Question: What’s the
fastest-growing Mennonite church in Winnipeg?
Answer: St. Margaret’s Anglican.
That old joke came back to me last week when I learned that
the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada and Mennonite Church Canada
will be voting this summer to enter into a five-year bilateral dialogue.
If passed, it would be the first time the Anglican Church
of Canada has engaged in a bilateral dialogue with a denomination from the
Anabaptist tradition.
In an interview with the Anglican Journal, Archdeacon Bruce Myers, formerly the
Anglican Church of Canada’s co-ordinator for ecumenical and interfaith
relations, specifically referenced Winnipeg as an inspiration for the dialogue.
“There are all sorts of people who
happily migrate” between St. Margaret’s and st. benedict’s table, another
Anglican congregation in the city, he said, adding that this “creates all sorts
of interesting questions for ecumenism.”
Through the dialogue, the two church groups could learn a
lot of from each other, Myers said.
“The Anglican Church of Canada, is increasingly . . . becoming a church on the margins, a church away from the centres of power, when historically we were a church of empire, establishment and privilege,” he said.
Mennonites, he went on to say, have made “a conscious
decision to be very separate from the principalities and powers, and to take a stance
that is often in opposition to empire."
I’m not sure that Mennonites are as
separate or as opposed to empire as they might like to be, so Anglicans might
be disappointed on that score. But it is true is that a growing number of
Mennonites and others from non-liturgical churches are being attracted to the
liturgical style of worship of Anglican churches.
Harold Dick is one of them. The
Winnipeg lawyer grew up in a Mennonite Brethren church in rural Alberta. He’s
been going to St. Margaret’s since 1981. What appeals to him about that church?
“It’s the liturgy,” he says. “It’s
the sense of mystery, the idea that God is not something we are expected to
fully understand.”
He also likes the idea that “the
service isn’t about you, but about God . . . It’s about celebrating what God
has done, not just about what you need to do to make your life better.”
And he appreciates the connection
he finds each Sunday to a long-standing tradition. “People have been
worshipping this way for a long time,” he says. “It’s something that has gone
on for a long time before me, and will continue whether I am a part of it or
not.”
When he
goes to church, he says, “I feel that my attention has shifted from my own life
to this thing that is beyond me.”
Thomas
Reimer, the parish administrator at St. Margaret’s, and Bonnie Dowling, a
priest/curate at that church, also both grew up in Mennonite churches in
southern Manitoba before becoming Anglicans.
Reimer was
also attracted by the liturgy, the sense that “something bigger than myself is
going on, a tradition that stretches back hundreds of years.” Dowling agrees,
adding that she also likes how “the services are deeply rooted in scripture.”
I asked them: How has the presence
of so many former Mennonites impacted St. Margaret’s?
The church was already
“pre-disposed toward asking difficult questions,” Reimer says, but the presence
of so many Mennonites “has heightened the social conscience of the church.”
Dowling adds that it has led to more “robust” discussions about issues, such as
just war and pacifism.
Andrew Dyck is Associate Professor
of Ministry studies at Canadian Mennonite University. He understands why some
Mennonites are attracted to Anglicanism.
“Mennonites place a high value on
scripture, so how it is read so much in Anglican churches would be appealing,”
he says.
As for the liturgy, it “provides a
richness around the mystery of God, something that is neglected in Mennonite
and evangelical worship,’ he adds.
In Anglican worship, people can
find a combination of “piety, intellect and mystery” that can be very
appealing, he says, along with the liturgical patterns such as standing,
singing, speaking and kneeling.
Whether or
not the formal dialogue goes ahead this summer, Mennonites and Anglicans in
Winnipeg may already be developing a new form of dialogue and worship that
could be a model for the country.
