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

of erosion. Mennonite Brethren piety looks more like popular evangelical-'save me Lord and make me feel good, but ask little from me/'22 He pointed to the finding that only forty-two percent of Mennonite Brethren believe that Jesus is normative for daily living. It was his observation that the profile raised profound 308 A CALL TO COMMITMENT questions about the Anabaptist-Mennonite identity of Menno- nite Brethren. "The forces of religious group acculturation progressively pulled Mennonite Brethren into popular Ameri- can evangelicalism. " This acculturation has meant a shift from a discipleship centered understanding of the faith to a belief centered understanding of Christian faith. Consequently the profile revealed high orthodoxy/funda- mentalism scores and eroding piety/Anabaptist-Mennonite Brethren scale scores. The profile suggests the Mennonite Brethren Church is at a critical moment in history. The trends identified in the profile point toward the loss of a particular theological identity in popular American cultural religion.23 Delbert Wiens, a professor at Fresno Pacific College, saw in the profiles a weakening of Mennonite Brethren congrega- tional life. The congregation is more fragile and demands less of its members. It is a more "contractual" and a less "oiganic" form of association. Members join a congregation for fel- lowship and support. But, unlike more organic "tribal" or "ethnic" communities, it cannot insist on shaping all as- pects of a member's life. There is a tacit "contract" re- garding what the individual and the group owe to each other. Some aspects of our lives are not included in that contract and are not submitted to the group's direction. In general, political, economic (and some moral) disci- plines are increasingly held to be outside the church's ju- risdiction; they intrude into what is sensed to belong to the sphere of the individual.24 The three persons who administered the 1982 profile compiled their views of the implications emerging from this 309 A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH study of Mennonite Brethren faith and practice. Their find- ings, which were subsequently affirmed by the data in the 1989 profile, The Mennonite Mosaic, are reprinted here in their entirety. IMPLICATIONS OF THE MEMBERSHIP PROFILES (J.B. Toews, Abram Konrad, Alvin Dueck) We present a series of conclusions that have emerged from "examining ourselves." From these conclusions we draw some possible directions and specific implications. At best, the implications may serve as suggestions that will challenge us to greater faithfulness in our discipleshi