Dear MBchurch.ca:
Historically, the MBs were both Anabaptists and evangelicals. When the movement started, the leaders were strongly committed to the Anabaptist Vision and saw in this no incompatibility with a strong emphasis on evangelism. Early MBs valued highly the foundational values of discipleship, yieldedness (Nachfolge) and peace.
The move to the new world has been difficult for the MBs, for in both Canada and the United States the MBs came into close contact with evangelical and fundamental movements which were at significant odds with the Anabaptist Vision. Missions schools like Biola, Moody, Prairie Bible Institute and Briercrest Bible College (BBC) attracted large numbers of MB young people and these schools had a much stronger emphasis on evangelism and missions than on discipleship and peace. In the early 1990’s, when I was still deeply involved in Conference affairs, I wrote a letter to John Barkman, then president of BBC. BBC actively recruited students in MB churches and I asked Barkman if it would be possible to include peace theology in the BBC curriculum. His response was that peace was a denominational distinctive, and for this reason it would not be taught at BBC. Like Henry Hildebrandt, the founding president of BBC, and Barkman, BBC’s second president, and both with Mennonite/Anabaptist roots, this shows the deliberate rejection of their spiritual heritage.
In the USA the affiliation with the evangelicals goes back even farther. The MB’s were the only Mennonite group that identified with the National Association of Evangelicals almost from the founding of that organization. It was at the annual NEA convention in 1983 that Ronald Reagan made his Russia-is-the-evil-empire speech. This was a harbinger of prominent evangelicals like Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention, and James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, urging the younger Bush into the illegal Iraq war which gave the world Abu Ghraib and eventually ISIS and the unholy mess that is now the Middle East. Evangelicals like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr. are now twisting themselves into pretzels to justify their support for Donald Trump, a Nietschian antithesis of everything found in the Sermon on the Mount. Where do the American MBs stand on issues like this? Are they beginning to see the incompatibility of having the Stars and Stripes prominently displayed to the right of the pulpit in every MB Church in the USA save one?
In Canada the leadership of the MB Church has been usurped by these evangelicals whose only vision seems to be evangelism. Where Paul tells us that the Church has many gifts—apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, evangelists, administrators, counsellors—these folks would have us believe that we must all be C2C evangelists. They seem to be so committed to their beliefs that they think it acceptable to violate every principle of due process and disregard Paul’s admonition, “Let everything be done decently and in good order” to advance their cause. In my opinion, they are leading the MB Church to irrelevance—to the condition where salt has lost its savour.
Dave Hubert, Lendrum MB Church