Back when The Mennonite used to be called The Gospel Herald, they published an occasional column called “Why I’m a Mennonite” (or something like that) where non-cradle Mennonites talked about what drew them to the Mennonite church.
It was a way to pat ourselves on the back, a little self-congratulatory and just falling on the good side of prideful, as they talked about how welcoming we were, how peaceful we were, how nice we were. I remember thinking that it wouldn’t be bad for us to have some opposing viewpoints represented.
This thought hit me again as I read the most current issue of The Mennonite. In an article by John D. Roth, an interesting little factoid was thrown out:
One well-placed observer suggests there may be as many as 2,000 “ex-Mennonite” young adults in the greater Denver area alone, a reality likely replicated to some degree in virtually every major city in the United States.
There’s been a real hue-and-cry over the latest Mennonite survey showing a precipitous decline of members under the age of 45. A drop of 15% in only 9 years as a matter of fact. It’s not unique to Mennonites; all major denominations are experiencing a decline. But there’s only about 115,000 of us in Mennonite Church USA so we’re going to hurt first and hurt bad.
The Mennonite has been running occasional articles exploring some of the issues and looking for solutions. The latest, “Remembering our Baptism” by Roth is one of them and he spends some time talking about baptism and continuing education of our baptismal teachings and taking the binding and losing seriously and blah, blah, blah.
Look. It’s not that it’s a bad article. It’s good. It’s fine. Excellent points. But I suspect that if you polled those 2,000 Denver ex-Mennonites, the lack of continuing baptismal education has very little to do with their non-Mennonitism. In fact, when I think about all the ex-Mennonites I know in DC (and you could definitely come up with another 2,000 here) or other urban areas, I’m pretty sure that reason is nowhere on their top ten list of why they don’t attend church or really consider themselves Mennonite anymore.
It’s curious to think about. Out of a group of about a dozen close friends from college — every single one of them a cradle Mennonite — less than half of us currently attend a Mennonite church or call ourselves practicing Mennonites. And out of those 5 or so that do call ourselves Mennonite, at least two of us spent a fair amount of time not being Mennonite.
Why?
Some don’t believe anymore; some never believed and now don’t have to fake it; some are gay (and aren’t feeling the love from Mennonite churches in general); some are miles from the lone Mennonite church in their city; some would rather spend Sunday mornings with their families; some don’t want to deal with the baggage (and trust me, there can be some baggage). And almost none of us reflect the current status quo of the Mennonite church and MC USA member beliefs.
So, I want MC USA to do studies, survey and polls on these people. I want The Mennonite to print their stories. I want to read occasional columns titled “Why I’m not Mennonite Anymore” or “Why I’m Still Mennonite But Man, It’s Touch and Go Sometimes” or “Why I’d Love to Be Mennonite Again if Only …”
Mennonites can talk all they want about being missional but if we can’t even figure out why people don’t stay or seriously think about how to hang on to the people we’ve already got, what’s the point of all that fine talk. I don’t think we are even curious. And that’s not 2,000 Denver ex-Mennonites loss. That’s our loss.
Related posts:
This should be a letter to the editor.
I’m not a cradle Mennonite, but the biggest reason I’m not a Mennonite is that while I was at EMU a lot of the cradle Mennonites almost seemed to go out of their way to make the rest of us feel like second class citizens. They’d stand there and talk at length about how superior their Mennonite upbringing was to mine, how superior all things Mennonite in general were, and then in the very next breath thumb their nose at the doctrines of the Mennonite church. Even the ones who said they stopped being Mennonite tended to find other ex-Mennonites to hang around with, and when they married the odds were that they were going to find another ex-Mennonite to drag around through life with them. For all their talk of diversity, they really were rather full of crap.
Then, in the years since I’ve been out of school anytime I’ve had occassion to go to a Mennonite church (and there has been many) the entire service is devoted to, “Aren’t we wonderful because we’re Mennonites?” Usually, they’ve dug up some converted Mennonite to talk about why they became Mennonite – for all the reasons you’ve just listed.
Then, I recently read about Shane Claiborne’s Jesus For President rally/forum/whatever in Durham, and somehow the writers took the focus off Jesus (who is the focus of Shane’s book), and they made it, “Aren’t Mennonites wonderful for putting this on?”
Do Mennonites EVER talk about Jesus or do they just talk about how wonderful they are?
Melissa,
Of course we talk about Jesus! Jesus was a Mennonite, after all.
*pinches J*
As another non-cradle Mennonite – my wife and I have our MBAs (Mennonites By Association) she via Bethel College and me via MVS, I can sympathize with Melissa to a degree. I came to the Mennonites in Waterloo ON with a friend who was dating a “cradle Mennonite” and I have to say, the community is pretty insular, even the contemporary arm of the church. It’s not my impression that they do it on purpose, but in-jokes and cultural jargon do a lot to put up a wall. To their credit, folks in the church I attend now are aware of this dynamic, sometimes painfully so, sometimes humorously. I think it’s a bit different in urban Mennonite churches, where in my experience, the mix is something like 60:40 cradle to non. The good churches realize that being insular will keep new folk away and make those younger members interested in differenting themselves wary of the “warm parental embrace.” It’s tricky, though, of course because there are aspects of the Mennonite church (at least the one I attend) that for me are truly unique: historic peace stance, choral singing, strong cultural identity, commitment to adult growth and education, community involvement etc. I would be very saddened to see that watered down in the interest of simply attracting more members.
All that said, though, I think you make a good point that dry academic examination of theological exigencies (yeah, I said it
) is off-putting to those on the inside and rather baffling to those on the outside. Wow, I had some fun with that last sentence. Anyway. I’d be curious too, to see some of those surveys done. I agree with Melissa, if the point that she’s making is that it would be beneficial for cradle Mennos and probably non-cradle folk like myself who are “on the inside” to have a dose of “get over yourself.” Where’s that much-vaunted humility when you need it? 
Thank you Melissa and others for your honesty. I am a cradle MB (that’s Mennonite Brethren)and we felt we were even superior to the other mennos! Now no one ever said this of course, and it didn’t come from my parents, but somehow I absorbed it by osmosis in the church culture wherein I was raised. And in my present congregation,(MCUSA) the “aren’t we great!” is quite prevalent. Even at San Jose07, one of the speakers spent far too much time describing how wonderful his church was when they had a family crisis of some sort. Every time a preacher or someone else pontificates about our wonderful heritage, how much good we do, etc. etc. I want to puke. Between that and the false humility, I get very nervous. Because we have our share of family dysfunction, church conflicts, sinful behaviours, etc. just like everyone else. But often these are swept under the carpet and not brought to light because….”these things don’t happen with us”, because we are so….good. The added irony is that a significant number of cradle mennos want to downplay or even do away with those theological distinctives that make us menno and have attracted people to us. I’ve tried to talk about these things in my congregation on occasion, but then get this “don’t be so negative” vibe. Sorry, this has gone on too long, but you struck a chord with me.
Urbanmenno:
de-lurking to ask a question. (I’ve been following your blog for a while now – Menno Roundup is my favorite.) I’m doing a doctorate in religious studies now, and as I read your article and the comments on it, I wonder if one of the reasons young adults are feeling this way is a contemporary culture that’s uncomfortable with religious distinctiveness. That we don’t like it when somebody says, “Hey, we have something different from everybody else, and it’s done these great things for us, and we really strongly believe in it.” Most people want to believe either that religion is dangerous, or it’s really a kind of universal experience that should be talked about in generic terms. Specifics make us itchy.
That’s an interesting point Dr. J. I could probably buy into that theory or part of it anyway.
But I don’t know if any of my friends, particularly those who aren’t practicing anymore, would say that what we had did great things for us. I think that’s the problem. That being Mennonite didn’t do actually do great things for us or not great enough things or distinctive enough great things that we could carry them through to new situations and new settings that were non-Mennonite normative (Mennomorative?) — like being urban or being gay or being a single mom, etc et al.
That something different we did have turned out to not be all that different once we got out of our rural/suburban Menno enclaves and met other people. Mennonites like to think we’re distinctive but actually, as the survey showed, we’re just a lot like the rest of rural/suburban, white, slightly conservative, middle-class America.
The churches and Mennonites who are distinctive actually stand out even in their own denomination.
I was baptized Mennonite at 19 and became Roman Catholic at 31. There are definitely things I miss about the Mennonite Church, but most of them have to do with music, food and textiles. One of the things I found frustrating about being Mennonite was the avoidance of dealing with anger and frustration. So often, it seemed, pacifism translated to passivity in daily life. Outside of my War, Peace and Non-Resistance class in college, we didn’t really talk about how to deal actively with rage over injustice. We were supposed to be quick to forgive instead of working through the process toward forgiveness. That’s the nutshell version.
I’m writing from Oxfordshire in the UK. Anabaptism was exterminated in Britain in the 16th Century and today comprises the Anabaptist Network and a select band of small but influential institutions such as the London Mennonite Centre. So, I can’t comment on the specifics of decline as regards Mennonites in the U.S.A. but I believe the British story is likely to be highly significant for issues linked to decline and mission in Postmodernity in the U.S.A.
In England and Wales churches lost around one million members (including children under the age of 15) during the first nine years of the 1990’s. We are current awaiting the next decades’ figures, published by ‘Christian Research’. Nearly every Christian Tradition (with a few exceptions) has experienced dramatic decline. Some commentators are even predicting that the last Methodist Church in Britain will close its doors by 2030.
Against this backdrop mainstream denominations are exploring what it means to be church in the 21st Century under the banner of ‘emerging church’ or ‘fresh expressions’. It is too early judge which of these ‘expressions’ will be transformational but I remain hopeful.
For what it’s worth (perhaps because we have little Mennonite denominational baggage) there is an upsurge in interest here in the relevance of Anabaptism to doing mission from the margins.
*clearing my throat.* Hi. Cradle Canadian mischling Russlaender/Kanadier Mennonite here.
Just had a couple of thoughts about the Mennonite superiority complex cited by non-Mennonites. It’s not that Mennonites like themselves so much, really. But I think we are what Novalis said of Spinoza, “Ein Gott betrunkener Mensch” or, in the case of Mennonites, menschen. (A people drunk on God.)
We actually bitch (at least we do here in Canada where there are just way too many Mennonites with their nose in your business) a lot about each other. But even when we don’t actually belong to a Mennonite church (I don’t go to any church except on Christmas when I get lonesome for the old German hymns of my childhood) and have not been baptised as a Mennonite, which means of course, that to many Mennonites, I am not a Mennonite unless, of course they want to offer a familial opinon on my business but I digress. Life’s complicated, ya know?
As I was saying , in explaining Mennonites to people who think we are all dead – as was the case with European friends who thought they’d killed us all 500 years ago and were shocked to find we’re still around (nyah nyah) – or other non-Mennonites – we become drunk on the *idea* of God as expressed by anabaptism. It is the ideal that Mennoites praise and at the same time, at least if you are of my generation (40s), grew up fearing you could never live up to.
it is also true what Dr. J said, about how society does not like anything different and for many Mennonites that I know, there was this constant twanging between the ideal that captured our genetic imagination 500 years ago, and our own desire to be of this world, to play in the bright colors of this world instead of forever wearing the mental cloak of martyrdom.
At least so it is here, in my opinion. But of course I have all the baggage of the Russian Revolution Mennonite experience as well as the baggage of the 1848 Canadian Mennonite experience on my shoulders.
Is the American Mennonite experience much different? Oh yeah, and I have to add, that MBs here were very clear that they thought the rest of us Mennonites weren’t very good Christians. As the joke goes, “why are MBs buried seven feet deep rather than six feet deep?”
“Because deep down they know they are better than everyone else.”
Layla – I’m assuming you meant 1948. Loved the joke! We do need to learn to laugh at ourselves more – it’s humbling but at the same time liberating. This constant tension of “being in the world but not of it” is a given for anyone who takes their faith seriously, menno or not. In the end none of us do it perfectly, but this is where GRACE comes in. In our attempt to avoid cheap grace, we often, in our life together, neglected to model it at all. And our history and experiences, unique to each of us, can become baggage. But can we transform it from a heavy burden to bear forever to something we carry with us lightly and draw from periodically to understand ourselves, and others, with GRACE. I admit it’s a challenge.
Actually, in Canada, there is a Great Divide between the Russlaender Mennonites who arrived as a direct result of the Russian Revolution and the – and this is where I made a mistake – the earlier group of Mennonites who left Russia in 1874-1878, not 1848. Oops. I didn’t think that sounded right.
The earlier immigrants are known here as Kanadier and the later group as the Russlaender. There were a lot of hard feelings between the two groups. The Russlaender generally were more worldly and better educated – and that is my heritage on my paternal grandparents side – they were kulaks in Russia – worse yet, as far as the Kanadier are concerned.
Russlaender were generally blessed with an autocratic attitude and the weathlier they had been, the more autocratic their attitude tended to be. They looked down their noses at the Kanadier which I am on my maternal grandparents’ side.
The Kanadier didn’t value education, although they seemed to be nicer to children and dogs than the Russlaender. They (at least my group did) danced, drank, and didn’t sweat the small stuff. The Russlaender side of me didn’t have good times. The Kanadier resented the Russlaender attitude of superiority given the fact that it was the Kanadier who sponsered the Revolution-fleeing Russlaender refugees to Canada and didn’t quite appreciate their generousity being ‘rewarded’ by arrogant Russlaender looking down their noses at them.
So each side comes with its own burden of neurosis, that’s what I meant. Those distinctions are still very important in Canada between the two Mennonite groups.
However, it occured to me when I spoke of my generation as being the “40s” that it might have given the impression that I was born in the 40s when actually I meant that I am in my 40s. So oops again.
No, we don’t do grace very well, I agree. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many Mennonite denominations.
Thank you, Layla for that little history analysis of the Canadian Mennonite scene. I too have a mixed bag of menno history – maternal grandparents immigrated from Ukraine/Russia in 1913, paternal from Kansas about the same time. The latter were from Kleingemeinde – to become KMB – immigrations of 1874-75, who actually spent a year or two in Manitoba to begin with. I think conflicts about how to do church drove them south to Kansas – it’s been called the “mennonite disease”. In the congregation I grew up in, my parents were very much a minority – the Russlaender mentality very much dominated, causing all kinds of conflicts. I am told that even back in Russia, there were clear class distinctions between/among the the Chortizer and the Molotschna mennos. Ah yes, “the world is ever with us….” Just to add to the mix, I married a guy whose paternal side has Amish roots! Mixing is good for us – keeps us humble and flexible.
The other day I read a letter to the editor in a friend’s copy of The Mennonite (I no longer subscribe to it because it makes me rant incoherently) that inspired such feelings of simpatico that I read it out loud to her, and got her to make me a photocopy, and then brought it home and read it to my husband, who, like me, is a cradle-now-ex Mennonite. Reading this post, it’s obvious you wrote the letter that got us all so excited.
I especially appreciated that you wrote “I don’t even think we are curious” about why people leave. When I try to explain this decision to my elders, this defensive lack of curiosity, followed by lists of all the reasons why Mennonites are so great, is the usual response. Thank you for helping me feel like I’m not crazy.
I’m happy to have found your blog. I hope you don’t mind if I link to you on mine.
Don’t mind the link at all! Thanks for the nice words.
What a revealing article, and really informative follow up comments. I worked in a Mennonite facility for several years and completely agree with the primary idea that Mennonites, and indeed all religions, are losing the recruitment and retention battle because they are exclusionary, clannish, and judgmental. In the case of Mennonites specifically, I’ve never met so many passive aggressive individuals under one roof.
It’s really been educational to read this article. Thanks!
Yes!! I agree with this post whole-heartedly. I popped in on a Sunday School class in my original church last week, and they were talking about very interesting issues of how to be an open and welcoming church to everyone, including people at varied stages of doubt and belief, and even (gasp) atheists.
Of course, they didn’t talk about specific ways to apply it to their church, but the idea was very good, and I realized that if I could be openly atheist and queer (*comfortably*) at a church, I might actually go.
I like the community, the four-part harmony, the potlucks, the interest in social justice, but I don’t like keeping silent about parts of myself, and about the former painful baggage I have with the Menno Church. And I want room to not believe, but not be entirely closed off to maybe believing at some hypothetical future point…
End ramble.
-J. Yoder 2
you must understand there is only one true church, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Please convert and be baptized.
God bless you
I can’t remember what I googled to get here, and I’m sure this thread is dead now, but… Yes. YES. I married a Mennonite, complete with Menno. last name and MCC connections, and Jiminy Cricket I have gotten so fed up with the constant vibe from the Mennonite subculture, which can be summarized as something like, “We are EVER SO MUCH better than you, dear, but do note how wonderful we are not to say so outright. Because we wouldn’t want to make you feel like the worldly, insufficiently-earnest, non-wispy-skirted, non-Timbrel-reading, biblically illiterate, benighted, too-expressive soul that you actually ARE. Because we’re ever so humble, y’see. YOU’RE WELCOME!” [condescending pat on the head]
And the SEXISM… oh holy buckets, the sexism. We went to a large MC USA church in the upper midwest for a while. The menfolk talked earnestly about politics and peace and justice and theology and peeeace and jusssstice and nonviolence and PEEEEACE and JUSSSSSTICE… and the ladies stood demurely in the background, raised their children for them and made the luncheon and cleaned up. That was the script. I have no truck with anyone who chooses traditional gender roles because they like them and they value the work — but in this case, THAT WAS THE SCRIPT. And woe to anyone who tried to deviate therefrom! The combination of progressive-ish causes and knee-jerk misogyny from the men was a wonder to behold. Honestly, my experiences at this church made me wonder whether MC USA was the Duke Divinity School of the denominational world — a sort of catchment area for crowing young white heterosexual cisgender men who want to fancy themselves really radical while not giving up a damn bit of their privilege. So, you know, we’ll have this grand revolution for peace and justice… and, gosh, it just so happens that it’s all the white dudes who’ll be in charge of it. (While their earnest wives will serve a potluck and mind the children.) One thing I particularly remember is how, at this church, we would wind up chatting with people we’d talked to several times before… and they would always correctly remember my husband’s paying job but would (mistakenly, and repeatedly) think that my husband was getting a Ph.D in addition to his full-time job. (Nope, sorry, that would be me. But feel free to make this same mistake the next five times we chat at church. Truly, it makes you look charming.)
And just generally, seeing how little you had to scratch before the progressive peace-and-justice veneer gave way. This was a really wealthy church, very white. I remember once someone complaining about how she didn’t like to talk about systemic racism at church because it was such a DOWNER and they’re always having to talk about that at WORK and this is supposed to be her SABBATH. (Of course she was one of the many with a “God Loves The Whole World – No Exceptions” bumper sticker.)
And that’s not even to touch on the pathological ideas about self-control and emotion. Where holiness = white-knuckled control over feelings, to the point that, if all goes well, you don’t have feelings anymore. Because you’re so single-mindedly focused on being one of God’s Goodest People In The Whole Wide World, that human emotion – your own, or other people’s – gets ignored.
Well, anyway. That’s why I ran like the wind from Mennonites and anything Mennonite-related. Or try to. I’ve still got these in-laws, though, and a spouse who struggles with the belief that any emotion is shameful.
I guess those memories are a little raw.
A Sarah – I’ve been assured by urbanmenno that threads on this blog never die! So thanks for expressing yourself so passionately. If you notice some of my previous comments, you will see that I share some of your frustrations. Speaking as a many years ago transplant to a large – albeit getting smaller – traditional rural menno church in the midwest, I have observed that we are not very self-reflective, and we do not realize how we come across to those who are not part of the in-group. The sad thing is, many of us don’t really care either. At least that is my experience. This comment is probably cynically jaded, because I just learned that Goshen College has decided to play the National Anthem at sporting events. I’m completely baffled, in spite of the “theological” rationale given by their president. But that’s a whole ‘nuther subject!
I guess I’d be considered a cradle mennonite having been born to mennonite parents and married into another mennonite family. My husband and I have attended the same rural Mennonite church all our marriage and have raised 3 children in the mennonite church.
I’m a bit disturbed by some of the strong emotions expressed here. My experience both in Ontario and here in BC has been one of a very supportive and mostly non judgemental community. Yes, we have our problems and carry lots of baggage – is there any person or group of people that don’t? When we focus on our ethnicity rather than our responsiblilites as people of faith we will fall flat on our faces. Our denomination has changed – drastically, and I think in many ways, for the better since my parents were teenagers. Speaking of our local churches, they have left much of their legalistic tendancies behind, becoming far more inclusive. In our small communtiy we share many programs with the GC Mennonite church down the road (we are MB) whereas years ago there was a huge rift between the two- each church judging the other for their differences.
Personally, our family now includes two non mennonite in laws and yes, there have been hurdles – mostly with the adjustment to the idea of community and perceived expectations and on my side, I have had to examine my commitment to ethnicity and have been challenged to see myself the way my in law children see me . I am challenged daily to a deeper commitment to my faith as a result.
I would caution you to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is much good within the Mennonite denomination – after all, if we were so non-inclusive, why is it that there are more non-ethnic mennonites in our denomination now than those of us born to it? In our area, the church continues to grow- not without problems, certainly! We are often our worst enemies, through pride and an unwillingness to serve sacrificially.
Ultimately the church – Mennonite or Catholic or [choose one] is destroyed or built up one person at a time. I hope that we will be builders, not destroyers as we seek to be ambassadors of Christ in our communities – both within and without the church.
Thanks, Bev for your insightful comments. And I’m glad you have had a mostly positive menno experience and that in your setting, the barriers are breaking down. In the end, our focus is on Jesus, and that should be the uniting force, rather than ethnicity or even community. But how that plays out, or I should say, how we live it out in our various settings is the challenge. We all carry baggage – after all, we are on a journey. But periodically we need to decide which items to keep, and which we need to discard because they are no longer useful to us or because they are worn out. That process can be painful, but we can offer one another grace along the way. And sometimes – at least I have found this helpful in processing past hurtful experiences – Jesus’ (and Stephen’s) prayer comes to mind “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”