The New Conservatives — Melvin Lehman — Ep. 017

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here again with Melvin Lehman. And in 2007, so 10 years ago, you wrote an article that, in the midnight world at least, went semi-viral or a lot of people read it. It got a lot of attention because of some things you said. It was called The New Conservatives, and we'll make sure and put a link to that so you can read it. It is a really interesting read. Actually, Frank Reed used it in history class for us. That was part of our curriculum. We were asked to discuss it and dialogue about it. But anyway, it's been 10 years.

Let's revisit some of that stuff. So just starting off, define what you meant by the term New Conservatives. What group are you talking about? And let's kind of get a baseline here. Big question. Well, again, thank you, Reagan, for the opportunity to talk here a little bit about this. It's pushed me around just a bit to think on this and say, okay, yeah, what did I mean? Well, as you've said, I did write the article about 10 years ago.

And at that particular point, I was thinking long and hard about the young folks who were coming here to Faith Builders and trying to read them. And came to the realization that they had a different perspective than what I had.

And of course, I asked the question, well, why? What has changed? Well, that led me to reflect on things. So I grew up in the '60s, public high schools, and realized that I myself had taken in, what would I say, the rebellious '60s or just that whole world that existed at that time.

It was also the era of the fragmentation of the solidarity of the old Mennonite church, and even the one that I grew up in. I don't mean the congregation itself, but the conference that we belonged to. And of course, there were just a lot of divisions that happened.

But the big divisions were liberal, conservative. Okay. What do we mean conservative? What do we mean liberal? But back at that time, it was pretty clear this was conservative, this was liberal. So I think out of that framework, but I could tell that the people I was teaching in the 1980s, '90s, and into after the millennial change, did not think in the same terms I did. That person is the person I'm calling the new conservative. So they're not coming out of that '60s and '70s perspective.

They decidedly, though, are not liberal. They don't think like a liberal does. Okay. Okay. Not at least the liberals I knew in the '60s and the '70s, the liberals I went to school with. In fact, kind of we're quite open to conservative people and conservative thought, but what I heard them asking for was a compelling reason.

Okay. What are the compelling reasons for following the conservative path? And I heard them talking about the things that concerned them that they really care about. And this is '80s, '90s, 2000s. That's right. Particularly the '90s and the 2000s. Okay. So basically more my generation and maybe a little bit older. Yeah. People who are now in their 25 to 50 in that age group that's similar. So kind of like the generation. It's like your generational differences almost in a way. That's right.

I myself was attracted to what I heard them talking about. Okay. And so I thought, well, why not try to sort this out a little bit? Think about what are the categories and so on. And so as you've already stated, our listeners could easily access the article itself. But I will just mention the six items that were very important, if I may.

And the ones I identified that would, I think, represented the new conservative. First, they do appreciate traditional practice. I don't mean they just buy in. Okay. That is okay. Yeah. Maybe better said, they don't out and out reject it just upfront. Just because somebody says it's traditional, they don't say, okay, okay, I don't want it. It's more, oh, well, okay.

While a liberal, what I call a liberal, would be a person who just automatically reacts to anything that is traditional. The new conservative does not do that. He's not a buy-in. He doesn't just say, oh yeah. And I'm glad he doesn't. He shouldn't. Yeah. That's why I refuse to call them liberal. They're a new conservative. Second, they reject authoritarianism without relationship.

I grew up in a world where authority might even be in an office 10 miles away, but if they spoke, you did. The church is not quite like that, but perhaps more so than what at least what a new conservative would want.

So authoritarianism with relationship. Third, seek to respect and honor other Bible-believing groups. Okay. So the unnecessary walls, new conservative doesn't like them. Okay. So why all the divisiveness? It's a really good question. Values of Christian education. Yeah. Now that's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. Okay. And obviously, I'm a teacher. I'm here at Faith Builders. I care about education. I respect the position because I understand the concern. So I want that understood. But the more conservative or the farther you go, the deeper you go into conservative thought, the more anti-educational you tend to be.

And it's a little unfair statement, I know, but generally speaking, probably true. The new conservative does not think in those terms. He actually sees education as an ally to the kingdom and to his church and to his life.

The next one or the fifth one that I mentioned is believes that separation from the world in thought and practice begins in the heart and affects every area of life, not just arbitrarily selected areas.

Yes. I've heard a lot. A lot of friends from Bible school that I would have went with would have said things very almost word for word like that. Yeah. Absolutely.

And I'm right on board with this. It's to categorize and so on is problematic. In fact, I like the term counterculture better than I do separation. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. So counterculture, meaning whether it's money, whether it's the house I build, whatever it is, I'm willing to accept, not only accept, but embrace a position that separates me from a world that is pagan and is gung-ho about such things.

So that I think is an important point. And the sixth one I make is the new conservative longs for meaningful Christian community as a basis for personal growth and effective mission activity. The Christian community thing is what I'm keying in on here.

My own sons, I hear them almost wistfully saying, "Well, Dad, help us to understand what the Christian community was like that you grew up in." And I hear them wanting a level of community that seems just a little beyond their grasp in today's Anabaptist circles.

I'm not quite sure how to get my finger quite on that, but I know that the new conservative wants it pretty badly. And so those six things are the ones that generally outline who the new conservative is. This is a very unique blend of mindsets and culture and kind of reaction to traditionalism, I guess you could use that word, and liberalism. So with such a unique combination, where is this headed and how is this group, the new conservatives, really my generation, making contributions to the church?

Oh boy. Great question. Where is it headed? First, I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I'll still make a few comments about it. I think the new conservatives are tilted toward tolerance. When I say tilted, again, there's always a continuum here of where we're really at, but tilted toward tolerance and away from raw authority in institutional organization.

Now, I'd say that because to address the question of, so where is it headed? My summary statement actually that I wrote down in my notes was that I think that the new conservatives will struggle with the administrative structures that actually will move their ideals forward. I'm old enough now and have experienced enough failure myself. I'm not talking about personal failure, but failure of trying to get accomplished what I wanted to get accomplished, to realize that the actual structures that are required to move a vision forward are understood by very few people. And I think the new conservatives will have to learn that there are structures that move things forward.

This tilt toward tolerance, I'll tell you a place where I see this. When I watch the new conservative parent actually parenting a child, they do not parent it the way Sheila and I do. They did. Sure. Okay. And I don't mean to be negative so much as to say that it's clear that they think that they can talk their children relationally into fill in the blank.

My warning is this. You can't talk everybody into it. I thought you could. I actually thought if you're skillful enough, that you're persuasive enough, you can talk anybody into anything. Not true.

A child does need to be raised to understand that no means no. Yes means yes. Sit here means sit here, and so on. I think the way the new conservative answers the question I'm trying to push out here will say a lot about where it actually heads if they can create the structures and if they can actually know the difference between godly tolerance that leads toward holiness of lifestyle and a tolerance that really just opens the door to a crass worldliness.

So I'm waiting to see how that works. And it's been 10 years since you wrote that article. Do you see it going down, up, but you know? Or is it too early to say? The new conservatives that I know, and I would be frank and say they're mainly people who circulate through Faith Builders and so forth and so on, are pretty alert to this and aware of it. And I really can appreciate their willingness to actually engage the discussion, let's say the discussion of tolerance. It feels to me as though we have a good chance, frankly.

Ask me at the right time. That's hopeful. Yeah. Yeah. I sometimes tell people, ask me at a different time of the day, and I'll be so pessimistic. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. In general, I feel pretty optimistic about it. Well, and just the fact that we're having these conversations and the fact that you wrote this article and it did strike such a chord, you're hitting something that my generation is feeling, and we just don't know quite what to do with it. That's what it seems to me, yes. Yeah. And really, when I read it for class, which would have been several years ago, I guess, under Frank Reid, yeah, I was like, whoa, this really makes so much more sense.

And at least it gives me a baseline to work from. And even now, revisiting and going through this again, I'm just like, yeah, I'm really seeing the potential, but also it could be, yeah, how could it go either way? It could, yes.

But let's get practical. What's some positives of this and what's some negatives? Very, very good question. Some positives in particular is an emphasis, sorry, a mission emphasis. Okay. Okay. And a particular one that I'm intrigued by. Your generation has become very interested in the children of the world. So when I was growing up, prison ministry was the big thing. Sure. It was the popular thing that's what you did. Well, good thing. I was involved in one for 16 years. Really? Okay. Yeah. I loved it. I don't regret it at all. But you always had that impression you were working at things from the wrong end. The emphasis now, it feels to me, from the new conservatives is more back to the children.

Okay. At least the ones I know. Lots of interest in. Yeah. No. Yeah. Lots of interest in like, oh, your childcare places and for your pregnancy centers and things like that. Yeah. Life's caring at the right place. It's values at the right place.

The scriptures are clear. Pure religion, undefiled, is to visit the Fatherless and the Witness in their affliction, to keep oneself unspot from the world. It's kudos to the new conservatives for putting their finger at the right place. I'm not saying that we were doing the wrong thing in the prisons. Sure. Sure. Just saying that it feels right to me that we're being very, very interested in the children.

So that's, I think, a very, very positive thing. I already mentioned earlier the community emphasis. And I hear that more and more and more. I'm not quite sure if the new conservative has identified what they mean by community. So what is that? Is that living close together? Proximity? Is it just a feeling of camaraderie? Is it a, we have one goal that we're pushing toward? I'm not quite sure what all they mean, but it's good talk.

And again, it feels to me, as I said earlier, that the new conservative's work is to bring some of that into some structures that actually do see those ideals emerge as realities. I like the rejection of affluence.

Yeah. A bit of warning. That can circle around and bite you. I mean, I was a part of the '60s, and we were very much that way. Anti-affluence. Plastic society, we called our fathers and forefathers. Well, interestingly enough, my generation, by the time we were in our 40s, we had bought into it. And we're maybe worse. Maybe worse than the generation earlier. In what way? Well, on the honesty issue. My generation was willing to actually be dishonest for gain.

The generation who had reacted to the plastic society then were willing to build on the plastic society in the end and even introduce dishonesty and a whole lot of other things with it. The new conservative generally frowns on money grabbing and just so much effort it put into the financial. And that's something I've seen. I mean, I've started hearing that a lot more. It's just like. It's to be learned. Yeah. It's a good thing.

So I feel very, very positive about that. A negative or so, you can't be all things to all men. This is that tolerance thing a little bit kind of coming back and circling back and saying that at the end of the day, you do have to, well, maybe at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, you have to somewhere make some differences.

I just let my statement stand. You can't be all things to all men. And if you try to do that, you tend to end up being almost nothing to anybody. And so there does have to be some clarity there.

And I'm not pushing now back to say, well, you need to, everybody needs to identify with the conservative Anabaptist constituency. I think it's a very good group to identify with. But one needs to create an identity. And it feels a little ambiguous to me for the new conservatives.

I know this is kind of repeating myself, but I'll say it again. The new conservatives, so not really negative, it's maybe an observation. You need to build a sustainable culture. Now, I use the word culture here because it's probably the newest frontier that I'm working on. Culture is extremely important. It's not everything, but it's important.

And what do I mean sustainable? Well, even for myself, am I passing my core values to the next generation? What does the next generation actually carry with them? I don't mean that they should mimic us and be just like us, but they should clearly carry the core values forward.

And I'm wondering if the new, so those six things I read, so I wonder, so the next generation, will they actually have imbibed them and will they carry them forward? Here's the thing that people forget. Values are carried forward generationally by traditions.

Don't think specific Mennonite traditions now. But think of Christmas, for example. There's all kinds of values that surround that, that if you were suddenly to somehow magically be able to excise the tradition of Christmas from Western society, you could just make it disappear.

I know it's a mind game, but supposing you could, what would happen to the values that are attached there that almost everybody in Western society talks about going home at Christmas time and so on? All that would disappear. Yeah. Okay. That's what I'm talking about. So it's not so much artificial traditions as it is traditions that actually are integrated and they carry forward the values.

I'm not sure that the new conservatives are building those. That's a really good point. Yeah. I've never thought of that before. Well, think about it. And I don't know. I'm doing some writing on this right now and just observing that even in non-Christian circles in the pagan world, it's your baseball games, all the stuff that's involved, these are the traditions that carry their values forward.

Yeah. Wow. Maybe that's enough for now, but those are some things I think. Yeah. Some things definitely. With those, one criticism of this, and I think of the original article too, is just, well, isn't this just another way of saying this is people transitioning from conservative Amish or Mennonite into more mainstream Christianity? Isn't that just what the new conservatives are?

I'm optimistic that it is not.

Normally, there is not just a choice between this way or that way. Okay. Okay. Okay. In a sense, there are some questions that are that way. We sing the song, there's one door, only one. I don't see this question as being a one door or this door, this one or this one. Liberalism or conservatism, so to speak.

I think there is an option. Actually, can I read just a little section from the end? You can. Please. Say it this way. Finally, I apologize for not being able to think of a better word than new conservatism.

To define the stream of thought that I'm attempting to identify, personally have a deep respect for the contributions of the old conservative positions during the 20th century and have no desire to devalue that contribution by suggesting that there is a new way that we must follow. Not saying that. The path that leads to God is an old path that many saints have tried before us and were brethren with them.

So rather than talk about, is this just another path to liberalism, I don't see it that way at all. I really see it more aligned with conservative ideals.

It has a better chance of carrying, actually, I think it has a better chance of carrying forward the ideals that my father had by a long shot than does the really extreme conservatives or the liberals. Okay. I got that. Okay. That makes sense. I really honestly do. Interesting. Because even though I have a heart for the old conservatives, I'm not stupid. There, of course, are some serious flaws there that are problematic. And I think that the new conservative path has a chance, I think, has the best chance of grabbing hold of what's best in that old conservative flow and actually pulling it into a bit of a different perspective, but not one so different that it's totally unrecognizable as being connected or finding its roots in the conservatism of the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s.

So that's why I feel optimistic about it. I'm saying I don't see it as a path that is going to veer over here to really, in the end, just being on the liberal path. Does it have a possibility of doing that? Of course it does. Absolutely.

Let's not be foolish and have our heads in the sand. Of course it can. But I think if it can stay on course with actually honestly grappling with the issues, sorting through some of the debris and pulling it into some of the framework we've talked about here and enlarging on it a bit and so on, I'm hopeful that it really is the path forward for the next 100 years.

So is this then, is this mindset something that is truly unique, or is this something that, in a sense, every generation goes through? And really, what can we learn from this mindset? It's probably not wise for us to think that something is uniquely unique. And by that, I mean brand new.

We're human beings, and we're way down the line here. So human beings have experienced a lot of things. And so it's not that I would say that, aha, we've landed on something so brand new that everybody needs to get on it.

This will fix our problems. I don't think so. However, I'd like to hope that we are grappling with the right issues and will find perhaps a unique path in the world in which we live, even among Christendom, so to speak.

Here's a book that I would, I don't know if you've read it or not. It's called Vision, Doctrine, War, by James Duka.

I have not read it, no. It's a part of a four-part series. I've read some of that series, but not that book. Yeah. This chronicles the 1890s to the 1930s. 1870s, I'm sorry, to the 1930s. I just read it.

And I was amazed, astounded at the recording here of some conversations and movements that are so similar to the things that we are actually talking about. That when I saw this question that you raised, I'm like, uh-oh.

There is a certain amount of this cyclic thing that is somewhat recognizable, particularly if you read something like this and realize, wow, they were asking the same questions that we're wanting to ask in a different time, different setting, and so on.

And yet, so I'm being like modern scholars are, even though I'm not one myself, it's like, well, yeah, it depends on how you look at the question here. From one perspective, it can feel cyclic. And that's the reason why I'm saying we shouldn't be stupid and act as if this is so brand new that it's linear, headed the right direction. And yeah. Okay. Yeah. But let's also be hopeful that we actually can plow ground, particularly in our generation that hasn't been plowed.

Perhaps it was plowed 10 generations ago. I don't know for sure. But we have the opportunity, and I think we have some perspective and some vision for it. And I'm quite hopeful that the new ground that I'm talking about is unique to our generation.

And hence, we have a unique chance to carry forward these ideas. Let me give you an example. It says, take community. Well, this is a rich ideal of the new conservative. Well, we've got phones and we've got computers and we've got an endless array of stuff that an earlier generation did not have to actually push forward community. We all know that it also has a potential to go the other way, quite strongly. But I just use that as a simple example to say, so we have a unique opportunity to plow new ground in our generation and perhaps make some headway that was not made previously. But I say that with humility and just a lot of respect for those who've gone on before us.

So maybe the mindsets that are going through my generation, the new conservatives and so forth, maybe those particular concepts aren't necessarily new, but the setting that they're in, the context is totally new. Absolutely. So that's a challenge. No generation that I teach world history, no generation that I have ever read about or even thought about has anywhere close the number of things at their fingertips as a generation today.

Well, we have a lot of things to work through. We do. It sounds like, oh my. Wow. Wow. Well, thank you for explaining some of that and yeah, taking the time and a lot to think about. A lot to think about. Praise the Lord. Wow. Well, thank you everyone for watching as well. And yeah, if you like what you see, come back. We do new episodes each week and leave a comment if you have a question. And hopefully, we'll keep making stuff like this. This has been really interesting. Thanks again for your time. You're very welcome. Thank you. Yeah. I've enjoyed this. So yeah, I guess we'll see all of you in the next episode.