Non-sectarian

While traveling back to the Winnipeg, MB area in 1985 to be with my wife as she reconciled with her astranged mother, I took the opportunity to do a little geneological work in the Morden/Winkler area. While driving through Mordon, on a nondiscript street, sat a nondiscript house, with a tiny little nondescript sign that read "Heritage Library." I thought that this might be a good place to start looking for remnants of my grandmother's family. When we entered, we were greeted by an elderly gentleman and his wife. He showed us, with some pride, his enormous collection of Dutch Anabaptist originals. I was overwhelmed.

After tea, and a timely visit discussing my own heritage in the Hutterite Church. I asked him if the library was Mennonite. At once, he quite sternly replied, "Yes, but we are non-sectarian." I had never even heard the word before, and here it was being used to speak of the different branches of the Mennonite world. The elderly gentleman obviously disliked the thought of being lumped into one or another group.

Sectarian: 1. Of or concerning a sect. 2. Bigotted or narrow-minded in following the doctrine of one's sect. 3. A member of a sect. 4. A bigot. (The illustrated Oxford Dictionary-Oxford Universtiy Press, Oxford1993, 2003)

To be non-sectarian then, is to be sectless, open-minded, antiracist.

This kind elderly gentleman added that day, a new word to my vocabulary. While my early history is Hutterite and my present-day history is Old Colony Mennonite, I stand to be non-sectarian. I am Anabaptist, neither catholic nor protestant, but simply a radical follower of Jesus Christ, holding firm to the traditions of the peace church, believing in the ministry of reconciliation, living in intentional community according to Acts 2 and 4, redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the inner work of the Spirit of God, sometimes called baptism in the Spirit, sometimes called sanctification, always about living a Christ-centred life, always non-sectarian.