs Pilgram Marpeck: Lunatics or Preachers of Care,” “Trauma, War and Soviet Mennonite Women Refugees”) sound so interesting I’m keen to offer advance notice. Further information here.

3. Another event that greatly intrigues me, which unfortunately I not be able to attend as we’ll be away on holidays then, is “Celebrating 150 Years!” This has been organized by Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) for June 5-6 in Winnipeg. I’ve mentioned the 150 year celebrations of the Mennonite Brethren in this blog. This conference recognizes that anniversary, but also the 150-year anniversary of the formation of the General Conference Mennonite Church formed in Iowa in 1860. (This body is now Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA.) These two 150-year-old bodies are the  supporting denominational bodies of  CMU — “two compelling stories…brought together in a special way.”

“[I]t is appropriate to reflect on what we have experienced and learned with and from ‘the other’,” states the conference invitation. Presenters of workshops and discussions have been drawn from both bodies and topics include “Exploring Stereotypes,” “Marriage across the MB-GC Divide,” and “Periodicals as Windows.”

Untold stories

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I’m enjoying Skin Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations (Gaspereau Press, 2009), a book of poetic reflections by Canadian writer John Terpstra. His religious tradition is Dutch Calvinist, but for many years he and his wife have been attending a Presbyterian church, along with a variety of other religious refugees. He discovered that someone he’d been there with for some time was unaware of the circumstances described in his book, The Boys, namely the terminal disease and early deaths of his wife’s three brothers. Others, he thought, must have significant stories that were unknown as well. He contemplated writing a kind of Canterbury Tales, or something based on this line of the Tales at least: “this company of sundry folk, by adventure having fallen together into fellowship.”

However, the reluctant reaction of someone with whom he probed the idea led Terpstra to another angle on this situation. 

I thought: perhaps one of the reasons people come here in the first place is because no one knows their story and they do not have to tell it, or they may tell it selectively, if and when they choose.

I thought: perhaps these untold stories are still somehow subsumed into what is happening on a Sunday morning, and they do not need to tell, because it is already being told, simply by their bodily presence.

Most of us set great store in transparency, openness, and sharing, in the ideal of being known to one another. I like the window Terpstra opens here to something more realistic, like fostering a sense of safety first in the regular telling of a bigger story. It reminds me that while knowledge of one another may be important, knowledge is always trumped by love.

The pieces we’re missing

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A news article in the latest MB Herald, with the headline “MB seminary professor apologizes for remarks,” reveals that B.C. conference minister Steve Berg sent an email to the MB seminary (MBBS) board in November expressing “his concerns” that “Mark Baker states that penal substitutionary atonement is unbiblical.” The email also said, “In what is already a very challenging time for MBBS, we are concerned that there is a disconnect underway between BCMB churches and MBBS, and the atonement debate is accelerating the process.” 

The article describes and quotes Baker’s response to the B.C. executive and pastors. Baker sounds gracious and thorough in explaining what he believes and what he wishes he’d communicated more clearly, what he wishes he had not written. The content of it sounds very much like what he stated at the MB study conference in Saskatoon in October — the same affirmations, clarifications, attempts at nuance — though he goes further to address a number of his responses at the conference itself. At that event, he stated his first book will be revised. He also clearly affirmed the MB Confession of Faith, Article 5 on Salvation, and does so again in his letter. I attended and reported — here — on the Saskatoon conference. I don’t recall “‘unbiblical’ rhetoric.” I do know that Baker felt himself rather on the block, so to speak, which is never an easy place to be, and I do recollect that he responded carefully and with integrity to the challenges raised to him. 

My opinion on whether an apology is necessary is beside the point, however. He made it, and it needs to be received.

But, will it be received? Has it been? Maybe that’s what’s bothering me about this article. It’s not what’s here, but the pieces we’re missing. The back story. And what happened next.

Re. the back story, I’m wondering why Berg sent this email to the seminary board after the October conference, when Baker’s views had been clearly indicated there. Berg himself led the session in which Baker presented. Is there other pressure coming to the B.C. executive? From the two people Baker says he wishes he had responded to more affirmingly? From those who did not attend? What’s going on?  Berg notes an accelerating debate, but it’s hard to believe that Baker is responsible. And, to be honest, I’m queasy, fearing he’s being made the fall person. 

MBBS president Lynn Jost is also quoted in the article. He thanks the B.C. executive  for communicating their concerns directly with the seminary, and reminds of the seminary’s commitment “to biblical authority and to interpreting the Bible in a way consistent with the MB Confession of Faith.” This commitment, truly said and truly meant, is also not new. Has it been heard and truly received? I can’t help recalling Jost’s words at the MB Forum recently, about “the difficult position that a culture of suspicion raises for the Seminary.” 

Yesterday, I happened to be sorting through a pile of papers and came upon the candid words of a young B.C. pastor to the recommendation on women in ministry at Calgary some years ago. He intended to support the motion, he said, even though it hadn’t gone as far for full and equal participation as he wished. Because of that, it would require his own “self-control and respect of people who believe very differently.” He went on to say, “It will also require some of you to stop labeling me and others who believe similarly, as heretics or on a slippery slope to liberalism, or as being soft on ethics, or whatever other label you might use to write off people who hold a reasoned opinion that disagrees with your own.”

His words felt oddly familiar within this new context. There’s been labelling, baiting, mollifying of behaviors that foster a culture of suspicion, withdrawing of financial support. (The latter has always struck me as the most pernicious, and I’d even say ungodly, strategy individuals or churches can use to exert pressure, because it’s so powerful and puts others into danger not just economically but spiritually.) 

The letter has now been reported. But is there more we should know? And will there be other, good, responses to come?