An old classmate of mine puts together her thoughts on the upcoming 20 High School year reunion.
GRCHS Class of 1996
My own thoughts are pretty much the same as they were 10 years ago, when I wrote about our ten year reunion.
(That old post, like a lot of my old posts, is rambling, long-winded, and largely incoherent. But if I did organize it into something more coherent and readable, the basic thoughts that inspired that old post would largely be the same.)
Wednesday, June 01, 2016
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12 comments:
I've probably already mentioned that I attended -- and deeply regretted -- the 20th anniversary of my high school grad. I still can't quite wrap my head around the disparity between what I anticipated and what I experienced. I think the locus of my discontent resides in the character of my memory. If you rattle off any random name from the group I graduated with, I'll associate that name with a fond recollection -- some episode or conversation that evokes what I enjoyed about that person. Gathering once again as a group I was suddenly brought face to face with all the social dynamics that made me crazy around these people -- there are good reasons why I don't live close to any other Mennonites, and I apparently needed reminding of them. A very strange, and still quite troubling, experience.
Interesting. These were Mennonite specific problems then? Or just general post-high school issues?
In my case, in spite of everything,
I rather enjoyed my 10 year reunion.
Well ... my issues are probably specific to the particular brand of Mennonite I grew up with -- quite an evangelical bunch, really (Mennonite Brethren, if you want to know the exact flavour). The tendency is to wallpaper an upper-middle-class North American lifestyle with an endless and unexamined pious litany -- the usual "God has blessed" horseshit, basically.
I should add I was very happy to reconnect with two guys I spent a lot of time with, back in the day, including one who went on to become a pro musician. These two guys had a large stock of amazing stories. If I could go back and restructure that weekend, I'd suggest an afternoon at a pub, then duck out of the final dinner after dessert is served and before the mic gets passed around.
As far as I can judge from Facebook, my former Calvinist High School classmates are now all over the map religiously. Some of them are atheists, some agnostics, some have gone for some liberal variant of Christianity, some have stayed faithful to the fold, and a few have gone the reactionary route and are even more extreme conservative than they were back in high school.
I think Calvinists are more worldly than Mennonites though, so perhaps this difference isn't surprising? I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong.
Although there's a generational element as well. My parents' generation didn't leave the church in the same numbers my generation has.
So perhaps the changing world is also a factor. People are more mobile, and information is more available now, so that people are exposed to a lot more than in my parent's generation.
I'll ask you to clarify what "more worldly" means. In the meantime, I'll also indulge in stereotypes and maybe bring out the answer inadvertently.
There was a cadre of CRC kids in my MB high school, and I got the impression from conversations with them that on some levels their upbringing was more austere than mine. Drinking and smoking were permitted among the Dutch, of course(?), and (from the fellows, at least) there was some expectancy that these bodily indulgences would likely lead to behaviour that, while CERTAINLY frowned-upon, was nevertheless to be anticipated. Now that I think of it, the number of CRC guys to CRC girls was heavily weighted to the guys. I have to wonder if the parents didn't, subconsciously at least, set these dudes free to frolic and disseminate their wild oats among those horny Mennonitische field-hand types, with the expectation that when it was time to settle down, you did so with your own kind.
At the time (1980) the school didn't host dances -- we rented a downtown roller rink and danced on skates. That's changed, apparently.
Anyway, expand your definitions a bit, and I'll respond to that.
There was an expectation in the CRC that you were supposed to engage with the secular world, even if you did so from a Christian perspective. So, for example, you could see secular movies, but than you were expected to critique them from a Christian worldview.
The impression I get from your stories is that the Mennonite communities kept the secular world at a bit more arms length. But correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm in an odd position, because my father got his M.Th at Westminster in the 60s, so this business of engaging the World via a Christian critique was most definitely a framing proposition I grew up under. Was this the Mennonite way? Mmm ... depends. The 60s and 70s, that bug was definitely in the water for a lot of Christian groups. Regardless of what the particular congregational directive might be, the kids I grew up with listened to the radio and went to movies. We didn't get much direction from our teachers in this matter, now that I think of it, so it's possible that speaking to the matter invited censure.
Francis Schaeffer -- man, whatever else you want to nail on him, you have to give him credit for getting the home team to take a deep breath and chill.
Censure was often determined by a family by family basis. I wasn't allowed to have a G.I.Joe doll because it was military, and we were pacifists. A bitter pill for me to swallow, because I had friends in church who were swimming in those toys. But I was the first kid in my church to see Star Wars. It's all very confusing.
Something in your comments that I should have responded to -- the generational shift in religious attitudes. In the 60s/early-70s an entire generation of Mennonite kids just up and left the pews, never to return. At that point Mennonite churches scrambled to get hip to the kids, hiring youth pastors and relaxing attitudes toward music etc, so that by the time I was in my teens things had stabilized. I suspect this attitudinal shift inside the church goes some distance to explain why my cohort has, for the most part, stayed put religiously-speaking.
That said, the people I missed at my reunion (because they weren't there) were people who'd probably identify as "other."
There was a lot of weird ideological shifting happening in the late-70s, early-80s. When I graduated in 83, the MB college in Winnipeg had a reputation for being heavily oriented toward a "Social Gospel" POV, with an emphasis on peace-and-justice concerns, Liberation Theology and the like -- the sort of place I could have really grokked out on, were it not located in Winnipeg. A year or two later a massive staff purge took place, and the joint turned into something more recognizably conservative -- the sort of place I avoided like the plague. Enrolment numbers jumped. Plus ca change, as they say.
Interesting. Funny how the pendulum swings back and forth on a lot of these issues.
Speaking of Liberation Theology:
I remember some of my more liberal religious peers were really attracted to the Catholic Church back in the day because of the whole Liberation Theology angle. (The hey day of Liberation Theology was in the 1980s, of course, but people were still talking about it in the 1990s).
Is wonder though, is Liberation Theology still kicking now, or is it entirely dead in the catholic church? Perhaps another example of the pendulum swinging back again.
I've seen it argued that the current Pope is the direct byproduct of Liberation Theology, which makes a kind of sense. If you take that tack, you could almost say it's gone mainstream, in Latin America at least.
Religious education is a very prickly business -- and a business it most definitely is. You get "left" leaning teachers more often than not, but the dudes who hold the purse-strings are decidedly "right" of that, and not at all interested in exploring nuances and grey zones. The money holders want defenders of the faith, who'll keep the children from straying from the path -- a vision most parents are sympathetic to.
Oh boy does that ever describe my experience at Calvin College perfectly. Almost all of my professors were Left leaning, but the administration was very right wing. And your typical Calvin College donor is very, very, very right wing.
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