IWU had its College of Arts and Sciences faculty retreat this past weekend. Amazing how much we grow each year. I think we added over 20 faculty to this one college in the university this year and our enrollment was up I think several hundred over last year--how will we cover these classes, let alone find room in the dorms??!!
We had the retreat at Shipshewana, Amish country. We took Amish buggy rides and toured the "Menno Hof," a sweep through Mennonite/Amish history. I smirked to myself thinking (I'm not sure of course, it's just a guess) that the place was run by "liberal" Mennonites with the Amish working for them. The "liberal" lady shoveling some 150 faculty (it may be more than that) into buggies didn't seem to me to have a great relationship with the Amish buggy drivers.
Anyway, it was interesting to look at church history through Mennonite eyes. I wondered if the displays and presentations had been set up by someone from nearby Goshen College, which is Mennonite in foundation. I had a worldview moment when I asked our buggy driver if Goshen was about 30 minutes away. "About 20 miles," he replied.
Zwingli was first praised by the tour, then lamented for his affirmation of infant baptism (then I understood Jim West). I guess he called the drowning of one of the first "anabaptists" his third baptism. But one of the things that stuck out to me is how hard it would be for someone in one of these traditions ever to even consider infant baptism as a possibility. Too much blood remembered.
Another interesting feature was the emphasis on boundaries as important to keep community. "Good fences make good neighbors." Of course these groups have split and resplit like so many Protestant groups just following what the Bible says... and coming up with as many different interpretations as people reading the Bible alone...
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Good fences make good neighbors means that we know who we are and what we believe and what we are committed to. We respect others in their different understandings, as well. But, we must not dismiss the important point of yesterday's post. We must decide for ourselves what we feel is most important. Without freedom there is no justice. Therefore, our democracy/representative republic is most to be upheld as a form of government. We must not ignore those who would subvert or thrawt the cause of Freedom world wide...We Americans take our freedoms too much for granted!
By the way, your comment on asking if Goshen College was 30 minutes away and getting back an answer of distance, NOT TIME, illustrates the paradigm the Amish live in...They "drive" horses, thus have no "Context" to understand time and distance....Interesting....priorities are based on these things. We must understand that in our country with the diversity it has, we are prividledged, because we can be exposed to mores ways of thinking and doing things...and we must expose ourselves and grow in our commitments and thinking...
did you make it to the essenhaus in middlebury? mm, good amish cookin'.
Welcome back to town, Angie. Wim said he was numb with the culture shock of returning :-)
Kris, we didn't make it down the road, although my wife and I passed it on the way...
By the way, I found out this morning as the business part of faculty retreat began that the Amish forbid higher education. Very interesting.
love the worldview moment.
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