Cultural or biblical?

It is exactly 100 years ago that my congregation, First Mennonite Church in Kitchener, divided over

the issue of women’s head coverings. Two-thirds of the congregation left

because they did not want women to be forced to wear head coverings. They moved one block up the hill to create Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church.

A century later, we are aghast that a church would split over such an issue. I related this story to some of the

leaders of the Mennonite churches I recently visited in the Caribbean as part of my work with Mennonite World Conference (MWC). One of them had a very quick response: “Oh, that’s a cultural issue, not biblical.”

I tried to push back, but they did not see that this issue could be something that was defined as a question of obedience to the Bible, to Jesus and to the church.

In all four countries where I visited Mennonite churches recently, we discussed the current divisive issues in the MWC communion.

Most people could name only one or two controversial topics, so I mentioned others: sexuality and gender, ordaining women in ministry, baptism, gifts of the Holy Spirit, divorce and remarriage.

I am intrigued that the leaders didn’t understand why people would get worked up about some of these issues. If it wasn’t an issue for them, it was hard for them to understand why it was a serious issue somewhere else in MWC.

The only issue that mattered to all of them was sexuality and gender, and these leaders saw that one as different than all the other topics I mentioned.

Of course, they wanted to know MWC’s position on that one issue. I handed out the MWC Statement of Shared Convictions, and explained again and again that this short statement does not replace the Statement of Faith that all the different member churches have.

Instead, this one-page statement is the core set of beliefs expected of all MWC member churches.

MWC does not take a position on the many theological topics that are not included in the Statement of Shared Convictions, and that includes all of the controversial topics currently being discussed in MWC member churches.

This is a hard concept. How can we be in communion with people who don’t interpret the Bible the same way we do?

This question is relevant everywhere, at all levels of the church.

I talked with the Caribbean church leaders about the importance of obedience in following Jesus, the Bible and the church.

I also talked about the importance of unity in the church. Jesus’s prayer was for unity among his followers. Paul’s plea is for unity in the early church, particularly the struggles between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians.

Some of my discussion partners nodded and others were quite troubled. It is hard for some to imagine that something they believe is biblically wrong can be accepted by Mennonite Christians in another part of the world.

We came back often to the question of what is cultural and what is biblical, and how to do biblical interpretation. The answers to these questions are not always obvious.

I like the idea of holding two contrasting ideas together and that we are called to both. I believe that as Mennonite Christians we are called to a life of obedient discipleship and we are called to live in unity.

Neither are possible with just our own pure determination, but both are fuelled by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

I pray we will welcome the Spirit in both.

Arli Klassen is a member of First Mennonite Church, Kitchener, and can be reached at klassenarli@gmail.com.

Read more The Church Here and There columns:
Salt and light: Structures and policies
Polarization and unity
Deconstructing or reconstructing?