I want to offer three basic observations or theses on “speaking to government” that have taken shape in my mind over the past year or two as I have traveled in many, many Mennonite congregations speaking on topics related to Christian pacifism and the “gospel of peace.”

The presidential election campaign of 2004 revealed a deep division within the Mennonite Church that should be named, analyzed and openly addressed.   As I traveled in many different Mennonite settings during the months leading up to the presidential election in November—saw the bumper stickers in church parking lots, listened to encounters around coffee in the foyer, and engaged in dozens of direct conversations—I was troubled by how much the partisan Red/Blue political chasm that has divided our nation as a whole is also evident within our congregations.

I don’t assume that Mennonites have ever been (or even should be) of one mind on political issues:  but to a rather alarming degree our conversations about faith and politics—on both the Right and Left—are increasingly being co-opted by the polarized rhetoric of radio talk show hosts, direct mail campaigns, polemical ads and web-site bloggers.

We will be making a public witness for ourselves and to the world that the church – not the Democratic or Republican party – is our most fundamental point of reference.

Our growing readiness to identify ourselves as Republicans and Democrats—as passionate supporters (or antagonists!) of Bush or Kerry—and our apparent inability to distinguish our political witness from the deeply entrenched divisions in the larger culture is an embarrassment to the church, threatening to make us simply one more lobbying group or political action committee shouting to be heard in the public square … often at cross-purposes with each other.

Mennonite political activists on both the Left and Right are in danger of expecting far too much from government and far too little from the church.  At the heart of the our understanding of Christian faith is conviction that the church is made up of believers who have voluntarily chosen to accept God’s gracious love and commit themselves to follow in the path of Jesus. The decision to follow Christ means that our primary allegiance, and the main focus of our engagement with the world, is the body of Christ – the church; a church that is made visible to the world by its distinctive practices of service, mutual aid, love and compassion for all human beings, including our enemies.

Our tradition has long taught that we should respect and pray for those in government—indeed, the state has a divinely ordained role of preserving order (“punishing the evildoer and protecting the good”); it might even, tragically, use violence to do this.  But the primary concern of Christian is not to “redeem” the state, or to take control of government, or to insist that it live up to the standards of the New Testament.

To say that our primary focus is on the church rather than the state is not a romantic appeal to some sort of separatist “purity” or a retreat into the safety of ethnic enclaves – just the opposite! Christ calls us to engage the “messiness” of a broken world; but we do this “sacrificially” and “sacramentally” – in a language and a method consistent with the gospel that we proclaim. In a spirit of love and compassion rather than the politics of antagonism and fear.

My final point is a proposal or suggestion that might help us move forward in a more positive way:  at the initiative of local congregations, ministers and conferences, Mennonites in the United States should commit themselves to a five-year sabbatical from affiliations with any political party.  That is, we should publicly resolve to sit out the next presidential election and to consciously abstain from all literature, web-sites, organizations and lobbying efforts supported by groups partisan to the Democrats or the Republicans.  Choosing to withdraw from party-driven, partisan politics for the next five years has several clear advantages:

(a) It offers both sides a conscious “cooling off” period in which we symbolically acknowledge to each other that our identity as brothers and sisters in the church matters more than our identity as supporters of a particular set of government policies.

(b) It offers an occasion for a serious, sustained church-wide conversation about the nature of Christian witness in the public square.

(c) It may allow us to develop a shared language for political witness that is rooted clearly and unmistakably within the framework of the Church and our prior and primal allegiance to Jesus and the Gospel. I don’t assume that the result of all this will be complete agreement … but we will be making a public witness for ourselves and to the world that the church – not the Democratic or Republican party – is our most fundamental point of reference.

What might we focus on during that five-year sabbatical?  Local congregations would need to decide, of course, but I would suggest that we start by cultivating spiritual practices that will keep our political witness rooted in Christ.  Before Jesus began his intense, politically-charged ministry he retreated to the wilderness for 40 days of testing:  we would do well to begin with a disciplined period of spiritual retreat in which, together—as political activists on both the Left and the Right—we examine our motives, our goals and our methods.

If, together, we choose to be politically active during that five-year period, then I would encourage us to focus on initiatives that are clearly rooted in the life of the church.  For example:  provide a safe house for young pregnant women in your community so that they know that they, and their unborn child, have the security of a loving and supportive community; develop partnership with a sister congregations in Colombia or India or Indonesia; cultivate a global awareness through the lens provided by MCC, MWC and MMN rather than NPR or FOX. 

And along the way, consciously nurture the Fruits of the Spirit in your midst, so that our shared witness to the world cannot help but reflect the deep sense of love and compassion that we bear for each other, as brothers and sisters in the church.  Above all, do not retreat from the pain and suffering of the world; but let the healing of the world begin with the hard, joyful work of reconciliation in our own congregations and in our own church.

"A slightly-longer version of this text was presented as a speech at the Mennonite Church USA Delegate Assembly in Charlotte, NC on July 6, 2005.