Rethinking a Mennonite Relationship to “Culture”
by Justin Sun
“It’s countercultural.”
“Don’t give in to the culture!”
“In the culture right now…”
These are all statements I heard at an Anabaptist organization’s meeting recently. Curious, I waited for elaboration from any of these statements’ speakers regarding what was meant by “the culture”, but nothing came, leaving me wondering how it all served as a premise for many subsequent points. What was clear to me, however, was the phrase was used pejoratively.
That is, “the culture” is undesirable; it stands in contrast to “us”, connotes “them”, and therefore sets clear lines for battle. In this framework, being countercultural is a sign of faithfulness, reinforcing group identity and strengthening the community.
I’ve often wondered about this whole premise.
What underlies pejorative uses of the word “culture” can be unpacked at length, but I often wonder about its use specifically in Anabaptist circles. In college, I learned for the first time about the Radical Reformation and its various sub-movements. I learned how historic Anabaptists across Europe, led by charismatic teachers, understood differently how to navigate their community’s relationship to the world around them. Some went to extremes, setting up physically removed colonies, enabling a clear and tangible boundary. Others, though cautious, found it more acceptable to weave in and out of civic and national life, participating in public institutions to varying degrees and associating with non-Anabaptists. In this, a spectrum existed among early Anabaptists, with differences in understanding and practicing how to be a community of Jesus-followers in a world where not everybody followed Jesus (or, at the very least, where people had different ideas of what following Jesus looked like). In many ways, this navigation and negotiation of boundaries is as old as the biblical narratives themselves—the Scriptures are full of stories of people asking questions about who is in and out, who gets to decide, and how?
And with that comes one of my favourite things about the Bible, actually: the answers to the question of in and out often seem to be, “Who’s in and out ain’t who you think it’s gonna be; not only that, those who think they are most central to the community of God’s people may actually be the most peripheral, and those considered furthest may be the closest.”
Our worship has not been immune to these debates about "culture."
Have you been part of a church that has debated “contemporary vs. traditional”, “electric vs. acoustic”, or “hands-raised vs. reserved-respect”? How have those arguments been framed in your experience?
Maybe you have heard that incorporating foreign or innovative styles of music and art in gathered worship is a concession to culture set against the purity of what has always been. But to this again I ask: do attitudes like that show automatic bias for the faithfulness of one’s own cultural expressions set against others, who are perceived as intrusive variants?
And would deep self-reflection show: actually, even the traditional has roots, and the question is not just whether old or new is faithful or not but how God may be working in each and how and why and how a particular way may speak to a particular group.
My focus here is not to clearly lay out for us who I think is in and out—I still haven’t figured it out fully, and I have a feeling it’s a moving target. My focus is simply to question lazy ways of positioning culture that ultimately lead to clean-cut ideas of “us and them”. I wonder if deeper reflection shows us that, actually, we all belong to and navigate culture(s) of various kinds—it is an inescapable part of being human—and faithful journeying with Jesus is not about being cultureless or arbitrarily countercultural but being deeply aware of the cultures all inhabit and navigate. From that, in conjunction with the wisdom of our ancestors, I believe it is our goal as Christians to discern how our God may be speaking to us particularly through cultures to further the good work that must be done anew every generation: walking faithfully in tune with a God that wants to give us life in full. All this so that, when it does come to speaking out against cultures or aspects of it, we can be deeply aware where we come from first.
So going back to the meeting I attended: during that gathering, even as folks discussed being “countercultural” or “not giving in” to culture, I thought about our context.
We were speaking English, as opposed to any other language (German, anyone?); it was a gathering where mostly white, upper-middle-class, university-educated, straight, married, able-bodied, and cisgendered men over the age of 40 spoke; most descended from European Anabaptists and grew up in Mennonite churches where hymns and drums were debated; and almost everyone lived within an hour drive of the meeting place. From my perspective, these are all significant cultural markers that shape people.
Ask anyone what it means to be from where they are from, what it means to be Mennonite, what it means to be a graduate from their university and work their jobs, or what music styles they prefer. Unpacking any of those can show us ideas, norms, perspectives, and ultimately ways of life—in other words, cultures—that arise out of belonging to those spaces.
Myself, as someone who fills many but not all the markers above, I wondered if anyone at this meeting who spoke poorly against “the culture” had taken the time to reflect on these pervasive but sometimes subliminal markers. Would that have allowed them to realize more clearly the positions they were speaking from and slowed down any assumptions that their own traditions were more faithful than others, though all are culturally-embedded? Would this then have led to questions like: “When I speak of ‘the culture’ this way, how does it position me toward it? What purpose does it serve to speak about cultures I do not embrace the way I do, or who does it serve? Whether familiar or new to me, how may God be working in and through any particular culture and people?”
These are all questions I wish everyone had taken the time to ponder before speaking at this meeting. Ultimately, these questions and their answers have material consequences, resulting in practices that communicate who is in, who is out, and therefore ultimately who belongs.
Set against this idea of culture is often the idea of being “biblical.” I believe, in many ways, being biblical can be a great thing—as someone who has studied the Bible for years, I believe in its tremendous power and value. And it is because of that belief that I value the Bible, alongside its sacred elements, as it is: as a document from ancient peoples and a product of ancient cultures. It was not written in our modern languages; it contains rituals and customs deeply embedded in the ancient Near East; and it is largely the literature of an oppressed and exiled people group. Rather than locking it forever in its original context and rendering it irrelevant, however, these cultural markers force me to wrestle with them and ask: what has changed? How have these texts been interpreted? How may God be speaking through it? And ultimately, if I profess to follow the same God as the one in these texts, what can I learn about who this God is and how they work through these cultural texts? Rather than coming to us in unqualified philosophical statements, the deeply enculturated stories of Scripture show a God that cares for the specific places and times people inhabit. Indeed, they become Holy Scripture and not just a collection of occasional documents when we take these ancient texts and ask how they speak today. If Christians want to take the Bible as Holy Scripture, enculturation must be recognized—otherwise, reading it is just an exercise in ancient literature. Ultimately, I learn through the Bible that the incarnation itself, a core conviction of our faith, is a deep process of enculturation—of a God come down to a place and people and then “re-culturing” across each new generation with the Spirit.
So for us today, I believe it is key to remember all this, because it forces us to pause before we accuse others of giving in to “unchristian” cultures or claim to be Christians with undistilled access to God and the Bible.
In our worship, I hope we can find ways to celebrate our different cultural markers, naming them as good.
I believe deeper reflection, especially when done in open-handed community with those from different cultures, will show that, not only are we all enculturated and must parse through complex intersections of beliefs and practices, our God works in and through the particular cultures we all navigate together—our God is not an abstract philosophical deity but a Creator deeply near to Created, who works in and through our deepest expressions of humanity. Remembering this can transform our posture from one of combat and fear about who is in or out—the “purity” of the community—to one of self-reflection, curiosity, and openness to a God that works in unexpected ways.
Justin was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, to parents who immigrated to North America from Hong Kong. He grew up navigating life and faith within those cultural dynamics, and one of the most important areas this happened was in church, where he was raised by an entire village of aunties and uncles. In his early 20’s, he discovered Anabaptism and obtained a BA in Biblical Studies after spending his post-high school years bouncing between jobs and schools. Since then, he's been learning how his life is deeply woven into the larger story of Jesus and the church and chooses to join in that work as a pastor, working for the liberation and renewal of all things. He works for Peace Mennonite Church in Richmond, BC.