This is definitely not a battle I want to get entangled in. The past “discussions” have been bitter and divisive and down-right brutal. Yet, those of us who hold the Anabaptist distinctive dearly can’t help but be affected by what will be debated. The national conference of Mennonite USA starts in Pittsburgh on 4 July. Already the pre-conference chatter has started and the GLBTQ issue will have to be addressed. A long moratorium kept the issue quiet until last year – officially. However, much has changed in the demographic of the church since the moratorium was put in place. It is a younger congregation and GLBTQ simply isn’t the issue to many of the younger, more urban parishioners that it was to the generation before.
Apart from the theological questions and pastoral issues, one of the most interesting questions to watch will be the use of media on both sides. Last year Pink Menno leveraged Twitter heavily to organize their gatherings. This year Pink Menno is back with a significant Twitter and Facebook presence. Last year following the mainline Mennonite updates was slow and rather hit-and-miss. This year the conference has a Facebook Page but no dedicated Twitter account (and no hash tag just yet).
Pink Menno is actively engaging their constituency in real time allowing them to organize, respond, educate, and encourage in a way that the printed newsletter simply can’t. With smartphones and a demographic accustomed to getting, and responding to, news instantly, new media is a force-multiplier. The problem for the conservatives is insurmountable. The conservative contingent is generally of a demographic which wouldn’t know what to do with new media. Hamstrung with slow and uni-directional communication the conservatives simply lack the ability to rally forces to their cause or make their issues heard. There is no small irony here that new communications tools will very likely shape the future of a theological heritage founded in the wake of the printing press.
Whatever the intention or outcome of Jim Schrag’s (then Executive Director Mennonite Church USA) post-2009 conference letter there is a certain case-in-point here. Mr. Schrag seems to be attempting some damage control to the conservative parents:
Mr. Schrag seems to believe that the denomination’s role is to control the information youth receive. Indeed, this seems to be the mainline approach to the problem. If people don’t hear about the issue it is a non-issue. However, we know this is simply an untenable approach. No matter how the denomination tries to control the dissemination of literature and the wearing of the colour pink the youth will hear. Censorship hasn’t worked to suppress movements in the past and will only fuel fires now.
Now we wait and watch the combatants prepare for their war of communication and theology. It’s impossible to forget the damage done in previous battles. Let’s keep both sides in prayer and hope that a denomination famous for peace and reconciliation can find peaceful and healing ways to dialog.
The Pittsburgh 2011 and Pink Menno by The Tomb, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
