During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Mennonites followed the Christian year while most American Protestants did not. In the twentieth century, with the transition to using English in worship, Mennonites dropped the Christian year, which now seemed formalistic and restrictive. Since 1980, many Mennonites have discovered the Christian year as a means of revitalizing worship, though on the whole, its use remains irregular.
Prior to 1980, Mennonite churches in twentieth-century America planned and conducted worship with little reference to the Christian year. Apart from the major Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter, neither the days and season of the liturgical calendar nor the lectionary exerted much influence on their patterns of worship. Good Friday was observed in some congregations and Pentecost was often noted, but among many groups, services proper to the seasons were unknown.
Suspicion of Symbol and Ritual
Generally, Mennonites considered the Christian year formulaic and restrictive—appropriate, perhaps to “liturgical” worship but inappropriate to the free worship traditions of the Anabaptists and other like-minded groups. With their emphasis on conversion, discipleship, and daily obedience, Mennonites preferred a style of worship centered around the sermon and focused on texts or topics selected for the day by the preacher. Sermon series sometimes linked Sunday’s service to the next; more often, each Sunday’s sermon dealt with a different biblical passage or aspect of the Christian life. Until the 1960s, “worship” usually referred to the non-sermon part of the service and followed a standard pattern: opening prayers, familiar hymns, and the Scripture reading, followed by a lengthy sermon. While the greater flexibility and variety in worship services appeared in the late sixties and seventies, Mennonites remained unfamiliar with the practices of the Christian year and somewhat suspicious of its general purpose.
Opponents and advocates alike attributed Mennonites’ reservations about the Christian year to their suspicion of “liturgy.” The origins of that suspicion were traced to the reformer Zwingli, whose opposition to ecclesiastical symbols and rituals shaped early Anabaptist worship. Most Mennonites assumed that from the Reformation forward, Mennonite worship developed outside the influence of the liturgical tradition, free of fixed seasons, Scriptures, or saints’ days.
The Mennonite Church Year
Surprisingly, it has not been brought to light that in America, Mennonites were one of the few Protestant groups to observe the Christian year in detail. Under Calvinist Puritan and separatist influences in Britain and Europe, many Protestant groups who eventually emigrated to America rejected the Christian year and its feasts as “abominations.” Consequently, most American Protestants limited their observances of the Christian year to Easter and Christmas until the twentieth century. Christmas itself was not observed until the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, a church year was followed in nearly all Mennonite churches to the twentieth century.
While it is unclear when and where Anabaptists first adopted the Christian year as a pattern for worship, a book of sermons published in 1730 by a German Mennonite preacher, Jacob Denner, shows that some Mennonites in Europe observed the Christian year from at least the eighteenth century. Denner’s sermons followed the church year, with each section of the book designated for a specific season of the year. By 1800, Denner’s sermons had been brought to America and were sold and used widely.
The predominant Mennonite hymnal and worship book of the nineteenth century, the German-language Gesangbuch, also included a church calendar. Through the years, these calendars became more elaborate, and the calendar which appears in the Gesangbuch includes observances that were not present in Denner’s calendar—the Annunciation, Ascension Day, the Visitation of Mary, St. Michael and All Angels, and a Harvest Festival which occurred near the end of September. It is not clear why the Mennonites chose to observe St. Michael’s and not other saint’s days.
Prior to the turn of the twentieth century, all main feast days were observed, beginning with a period of Advent and continuing with a two or three-day Christmas season. New Year, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday (as well as Easter Monday and sometimes Easter Tuesday), Ascension Day, and finally Pentecost (usually bringing a baptismal service) were also observed. Although one writer of the period suggests that the church year ended at Pentecost and was “resurrected” again at Advent, the Gesangbuch calendar includes both Scripture readings and suggested hymns for all of the twenty-seven Sundays after Trinity, as well as special occasions such as the “Day of John the Baptist.”
Transitions to English and Loss of the Christian Year
Mennonite observance of the Christian year was discontinued in the first quarter of the twentieth century just as many Protestant groups were experiencing liturgical renewal. Factors within and beyond the Mennonite church accounted for the termination. The great revivals of the nineteenth century and the movements they spawned prompted Mennonites to examine their forms of worship and patterns of life, leading to a renewal of piety within the church. Coupled with Mennonites’ historic concern for Christian faithfulness in life, the new piety gradually turned worship and preaching toward the doctrines and disciplines of faith and away from a formal liturgical cycle. Greater mobility among Mennonites and frequent contact with society at large also loosened the connections between worship and community for Mennonites, diminishing the community’s engagement with the Christian year cycle and highlighting the need for corporate worship to deal with issues in the lives of individuals.
The shift from German to English as the primary language among Mennonites epitomized the changes which eroded the use of the Christian year in worship. Until the early years of the twentieth century, Mennonites, much like present-day Amish, lived, worked, and worshiped within German-speaking communities. Their contact with English-speaking society remained strictly separate from their communal life and most especially from their worship. The use of German in work and in worship stressed their continuity with the European Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition and reinforced their separation from American social and religious groups.
As social and religious developments at the turn of the century increased their contact with the larger world, Mennonites began to evaluate their use of German as a first language. Travel, education, and business dealings expanded contact with English-speakers outside the community, and the renewal of personal religious faith among many Mennonites raised questions about their general reluctance to give witness to their faith verbally. To retain German as a mark of separateness was regressive, many felt when the church was being newly challenged to reach out to the world. Gradually, in the first decades of the twentieth century, English emerged as a common and then primary language among Mennonites.
The shift to English among Mennonites meant that many of the understandings that had supported the use of the Christian year in worship disappeared with the German language. The adoption of English did more than represent a break with tradition; it left Mennonites unable to express in their new liturgical language many of the qualities of worship and life that had grounded their understanding of the Christian year. The structure and sense of the German language had shaped their experience of faith, time, story, and community—aspects of experience that are basic to living out the meaning of the Christian year. For these categories of experience to be reshaped in a “foreign” language meant that the Christian year became more formal than an experiential reality.
Consequently, English hymnals that replaced the German Gesangbuch after the turn of the century omitted the calendar of the Christian year, the lectionary, and the schedule of hymns for each Sunday’s readings. So widespread was this disregard of the church calendar that Mennonites for nearly three-quarters of a century neglected use of the Christian year and forgot their own history of observance. Most Mennonites are even yet convinced that the calendar of the Christian year and the lectionary have never been part of their tradition.
Contemporary Discoveries and Practice
Since 1980, however, ecumenical awareness and a perceived need to revitalize their own worship have led some Mennonites to realize the potential for liturgical renewal in the Christian year, though for most it is a matter of discovery, not recovery. Initially, Mennonites sought the variety and the structure provided by the Christian year. Linking worship to the cycle of the Christian calendar avoided the arbitrariness involved in most worship planning and provided an expanding horizon of texts and themes for Christian worship. For some, the benefits multiplied: the Scriptures were read systematically and informed the entire worship event; resources keyed to the Christian year offered diverse worship expressions; the story of Christ and the church acquired new emphasis; the affective dimension of worship—color, symbol, movement, and sound—deepened; the ancient traditions of the church drew nearer, and the Christian year began to create a counter-rhythm to the calendar of secular life.
Adherence to the Christian year is promoted by the denominational offices and seminaries of the Mennonite church. It is not mandatory, however, and observance across the denomination is limited. The church hymnal published in 1992 includes sections of hymns appropriate to the seasons of the Christian year but is organized around acts of worship rather than the liturgical calendar. It does not include a lectionary, making it difficult for congregations throughout the church to follow the weekly Scriptures. Correspondingly, larger congregations near urban or educational centers are more likely than smaller rural churches to follow the Christian calendar, although the Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries has published a planning calendar for small churches structured around the Christian year.
Congregations observing the Christian year often do so only during the major seasons and frequently select their own texts and themes for each Sunday. Many congregations, large and small, continue to plan worship without reference to the Christian year or the lectionary, focusing rather on topics and biblical passages pertinent to the individual and corporate Christian life.
Notwithstanding their irregular observance, Mennonites have begun to make unique contributions to the practice of the Christian year. Nowhere is the congregational singing tradition stronger than among Mennonites. Their new hymnal, entitled Hymnal: A Worship Book offers extensive resources for congregational songs drawn from ancient and contemporary sources, representing a broad range of cultures and worship styles. Though sequenced according to acts of worship, hymns and readings are indexed and cross-referenced with both the Scripture and the Christian year, facilitating comprehensive use through the seasons and special days. Many of the hymns emphasizing Christian community, discipleship, peace, justice, and cultural inclusivity expand the meaning of the gospel and add new dimensions to the traditional themes of the Christian calendar.
In addition to these printed resources, several Mennonite congregations have begun to consider the significance of the Christian year for stewardship, lifestyle, family, social and political action, spirituality, the created order, and community formation. Correspondingly, Mennonite artists, readers, actors, preachers, and storytellers have explored new ways to present the Word.
Currently, the Christian year and the lectionary serve as more of a resource for Mennonite worship than a pattern. In years to come, the strong biblical and Christological focus of the Christian year and its potential for ordering life in the Christian community may eventually lead Mennonites to recover the Christian year as a central reality in worship and in life.