Born Secular

56-year-old Barbara Fenton of Brownfield, Maine leaves behind her secular past to convert to a simpler, Christian life with a community of Mennonites.

[Click to listen to Barbara]

On a Sunday morning, families, several with five or more children, spill from darkly colored vans in front of the Shepherd’s River Mennonite Church, nestled in the foothills of the White Mountains in Brownfield, Maine. The men wear black brimmed hats and long straight-cut coats, while bonneted women with their hair pulled up tight and little girls wearing immaculate, waist-length braids smooth their high-collared, printed dresses.

The sisters and brethren (members of the congregation) crowd in the entry to greet each other with a peck on the lips, a holy kiss, before drifting into the stark meeting room. While the clothing seems to be from another era, the fluorescent lights and podium give the room the modernized, sterile atmosphere of a lecture hall. With no altar or crucifix, the five rows of pew-like benches are the only signal that the space is meant for worship.

By ten minutes before ten, the church is seated with the men on the right side of the aisle, and the women on the left. All are quiet except for the young mothers who fuss over infants. Barbara Fenton, a middle-aged woman, bird-like with high cheeks and a sharp nose, sits expectantly with her hands folded over her pocketbook.

Barbara hasn’t always been a Mennonite. A spry 56 years old, she attended college at Northeastern University in Boston, and University of New Hampshire for graduate school in Education. She taught the Theory of Evolution in her high school biology class—“Darwin and everything,” she says. She once wore earrings and has the tiny specks of scars to show for it. And she was married before she divorced her husband and became a single mother to her two children.
Mennonites, while closely related to the Amish (both are sects of Anabaptists that fled to America after being persecuted in Europe), are slightly less radical in their level of isolation and can use technology like cars, power-line electricity, and cell-phones. With over 5,000 members, and 77 churches worldwide, the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church (one of several Mennonite denominations), is one of the most conservative in terms of not conforming to the secular world.

As Barbara struggled on her own with her marriage and faith in Brownfield, Maine, she formed a bond with an Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite church in Mendon, Massachusetts—hours from her home. But the question of her divorce almost kept her from joining at all. After years of attending and shaping her life to its stringent standards, the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite church finally decided to create a church in Brownfield, bringing Barbara the community she had patiently awaited.

For much of her life, Barbara was casually religious. As a child, she attended church on a regular basis, just because that was the status quo. “In our days, we just grew up going to church. And I knew that that wasn’t what I wanted,” Barbara says.

After giving birth to her first child, Ariel, eighteen years ago, Barbara fell into post-partum depression. She felt like a piece of herself was missing and began searching with her husband for a spiritual practice. “Before God is first, we depend on ourselves,” Barbara says. “But if your self is broken, there’s a need you have that is more than yourself.”  She experimented with yoga and meditation and attended various churches, unsure of what she was seeking. But at age forty, two years after Ariel was born, Barbara realized she wanted “a life committed to Christ.”

She began actively seeking a church to guide her in a Christian life, but she didn’t find anything satisfying. “It seems like…a lot of the churches are more of…a social group. It tells you what you want to hear,” she says. “It doesn’t tell us the way we should live our lives.” She wanted “a church that really follows what the Bible has to teach” in all parts of life. But for that, she says, “We have to travel a bit.”

Barbara started homeschooling Ariel in first grade with Mennonite curriculum, which covers everything from math to Bible passages and religious-based science lessons. Around that time, she began making the three-hour drive to Mendon, Massachusetts one Sunday a month to care for her aging parents. Attracted to the Mennonite beliefs and community lifestyle, she attended a Mennonite church during her visits.

The Sundays she was home, Barbara held church services in her living room with another family who travelled to be there. Together they sat and listened to the message (the sermon) being given by the minister in Mendon over a speakerphone and studied the Sunday school lesson printed and distributed to all Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite congregations.

During the first years she attended church at Mendon, Barbara did not seek membership. As she became more devout, she began to question her marriage to the man who initially encouraged her spiritual search but who never found peace in religion himself. Her commitment to lead a Christian life had led her to read the Bible and face the fact she had long dismissed—that her husband had previously been married.

“I came to the belief that…I was living in adultery,” she explains frankly, her wide eyes firm and serious behind her glasses.

Though he was divorced, Barbara explains, “The Bible talks about a woman married to her husband….that is your husband for life.” For the most part, it was a problem she had to work out on her own. “I was unraveling the different issues that I had in my life,” she says, “But that was the last real big one to go. And so that was not an easy thing one way or the other.” Barbara’s choice was complicated by the fact that divorce would leave her a single mother, or—what she hadn’t expected—it could lead her young son to follow his father away from her and Ariel and the Mennonite lifestyle.

“I loved him,” she says of her ex-husband, “I still do.” But she saw her marriage as polygamous, with him still married to his first wife in God’s eyes. However, she also worried if she divorced him, she would not be able to join the Mennonite Church. Knowing Mennonites do not believe in divorce, Barbara never tried to discuss her decision with them beforehand.

The Mennonites define marriage as a permanent union between a man and a woman where the husbands, who are the leaders in the home, must love and help their wives, while the wives must submit to their husbands’ leadership. Because a marriage is permanent, even between a Mennonite married to a non-Mennonite, they consider couples to be married for life.

“I wanted it to be what God wants,” Barbara says, “I didn’t want it to be what a church wants.” At the time, she says, “I didn’t want to be a Mennonite necessarily. I mean, I loved everything the Mennonites stood for, except…I just assumed I would never become a Mennonite because of the divorce and remarriage issue.”

While the church encourages women to submit to their husbands on the question of joining the church (another woman who attends church with the Mennonites has decided not to become a member in deference to her husband’s wishes), Barbara thinks it is up to the individual wife. “I think our number one—we want to please God. And then, if our marriage is a right marriage, then we’d really want to please our husband…And that’s certainly what I did when I was in a marriage… If you really want to please God first, I think that’s how you play it out. But if…a conviction is so strong that you think that it’s in disobedience to God, then you might disobey your husband.”

In the end it was impossible for her to remain with her husband. “When I knew that I was not in a right marriage,” she says, “then I went to the Mennonite church and said, ‘I need help.’” Eight years ago they divorced. The church still accepted her, but since Mennonites do not recognize divorce, Barbara says she will never remarry as long as her husband is alive.

After they divorced, Barbara became serious about membership. Eventually the Eastern Church recognized the need for a church in Brownfield and sent a minister one Sunday each month for a year to deliver the message in Barbara’s house. The second year two ministers came on different weeks, but it wasn’t until the third that they started the new church in Brownfield and asked families from other Eastern Churches across the country to join. The church bought an abandoned bed and breakfast, renovated it into a school, meeting, and worship space, and hired a young schoolteacher to teach in the single classroom.

About four years ago, the families began to arrive. As of 2009, seven core families make up Brownfield’s Shepherd’s River Mennonite Church. Two other families who live in Maine are also seeking membership though they must first complete the yearlong instructional period, before being baptized and accepted into the church.

It’s not uncommon for the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church to simply build a new church around an isolated individual, though in part, the decision depends on available farmland. Besides Brownfield, the conference is forming new churches in Michigan and Southern Mexico, simply because individuals were interested.

A like-minded community that encompasses all aspects of life is crucial to maintaining traditions and raising children who will not feel the need to conform to the outside world. Even as the church prohibits TV, radio, and Internet and forbids members from following sports teams or going to other secular entertainment, it creates strong personal bonds between its members. They frequently meet together outside of church, having fellowship lunches on Sundays and prayer meetings during the week. Barbara compares joining the Mennonite church to going away to college—“Your friends become a bit of your family.” Compared with her non-Mennonite relationships, Barbara says her church friendships have a higher level of stability and intimacy come to through shared beliefs and lifestyle.

In this environment, Barbara brought up her children in relative seclusion, although she believes they had more exposure to the secular world than many Mennonite children. Both attended the Mennonite school in Brownfield, and Ariel voluntarily joined the church and began wearing head coverings to signify her faith when she was fifteen. During the summer and fall, Barbara and Ariel work baking bread and pies and selling them at local farmers’ markets, though now that it’s winter they’ll be selling out of their house.

Because she quit her teaching job after Ariel was born, Barbara became a baker to support herself and her children after her separation. Mennonites do not traditionally enter into what they call “the professions”—high paying jobs that require pursuing higher education. Nor do they have business partnerships (or marriages) with non-believers, as such a relationship could not work given the parties’ different goals.

Living in such a community allows the Mennonites to be strong in their non-conformity. Their modest dress keeps them from following changing fashions. They don’t vote or participate in politics—they only pray that God will continue to allow them to practice in peace. They practice non-resistance, which means they aim to do nothing that would hurt others, both in terms of physical violence and financially (they would not sue someone, but rather would accept a financial loss). In striving to lead simple lives, free from secular distractions, the Mennonites avoid pursuing material wealth, making enough to get by on, but living simply.

Some are farmers who sell their crops at the markets alongside Barbara’s pies, though this year’s crop has been poor. While many once had successful farms, learning the timing of a shorter growing season and adapting to the rocky Maine soil has been a challenge these first years. Even Barbara’s bakery has barely allowed her to support herself and her children. Being part of the church, however, provides some security in case of financial troubles in a system called the Brotherhood Assistance Program. In this program, when individuals cannot pay bills, the church helps them by “lifting an offering,” or raising money from other church members. Since the Mennonites do not carry life insurance, health insurance, or accept government aid, the program serves as a safety net. Barbara explains, “It is putting your trust in God…because otherwise we trust the insurance agencies, and then they become our God. We put such faith in insurance agencies…we’re not being responsible for ourselves.”

Barbara describes a recent church message, which encouraged members to give as much as they can to the offering. “Grace,” she says, “is God giving us what we don’t deserve.” Money, possessions, cars, she says, “everything is God…So if we look at it as ‘it’s not my bank account, it’s really God’s bank account,’ we think of it as ‘God has provided us with this so we need to share it.’”

Barbara has recently been on the receiving end of Brotherhood Assistance—something she accepts with humility. Last year, Barbara’s ex-husband removed their now thirteen-year-old son from the Mennonite school and community. As she has tried to maintain partial custody, she has sought as much legal assistance as is allowed within the doctrine of non-resistance. The deacon at Mendon and the congregation have given her emotional and financial support throughout the process. She doesn’t even remember asking for help with the legal fees, but the church always provided for her.

*

During the church service different men in the congregation offer the “devotional,” or prayer, lead the congregation in song, and offer the message.

“The women don’t usually speak,” one woman in the congregation explains, “simply because in the Bible it says that women are to learn in silence.”

Halfway through the service, Raymond Siegrist gets up to teach the adult Sunday school lesson. He and his family moved here two years ago from Pennsylvania and in addition to selling produce to earn a living, he serves as the principal to the Mennonite school, an unpaid position. After the children file out for their Sunday school class, the adults begin their lesson. The pamphlet containing the curriculum is part of a seven-year cycle that works through the Bible—Old and New Testament—beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation.

Raymond begins to read the study questions printed in the pamphlet about this week’s lesson: “God’s Judgment and Mercy in the Flood.” It’s clear from the responses that everyone has done their homework. Barbara has notes already written in the blanks.

“What conditions moved God to bring judgment on earth?” Raymond asks the room.

A man in the back row answers, “Evil thoughts in hearts.”

“Yes, very good,” Raymond says. Again, the women do not speak during the question and answer session, though Barbara takes notes furiously in the margins of her pamphlet, in perfect cursive handwriting.

Raymond discusses challenges posed to faith by science and academic theories. He talks about Christians who try to use science to justify their faith, saying such reliance is a prison.

“We understand that there was a flood, and it destroyed Man except for Noah,” he explains. This is not a belief that Christians need to explain or justify. For the Mennonites, it’s wholly an issue of faith. “If someone really discovers the ark today, will it give you more faith?” he asks. One man answers no, because faith is based on evidence of things not seen.

A recurring theme in the Sunday school lesson and church messages is the “world of confusion of information” that lies outside the teaching of the Bible. There are too many contradictory viewpoints and scientific explanations out there, that it is simpler to just believe exactly what the Bible says, and go from there.

When Barbara was still a teacher, she never thought twice about teaching the Theory of Evolution. It was something she had grown up with and taken for granted as fact. When she became a Christian, it was one more thread of her past life to unravel.

“It bothered me that I had all these years of thinking one way…I didn’t fully understand how all these things that I just always thought was fact could all of a sudden not be fact…” she says, “I finally came to rest when I just believed that the Bible is God’s word. And so that’s the true fact…So we just do that by belief, by faith.”

Since then, she says, “It seems like everything jumps out at me…that there’s so many pieces that fall together if you base your thinking on the flood, or base your thinking on the Bible.”

As one of few in the church who has experienced the world of higher education, Barbara seems more extroverted and assertive than many of the young Mennonite women. Because of her experiences, Barbara says, at first, “I felt like I didn’t fit.” But she has made peace, deciding those years of education weren’t wasted as they eventually led her to follow God. She also appreciates the difference in lifestyles now that she has left that world behind: “When you’re trying to serve a career or keep people happy,” she says, “there’s not the same rest as a Christian that wants to serve God can have.”

*

Barbara kneels in silent prayer turning to face the bench. Some of the other women squeeze their eyes shut tight, arching their backs so they can rest their heads on their clasped hands. Barbara folds her arms on the bench and drapes her head on them, covering her face. Wisps of sandy colored hair escape from the white bonnet, fastened to her hair with pins. She seems to deflate, sinking into the floor as she prays, one of many, bowing their heads together to forces greater than themselves.

While the church guides its members’ behavior and beliefs, it also supports them in difficult times. For Barbara whose parents are dead and who knows she will never again have her traditional nuclear family in one piece, people in the church have become her family. “I guess it’s taken me a while to realize it,” she says, “I suspected it, that we’re called brothers and sisters in the lord, and that’s what we are…It’s a strong family. It’s a supportive family.”

For the non-Mennonite majority, she says, “You’re having to solve it yourself. You’re having to figure out everything. And I don’t want to dwell that this life is less than perfect, but I just feel like you wouldn’t want to face some of the issues in life on your own. And there are going to be issues in life…. And life as a Christian—I just can’t imagine being without it.”