Mennonite Weekly Review

Jonah is the only book of the Bible that ends with a question. God rebukes a washed-up and annoyed prophet.

Stephen Kriss is a teacher, writer, pastor, student and follower of Jesus living in Philadelphia.

It’s been 30 months since the waters of the muddy Mississippi spilled into the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans, lower than sea level and almost surrounded by water, is a city known for frivolity and celebration.

It’s a city most unlike us pragmatic and pietistic Mennonites. Other than a long-term presence from Mennonite Central Committee and a relatively new community of Central American Mennonites called Amor Viviente, we don’t often see ourselves within its images of partying, loud music, spicy food, poverty and religious syncretism.

Pam Nath, a professor at Bluffton (Ohio) University, is in the city these days through MCC, incarnating an Anabaptist presence along with the Mennonite Disaster Service teams.

It’s not an easy task. It’s been tough to make connections between Mennonite heartlands and the struggle on the delta. Nath is living the uncomfortable presence of a prophet.

The Louisiana Music Factory in the city’s French Quarter sells T-shirts imprinted with the words, “New Orleans Matters.” I’ve been wondering: Does New Orleans matter to Mennonites?

In the U.S. Mennonite experiment, cities haven’t seemed to matter much. They’ve been locales for missionary zealots to take a message to the urban “others.” And we’ve been glad for good stories of Mennonite converts who’ve come to our way of the gospel, opening possibilities for Mennonite multiculturalism.

Still, we’ve largely remained unchanged and unmoved while acknowledging the successes of multiethnic congregations from Philadelphia to Chicago to Los Angeles.

Author Digby Baltzell compares the Puritan perspective on Boston with the Quaker outlook on Philadelphia. The Quakers’ inner-light, peace-driven experience cultivated a tolerant, individualized spirituality. Puritanical Boston upheld a care for the whole of the city for the sake of the reign of God.

Baltzell’s assertion looks like a Mennonite diagnosis as well. We have not sought a path of sustained transformative engagement in U.S. cities.