Is the Light Dying?
Depending on whom you talk to and what statistics you examine, you could draw opposite conclusions about Mennonite colleges. Either: (1) they are morphing into being little different from other small liberal arts college around the country – and, if so, then why do they exist, since they tend to lag behind older, wealthier colleges in the amount of financial aid they can offer and the money they can put into student-pleasing facilities – or – (2) they continue to occupy a distinctive niche in the Christian canopy, being neither Protestant nor Catholic and insisting that Jesus’ teachings on community, peacemaking, piety, and loving one’s neighbors are as applicable today as they were 2,000 years ago. Over the last 20 years, many Christian sociologists and educators have warned that U.S. colleges launched on a faith basis have a strong tendency to move away from the tenets of the founding church, gradually gaining their independence but losing their theological reasons for existing. This is rarely an intentional move, writes James Tunstead Burthchaell in The Dying of the Light, a 868-page, 1990s-era study focusing on seven Christian traditions (but not the Anabaptists). Burthchaell thinks the separation happens inexorably as colleges try to maintain or grow their enrollment in the face of fewer students from the founding tradition, attract top-notch scholars regardless of their religious persuasion, satisfy the demands of government as well as secular accrediting agencies, and generally enhance their colleges’ prestige in the eyes of the world, which mitigates against being “different.” In Quality With Soul—How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions (2001), Robert Benne, professor of religion at Roanoke College, argues that it is essential for a college to maintain a “critical mass” of trustees, administrators, faculty and students from the founding faith in order to keep everyone rowing more or less in sync, heading in the direction established by the church, rather than being swamped by mainstream culture. In Models for Christian Higher Education (1997), Anabaptist historian Theron F. Schlabach asks, “Where is the threshold beyond which diversity [in belief] brings a loss of the institution’s purposes and character?” In the fall of 2008, the Mennonite Education Agency (MEA) reported that Mennonites constitute 45% of the total undergraduate population at MEA-affiliated institutions, a percentage that declines with each passing decade. Among graduate or non-traditional students, religious diversity is the norm in all Mennonite institutions. On the key issue of who teaches and otherwise shapes students, the colleges differ on how much uniformity of Mennonite belief and practice they
40 | crossroads | spring 2009
seek in hiring faculty members and administrators. Amid worries about the end of distinctive roles for faithfounded colleges, Brian McLaren, a decidedly non-traditional Christian thinker, offers counter-views. The title of his 2007 bestseller sums up his optimism: Everything Must Change – Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope. McLaren sees a grassroots movement toward a renewed understanding of Jesus’ message of spiritual and social redemption. In a visit to EMU this spring, he suggested that Mennonite colleges already embody the message of transformational Christianity that others, especially young adults, are now seeking. Unlike Burtchaell and Benne, McLaren feels hopeful, observing that though this grassroots movement is not bound by traditional church structures, it may spark renewal within them. Is the Mennonite light dying? No, not if viewed through McLaren’s lens. Not if measured by the disproportionate impact Mennonite colleges and their alumni have had and continue to have. On the global level, the Mennonite church is growing. In the United States, Mennonite churches serving urban people of color and recent immigrants are also expanding. Millions around the world continue to resonate with our church’s age-old message that “true evangelical faith cannot lie sleeping, but it clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; and returns good for evil” (Menno Simons). These populations may be the largest source of the next generation of students at Mennonite colleges. As can be seen with Meserete Kristos College in Ethiopia, founded in 1997, they may even be the founders of new Mennonite colleges. Bonnie Price Lofton, MA '04, editor