Dialogue matters

(The full text is available at Mennonite Life where it was originally published. The link to the last portion of the piece is provided in a link below).

In 1960, when Vincent Harding moved to Atlanta, he began trying to weld together the ongoing nonviolent activism being lived out by some in the Black Church with the peace witness of the Mennonite Church. This effort became less than a decade long experiment, because Harding would eventually break formal ties with the Mennonite Church. Though his time and effort keeping a foot simultaneously in both the Black community and Mennonite community was fixed should not suggest to us that he no longer had an important role to play in for Mennonite lived faith or that he did not continue to influence the Mennonite Church deeply. In fact, his ongoing legacy for the Mennonite Church lives on today.

When parting ways became more and more inevitable Vincent Harding also increasingly became more and more influential in the Mennonite Church. From my readings, conversations, and observations, it was precisely Harding’s apparent distance and base in the black community while in the Mennonite Church that allowed him to speak more truthfully to Mennonite leaders as well as be heard more receptively from ethnic Mennonite insiders. This is the irony of Vincent Harding’s presence for the Mennonites. It might just be the Mennonite Church’s inability to manage Harding from within that made him a perfect candidate to speak prophetically to this historic peace community.