By Celeste Kennel-Shank
Mennonite Weekly Review

	Norman Ewert and Sharon Coolidge Ewert, faculty at Wheaton (Ill.) College, introduce guest Mark Husbands before “Mennonite dinner,” a weekly meal and discussion at their home. — Photo by Celeste Kennel-Shank/MWR
		Evangelicals a diverse moment Evangelicals have likely been the most talked-about group among U.S. Christians during recent years. The mass media puzzle over them. Politicians court them, with Democrats hoping to woo more of a group that has been a largely reliable Republican supporter. Fellow Christians are sometimes ready to claim their own definition of being evangelical, while others are willing to give up the term. “Evangelical” is a difficult word to pin down. According to the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton, a helpful contemporary definition is that of British historian David Bebbington. It includes emphases on conversion, reverence for the Bible, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and sharing the gospel. Evangelicals could also be seen as a movement or style of church tradition, the Institute suggests. “As a result, groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella — demonstrating just how diverse the movement really is,” according to the Institute Web site. A third definition of “evangelical” is a member of one of several organizations that formed after World War II, the Institute wrote. The western Chicago suburbs are the center of many of those organizations today, including the Billy Graham Center on Wheaton’s campus and Christianity Today International, which publishes a variety of magazines and church resources, in a nearby town. — Celeste Kennel-Shank

They also bring an Anabaptist influence to Wheaton, where many of the nation’s most rigorous evangelical Protestant academics study and teach.

Wheaton employs about a dozen members of nearby Lombard Mennonite Church in the western Chicago suburbs. The church, in turn, attracts students from the college.

Todd Friesen, pastor of Lombard Mennonite, said Wheaton students have insightful critiques.

One of their challenges is for Mennonites to share the gospel more, citing evangelism as part of Anabaptist history.

“Early Anabaptism was a strongly evangelical movement,” he said.

Having Wheaton students at LMC changes both the students and the church, which has a dozen Wheaton faculty and staff among its 120 members, and about 10 students during an average Sunday attendance of 165.

Students often come after seeing poverty in the city or internationally, and want a church that integrates faith and social concerns, he said.

“We talk here about whole-life discipleship,” he said, as well as emphasizing that the primary allegiance of Christians is to God and not any nation. “That’s hard, and very jarring to students from other backgrounds.

“But especially after they have international experiences, they come to treasure it.”

Several Wheaton graduates who attended LMC were impressed enough by the emphasis on service to join Mennonite Central Committee.

While appreciating teachings on service and social justice, Wheaton students push Mennonites to be more clear about the theological and biblical underpinnings of their views, Friesen said.

“They ask whether what we do in terms of social and political engagement emerges from our commitment to the gospel,” he said.

While Wheaton students may leave LMC valuing Mennonite perspectives, most return to other traditions after graduation.

“We’re not necessarily trying to make Mennonite Christians,” he said. “Our church embraces that as part of our mission to spread that more full understanding of the gospel with these students wherever they go.”

While some students learn from LMC by attending regularly, others come for short encounters to dialogue with people of different perspectives, he said.

Some of the liveliest conversations between evangelical and Mennonite Christians in the area occur blocks from the Wheaton campus in the home of Norman Ewert and Sharon Coolidge Ewert, members of Lombard Mennonite and the Wheaton faculty. Each Thursday of the academic year they host 40-50 students for “Mennonite dinner.” The tradition is 30 years old, with the Ewerts hosting for most of that time.

At a recent meal, two large crock pots of chili steamed as students gathered with the Ewerts and their guest speaker, Mark Husbands, former theology professor at Wheaton now teaching at Hope College in Holland, Mich.

Students packed around several long tables, in the front hall and on front stairs, engaging Husbands in a theology discussion peppered with such questions as “Do you believe in hell?” and “What do you wish you could have said about theology at Wheaton and were afraid to say? (The answers, much shortened, were “no” and “nothing.”)

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