My wife, Aleisha, and I live in Phoenix, AZ and have just started attending a church a few blocks from our house. We’re beginning the work of making friends, getting connected, finding a place. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the tradition and church I was raised in. Many of my dearest friends I met there – much of who I am was developed there. Still, it’s really complicated. If church is the family of God, and if that community is where we figure out who we are and who we should be, then it really matters what we’re telling each other.

In Christ,

Javen.

---

Introduction

The Mennonite story is one filled with oppression and relocation. The tradition takes its name from Menno Simons, born in the Netherlands in 1496. Simons became a priest at age 28, and then split away from the Holy Roman Empire’s Catholic church after reading scripture, something he was afraid to do for his first two years as a priest. Reading led him to first deny transubstantiation and later the infant baptism taught by the Catholic church. After being a preacher for several years “without spirituality or love as all hypocrites do,” he had something of a spiritual awakening after witnessing the death of three hundred radical Anabaptists killed by authorities, his own brother, Peter, among them (Galli, 2000). “For nine months thereafter [Simons] essentially preached Anabaptist doctrine from his Catholic pulpit, until he finally left the church and…fully cast his lot with the radical Reformers” (Galli, 2000). These radical reformers would later take his name and call themselves Mennonites.

German Mennonites

Relocation of Mennonites to America came in various waves and for varying reasons, a common theme being the desire to practice a non-resistant faith in freedom. Steve Nolt notes three prominent groups of Mennonites who came to the New World: Mennonites from Germany (Swiss and German), Russian Mennonites, and a third group which will be of special interest in this paper. The Mennonites from Germany settled largely in Pennsylvania from round 1680-1710 (Nolt, 1999). According to Steve Nolt, these Mennonites identified largely with the German speaking subculture already present in north-eastern America, though they only comprised a very small part of it. While they understood themselves as distinct from mainstream American society, “political life was less a cooperation with worldly state coercion and more an expression of commitment to and identification with a friendly ethnic community. In many ways Mennonites within Greater Pennsylvania found an acceptable and comfortable ethnic identity in Pennsylvania German culture. (Nolt, pg. 490).

Russian Mennonites

Russian Mennonites whose privileged status was revoked by an order of St. Petersburg in 1870 made up another migrant wave (Saul, 1974). About a third of the Mennonite population in Russia migrated to the great plains of North America. Russian Mennonites found somewhat less of a subcultural identity among other immigrants with which to identify. “America’s Russian Mennonites forged an ethnicity that tended to create cultural islands in the midst of larger American society” (Nolt, pg. 494). This German speaking group of Mennonites started their own print publications as well as primary and secondary schools. Yet, similar to the Pennsylvania German Mennonite ethnicity, the Russian Mennonites envisioned their faith as “one piece of a broader identity that in turn connected them to neighbors or an ideal across the ocean. In both cases ‘secular’ culture – as each group defined it – did not threaten faith” (Nolt, pg. 496). Neither of these groups, the Dutch or the Russian Mennonites, became homogenous with mainstream American culture. Yet both saw their identity as a people as something which allowed them to live at peace with and integrate to a certain extent with the society around them. 

A Third Kind of Mennonite

Juxtaposed alongside these two Mennonite visions of identity in the New World is a third group of Anabaptists. The Dutch and Russian Mennonites forged a cultural identity which in some way harmonized with surrounding society. This was not characteristic of this third group of Mennonites. 

“What was different for these Mennonites was not their need to separate themselves from what they considered worldly American society but their lack of an alternative community with which to integrate…the church itself became an alternative and primary community and means of identity. H. Richard Niebuhr’s characterization of Mennonites as representing “Christ against culture” probably fit these Mennonites best…[they] tended to define themselves more in terms of their specific beliefs and religious practices…[living] as strangers in an American frontier shaped society. ” (Nolt, pgs. 496-497).

This third group of Anabaptists built the institution of Mennonitism, seen as a third way and not distinctly Protestant or Catholic. “Activists constructed a world of alternative Mennonite structures— eventually able to handle everything from denominational business to personal financial services” (Nolt, pg. 498). These alternative structures included published written content, private schools, missional efforts, financial loans for conscientious objectors, insurance agencies, credit unions, retirement centres, boys’ and girls’ camps, psychiatric hospitals, and travel agencies.

“The new ethnic Mennonite could send her children to school, save money, buy insurance, invest savings and plan vacations all through Mennonite institutions.”

(Nolt, 499)

When this third group of Mennonites found no sub-culture into which to integrate their distinct identity, they built their own from the ground up. The result was an Anabaptist belief system operating within its own institutional infrastructure. Mennonites already viewed the world from a largely dualistic perspective. Now the in the world but not of the world mantra could be applied in almost every facet of life. This paper will focus on this third group.

Part One

Key Scriptural Texts and Interpretations

In a paper published by the Mennonite Quarterly Review, Steve Nolt observes, “Even a brief review of Mennonite history leaves one unsure whether this topic is best framed as a discussion of religion and ethnicity, or religion as ethnicity.” (Nolt, pg. 485) Mennonites find a great amount of personal meaning through their religion, so that lifestyle seems a more appropriate word. Kevin Gushiken notes, “Ethnic groups cultivate identity by constructing “group boundaries and social solidarity” (i.e., by defining and preserving ethnic thickness)…Ethnic thickness or thinness is the degree to which a person’s identification with a particular group is important or not important” (Gushiken, pg. 34). The third group of Mennonites possesses a profound sense of ethnic thickness. This ethnic identity is based largely on a specific interpretation of certain New Testament writings. 

Historically, Mennonites have favoured a rather literalistic reading of scripture and certain Pauline texts in particular. Below, I will outline some of the key texts and attempt to demonstrate how these readings serve to construct gender roles and establish the normative, everyday in the Mennonite church. 

In I Corinthians 11, Paul writes to the church at Corinth regarding guidelines for the church in worship. The Mennonite church has historically interpreted this passage as a call for women in the church to cover their head with a veiling when praying or prophesying. And since Paul also calls believers to pray without ceasing, many Mennonite churches require women to wear the prayer veiling continually. The veiling then also serves as a symbolic tool – women who cover their heads are easily identified as part of the Mennonite church.

I Timothy 2 is another key passage. Here, Paul gives instructions for how women ought to dress. “I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God” (I Timothy 2:9-10). Deuteronomy 22:5 states, “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.” Combining these passages, many Mennonite churches do not permit women to wear pants, which are seen as men’s clothing, and require either dresses (or “cape dresses” which are specially sewn so that less of the bodily form can be detected) or skirts. Wearing jeans (or other legged pants), shorts, or dresses which accentuate the female form is seen as sexually provocative and as a violation of Paul’s command for women to dress modestly as well as the Deuteronomistic restriction on cross dressing.

In I Timothy, Paul goes on to write, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing” (I Timothy 2:11-15a). From passages such as this, the Mennonite church has established that only men must be permitted to teach or have authority in worship settings. Women are permitted to participate in some ways, so long as their role in not one of authority over an adult male in the church, for instance: playing an instrument to accompany a male worship leader, teaching a women’s Sunday school class, caring for children, giving a personal testimony to the congregation, etc. 

Representation

The third group of Mennonites has consistently found themselves existing outside the bounds of secular society. Originally, this was due to a lack of subculture with which to integrate the Anabaptist value structure in the New World. However, isolation from broader society is also largely intentional. In the Mennonite church there is often the notion that other Evangelical Christians have failed to differentiate themselves from the secular in really meaningful ways. The Mennonite church has found effective ways to accomplish this self-othering through the use of symbols. The members of most church denominations are not easily distinguished by their clothing. However, Mennonites have long set themselves apart in this way. Today, Amish men are easily distinguished by their long beards and black (or straw) hats while women are seen wearing long, plain dresses with bonnets to cover their head. Since most of the Amish travel by horse and buggy, their ethnic identity is easily observed even when passed on the road. In the following sections, this paper will observe Mennonite churches which (like the one I was raised in) which have thrown off many of the limitations embraced by the Amish (horse and buggy transportation, no electricity, homemade clothing, etc.) but which still insist on symbolic otherness by way of physical identity markers. 

Many of the third-group Mennonites are descended from the Amish and employ some of the same strategies in symbolic distinguishment. Along the continuum of more and less conservative Mennonites, there are different ways of symbolically differentiating from the secular world. In more conservative Mennonite churches, men are required to wear suspenders rather than belts, and members can drive only black cars. It is of particular interest to note however, the methods employed as some Mennonite churches become less and less distinct from other Protestant denominations. There is a tendency to project the othering symbols onto women in order to conserve a distinct identity while permitting men to look and act like members of contemporary secular society.

The Head Covering

The Mennonite church interprets much of Paul’s instructions to the early church as normative teaching for the church throughout history. According to their reading, which is a distinct minority in contemporary theology, women must pray and prophecy with their head covered by a symbolic veiling. This veiling serves to fulfill Paul’s command about covering the head as well as symbolize women’s submission to men in the Christ-man-woman headship order. Women must also wear the veiling (and their hair up in a bun) in public spaces in order to signify this headship, and because they may desire to pray outside of a worship service. The result is that Mennonite women bear a symbol to the world on their heads at all times – they belong to a certain church, and they submit to the men of that church. Before any word is spoken or any act is committed, they bear a visible image which ties them to a conservative Christian belief system. They are symbolically other than the secular society into which they enter when they leave the home or the Mennonite church. Since Paul makes no comments regarding men’s outward appearance in worship (other than perhaps not having wearing long hair), the head of a Mennonite man looks the same as that of any other man one might see in the marketplace. He is not identified as Mennonite through a symbolic image on his head. 

Dresses, Skirts, and Nikes

Traditionally, women in the Mennonite church were required to wear dresses when they were in worship settings or outside the home. More conservative denominations also prohibited any kind of graphics or logos on clothing. In some activities such as swimming or hiking, long pants or “modest” shorts may have been permitted. Today, some Mennonite churches still employ this as a normative requirement for Mennonite women. However, many of the children of these more conservative Anabaptists have reimagined what it looks like for women to dress “modestly.” In most of the Mennonite churches I’ve attended, women are required to wear skirts. In this way, women are permitted a bit more freedom in their clothing choices while still remaining easily identified in the public and private sphere as Mennonite. 

Mennonite women today are often seen wearing name brank apparel, such as Nike shoes or other name brand clothing. They are able to participate in society’s status-signifying markers by purchasing trending brands and styles, so long as they still maintain a dress code of a long skirt to cover their legs and head veiling to cover their hair. This is evidence of the Mennonite church’s willingness to integrate into mainstream meaning-making narratives in some manner while still attempting to retain a distinct ethnic identity. Mennonite men in this environment are no longer participating in the cultivation of a symbolically other identity. They are permitted to dress in the same manner as other males in contemporary society. If you pass a Mennonite woman at Walmart, she is immediately identifiable as part of the Mennonite church. If you pass a Mennonite man, it is not in any way clear from mere appearance what religion or ethnic identity he is associated with. Mennonite women alone bear the burden of wearing the symbolic otherness which the Mennonite church hopes to keep as a core part of its identity.

Part Two

Consumption & Regulation

I once heard a Mennonite man speak about his experience of finding a home in a new Mennonite church after being raised in one which tended toward hard legalism. He spoke, with a smile, about his surprise in finding this new church which had very few rules at all. However, he stated that whether or not we make them, there are always rules. This gentleman’s insight is a profound one. Whether or not there is a codified collection of rules or not, a group will establish a status quo – what is normative and what is out of bounds becomes familiar to those within the culture. In many ways a narrative embodied by the collective can be much more effective at enforcing the status quo and quelling resistance to it than can a document of rules. When acceptance into the culture or ethnic identity is predicated on keeping unwritten, but very present, rules, each one who keeps the code stamps their signature on an embodied narrative. 

Who Makes the Meaning?

Power to shape the structure of community lies in the ability to assign meaning. Likewise, authority to govern rests on leaders’ ability to assign meaning. The United States Government possesses great power in that they are vested with the responsibility of telling the people what the constitution means and how that meaning will be instituted. The government assigns meaning by imposing codes and regulations – what it means to be law abiding in this town is to drive at 55 mph, and it means such because they have decided and said so. Meaning assignment is present is every aspect of culture, and those with power are those whose declarations about what things mean are accepted. When the declarations of the government are meaningless to a people, there is disorder and anarchy. This is described in the book of Judges as “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). Great implications for gender roles and leadership structure lies in the Pauline texts described above. Much, perhaps most, of the nuts and bolts of Mennonite ethnic identity is built from their interpretation. Therefore, the ones who interpret those texts, whoever assigns them their functional meaning, holds a great deal of power. In the Mennonite church this has been almost exclusively men.

Since the Mennonite church does not permit women to have authority over men, and teaching of any kind is viewed as authority, women are excluded from any hermeneutical work. The interpretation, handling, and teaching of scripture is an exclusively male task. Other leadership roles which require decision making on behalf of the church (such as finance committees, mission boards, building fund managers, etc.) must be filled by men. Women are deemed unfit for this kind of work, either because their femaleness renders them inadequate for the task or because of an interpretation of scripture which restricts women from authoritative positions. In a letter to the editor of a Mennonite newspaper, a reader submits a nice summation of the Mennonite church’s historical attitude towards women.

“It doesn’t matter what [women] feel any more than it matters what I feel. It only matters what God says in His Word. Scripture does not say that women cannot lead but it does say that they are not to have authority over men. This is if they lead, they are to lead women and children, but not men. I say to these women and others that if you desire true fulfillment, then obey Christ and forget what you “feel”.

(Davis, 1993)

The narrative is clear and powerful; God has restricted women to domestic, submissive, quiet roles. If that seems inequitable, undesirable, or out of step with their gifting, it is because women are resisting the true fulfillment God intends for them.

Creating Identities

I was born and raised in the Mennonite church. For as long as I can remember the vision of life I consumed through worship services on Sunday morning and evening and through weekday life among community members was highly complementarian and male run. That preachers, worship leaders, deacons, and those in charge of anything other than food, flowers, or hospitality were male was normative. As I grew older, I was trained to develop into a leader in these kinds of roles while the girls I grew up with prepared to take on the submissive, quiet role afforded to them. One morning in the young adult Sunday school class, the teacher announced he would be gone the next Sunday, and someone would need to fill in to teach. An awkward silence pervaded the room as none of the male members of the class spoke up – it was taken for granted this was a task no female was capable of. Finally, someone broke the silence, and jokingly suggested the teacher’s wife could fill in; we could just spend the time giving each other back massages. Everyone laughed. Obviously teaching a group of people from scripture is beyond a woman’s capability, though perhaps physical service to a group would be appropriate for her skill set.

After I graduated high school, I began regularly attending the congregational meetings which took place from time to time to make collective decisions and dialogue about the future of the church. These gatherings were called “men’s meetings.” Decision making and open debate was an activity appropriate for men; if women were interested, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. The church operated from a very democratic style of leadership. Almost every issue was put to a vote: should the church buy new speakers? Who should lead VBS? Who would be the new Sunday-school superintendent? How much money would go towards missions? These were all decisions in which male members had equal voting power. In her paper Me Tarzan, Son of Menno-You Jane, Mennonite Mama, Katie Funk-Wiebe writes about gender roles in the Mennonite church.

“For men, legitimate authority to do theology is achieved by education, position, knowledge, personal charisma, and the wisdom of experience in church life. But often gender has been the first prerequisite. Young men are elected to positions in church councils or boards of elders ahead of highly experienced and educated women. Men have the authority of tradition backing them as polemicists; men have always been leaders in thought in the Mennonite church. Our Tarzans have been our male theologians. Our Janes have been our Mennonite mamas.”

(Funk-Wiebe, pg. 12)

The decisions about how the church would be structured and who would fill which positions was decided democratically, but women were excluded from this decision-making process. In the Mennonite church, femaleness is an image which defines a woman’s identity much more than her gifting, experience, or skill set. By producing a vision of male competence and female domesticity, college educated women of the church are excluded from meaning making structures, like voting in meetings, which include seventeen-year-old “men”.

Paths to the Good Life

The Mennonite church has long championed a dualistic ontology in which “us” and “them” are easily distinguished. This commitment to doctrinal purity through intentional othering was also prevalent in the fundamentalist churches before the Evangelical movement (Smith, 1998). By intentionally separating from “worldly” structures through conscientious objection, prohibition, commitment to tightly-knit community etc., the Mennonite vision remains potent and distinct. Historically, conservative Mennonite and Amish communities deemed education to the 8^th grade as sufficient for children who would then join a workforce trade or find a husband. The possibility of a college education has in recent decades become a more plausible option for young people in the Mennonite church. 

After graduating high school, I enrolled in a four-year program to study communication. At college, I was able to integrate into the student body identity. Aside from my decidedly theologically conservative background, I was largely undifferentiated from other college students. I was able to flow freely between the world of the Mennonite church and the world of liberal arts college. My female friends from the church did not have the same experience. They were required to bear the identity of symbolic otherness at all times. In the marketplace, in college, in restaurants, in every social environment, they were easily identified as different and other. They are often asked why they wear a veiling or why they always wear dresses and skirts, the marks of symbolic otherness. They are not able to navigate seamlessly between the sacred and the secular as men are. The church’s vision for them is one of marriage and then childbearing. In the past both Mennonite men and women expressed their commitment to being separate from the world through worn symbols. More recently, that task has been relegated solely to women. 

Marriage is the expected ideal of young folks in the Mennonite church. Because of the passive, receptor identity perpetuated in all the ways discussed, women are expected to wait for a male partner to approach them romantically. They may reciprocate affection shown (or not), but to approach a male with romantic interest would be decidedly non-normative. Because of the difficulty women experience in moving between the church community and the marketplace, most unmarried Mennonite women take jobs at local Mennonite-run businesses. In this space they can safely maintain the church’s dress code requirements and be sure to not rise to a position of authority over a man. They are expected to work while they wait for a Mennonite male to approach them romantically. 

If they should resist the prescribed image of veiled and skirted submissive woman in order to make themselves romantically appealing to non-Mennonite men, they would find themselves in stark violation of cultural expectations expressed through an established female identity. The projected ideal is produced and maintained in this way. The line between “in” and “out” is as clear as adherence to outward identity markers, symbolic othering tools which make the lines between “us” and “them”/ “church” and “society” vividly clear. Mennonite males on the other hand are free to move between secular and sacred spaces and are unbound by symbolic othering identity markers. They might romantically pursue women who are inside or outside of the church while working at a job inside or outside the Mennonite community. This feminine ideal serves as a uniting image, the fabric of the ethnic identity.

Part Three

Accepting and Resisting

In his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Richard B. Hays examines the work of feministic theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, writing, “The patriarchal household became the model for the church, and women were explicitly relegated to subordinate roles. Schüssler Fiorenza suggests…emergent early Catholicism suppressed Christianity’s original egalitarian impulses…Even though their alternative vision lost out historically to the power of patriarchy, it stands as a faithful witness to ‘Jesus’ alternative praxis of agape and service” (Hays, 271).

Each new generation of Mennonites enters the space of establishing the ethnic identity. They must reckon with both living in the world and integrating an Anabaptist theology which recognizes Christians as set apart, a remnant operating from a different value system. What symbolic inventory will be employed in the quest to shape this set apart identity? This identity has been largely preserved through easily identifiable outward symbols worn by women. It seems a distinct theology, a way of being is much more difficult to teach and to recognize than simply instituting dress codes. Anabaptist theology is rich with distinctions such as non-resistance, believer’s baptism, and practiced generosity. Yet these “images” are much less potent, much less effective at creating cultural boundaries than physical markers.

The Amish have long practiced shunning, the disowning of those who fail to keep the community’s rules. While the Mennonite church has mostly abandoned this practice, the same effect is achieved by establishing a rigid status quo in which there is little grey area. Those who do not bear the appropriate symbols are in clear violation of the ethnic norm. This creates an ultimatum in which members either conform to the idealized image or leave the community, and it serves to implement a strong, homogenous identity. The status quo is developed through a very conservative biblical hermeneutic handled exclusively by men and carried out exclusively by women. Sexist gender role expectations are normative, and very little room for resistance or negotiation is present. These identities and ideals are produced by the men with the power to assign meaning and consumed through teaching and observance of (and participation in) the status quo of the everyday.

A Way Forward

Some of the Mennonites who came across the Atlantic to the New World found themselves estranged from all that was familiar. Like the children of Israel, they were forced to build their own ethnic identity and the systems needed to support it. Yet like Israel, the Mennonite church has often forgotten its charge to bless the nations – too often, Mennonites have built barricades between their communities and outside world. As new generations renegotiate the narrative of being in the world but not of the world, they must renounce the sexism which has pervaded the Mennonite church in the past. There is real power in the core tenets of Anabaptist theology, power enough to sustain an ethnic identity which has previously handed women the task of maintaining identity through symbolic othering. 

The Mennonite church must reject the patriarchal church structure described by Schüssler Fiorenza and work toward “an enGendered story” (Funk-Wiebe, pg. 21). This story ought to recognize women as capable of exercising their gifts in hermeneutical and leadership work. It must listen incorporate their voices and empower them to demonstrate the otherness of the Mennonite way of being in the world through more than easily identifiable outward markers. Traditional Mennonite narratives have discouraged diversity and championed stereotypical gender identities through the rigid enforcement of a male-determined status quo. Inviting women into the spaces of meaning assignment (like voting, teaching, and leading) is the only way the Mennonite church will rid itself of its pervasive sexism. This would allow for a truly unique Anabaptist identity which would not rely on merely external tools for symbolic othering. 

---

Some Resources I’ve Found Helpful

---

---

---

---

Preface

A few weeks ago I sat down with my friend to eat some Vietnamese food, and over my lemongrass dish I explained about a piece I’d starting writing – this piece about getting vaccinated. And my friend wasn’t convinced it was a good idea – you should at least put it behind a paywall so less people read it. I do that sometimes with pieces I write that I wouldn’t want just anyone reading (in fact I have one written I’d like to share soon). And so I agreed. Then, about a week later, my friend brought it up again and said no I think you should just write it. So that’s what I did.

And I didn’t write this for the trolls. Whenever I choose to write on a complex issue with a lot of energy around it, there are always a few familiar folks who show up with their minds made up, totally sure, seeing it black and white. They’re easy to spot, and that’s alright – but I didn’t write this with them in mind. I wrote this in that grey middle space, for folks like me, not totally sure and not up for brawling about it. If that’s you, I hope it’s at least a little helpful. These are my words, my experience, what I’ve learned, my thoughts – may I entrust them to you?

---

The Two Questions at Hand

I believe the question is not so much are these vaccines effective and safe? The question is what do these vaccines mean? I want to address that first question a bit farther down, but to start, I want to think about the second question: what do these vaccines mean?

My Own Experience Getting Vaccinated

On Thursday two weeks ago I decided to get vaccinated. Vaccines have been available for quite some time, so I’m not exactly sure why I waited so long.

There were a few tangible reasons that made up my mind. First, Covid-19 is hitting us very hard again, here on the west coast and back on the east coast. As NPR reported in August, hospitals across the U.S. are, again, filling up. And again we’re in danger of being in a situation where people who need treatment will not be able to get a hospital bed because folks with severe cases of Covid-19 are filling them (we’re already there is some places). 1 out of every 500 Americans have now died from Covid-19. And no, we’re not talking about just those infected. The US population (331,449,281) divided by the number of Covid-19 deaths reported (663,970) = 499.19. 1 out of every 500 people in the US has now died from a virus that popped up less than 2 years. This has been verified by CNN, FOX, The Hill, and others.

Second, one of my trusted friends in medical field, Karlin Bacher, shared a video in which the Republican house representative of S.C.’s 5th district, Neil Collins, spoke with four local doctors and professors: Dr. Helmut Albrecht (prof. at USC), Delphine Dean (prof. at Clemson), Dr. Ted Swann (family doctor in Clemson), and Dr. Phillip Buckhaults (prof. at USC). They discussed the vaccines and gave their advice. They spoke with clarity and unity about the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines, and testified they’ve not only been vaccinated but also arranged to have their family, children, and close friends take it as well.

And thirdly, I recently got to take a trip home to South Carolina where quite a few members of my home community have been recently hospitalized with the virus. I got to see my grandparents. I really love my grandparents, and while I would probably be find if I got Covid (I survived it once), I don’t know that they would be. Since I live 3,000 miles away, there’s a very small chance I would pass it to them. But the vaccine would ensure there would also be only a very very tiny chance I could inadvertently pass the virus to anyone else’s grandparents either.

We’ve all read a thousand articles and posts about Covid-19. But on that particular Thursday those three reasons, that hospitals are getting really full as the virus surges, that medical friends and professionals from my home area gave me a convinced, informed opinion, and that there was a real chance someone with a not-so-great immune system could actually die if I gave them a virus I could’ve not given them – these were enough for me to make my choice.

I searched “vaccine near me” and then took about five minutes to schedule a Walgreens appointment for the first dose of the Moderna vaccine. On Saturday, I drove to Walgreens and parked my car. On the way in, I was asked by a rough looking older man for assistance. I was reaching for a $1 bill when I realized he was asking me to roll him a cigarette. He had little papers and a can of tobacco. I told him I didn’t know how, and he said he didn’t either, but he was trying to learn. Inside the store, I filled out a page of paperwork, sat in a chair, then followed a pharmacist to another chair where he gave me a shot in the left arm with a silver needle. I stuck around to be observed for fifteen minutes, and then I was given a card, and I walked out vaccinated.

It’s so puzzling to me that so many of us are scared to be vaccinated. I was even puzzled why I waited so long. I think – even though I’m embarrassed to say so – I kind of believed all the hype. It wasn’t doctors’ opinions or professional advice that came across my newsfeed everyday making me suspicious. No – It was pundits or friends who think they have the latest scoop, and folks who are out doing their own research and sharing Tik-Toks. These are people I would never want medical advice from. Still, being surrounded by all this talk, all the rumors and accusations kind of got to me. What if they’re right? But on Thursday, I decided 96% of doctors means more to me than folks tapping on their iPhones.

So what does the vaccine mean? This is the central question for many of us. It was developed as a medical remedy, but for many of us it’s a symbol. Vaccines, like masks, have come to represent political expressions – they’ve morphed into more than things. Wearing a piece of cloth on your wrist does not have particular meaning associated with it. But we’ve all felt the awkwardness of wearing a piece of cloth over our face and not being sure what it means – how is this interpreted by the others in the room? While we could hardly care less if someone has the flu shot, asking someone if they’ve been vaccinated is a question with mountains more attached. We tend to assume so much – if I know this one thing, then I can pretty much put the rest in place. Did you hear so and so got vaccinated? – yeah, that seems about right, they seemed like the type! So what do these vaccines mean? You could write a mountain of articles and research papers asking that question. We all have to decide what they mean. And in our deciding we contribute to the collective conception.

Back to the First Question

Are these vaccines safe and effective?

I reached out Karlin for help compiling some data. Whether or not data means much to us is up to us. If we are totally engrossed by the other question, the one about what they mean and what kind of person would or would not get vaccinated, this second question and its answers won’t matter so much for us. But I think it ought to.

Are our doctors actually taking the vaccine?

96% of doctors are vaccinated (this is verified by Fox, Forbes, USA Today, The American Medical Association, and a whole lot of other organizations). Of the doctors who have not yet been vaccinated, 45% intend to take the shot. I think this is important. If we had physicians recommending treatment they would not administer to themselves or their families, that would seem to be cause for concern. Yet our doctors are in unison on the question of whether or not to be vaccinated. There are a very very small subset of outliers – the collective opinion among doctors is pretty unified.

Do the vaccines actually work?

Prisma Health is a care provider in South Carolina (they service the hospital I was born in), and they’ve been tracking and publishing data from Covid-19 hospitalizations. Their latest data at the time this is published shows:

Karlin has been tracking this data over time and reports, “The overall average of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients at Prisma Health this past month calculates out to 91%, but it has ranged from 86%-96% depending on the day.” The vast majority of those in the hospital suffering from Covid-19 are those who have not been vaccinated, and this is not an isolated trend. Forbes reports,

“For every 100,000 unvaccinated individuals, you could expect 2.03 of them, every day, to need to go to the hospital for a Covid-19 infection. Comparatively, for every 100,000 vaccinated individual, that same hospitalization rate is just 0.17: a risk reduction of 92%. Not only are you less likely to be infected at all if you’re vaccinated, but even if you get an infection, you’re far less likely to require hospitalization for your condition…if you’re unvaccinated as opposed to fully vaccinated. Across every relevant metric, the outcomes are undeniably worse.”

What about breakthrough infections?

There is concern that even those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 could still contract the virus as breakthrough cases have been reported. As of the writing of this article, about 208 million Americans have received at least one dose – more than 50% of the population has been fully vaccinated. A graphic from the NYT shows:

A study from Los Angeles County reported by Reuters shows, “3.2% of fully vaccinated individuals who were infected with the virus were hospitalized, just 0.5% were admitted to an intensive care unit and 0.2% were placed on a ventilator. Among the unvaccinated who fell ill, 7.5% were hospitalized, 1.5% were admitted to an intensive care unit and 0.5% required breathing support with a mechanical ventilator.” As summarized by my friend, even in cases where vaccinated folks do contract the virus, “Vaccinated people who experienced a breakthrough infections seem to be less contagious & contagious for a shorter period of time than if they had not been vaccinated.”

The Heart of the Matter

Getting a needle in the upper arm at Walgreens wasn’t sexy at all. And when I went back outside the cigarette guy wasn’t even there for me to tell him about it.

At the end of the day, our hospitals are not out of beds because people are shooting up churches. Our neighbors and our grandparents are not in much danger of being hit by a terrorist attack. But 1 in 500 of our neighbors are dying from Covid-19. There is really transmissible virus putting a lot of people in some real trouble. We are collectively pondering what to do about that – maybe you’ve already decided – maybe you aren’t sure – maybe heaven and hell together couldn’t get you to do anything. I believe with all my heart that to live means to put your faith in something. You can’t believe in nothing – you can’t have no faith – everybody puts their faith somewhere. And faith without works is dead, even if your faith isn’t afraid of anything. The decision I made to get vaccinated is what I believe was the right thing to do. Of course, some folks have real medical reasons why they shouldn’t be vaccinated, but most of us don’t.

I’m reminded of what Martin Luther (the Reformation guy) had to say when the Black Death (bubonic plague) fell upon a deeply divided civilization in 1517:

“[Some] are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are. They say that it is God’s punishment; if he wants to protect them he can do so without medicines or our carefulness. That is not trusting God but tempting him. . . .

No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places where your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city . . . Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid persons and places where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me, and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely, as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.”

Conclusion

We live in trying times my brothers and sisters – each time has its own perils and challenges. Here we find our own. I do hope that my experience and perspective shared above might be of some help to you in some small way. I don’t mean to condemn you if you are of another mind. I do hope you will take into account not only one but both of the questions I raised in this article. And I hope we follow the example of Christ and the words of Paul to look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

My good friend Jeff recently shared a podcast with me about bias (Learning How to See with Brian McLaren). In the first episode of the second season, they outline 13 kinds of bias which keep us from seeing well – I’ve listed a few I think are really relevant here. I think we do well to keep these in mind when we’re looking at tough issues.

---

• Confirmation Bias: it’s easy to see things that fit in with what I already think.
• Community Bias: It’s easy to see what my community sees, and very hard to see something my community does not see.
• Contact Bias: I see only what I have contact with.
• Incompetency Bias: I am unaware of how much I do not know and have not seen.
• Conspiracy Bias: I tend to believe stories that cast us as the hero or the victim, never stories where I am the villain or accomplice.
• Catastrophe Bias: I accept information about clear and present danger – I struggle to see danger that is coming slowly.

---

I hope we will all be faithful in loving our neighbors and loving God, whatever that looks like.

Amen, may it be so.

---

This is a revised version my capstone paper for the communication studies program at TFC. The full paper can be found here.

---

Workin’ Nine to Five

The workweek is often viewed as a prerequisite to the weekend. This is to say the workweek is a necessary, but somewhat contemptible, element of surviving 21^st century American life. For many, the hours between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. represent a sort of paid servitude in which they submit themselves to the whims of corporations so they can live the good life on weekends and holidays. The work done from Monday through Friday is often a kind of ritual we participate in as a tradeoff: daily labor in exchange for daily sustenance and the freedom and means to enjoy the weekend. Implicit in this paradigm is the conclusion that if we could bypass the ritual of the workweek and live in a constant state of “weekend,” we would experience a much more fulfilling existence. However, in order to understand the nine to five workweek and subsequent weekend from a biblical perspective, we must understand humanity’s purpose in culture and the true meaning of our work.

What Is Culture?

The essentialist notion suggests culture is merely the sum total of individuals melded together – that our identity is formed and then imposed upon culture in an impactful way. I don’t think this is a good way to understand the situation. Rather, culture is the space where our identity is worked out, where choices are made, and where meaning is constructed. Apart from culture we cannot know our identity. We cannot make sense of our existence apart from culture, for it is in the space of society that we negotiate, construct, and share meaning.

We cannot know or experience God apart from culture. In culture, we realize our purpose, become holy, and fulfill the task of being God’s image bearers. Culture is where humanity glorifies God by creating and ruling, and no attempt should be made to escape from the context of culture. Not only is this impossible, but to do so is to flee from the invitation to meet God.

[Christology] How Does Christ Demonstrate True Humanity?

            Christ comes to earth as the “seed” spoken of prophetically all the way back in Genesis 3. He fulfills the tasks given to humanity, and he does so as a man. Christ is the first human to truly and completely bear God’s image, thus he is the first true human since Adam. Throughout his life, Christ demonstrates the love of God, always yielding to the Father’s will and never committing a single act of sin. If it is true that Christ’s triumph was located in the space of culture and cultural activities (brushing his teeth, going to market, learning a trade etc.), then it must be true that these are activities inside the realm of the sacred work God intends for humanity to do.

[Ecclesiology] How Does the Church Function as True Humanity?

When Christ came to earth, he did not integrate with the flesh nor did he integrate into culture; he became flesh – he was born into culture. As the complete and perfect vision of what humanity ought to be, the divine Word took on flesh and lived the life of a human being familiar with he struggles and experience of humankind (Heb 4:15). Christ is not human in some abstract way, nor is his humanness limited to the pain he felt on the cross. For thirty-three years, Christ experienced an embodied life on earth and participated in the activities of culture. He learned to speak, learned to walk, learned what kinds of foods his particular set of tastebuds liked, developed a unique personality, made friends, went through puberty, etc. It was not in spite of these elements that Christ was able to demonstrate what true humanity looks like; rather, it was through them. And though he lived as true humanity, his own brother failed to recognize him as such, a testament to the regularity and normalcy which served as the context for his perfect life.

Tish Harrison Warren writes,

Like Christ, we inhabit cultural space, and this is the position in which we meet God. Like Jesus, the saints find themselves in the crucible of the everyday, situated inside familiar worlds with familiar routines and tasked with working out what it means to represent God faithfully. It is in the minute-by-minute actions and choices of the everyday that we construct our identity, that we lay claim to a status quo, that what will be normal is brought into existence. Whether this reality will be one of kindness or exploitation is decided in the space of the everyday, because it is in the everyday that the self works out what and who it will be.

Warren continues,

A sign hangs on the wall in a New Monastic Christian community house: “Everyone wants a revolution. No one wants to do the dishes.”… I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith. But it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith – the making the bed, doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small – that God’s transformation takes root and grows.

(Warren, 36).

Warren’s point is that we can glorify God in the space of culture not in spite of, rather because of, our embodiment. However, it is only when we understand our bodies as instruments of worship that we are able to give the whole of our lives in service to God. Too often, we fear the worship we are called to can only take place in what we’ve deemed to be special or spiritualized contexts. There is a messiness and uncertainty about parts of our lives which often leads us to understand only certain pieces of our existence as potential contexts for worship.

[Streams of Meaning] How Do We Make Sense of Our Lives?

Within Evangelical Christianity, there is a prevalent, and often implicit, principle by which all of life is organized. This principle organized life into two streams: one sacred and the other secular. From this perspective, every action, artifact, event, and person can be understood as existing in either the one stream or the other. A clear line of delineation separates the holy from the profane, the Christian from the worldly, the sacred from the secular. This creates a dichotomy and envisions effective believers as those who build bridges between the sacred and the secular in hopes of impacting culture. Implicit in the framing of the Christian’s place in the world is the understanding that to be sacred is to be apart from culture – that to be kingdom minded is to move actions, artifacts, events, and persons from one stream to the other, secular into sacred.

“Secular” spaces are viewed as places to be won over into (or influenced by) the “sacred” sphere. This framework often leads us to be suspicious of creative, artistic endeavors which aren’t done for the express purpose of evangelism and perhaps why films like God’s Not Dead, though a bit cheesy, are so appealing. It’s easy to see understand owning Atheist professors as God-honoring, perhaps it takes a bit more faith to see weeding a garden, painting a portrait, or going to a concert as such. So Christians have often sought to create outside the context of “the world.” The word Christian is a moniker for supposedly non-cultural creative endeavors. Movies, music, conferences, consumer items, businesses, etc. are created in hopes of being a bridge between us and them, church and world, sacred and secular. Perhaps a better, and more biblical, model is to understand all of creation, that is every inch of culture, as a potential dwelling place for God. This would mean the Christian’s task is to institute the order of God wherever she finds herself. The two-stream model gives way to the understanding that God did not give humankind only a small piece of the world to inhabit and rule.

The command to exercise creativity and authority is not limited to “Christian” spaces if all of creation is a potential dwelling place, a temple, for God. Our obedience to God makes present the kingdom of heaven and moves towards the restoration of relationships between God, humanity, and creation. Yet the potential for this work is severely stunted when we try to impact culture from an understanding in which the church exists outside of and then moves into culture.

[The Workweek] How Can Vocation Be Understood as Temple and Work as Worship?

The 40-hour work week must be understood as a space in which we worship God and in which we become holy. All the tasks which await the worker are opportunities to glorify the God who made humankind with the ability to create, to arrange the chaotic cosmos into an ordered world, to take an acre and make it a garden, to take raw data and draw a conclusion. Warren writes, “We grow in holiness in the honing of our specific vocation. We can’t be holy in the abstract. Instead, we become a holy blacksmith or a holy mother or a holy physician or a holy systems analyst. We seek God in and through our particular vocation and place in life” (Warren, 94). Whether we find ourselves as mothers, architects, teachers, ditch diggers, or mathematicians, the workweek must be understood, in faith, as a cultural ritual in which we joyfully participate for the purpose of meeting God and offering him our work as worship.

Martin Luther said, “God himself will milk cows through him whose vocation it is.”

      I remember listening to Mike Donehey say with an air of profundity between songs at a Tenth Avenue North concert that he was not a musician who happened to be a Christian, but rather a Christian who happened to be a musician. Warren is suggesting that we cannot become properly “Christian”, which is to say like Christ, outside of embodied experience. We cannot become rightly Christian before we become musicians – it is only in working out what it means to be a Christ-like musician, or a carpenter like Christ, or a metalworker in the image of God that we can become Christian, that God will make us holy. We are intended to live lives of worship grounded in cultural space. Quips like Donehey’s, while perhaps helpful in some way, suggest implicitly that one can develop an essential identity in Christ and then impose it upon the outside world. However, Warren’s approach is preferred as it is able to give a much fuller, more holistic account of the everyday. Whereas Donehey’s Christianity comes before his cultural vocation, Warren’s doesn’t exist without it.

In Exodus 31, there is a connection between being filled with God’s Spirit and being able to do vocational work well.

See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. (Exod 31:2-5)

In this passage it seems being spiritual and being vocational are intertwined. It was precisely in these acts of crafting that Bezalel demonstrated wisdom, understanding, and communion with the Spirit of God. Yet many Christians are only able to draw a connection between vocation and communion with God, or worship, if the work is explicitly church related. In this way, we default to the two-stream paradigm of some work being sacred and some being secular, and we miss out on understanding all the labor of our vocation as an offering of worship.

When we lack the faith to believe God might receive the worship we offer him through our ordinary work, we resort to other conceptions of the workweek. Tim Keller notes some popular options we tend to choose:

These conceptions of vocational worship may have their place, but in them the potential for understanding work as worship and culture as temple is diminished. The faithful Christian teaching holds that all work which is not immoral or unethical is part of God’s kingdom mission, his plan to redeem all things. If the Lord is serious about redeeming all things, then there is no task which cannot be understood as kingdom work. Warren writes,

When we use our bodies for their intended purpose – in gathered worship, raising our hands or singing or kneeling, or, in our average day, sleeping or savoring a meal or jumping or hiking or running or having sex with our spouse or kneeling in prayer or nursing a baby or digging a garden – it is glorious, as glorious as a great cathedral being used just as its architect had dreamt it would be.

Warren, 45

We must not be content with any eschatological conception of work which relegates activities into realms of sacred and secular based simply on spiritualization. If Christ really became a man born of woman, and if he really did rise from the dead, then believers can take to the world and joyfully bring their God-given creativity and authority to bear in the cultural context of the everyday. We can be confident the ordinary tasks of everyday existence are acts of worship if we will only offer them.

[Sabbath] How Can the Weekend Be Understood as True Rest?

            Life in the 21^st century west is governed by cyclical rhythms. Most of these rhythms are drawn from the natural order: the four changing seasons signaled by the weather, 365-day years signaled by the earth’s revolution around the sun, 30 day months signaled by the moon’s orbit of the earth, etc. However, there is no clear indication from the natural world which would signal a seven-day week (or a two day weekend). This rhythm is an arbitrary social construction which, in Judeo-Christian thought, originates from the creation account in which God works six days and rests on the seventh. In 1926, Henry Ford decided to give employees Saturday and Sunday off, and he instituted the forty-hour work week. “An altruistic move in part, it also gave his workers the opportunity to spend their down time buying consumer products, keeping cash circulating through the economy” (BBC, 2019). It wasn’t long before the weekend caught on nationally and became a defining element of American life.

A prevailing conception of the contemporary workweek/weekend paradigm understands the forty hours of work from Monday to Friday as a barrier to the good life. The weekend is the ideal – it is where we revel in enjoyment, freedom, and leisure while the stress of the next workweek looms. From this perspective the workweek is a barrier, and the weekend is a destination. This desire to escape the workweek ritual is evidenced by the willingness of the working class to play the lottery. Millions of dollars are spent each year in hopes of hitting the jackpot – this incredible sum of money is sought as a guarantee that the workweek will no longer be a necessary part of the American experience.

            For the believer who understands the workweek as a site of worship, exhausting though it may be, the weekend can be understood as a time of rest, reflection, and anticipation. Rather than an escape from the meaningless and mundane, the weekend can be viewed as Sabbath rest. Here, there is space for reflecting on the work of the previous week, regaining strength for tasks to come, and looking forward to the sacred tasks which are in view. In this way the weekend and the workweek are not disjointed, opposed realities but elements of a sacred rhythm. The weekend from this perspective is no longer the ideal, rather it is a celebration of what God has allowed us to do as well as preparation for the work he has planned for us. Congregants can gather together on Sunday as brothers and sisters in the process of being made holy through their vocations and celebrate the presence of the kingdom manifested in their workweek. They can also understand their Sunday (or Monday or Tuesday…) afternoon at the lake or in the woods as worship.

Conclusion

If any action cannot be understood as a sacred, kingdom oriented, God-glorifying task, then either it is sinful or the framework for understanding that action is insufficient.

Our theology of culture must be able to account for every act performed by the Christian in freedom as a fulfillment of the task given to humanity, provided that act is not unethical or immoral. As such, every interaction with a coworker, every email, every purchase, every step, every breath is an opportunity to be the image of God – not by spiritualizing every interaction – but by choosing the way of Jesus moment by moment. The vast majority of Christ’s life is not recorded in Scripture. Yet we know he was faithful in every regard; in every cultural activity he embodied faithfulness. With this in view, we can say with confidence: if God has tasked humanity with bearing his image through creativity and authority, and if the Spirit of God has set free from bondage those who are in Christ, and if Jesus himself exemplified true humanity by living within the context of embodied experience on earth, then every moment may be sacred. Every floor tile may be holy ground. Every action may be one which expands the order of the kingdom. Every inch of creation may be a temple for the Lord God.

---