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Violence, Community, and the Struggle for LGBTQ Justice in the Mennonite Church USA

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Violence, Community, and the Struggle for LGBTQ Justice in the Mennonite Church USA Pacifist Battlegrounds: Violence, Community, and the Struggle for LGBTQ Justice in the Mennonite Church USA By Copyright 2015 Stephanie Krehbiel Submitted to the graduate degree program in American Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Randal Jelks ________________________________ Sherrie Tucker ________________________________ Ben Chappell ________________________________ Akiko Takeyama ________________________________ Marike Janzen Date Defended: April 13, 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Stephanie Krehbiel certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Pacifist Battlegrounds: Violence, Community, and the Struggle for LGBTQ Justice in the Mennonite Church USA ________________________________ Chairperson Randal Jelks Date approved: April 13, 2015 ii Abstract This dissertation focuses on the movement for LGBTQ inclusion within the Mennonite Church USA, a Christian denomination of just under 100,000 members. Mennonites are part of a nearly five century Christian tradition known as Anabaptism, known for an ethic of nonviolence. Yet Mennonite communities and institutions have been and continue to be sites of intense patriarchal and gendered interpersonal violence. While LGBTQ Mennonites and their supporters have been engaged in visible advocacy and grassroots organizing for the past forty years, they continue to struggle for recognition and acceptance within a denomination that mirrors many other U.S. Christian groups in its sharp divisions over sexual politics. Mennonites’ polity tends towards congregational rather then hierarchical arrangements, and church policies are determined and debated at congregational, regional, and national levels through processes known as “discernment.” Discernment is seen as a peaceful approach to settling communal conflict. However, LGBTQ Mennonites often experience such processes as abusive and violent. Thus Mennonite conflicts over LGBTQ inclusion are also struggles over how violence should be defined. This study draws on interviews, oral histories, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival evidence from the past four decades, arguing that LGBTQ Mennonites and their allies have played an integral role in subverting and revealing the hidden abuses of power enabled by Mennonite communal discourses. It brings together a feminist and queer theory-based analysis of discursive violence with a critique of de-historicized multiculturalism in institutional life. iii Acknowledgements In the years that I have spent working on this dissertation, more people than I can possibly name have had an impact on its shape, scope, and arguments. My advisor, Randal Jelks, took interest in this project almost immediately upon my arrival at University of Kansas, and from the beginning his encouragement helped me to proceed with the confidence that my work mattered. This study has benefitted tremendously from his deep and expansive knowledge of U.S. Christianity, his commitment to scholarship with conscience, and his tireless insistence that religious belief be taken seriously as a factor in social change. My other committee members also had substantial roles in shaping my dissertation. Conversations with Ben Chappell about the theoretical underpinnings and ethical motivations of my work always helped me pull myself out of the inevitable ruts of the writing process; every chapter owes a debt to his thoughtful guidance. Sherrie Tucker taught me to be an interdisciplinary scholar, to trust my hunches, and to weather the backlash. Akiko Takeyama was invaluable in helping me to keep at least one foot grounded in women’s studies. Marike Janzen, while technically serving as my outside member, was anything but; her critical approach to her own Mennonite experiences has challenged and inspired me at several key moments in my process. David Roediger has also been a generous mentor and source of career guidance, as well as an incredibly forgiving boss for a research assistant in the throes of dissertating. The Hall Center for the Humanities made it possible for me to write without teaching during a key year on the project. Thanks especially to Victor Bailey and Sally Utech for your support of my work. iv Tami Albin is the superhero librarian behind this project. Very few graduate students benefit from the kind of interdisciplinary research support that I’ve had from Tami. I know how lucky I am. Liam Lair and Ashley Mog have been the best writing partners I could possibly imagine. All three have been indispensible friends to me. Liam, Ashley, Tami: I can’t imagine my life without the three of you, let alone this dissertation. Many friends sustained and cared for me in countless ways for the duration of this project. Thanks in particular to Oniel Chambers, Ellie Vainker, Cat Jacquet, Ruth Harder, and Caleb Lazaro. I also want to thank Jesse Graber, Lora Enfield, Gaywyn Moore, Rebecca Barrett-Fox, Sarah Weber, Phil Graber, Andrea Yoder Graber, Susan Gaeddert, and Katie Hastings Lewis, for friendship and much more. My fellow graduate students in KU AMS have been a fantastic group and source of support: a particular shout out to Chris Robinson, Sean Malone, Hai Cao, and Pete Williams. Jennifer Yoder and Carol Wise, in addition to serving as indispensible sources of knowledge for my study, were pillars of solidarity and activist love when the Mennonite world felt like more than I could handle. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude all to the organizers, advocates, and activists of Pink Menno and Brethren Mennonite Council on LGBT Interests, both past and present, particularly the following: Lisa Pierce, Patrick Ressler, Luke Miller, Justin Yoder, Christian Parks, Arthur Kauffman, Adam Hostetter, Kirsten Freed, Katie Hochstetler, Annabeth Roeschley, Christian Yoder, John Linscheid, Tim Nafziger, Wilma Harder, Larry E. Miller, and Su Flickinger. Special thanks to Amy Short for sharing the phenomenal source material of the BMC Oral History Project, and to Frank Trnka, for giving me access to his amazing attic archive and BMC drag photos, as well as for valuable elder guidance. I first met Audrey Roth Kraybill in the convention v center hallway on my first evening in Pittsburgh and within an hour we were both crying and drinking beer. She has been my fiercest supporter ever since. Do not mess with the Pink Menno Mama Bear. Thanks also to Hugo Saucedo, Tyler Zabriskie, Donna Sider, Jonathan Miller, Stephen Wilcox, Fidele Lumeya, Doris Bartel, Charles Cristano, Sara Person, Harold Miller, Leann Toews, Joanna Shenk, Heidi Regier Kreider, Hannah Heinzekehr, Glen Geissinger, and Arlene Geissinger. While not all your names appear in this text, all of your perspectives have informed and shaped it. I have learned a great deal from the Mennonite pastors who have taken social and professional risks in support of queer inclusion. Special thanks to Joanna Harader, Ruth Harder, and Cynthia Lapp, for your knowledge and for your friendships. Many thanks also to Sarah Klaassen, Michelle Burkholder, Ron Adams, Theda Good, Megan Ramer, Joetta Schlabach, and Joel Miller. My final chapter on sexualized violence would have been impossible without the close and regular counsel and friendship of Ruth Krall, Barbra Graber, Carolyn Heggen, Lisa Schirch, and Rachel Halder. Thanks also to Rachel Waltner Goossen, Regina Shands Stoltzfus, Felipe Hinojosa, and Gerald Mast. I owe all of you a substantial intellectual debt, and your personal generosity to me has meant more than I can say. I also thank Clarence Rempel, Elizabeth Soto Albrecht, Samuel Schrag, Isaac Villegas, and Ervin Stutzman. All of you have given time and energy to me in one way or another, and while I know that not all of you will welcome or agree with my interpretations, I appreciate your willingness to engage with me. vi My final and most heartfelt thanks goes to my family. It is impossible to trace all the ways that the influence of my parents, Dwight and Bonnie Krehbiel, is present in this text. Their love and support has been constant and unconditional. Thanks also to Arleen Cook and Darrell Wiens, Galen Cook-Wiens, Donna and Richard Zerger, Twila and Ed Wiens, and Randy and Myrna Krehbiel, all of whom have been constant in their interest in and support of this project. Finally, most of all, to my spouse and partner Eric Cook- Wiens: your faith in me is the reason this project exists. I love you. And to my cats, Billy and Xander: you are my heart, and I blame you for all the typos. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................. 24 CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................. 65 CHAPTER 3 ............................................................................................................................... 105 CHAPTER 4 ............................................................................................................................... 134 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................................
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