A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

gospel degenerates to neo-paganism. "Urban culture today has more affinity with the pluralism and paganism of Athens than with the homoge- neous religious heritage of Jerusalem."15 A PEOPLE WITHOUT A THEOLOGY OF CHANGE Mennonite Brethren, bred in a rigid culture of traditional- ism, have not developed a biblical theology of change- Their birth was a protest against what they saw as the corruption of Anabaptism.16 Faith in the Mennonite colonies had become domesticated and integrated with a particular ethnic culture in which Mennonite identity was based not on a personal rela- tionship with Christ, but along bloodlines. "This marriage of faith to a particular culture had a disastrous consequence for the life and ministry of the church/ said John A. Toews, adding that the Russian Mennonites were not the only ones to succumb to this temptation.17 Throughout their history, Men- nonites have, for various reasons, clung to the status quo and 210 WRESTLING WITH MODERNITY resisted cultural change with great determination. Earlier, in Prussia, they retained their Dutch language and culture for two hundred years before fully adopting the German of their "new" homeland. In Russia their economic, civil, educational and religious autonomy gave them a static environment in which change did not seem necessary or desirable. In North America they managed to remain relatively isolated in loca- tions such as Mountain Lake and Bingham Lake in Minnesota; Winkler and Steinbach in Manitoba; and Herbert, Hepburn and Waldheim in Saskatchewan. With considerable control over their outside influences, they gained little experience in coping with change. Other Mennonite groups experienced the same cultural patterns as the Mennonite Brethren. Yet it appears that the changes of the mid-twentieth century have affected Mennonite Brethren identity more than others. Sociologist Calvin Redekop has addressed the phenome- non that renewal movements tend to assume that the true essence of faith or relationship with God is detached from a historical context and is abstractly personal and experiential. His case study on the Evangelical Mennonite Brethren Church offers persuasive evidence for this position.18 In a later study of "Religious Renewal Movements in Search of a Past," Redekop observes that identity loss in re- newal movement (as an example he refers to the Mennonite Brethren and the Evangelical Mennonite Brethren) stems from an inability to deal with the rejection of one ideological tradi- tion (ethos) and the subsequent replacing of it with another. He points out that both the Eva