BACK TO MAIN PAGE ...
FAST FORWARD ...
Conclusion: The Call, the Self, and the Caller
I originally set out to investigate, from a pastoral perspective, how Mennonite women missionaries understood their calling, how it was related to Anabaptist/Mennonite theological and mission-historical distinctives, and to what extent it was a support factor in their journey to the mission field and back ‘home.’ 1
In order to find the answers, I listened to the women’s stories as recorded orally and in archival form, and to the way in which they were told. At times, the oral and the archival material seemed to provide two different accounts—largely because they were aimed at two distinct audiences. One was the official mission community, in the form of the mission administration and the recipients of circular newsletters, and the other was a ‘sympathetic’ interviewer researching the pastoral aspects of life on the mission field. Consequently, one set of records tells the official story, and the other a more intimate one.
This means that they have to be ‘heard’ differently and on a different level. In the official correspondence, the women seldom revealed their more private emotions. The stories were also different, however, because the archival material often reflected the missionaries’ thoughts in anticipation of their service abroad, while the interviews were mostly granted retrospectively, and often at a time when the women were already out of the ‘system,’ and felt they could be more open. The interviewees also had the added advantage of having had time to reflect on their faith journey, on their initial sense of call, and on their mission experiences.
The first part of the research question, as to how the women understood their calling and how this relates to the Anabaptist/Mennonite theological and mission-historical distinctives, is informed by critical variables. A significant aspect of the missionaries’ undestanding of the divine call is encapsulated in the distinctive Anabaptist/Mennonite call to discipleship and the call to be in the world but not of it. This understanding of the divine call had significantly shaped their socio-religious profile from an early age, although not every missionary experienced this in the same way. The differences in experience are largely due to the theological environment, and to the historical era in which they grew up. A majority of women were raised in Mennonite communities, with a strong fundamentalist-revivalist overlay, and a minority in a ‘traditional’ Mennonite environment that had been influenced by the ‘Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision’—an internal movement that sought to reintroduce the original Anabaptist distinctives into Mennonite communities that had lost some important aspects of their theological heritage.
In spite of these theological differences, missionaries raised in both traditions were strongly influenced by the call to discipleship, and by the call to be in the world but not of it, inter alia through their religio-cultural values. Based on the call to discipleship, these values included a strong sense that the Christian life had to be lived out in practical daily commitment. This form of discipleship was costly, and could include suffering for the sake of the call. High on its agenda was a distinct service mentality, which expressed itself inter alia through hospitality, selflessly reaching out to the less fortunate, etc. This spirit of service was particularly encouraged in women.
Many missionaries also vividly remembered childhood stories of forebears who migrated in the tradition of the Abrahamic call, forsaking the securities of a stable existence because of their loyalty to Christ. Those growing up in a traditional Anabaptist/ Mennonite environment directly connected these values with Christ’s call: ‘Follow me.’ They usually felt that they had grown into faith without the distinct personal conversion experience which was the norm for their counterparts who had been influenced by the fundamentalist-revivalist movement. They also viewed service and living a Christ-like life as witnessing to one’s faith, while those from a revival background practised a more overt and open evangelism.
The missionaries’ early spiritual profile was further shaped by the call to be in the world but not of it. They grew up with related religio-cultural values that had an ascetic perfectionist slant—such as simple living, producing work of a high standard, learning to cope independently, and a strong sense of responsibility. In addition, the call to be in the world but not of it had come to mean living an exile community life that largely centered on the church, with a strong sense of the importance of public and private worship practices.
Theologically, the call to discipleship, and the call to be in the world but not of it, are underpinned by distinctive Anabaptist hermeneutic principles and theological perspectives. The hermeneutic principles are mainly expressed in the tension between the inner and the outer, the spirit and the law. In its historic development, the trend shifted in favor of the law. This tendency is re-emphasized by the Anabaptist near-literal reading of scripture, with the Sermon on the Mount as the canon within the Canon.
The theological distinctives that underpin the call to discipleship are their functional Christology and anthropology, which have at their core the medieval/mendicant concept of Christ the king as the lamb, the symbol of sacrificial service. The disciple follows Christ’s call by obeying the king through following the lamb. The theological distinctives underpinning the call to be in the world but not of it are an ontological Christology and optimistic regenerative anthropology which, based on strong emphasis on Christ’s divine nature, set high standards for the Christian walk of the disciple. These high standards are further entrenched by the traditional Anabaptist two-step soteriology which stipulates that the disciple’s spiritual re-birth has to be authenticated by the fruit they produce in their lives. In addition, the Anabaptists traditionally interpret the sacraments symbolically: replacing the focus on merciful, redemptive divine intervention by grace with an emphasis on the worthiness and commitment of those who partake in the symbol.
As indicated earlier, the women’s understanding of the call was not only shaped by their Anabaptist/Mennonite heritage, which was lived out in various forms and degrees in their early environment, but also by the era in which they were raised and served as missionaries. Large parts of the Mennonite community had been affected by the 19th century mission revival of the Western Protestant churches. This understanding of missions was in its nature Protestant/revivalist, and not Anabaptist/Mennonite. It was also at the root of the founding of the CIM/AIMM mission organization at the beginning of the 20th century. It was characterized by a strong Sendungsbewusstsein, and had at its core a burden for the lost.
Further, the women's understanding of the call included, from its inception, practical action—particularly in the area of education and health care. This interpretation of the call opened up to women extraordinary opportunities for ministry, which normally were closed to them in their home churches. At least in theory, women missionaries were recruited on the same terms as their male counterparts. This is illustrated by the fact that, according to the application forms, they, too, were expected to have a personal sense of call. They joined mission service for the same reasons as did the men, namely to evangelize and win souls for Christ. This they intended to do largely by practising their profession.
While the mission spirit of CIM/AIMM was inspired by Protestant revivalist theology, it was the impression of the missionaries that, based on their Anabaptist/Mennonite heritage, they differed from missionaries of other denominations in their mission praxis. They felt that they were more motivated to learn the local language, and to engage with the African people on a more equal level in general. Over time, this servant attitude played an increasingly important part in the understanding of the missionary call in Protestant missions as a whole, but especially among Mennonites.
For them, this development was additionally underpinned by the interpretation of Christ’s call to discipleship, on which the ‘Return to the Anabaptist Vision’ movement had put a renewed focus. The new interpretation of the sense of call opened up the withdrawn Mennonite community to the African culture, with which they identified because of such common values as simple living, and the importance of relationships. It had the added effect that those who felt called were less bound by geography than those had been with a more traditional (fundamentalist-revivalist) sense of call, because discipleship can be practised anywhere.
The Sense of Call Revisited
Once they were confronted with the realities on the mission field, the women found many of their original expectations severely challenged. Married women especially felt a burden of having to choose between compromising what they saw as their calling, or compromising their roles as wives and especially as mothers. The single missionaries, who had to face the mission challenges on their own, found that the mission administration often dealt with them on the assumption that they were more flexible than their married counterparts.
In addition, both married and unmarried women missionaries usually had to practice their professions under exceptionally taxing and frustrating circumstances. These included a constant awareness that they could not meet the great needs they encountered, their relative lack of experience in their field of work, etc.—and in spite of their best efforts the results of their work were often disappointing. They were further confronted with language challenges, health issues, and rudimentary living conditions. What sometimes might have seemed heroic or romantic from the home perspective turned out to be intensely challenging realities on the mission field. The older generation had to live under this kind of pressure for an uninterrupted four years at least before they embarked on their first furlough.
In many respects, the missionaries responded to these challenges with the socio-religious coping mechanisms they had absorbed in their home culture. These were based on a strong sense of commitment, and on the maxim of giving much and asking for little. As a result of the unexpectedly demanding conditions on the mission field, and their particular way of responding to them, a great number of women suffered severe emotional trauma and exhaustion—to the extent that, at one point, they accepted nervous breakdowns during their fourth year of service as the norm.
The generational shift that occurred in the women’s understanding of their missionary call over time—replacing their early Sendungsbewusstwein with an emphasis on servanthood, integration, and identification with the mission churches, and a greater appreciation of the culture of the mission country—placed a different high demand on the human factor in the mission endeavor. Overall, the missionaries again responded according to their early socio-religious conditioning with commitment—at high cost to themselves. This, too, placed a heavy burden on the women—so heavy in fact that in many cases it turned out to be too taxing, either for the missionaries themselves or for their families, particularly their children.
Burden or Blessing?
It was my original position that a sense of a divine call would act as a support factor for women in their cultural re-location experience. Through my investigation, I have come to the conclusion that this original hypothesis is only partly true.
It was almost always true for the initial re-location phase both to Africa and back ‘home,’ where the sense of call acted as a strong motivational factor to deal with the challenges of the new situation. But in the long-term, the sense of call was in many cases both a burden and a blessing. It acted as a support factor insofar as it gave the missionaries a sense of assurance that they were where they were supposed to be, and generally doing what they were supposed to do. This knowledge supported them in difficult times, helping them to ‘super-center’2 on the caller as a crucial extra reference point in their mission situation.
However, the sense of call often also turned against those who felt called. This is evident inter alia from the fact that so many of them, including some of their children, suffered severe emotional trauma during their time of service. The destructive aspects of the sense of call were usually connected to the fact that the women approached their missionary call with certain unrealistic views of the divine caller, of themselves, and of their mandate. Such unrealistic views were—particularly in the long term—severely challenged by the realities of mission service. This usually led the women into crises. In the process they had to readjust critical parts of their sense of call.
This required some fundamental changes (traditionally understood as repentance), and the remodeling of their sense of call, in order to survive as individuals and as missionaries. This readjustment usually did not come about through one single event, but rather through a process that repeated itself in various forms, to differing degrees, and at different points of their missionary journey. Occasionally, it even happened that those who seemingly sailed through their initial re-location and through their long-term experience suddenly were confronted with such a crisis right at the end of their missionary journey as they had to re-locate back ‘home.’
In Anticipation and in Retrospect
There were significant commonalities in how the women had perceived God, the divine caller, in their youth. Among the most common concepts were the God who is ‘not to be trifled with,’ the divine taskmaster—and, based on how they experienced their fathers, a God who was protective and benevolent yet remote. This remoteness was underpinned by the Anabaptist/Mennonite ontological Christology, which particularly emphasized Christ’s divinity, and by their functional Christology, which tended to set unattainable goals for the disciple. These concepts of the divine caller were further related to the fundamentalist-revivalist tradition.
The women’s view of the caller expanded over time, although some of the early concepts, such as the holy God, or the God who punishes and rewards and demands much, often remained in place. By the time the women filled in their application forms for missions, many—especially of the older generation—had a dichotomous view of God. On the one hand, they displayed great trust in God their friend, who would provide for them even in the most challenging mission situations. On the other hand, they retained their concept of the remote holy God in their doctrinal statements.
In the course of their missionary service, and often triggered by personal crises, many had their view of God significantly enlarged. The God who, for many, had originally been mainly a motivational force in their sense of call, who demanded and deserved their full commitment, obedience and sacrifice, and who had in some cases turned into an object of intellectual study, often became the God who resurrects and sustains frail humans as themselves, who have exhausted themselves in their efforts to obey his call.
On the mission field, their view of Christ came more into focus than it had been under the comparatively less stressful situation at home. At times, women fitted him into their overall demanding understanding of their divine call. This sometimes resulted in their committing themselves to more than they could handle, believing that God would give them the necessary strength to deal with the excessive demands. This was the case both for the traditional as well as for the new generation missionaries.
The women had to find out that they had to change this view of the caller, because, against their expectations, they did not receive the strength they needed for their unreasonable demands on themselves. As a result, they had to admit defeat in their unrealistic view of the demanding caller, and come to know him not only as savior and role model, but also as the comforting and healing redeemer, who was there for those who had failed.
In their youth, they had mainly referred to Christ’s role as savior in connection with their conversion experience—at which point he had forgiven their general sinfulness, which for them often had a connotation of fear—the fear of hell and eternal condemnation. In contrast, their ‘conversion experiences’ on the mission field were often characterized by an acute insight into the inadequacy and frailty of their human condition, based on concrete situations, and the fear factor was replaced by a renewed holy respect for God, yet also by a very real experience of his forgiveness, mercy, and love in Christ.
For their sense of call to be a true support factor, the women had to realize that the mission endeavor did not depend on their superhuman efforts, and that no matter how hard they worked, they were unable to effect the divine changes on the mission field which they longed for. Instead, they had to learn to step back from any over-committedness, and assign to the Holy Spirit the role of the true missionary—as many had done in theory in the doctrinal part of their application forms.
The Self
For the women, their mission journey was only a part of their overall life’s journey—although an important one. They were children of their times—born into certain socio-religious circumstances which significantly shaped their identity. Based on their Anabaptist/Mennonite heritage, they grew up as God-fearing, capable, conscientious, and self-giving individuals with a rich spiritual life, who had been taught to live by high standards. As mostly rural women, they were not spoilt by an easy life, having been taught to make the best of all circumstances.
Before entering missionary service, many were involved in leadership roles in Christian activities such as Sunday school, mission prayer circles, vacation Bible schools, etc. They were good organizers, were used to hard work, able to make something out of very little, good cooks—all qualities they had generally learnt from their mothers. They usually had a solid but not exceptional education, which could include tertiary studies at a Bible college. Most of them had learnt a traditional female profession, such as nursing or teaching.
At the same time, they were devoted family women. Most, though capable in themselves, led traditional marriages and viewed their husbands as the head of their relationship. At the same time, some major decisions, for example the question of entering missionary service, were made jointly by many couples. Only a few women felt that, in this regard, they needed to submit to their husbands on the basis of the biblical Ruth’s motto: ‘Where you go I will go.’ Some women commented on the positive synergy between themselves and their husbands in building up mission ministries, and how, once they returned home, they realized that this had largely been the glue that had kept them together.
Beside the many commonalities, it has to be kept in mind, though, that the women were more than the mere product of their environment. Each one was an individual on her own personal life journey. Even under difficult mission circumstances, most of them succeeded in building up strong ministries of their own in teaching, health care, women’s work, translation work, accounting, devising leadership and mission strategies. At the same time, many women learned with much pain that they were not who they had thought they were. As they confronted their human limits and frailty—concepts that are not highly developed either in Mennonite theology or in the revivalist-fundamentalist tradition—they were forced to reassess their view of themselves as being limitlessly capable, self-sufficient, and able to give. In the process, they had to learn to entrust themselves to divine resurrection.
The Call as a Support Factor
In listening to the women’s stories, it became clear that, in order to prove or disprove my original hypothesis—that a clear sense of call was likely to act as a significant support factor in their cultural re-location experience—their cultural re-location has to be divided into three main phases. These are
The initial phase,
The long-term phase, and finally
Their return ‘home.’
The women had to negotiate each phase separately, yet at the same time they were all related, and in the end formed one meta-narrative. If the women succeeded in constructively negotiating all three phases, then their individual stories, including their suffering, disappointments, and failures, were overarched by a positive meta-narrative.
This does not mean that those who relocated successfully did not speak, often emotionally, about their difficult and painful experiences, which included significant initial challenges in making the transition from one culture to another. These entailed language learning, coping with very different and often difficult practical living conditions, an unaccustomed climate, and having to re-build a support system. In the long term, they often also included a lack of role definition, role overload, illness, loneliness, seeing their children suffer severely under the strain of mission life, feelings of guilt, depression, and nervous breakdowns.
However, those who successfully negotiated all three phases of their cultural re-location did not make these events the main focus of their stories. Even if one takes into consideration that retrospectively they might have ‘sanitized’ their memories to some degree, it is evident that, after having described them, they moved on to the positive aspects of their overall experience. These positive points they often described with great enthusiasm, dwelling on them, describing them in terms of having ‘loved it,’ having ‘enjoyed it,’ having derived ‘great joy and satisfaction’ from it. Additional signs that someone had re-located successfully included them having acquired at least one local language, and having developed successful relationships with the local population.
Their stories further revealed that those who did not succeed in their initial re-location to Africa also did not succeed in their long-term re-location. They were usually hesitant to speak about their entire experience—often giving very short, monotone answers, and seemingly preferring to stay away from the topic altogether. It is usually more difficult to gauge from the official documents if the missionaries had actually re-located successfully or not. However, the principle of the meta-narrative applies there, too.
Next, we have to ask the question: Did the women have a personal sense of call, and how did the presence or absence of a personal sense of call affect the women’s ability to culturally re-locate? Their stories indicate that, with regard to having a personal sense of call, the women fell into three main categories:
There were those with a clear personal sense of call. This included all the single missionaries.
There were those who lacked a clear personal sense of call, but substituted their lack of call by integrating themselves into their husbands’ sense of call, and
There were those who followed their husbands into missions against strong, persisting internal resistance.
Of the great majority of those women who touched on the subject, those with a clear sense of call negotiated their initial re-location successfully.3 The case study does, however, document the experience of one single woman with a very strong sense of call, confirmed by her spiritual elders, who against everybody’s expectations did not succeed in re-locating successfully.
Those who adopted their husband’s sense of call by proxy succeeded in their initial re-location, if more slowly and less enthusiastically than those with a personal sense of call. Those without a personal sense of call who followed their husbands against strong internal resistance survived their initial re-location but never really re-located internally. This is inter alia evident from the way in which they were perceptibly more reluctant to speak about the topic in a personal way—and from the far more negative focus of their meta-narrative. On the mission field, their inability to re-locate successfully could manifest itself, for example, in a failure to acquire the local language, which in turn kept them from successful relationships with the local population. Usually they also failed to find a truly satisfying niche for themselves in the mission endeavor.
What I did not anticipate as I embarked on my research is that the same mechanism also came into play on the women’s return journey ‘home.’ Those who returned ‘home’ for the sake of their families, or because of political unrest in their mission country, for example, found it considerably more difficult to re-integrate into their home culture, and to find a place for themselves, than those who returned with their internal consent. In many cases, their eventual successful re-integration entailed a marked process of individualization, especially from their husbands.
The Call as Law or Grace
Reflecting back on what I have sought to do in this book, which in many respects has become a personal journey in itself, I am left with one major impression. It finds its origin in my original reading of Kingsolver’s powerful work Poisonwood Bible—for what precisely was it that bothered me in that text? Was it the obvious caricature of the husband missionary, the harshness, even cruelty of the portrait painted? Or was it the phenomenon of a missionary wife who was forced to sink or swim without any sense at all of being called even by proxy—for what missionary society would really sponsor this?
Perhaps both of these bothered me equally. But above all, it was that, amidst the inevitable exaggerations of the text, necessary to achieve its objectives, there was such a powerful exposé of the problem of the missionary call gone wrong, and the damage it did to husband, wife, and family, and to the African community where they lived and worked. In essence, what went wrong, I would suggest, was a failure to understand the call in terms of grace and love rather than commandment, law, and human effort. There was nothing graceful about the husband’s call, nothing that helped to redeem the situation in which both he and his wife found themselves. In fact, the call turned against the one who felt called, and in turn against his family.
What Kingsolver describes is remote from what I discovered in my research. This is just not how the missionaries, husbands and wives, really experienced the call or expressed their vocation. It is, as I have suggested, a caricature. Yet in that caricature lies the germ of an important truth that does, in fact, resonate with what I have discovered in the course of my research. That is the danger that the missionary call, which can be such a source of strength, can also become a burden.
And, to take this one step further, the problem lies precisely where it does in the Poisonwood Bible—namely, that the call takes on the character of obligation, and loses its quality as grace. This danger is not more problematic for Mennonite missionaries than it is for Protestants, but it is perhaps more likely to become one given the factors that I have described and explored. Might this be a reminder of one of the dividing lines that separated the magisterial Reformers (Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin) from the Anabaptists—namely, the relationship of law and grace? Theologically speaking, I believe this to be the case, and that the explorations of this book point in this direction.
A lack of a sense of call, either as a specific sense of call to mission, or as a more general sense of call to discipleship, and to live counter-culturally as citizens of the kingdom of God, posed a severe hurdle for women in their cultural re-location. A sense of call per se did not guarantee a successful re-location experience either. It only acted as a support factor if it was primarily understood as grace and not as works.
BACK TO MAIN PAGE ...
FAST FORWARD ...
1I put the word home in quotation marks, because on their return to North America most missionaries initially felt like strangers in their former home environment.
2Cf. Paul Tournier in the Introduction.
3One of the limitations of this study is that, except for one case, it does not include missionaries who were unsuccessful in negotiating their initial relocation phase. However, it quotes observations by senior missionaries that indicate that not everyone who had a clear sense of call survived the initial stage.
No comments:
Post a Comment