August 10, 2016 • 32 mins
A 98-year-old minister takes on his church over the subject of gay marriage—and teaches the rest of us what it means to stand up in protest.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I grew up in southwestern Ontario, farming country, in
a place called Waterloo County. Waterloo County is home to
one of the largest population of Mennonites in the world.
I grew up among Mennonites, went to school with them.
They're Anabaptists, which is one of the oldest Protestant denominations.
(00:36):
Mennonites are small in number, industrious, close knit. Came to
North America after they were persecuted in Russia. The joke
is the basically Jews who farm. So I went home
to see my parents not long ago, and everyone was
talking about something online called an open Letter to my
beloved church. It's a long letter touching on family and
(00:56):
devotion and faith in scripture. A Mennonite pastor wrote it, actually,
I should say an x Mennonite pastor, a man named
Chester Wenger. I read the letter and I was so
taken by it that I went to see him, drove
four and a half hours on one cold January day.
Oh my, just every day three four or five people say, oh,
(01:17):
we dislike your letter. We like your letter, we like
your letter. The letter has been read more than two
hundred and thirty thousand times. On Mennonite dot Org. To
put that in perspective, there were only eight hundred thousand
Mennonites in North America. It's been liked and shared all
over Facebook hashtag Chester Wenger is a thing. I asked
Wenger if he anticipated any of his words going viral.
(01:40):
I didn't mean it. Didn't even know what viral meant.
The letter went virals. What's that mean? It's like a virus.
It's just read I was I was shocked. My name
is Malcolm Gladwell. This is Revisionist History, my podcast about
(02:02):
things misunderstood and overlooked. This week's episode is about Chester
Wenger and about an idea called generous orthodoxy. That phrase
generous orthodoxy comes from a theologian named Hans fry It's
(02:23):
an oxymoron. Of course. To be orthodox is to be
committed to tradition. To be generous, as fry De finds,
it is to be open to change. But fry thought
the best way to live our lives was to find
the middle ground. Because orthodoxy without generosity leads to blindness,
and generosity without orthodoxy is shallow and empty. One of
(02:46):
the hardest things in the world is to find that balance,
not just for those pursuing a life of faith, but
for anyone interested in making their world better. I think
Chester Anger shows us the way. I wanted to study Bible,
and I got the first Bester of Arts, and then
(03:08):
I got a Bachelor of Theology. I was very interested
in getting all the training I could. Wenger lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
another men a night enclave in a little house just
off the turnpike, where he and his wife, Sarah Jane
brought up their eight children. Wenger has a barrel chest,
straight back, real handshake, big head of white hair. He
(03:30):
looks a little like a cross between Colonel Sanders and
an NFL linebacker. He's ninety eight years old. This is
the part of the evening that I remember the most.
At the very end of several hours in his tiny
living room, it nearly brought me to tears. Adversity. I
thought I wanted to read from Romans. It's very familiar.
(03:52):
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.
It is the power of God for salvation to everyone
who has faith. Notice how broad that is. Let me
start with a few more words about Mennonites, because what
(04:13):
Wanger did makes no sense unless you understand the world
that he inhabits. The theologian Palm Rebecker has a lovely
phrase to describe the Mennonite way. Jesus is the center
of our faith. Community is the center of our lives.
Reconciliation is the center of our work. It's hard to
explain to an outsider how seriously the Mennonites take these
(04:34):
three things Jesus, community, and reconciliation. They don't use the
word community, for example, in the metaphorical way like most
of us. Do you know, I'm a member of the
journalist community. To Mennonites, community is a much more serious thing.
Listen to my friend Jim Leaptisin, who's a Mennonite pastor.
(04:57):
In my dad's church growing up, it was very strict.
He told me at one point that if people didn't
believe you're given ten percent year income to the church,
they had the right to audit your books. And he
said that without any recrimination or any condemnation, and even
a bit of humor. He was like, and so my
books got out twice by his good friend and neighbor
up the road. How on earth? But did that conversation
(05:18):
happen the treasurer came to him and said, we don't
think you're giving enough. Absolutely, And I have a really
high view of the church, and you know you speak
on behalf of the church. And we've all submitted to this,
so it's not like I'm submitting to something that you haven't.
So we're all in us together, yeah, and we're all
trying to be as faithful as we can be. That
(05:39):
business of auditing each other's books, that's from fifty or
sixty years ago, a different era, but I think it
gives you a flavor of what Mennonites mean when they
say we're all in this together. When I was a kid,
just after we moved to Canada from England, we heard
about a barn raising not far from us. When a
Mennonite farmer's barn burns down, the people from church gather
(06:00):
as soon as they can bring food and building materials
and anything else to a place what was lost, and
they build a new barn. Frame it up one day,
put it up the next. My parents were Presbyterians, but
my father found the idea of a barn raising incredibly impressive,
so he crashed it. You have to understand that these
(06:20):
were what were called Old Order Mennonites, like the Amish.
They drove horses and buggies and lived without electricity. My
dad was a college professor in a rusty pougia with
an impenetrable English accent and a shirt in a tie.
They had never seen him or anything like him before.
They just put him to work, no questions asked. We're
all in this together. Eventually my parents would join the
(06:43):
Mennonite Church, and my brother would marry a Mennonite pastor.
And I suspect that sense of community is why there's
something beautiful about that kind of belonging. One more Mennonite's
story from my friend Jim Leptisen. This might even be
the quintessential Mennonite's story. About a guy who buys a
house from another Mennonite whom, of course he trusted. He
(07:05):
bought the house and find out that in fact, he'd
been liked to him. So On either side of this
men were two men from a Mennonite church. One of
them said to him, did he tell you that the
septic system was in good shape? And he said yes
he did, and he said you have to fix it.
He said, yea, I have to replace it completely. Was
twelve thousand dollars or something. The septic system, one of
(07:27):
the most expensive things in a house. He said, well,
here's four thousand dollars for that. What he did wasn't right,
and he goes to our church. And the guy on
the other side said, I'll pay whatever he didn't pay,
so they together covered it. He said, he goes to
our church, and that isn't right. This is the world
Chester Wenger inhabits. He's squarely in the middle of it.
(07:48):
Wenger's father was one of the founders of a big
Mennonite seminary in Virginia. His daughter, Sarah, is the president
of the Big Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. Wenger lived
seventeen years in Ethiopia, where he helped to found and
build what is now the largest Mennonite church in the world.
To Deep Ties, Deep Tie, you guys are Mennonite royalty,
basically in Hans Fries's terms. Wenger is an Orthodox Menanite,
(08:15):
a member of the Blossom Hill Congregation in Lancaster. But
there's another side to him. Mennonites come in all kinds
of shapes and sizes. My parents' church in Ontario is
pretty liberal full of college professors and software engineers and teachers.
(08:37):
My mom and her best friend Lorraine were doing feminist
retreats back in the seventies. But Lancaster County, where Wenger
is from, is much more conservative. The Mennonites there didn't
accept women as ordained ministers until a couple of years ago,
and that was something that Wenger struggled with because he's
not just Orthodox, he's generous, he's open to the world.
(08:59):
He spent ten years as pastor of Blossom Hill in
nineteen eighties, so when it came to the prohibition against
female pastors, Wenger would do a kind of work around.
The rules said women could not be ordained as ministers,
meaning they couldn't be formally recognized as church leaders, but
they could still talk on Sunday morning. Right, I used
women in the pulpit that weren't ordained. I preach, and
(09:23):
then nick Sunday, I'd have this woman preach, and then
I'd have my wife preach. I didn't want to do
all the preaching. And if no one questions your loyalty,
you can get away with that kind of subversion. Chester
Wenger walked that fine line orthodox but also generous until
(09:45):
one day Chester's son Philip comes to him and the
line becomes almost impossible to walk at all. Growing up,
I had no awareness of homosexuality anywhere. I remember somewhere
along the line, maybe when I was early I hadn't
(10:07):
Lescence talked about a cousin of mine, but I didn't
I didn't know what they were talking about. The question
of whether someone might be gay simply never occurred to him.
And it goes without saying that a community that did
not permit the ordination of women until quite recently did
not have progressive views on homosexuality. But one day Phil
(10:30):
pulled his father aside. What did he tell you? I
don't know the words he used, but I understood that
he had attraction for males and females, and I said,
maybe you can outgrow this. And so that's where that's
where we left it. And about a year later he
(10:53):
came back and he said, Dad, I haven't outgrown it.
And so we had this awareness that he's that's who
he is. So Phil goes off to college, he comes home,
he brings up the subject again, and I came to
him and I explained to him ten minutes before I
(11:16):
was going to drive back to college in Virginia. That's Phil.
He's in the room with me and Chester sitting across
from his father. That dad, this is for real. I'm
going to identify as being gay. I'm going to tell
other people I'm gay. I'm going to date other guys.
And you know, you're going to have to get used
to this. As word got out in Lancaster, the consequences
(11:39):
were immediate. Phil had a job with the church. He
lost it. He was instructed to come in and confess
his sins. He refused. Chester Wanger had a position in
the Medanite administration in Lancaster at the time, and attended
a local Menonite church one Sunday morning. The pastor got
up and made an announcement. He just read off in
(12:00):
church one day that Phil Winger is no longer a
member of our coregation. And we didn't know it. He
didn't approach you first. We didn't know that he was
doing that. And Phil hadn't had contact with him either
or him with Phil, and I couldn't believe it. It
was unilateral and I wasn't part of the conversation, and
(12:21):
the deed was already done. And at that point my
faith had pretty much diminished to next to nothing, and
I was going to proceed with a life outside the
traditional church community. Think about this through Chester Wenger's eyes.
He can accept his son's sexuality, but his own church,
the church to which he has been loyal all his life,
(12:44):
that church has now cast his son out. His orthodoxy
is in conflict with his generosity, and his son is
caught in the middle. Can you imagine not just the pain,
but the guilt. He gave his life to a church
that said we're all in this together, and now that
church has split his family in two. I always told
(13:04):
Phil that your faith is most important to me, that
don't give up the faith of Jesus. Phil went on
to start a successful restaurant business. At one point, some
years ago, he goes back to his high school reunion
and there some of his old classmates confront him and
(13:26):
tell him they would never eat at one of his restaurants.
Phil tells his mother, and you told her all this,
and she said to you, don't give up on Jesus.
He's sitting in his chair straight back. Ninety eight years old,
Colonel Sanders meets a linebacker, a man of God, and
(13:48):
as Chester Wenger talks about that moment years ago when
he worried that his son's soul was in jeopardy. He
starts to weep, and I guess there was no expression
at that point particularly, But as he went to go
at the door, he gave a broad swah, touched her
(14:09):
hardest spot. Don't give up on Jesus. He seemed to
accept it, and with a smile that tucht us very deeply.
At the beginning of this story, I said that balancing
(14:31):
loyalty and conscience is just about the hardest thing to do.
Let me give you another example. It's not as wrenching
as Chester Wenger's story, but it gets at some of
the same issues. It's from Princeton University, one of the
schools that's been swept up in the recent wave of
(14:53):
campus unrest. The controversy is over Woodrow Wilson, who was
president of Princeton from nineteen o two to nineteen ten,
and of course, later went on to serve two terms
as President of the United States. Princeton named one of
his most prestigious graduate schools after him, the Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs. Wilson did many remarkable and
(15:14):
important things as the head of Princeton and later as president.
But he was a racist, and not a mild one,
a kind of nasty one. So in the fall of
twenty fifteen, activists at the school stage a thirty two
hours sitting in the office of the Princeton president. They
want Wilson's name off the graduate school, perpetuated in ideology
(15:37):
that has led to the continual China side of black
people in this country. He is a murmur We owe
him nothing. This university all name. Jacob Smith, one of
my producers talked to one of the protesters, a sophomore
named will Glory tan John. The promise of Princeton, she argues,
(15:59):
is that all its students will feel at home. This
campus is for you. But everywhere she goes, she sees
pictures of Wilson. Everywhere, in the most random places. There
are rooms that have just all these huge photos of
this white man peering down on you. Right. So when
you see these kind of things, you really feel like,
(16:20):
was this university meant for me? Or is it still
really meant for white men? Now? I happen to agree
with tan John. How do you think Princeton became one
of the wealthiest universities in the world. The place is
ground zero for rich white guys. Just walk around campus.
There's the carl Icon Laboratory. That's Carl Icon, rich white male,
(16:41):
corporate raid billionaire. There's the Frick Chemistry Laboratory. That's Henry
Clay Frick, white male robber baron. The Firestone Library that's
the rich white guy who started Firestone Tires. The Bezos
Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics, you know, the rich white
guy who founded Amazon. Look over there, it's the Lewis
Center for the Arts. That's Peter Lewis, the white guy
(17:03):
who started Progressive Insurance. The John Scully Center for the
Neuroscience of Mind and Behavior. Scully a rich white guy.
Not to be confused, by the way, with the other
John Scully, a rich white guy who used to run Apple.
This is the even richer John Scully, who manages billions
of dollars on Wall Street. Do I need to go
on Rockefeller Hall, richest white guy ever. Of course, there's
(17:28):
also Emma B. Bloomberg Hall. Emma Bloomberg not a white guy,
except wait, she's the daughter of Michael Bloomberg. Super super
like forty three billion dollars, rich white guy. They don't
hide their identities at Princeton. They put their identities on
every single building on campus. A few weeks after the
(17:51):
students sit in, there was a town hall meeting on
the Princeton campus to discuss whether or not to change
the name of the Wilson School. I really hope that
people really think about why we are so tied to
this name, like what really changes if we change the name.
It was held at the Richardson Auditorium, lots of dark
and stone tapestries on the wall. By the way, a
(18:12):
building named in honor of David B. Richardson, class of
thirty three, usefully described in the Princeton promotional literature as
a quote lifelong enthusiast of classical music and a successful
lawyer and investor. Another rich white guy. Think about it,
Princeton literally could not find a single place to discuss
the troubled legacy of a rich white guy that was
(18:34):
not named after a rich white guy. Here's the first
guy who gets up to speak. I'm Harvey Rothburg, class
of the Great Class of nineteen forty nine. I absolutely
believe that the name of Woodrow Wilson should be preserved
at the head of the School of Public and International Affairs.
(18:57):
Rothberg says it's important that everyone know who Wilson was
and what the man did. There could be a memorial plaque,
engraved in bronze and so on, which would detail in
a short paragraph his great achievements as president of this university,
and in a second paragraph his great achievements as president
(19:22):
of the United States and on the international scene as well.
But there could also be a final paragraph, short one
which would say something like Wilson's prejudiced views on racial
matters were undoubtedly influenced and shaped by his background and
(19:44):
his growing up in the postbellum South. Then another alum
gets up and he agrees he's a giant. You can't
just take his name off of schools or colleges. We
have to keep them. All people are flawed. He also
likes to black idea. But this speaker has a quibble
with a short paragraph about prejudice. I think it can't
(20:07):
just say Wilson was influenced by the prevailing war aids
of the time, because a man of his stature should
have seen beyond that. And I think somehow the podcasts
to acknowledge that real harm was caused to real people.
(20:29):
This is what the protesters are up against. I mean,
can you believe these guys. When Wilson took office as president,
the Federal Civil Service was one of the only institutions
in Washington that was integrated. Blacks had jobs next to whites.
One of the first things Wilson does is reverse that policy.
Lots of black federal workers get fired, and it becomes
(20:52):
really hard for educated African Americans to get a job
in Washington. And when a delegation of black professionals comes
to him to complain, you know what he says to them.
Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit and ought
to be so regarded by you, gentlemen. This is the
guy Princeton venerates. And the thing that the first two
(21:13):
speakers are arguing about is the wording of the last
paragraph of the plaque. They want to put up the
plaque as if the whole controversy were really just an
exercise in improving signage. For goodness sake, take the man's
name down. If you don't want to change the school's stationary,
just choose another Wilson. There are lots of Wilson's out there.
(21:34):
Who don't hate black people. Jackie Rita Russell, flip rebel Owen,
how about the Owen Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
But the only way people like this are going to
listen to the protesters is if they think the protesters
care about Princeton, care about Princeton the way it is.
(21:55):
They'll accept generosity only if it comes with some orthodoxy.
They want some acknowledgement that the protesters appreciate what they've
been given, some concession that the rich white guys who
make them so uncomfortable also made it possible for them
to attend a school that looks like Versailles, if versai
(22:15):
by some accident of history, had been built not outside
of Paris, but between Trenton and Newark, New Jersey. But instead,
what do they hear? This university owes everything. I walk
around this campus understanding that this was built on the
backs of white people, and I owe none. If you
guys anything, we all white people nothing, and not for
(22:36):
the evilness and a white hatred in this country, we
would not have to be fighting for our rights. All
of this is mine. My people built this place. She's angry,
she's passionate, Maybe right, now she regrets her choice of words.
When I was an angry young student of Generation ago,
I ended up regretting my words. But I went to
(22:57):
school before every emotional outbursts got immortalized on YouTube. And
those words are what every crotchety old Princeton alum heard
when they went online. All of this is mine. How
do you think they felt when they heard that or
some version of this. I don't feel welcomes When you
walk on this campus and you see the name of
(23:18):
Ujo Wilson on the graduate building, right will Glory Tanjong
complaining about the privileged white guys peering down on her,
But she chose to go to Princeton Ground zero for
the privileged white guy. It's not like the school covered
over the names on those buildings when she came for
her campus visit. She's basically saying that the school I
(23:39):
chose to attend, the school that makes no attempt to
hide what it is and what it stands for, is
not I suddenly realize a place that makes me feel comfortable,
and so I want to change it. These are not
arguments that are going to convince anyone. I don't need
(24:00):
to tell you what happens after a decent interval. A
few months later, the Wilson Legacy Review Committee comes out
with the university's decision. Head of the committee says, at
the end of the day, what we learned was that
Wilson was a complicated and flawed individual. But when you
look at the pluses andes, we didn't feel that the
mines were enough to eliminate his name a whitewash. Here's
(24:26):
what the protesters should have done instead. They should have said,
Wilson's name makes us so uncomfortable that we're not coming
back next semester unless you change it, and we're going
to tell other prospective Princeton students, minority and otherwise to
do the same. Instead of talking about what they were
(24:47):
owed by Princeton, they should have talked about what they
were willing to give up for Princeton. I am willing
to give up my position at the New Jersey Versailles
in order to make the school a better place. That's
how much I care about Princeton. Generosity mixed with orthodoxy,
Now would that have worked? Idea? But the best and
(25:11):
brightest standing up and saying I'm giving up my place
at one of the world's great universities in order to
save it from itself. Certainly has a better shot than
a sleepover in the president's office. Yes, it would have
been a costly strategy. It would have required a real sacrifice.
That's why generous orthodoxy is so hard. When he was
(25:44):
twenty nine, Phil Wenger fell in love with a man
named Steve. They have been together ever since. Then, about
ten years ago, Jean Robinson became the first openly gay
bishop in the Episcopal Church, and Phil and Steve found
themselves a new spiritual home. I was confirmed and joined
the Episcopal Church, and I invited mom and dad to
(26:07):
come and participate in that service, and a couple of
other siblings game. And after I rejoined the church, my
father could hardly stop weeping his tears of joy. When
a state at Pennsylvania legalized gay marriage in twenty fourteen,
Phil and Steve raced down to the courthouse to apply
for their marriage license. They were a second in line,
(26:28):
and the couple in front of us offered to let
us go first, but we let them go first because
we knew each other. Then they had a big party
at the Hamilton Club in downtown Lancaster as they waited
for their marriage certificate invited four hundred people. Phil's rector
from the Saint James Episcopal Church performed a ceremony. Phil
had his father say a blessing at the end, but
(26:49):
afterward he shared with me that he sort of was
a little bit envious that I had not asked him
to actually marry us. So as soon as we got
the wedding certificate, and as soon as I knew we
were going to get married, I went to Dad. I said,
would you be willing to do this officially sign our
wedding certificate, our marriage certiget, and would you be willing
(27:10):
to do the vows with the told us. They gathered
in Phil's backyard, Phil Steve, two witnesses, Chester and his
wife Sarah Jane. I asked Chester Wenger about that day.
Why would it matter to him that someone else would
officiate at his son's wedding. He told me that the
mayor offered to marry him. Well, I was his father,
(27:33):
and I was an ordained clergy in our church, and
I didn't say a word. He just waited quietly, and
when he asked, I said sure, So I was I
appreciated he let me do that and sign a certificate.
(27:56):
With that act, Chester Wenger made his family whole. He
welcomed his son back into the fold of family and
religious community. But he knew what that meant. It meant
that he had broken the rules of his own church,
which do not acknowledge same sex marriages. There was no
work around this time, like when he had women preach
from the pulpit of Blossom Hill. They had to discipline,
(28:19):
and so they lifted my credentials. He was no longer
I met a night pastor. You've had credentials as a
clergyman for how many years? Since nineteen forty eight? How
did it feel to be stripped of them? It didn't
make any difference to me, because I'm the same person
I am. I'm respected in my congregation. I don't intend
(28:42):
to marry anybody else. I don't intend to be an
authority for anyone. I just have a heritage life that
I've lived. So they took away something that I'll never
use anyway. I did think you might want to marry
one of your great grandchildren someday, he laughs. But of
(29:07):
course it made a difference to him. It made all
the difference in the world. He gave up his profession
his position within the church, his identity, so he could
officiate at the marriage of his son. He sacrificed, He
gave something up because his son had been excluded from
the world of church and family for a Mennonite, the
(29:28):
most grievous kind of harm. And he's my child, He's
my son, precious, precious child. Then Chesterwenger wrote his letter,
an open letter to the Mennonite Church, the letter that
went viral, written by the man who wasn't even sure
(29:51):
what viral meant. It's a long letter, but here are
the two sentences that struck me the most. When my
wife and I read the Bible with today's fractured, anxious
church in mind, we ask, what is Jesus calling us
to do with those sons and daughters who are among
the most despised people in the world, in all races
(30:12):
and communities. What would Jesus do with our sons and
daughters who are bullied, homeless, sexually abused, and driven to
suicide at far higher rates than our heterosexual children. That's generous,
Chester Wenger, open to seeing the world in new ways,
but there's no anger in his letter. Alongside the generosity
(30:38):
is Orthodoxy respect for the body he is trying to heal.
He goes on to say that he reported his transgression
to the church leadership himself. He told them what he
had done, and they responded, and these are his words
with grace filled pastoral listening. And then he writes, I
(30:58):
am at peace with their decision and understand their need
to take this action. Chester Wenger is going to win.
Maybe not right away, but he'll win because he makes
(31:21):
plain not just how beautiful, generous orthodox he is, but
how powerful, which is something that everyone who stands up
in protest needs to remember. You must respect the body
you are trying to heal. Are you going to read
something to his chest adversity? I thought I wanted to
(31:43):
read from Romans. It's very familiar. For I'm not ashamed
of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. It is the power
of God for salvation to everyone who has faith. The
Gospel is open. I just think that's so precious. You've
(32:15):
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app our show is produced by mil La Belle, Roxanne
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(32:39):
is composed by Luis Gera and Taka Yasuzala. Flan Williams
is our engineer and our fact checker is Michelle Saraca.
Penalty management team Laura Mayer, Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg.
I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Pushkin. I grew up in southwestern Ontario, farming country, in
a place called Waterloo County. Waterloo County is home to
one of the largest population of Mennonites in the world.
I grew up among Mennonites, went to school with them.
They're Anabaptists, which is one of the oldest Protestant denominations.
(00:36):
Mennonites are small in number, industrious, close knit. Came to
North America after they were persecuted in Russia. The joke
is the basically Jews who farm. So I went home
to see my parents not long ago, and everyone was
talking about something online called an open Letter to my
beloved church. It's a long letter touching on family and
(00:56):
devotion and faith in scripture. A Mennonite pastor wrote it, actually,
I should say an x Mennonite pastor, a man named
Chester Wenger. I read the letter and I was so
taken by it that I went to see him, drove
four and a half hours on one cold January day.
Oh my, just every day three four or five people say, oh,
(01:17):
we dislike your letter. We like your letter, we like
your letter. The letter has been read more than two
hundred and thirty thousand times. On Mennonite dot Org. To
put that in perspective, there were only eight hundred thousand
Mennonites in North America. It's been liked and shared all
over Facebook hashtag Chester Wenger is a thing. I asked
Wenger if he anticipated any of his words going viral.
(01:40):
I didn't mean it. Didn't even know what viral meant.
The letter went virals. What's that mean? It's like a virus.
It's just read I was I was shocked. My name
is Malcolm Gladwell. This is Revisionist History, my podcast about
(02:02):
things misunderstood and overlooked. This week's episode is about Chester
Wenger and about an idea called generous orthodoxy. That phrase
generous orthodoxy comes from a theologian named Hans fry It's
(02:23):
an oxymoron. Of course. To be orthodox is to be
committed to tradition. To be generous, as fry De finds,
it is to be open to change. But fry thought
the best way to live our lives was to find
the middle ground. Because orthodoxy without generosity leads to blindness,
and generosity without orthodoxy is shallow and empty. One of
(02:46):
the hardest things in the world is to find that balance,
not just for those pursuing a life of faith, but
for anyone interested in making their world better. I think
Chester Anger shows us the way. I wanted to study Bible,
and I got the first Bester of Arts, and then
(03:08):
I got a Bachelor of Theology. I was very interested
in getting all the training I could. Wenger lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
another men a night enclave in a little house just
off the turnpike, where he and his wife, Sarah Jane
brought up their eight children. Wenger has a barrel chest,
straight back, real handshake, big head of white hair. He
(03:30):
looks a little like a cross between Colonel Sanders and
an NFL linebacker. He's ninety eight years old. This is
the part of the evening that I remember the most.
At the very end of several hours in his tiny
living room, it nearly brought me to tears. Adversity. I
thought I wanted to read from Romans. It's very familiar.
(03:52):
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.
It is the power of God for salvation to everyone
who has faith. Notice how broad that is. Let me
start with a few more words about Mennonites, because what
(04:13):
Wanger did makes no sense unless you understand the world
that he inhabits. The theologian Palm Rebecker has a lovely
phrase to describe the Mennonite way. Jesus is the center
of our faith. Community is the center of our lives.
Reconciliation is the center of our work. It's hard to
explain to an outsider how seriously the Mennonites take these
(04:34):
three things Jesus, community, and reconciliation. They don't use the
word community, for example, in the metaphorical way like most
of us. Do you know, I'm a member of the
journalist community. To Mennonites, community is a much more serious thing.
Listen to my friend Jim Leaptisin, who's a Mennonite pastor.
(04:57):
In my dad's church growing up, it was very strict.
He told me at one point that if people didn't
believe you're given ten percent year income to the church,
they had the right to audit your books. And he
said that without any recrimination or any condemnation, and even
a bit of humor. He was like, and so my
books got out twice by his good friend and neighbor
up the road. How on earth? But did that conversation
(05:18):
happen the treasurer came to him and said, we don't
think you're giving enough. Absolutely, And I have a really
high view of the church, and you know you speak
on behalf of the church. And we've all submitted to this,
so it's not like I'm submitting to something that you haven't.
So we're all in us together, yeah, and we're all
trying to be as faithful as we can be. That
(05:39):
business of auditing each other's books, that's from fifty or
sixty years ago, a different era, but I think it
gives you a flavor of what Mennonites mean when they
say we're all in this together. When I was a kid,
just after we moved to Canada from England, we heard
about a barn raising not far from us. When a
Mennonite farmer's barn burns down, the people from church gather
(06:00):
as soon as they can bring food and building materials
and anything else to a place what was lost, and
they build a new barn. Frame it up one day,
put it up the next. My parents were Presbyterians, but
my father found the idea of a barn raising incredibly impressive,
so he crashed it. You have to understand that these
(06:20):
were what were called Old Order Mennonites, like the Amish.
They drove horses and buggies and lived without electricity. My
dad was a college professor in a rusty pougia with
an impenetrable English accent and a shirt in a tie.
They had never seen him or anything like him before.
They just put him to work, no questions asked. We're
all in this together. Eventually my parents would join the
(06:43):
Mennonite Church, and my brother would marry a Mennonite pastor.
And I suspect that sense of community is why there's
something beautiful about that kind of belonging. One more Mennonite's
story from my friend Jim Leptisen. This might even be
the quintessential Mennonite's story. About a guy who buys a
house from another Mennonite whom, of course he trusted. He
(07:05):
bought the house and find out that in fact, he'd
been liked to him. So On either side of this
men were two men from a Mennonite church. One of
them said to him, did he tell you that the
septic system was in good shape? And he said yes
he did, and he said you have to fix it.
He said, yea, I have to replace it completely. Was
twelve thousand dollars or something. The septic system, one of
(07:27):
the most expensive things in a house. He said, well,
here's four thousand dollars for that. What he did wasn't right,
and he goes to our church. And the guy on
the other side said, I'll pay whatever he didn't pay,
so they together covered it. He said, he goes to
our church, and that isn't right. This is the world
Chester Wenger inhabits. He's squarely in the middle of it.
(07:48):
Wenger's father was one of the founders of a big
Mennonite seminary in Virginia. His daughter, Sarah, is the president
of the Big Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. Wenger lived
seventeen years in Ethiopia, where he helped to found and
build what is now the largest Mennonite church in the world.
To Deep Ties, Deep Tie, you guys are Mennonite royalty,
basically in Hans Fries's terms. Wenger is an Orthodox Menanite,
(08:15):
a member of the Blossom Hill Congregation in Lancaster. But
there's another side to him. Mennonites come in all kinds
of shapes and sizes. My parents' church in Ontario is
pretty liberal full of college professors and software engineers and teachers.
(08:37):
My mom and her best friend Lorraine were doing feminist
retreats back in the seventies. But Lancaster County, where Wenger
is from, is much more conservative. The Mennonites there didn't
accept women as ordained ministers until a couple of years ago,
and that was something that Wenger struggled with because he's
not just Orthodox, he's generous, he's open to the world.
(08:59):
He spent ten years as pastor of Blossom Hill in
nineteen eighties, so when it came to the prohibition against
female pastors, Wenger would do a kind of work around.
The rules said women could not be ordained as ministers,
meaning they couldn't be formally recognized as church leaders, but
they could still talk on Sunday morning. Right, I used
women in the pulpit that weren't ordained. I preach, and
(09:23):
then nick Sunday, I'd have this woman preach, and then
I'd have my wife preach. I didn't want to do
all the preaching. And if no one questions your loyalty,
you can get away with that kind of subversion. Chester
Wenger walked that fine line orthodox but also generous until
(09:45):
one day Chester's son Philip comes to him and the
line becomes almost impossible to walk at all. Growing up,
I had no awareness of homosexuality anywhere. I remember somewhere
along the line, maybe when I was early I hadn't
(10:07):
Lescence talked about a cousin of mine, but I didn't
I didn't know what they were talking about. The question
of whether someone might be gay simply never occurred to him.
And it goes without saying that a community that did
not permit the ordination of women until quite recently did
not have progressive views on homosexuality. But one day Phil
(10:30):
pulled his father aside. What did he tell you? I
don't know the words he used, but I understood that
he had attraction for males and females, and I said,
maybe you can outgrow this. And so that's where that's
where we left it. And about a year later he
(10:53):
came back and he said, Dad, I haven't outgrown it.
And so we had this awareness that he's that's who
he is. So Phil goes off to college, he comes home,
he brings up the subject again, and I came to
him and I explained to him ten minutes before I
(11:16):
was going to drive back to college in Virginia. That's Phil.
He's in the room with me and Chester sitting across
from his father. That dad, this is for real. I'm
going to identify as being gay. I'm going to tell
other people I'm gay. I'm going to date other guys.
And you know, you're going to have to get used
to this. As word got out in Lancaster, the consequences
(11:39):
were immediate. Phil had a job with the church. He
lost it. He was instructed to come in and confess
his sins. He refused. Chester Wanger had a position in
the Medanite administration in Lancaster at the time, and attended
a local Menonite church one Sunday morning. The pastor got
up and made an announcement. He just read off in
(12:00):
church one day that Phil Winger is no longer a
member of our coregation. And we didn't know it. He
didn't approach you first. We didn't know that he was
doing that. And Phil hadn't had contact with him either
or him with Phil, and I couldn't believe it. It
was unilateral and I wasn't part of the conversation, and
(12:21):
the deed was already done. And at that point my
faith had pretty much diminished to next to nothing, and
I was going to proceed with a life outside the
traditional church community. Think about this through Chester Wenger's eyes.
He can accept his son's sexuality, but his own church,
the church to which he has been loyal all his life,
(12:44):
that church has now cast his son out. His orthodoxy
is in conflict with his generosity, and his son is
caught in the middle. Can you imagine not just the pain,
but the guilt. He gave his life to a church
that said we're all in this together, and now that
church has split his family in two. I always told
(13:04):
Phil that your faith is most important to me, that
don't give up the faith of Jesus. Phil went on
to start a successful restaurant business. At one point, some
years ago, he goes back to his high school reunion
and there some of his old classmates confront him and
(13:26):
tell him they would never eat at one of his restaurants.
Phil tells his mother, and you told her all this,
and she said to you, don't give up on Jesus.
He's sitting in his chair straight back. Ninety eight years old,
Colonel Sanders meets a linebacker, a man of God, and
(13:48):
as Chester Wenger talks about that moment years ago when
he worried that his son's soul was in jeopardy. He
starts to weep, and I guess there was no expression
at that point particularly, But as he went to go
at the door, he gave a broad swah, touched her
(14:09):
hardest spot. Don't give up on Jesus. He seemed to
accept it, and with a smile that tucht us very deeply.
At the beginning of this story, I said that balancing
(14:31):
loyalty and conscience is just about the hardest thing to do.
Let me give you another example. It's not as wrenching
as Chester Wenger's story, but it gets at some of
the same issues. It's from Princeton University, one of the
schools that's been swept up in the recent wave of
(14:53):
campus unrest. The controversy is over Woodrow Wilson, who was
president of Princeton from nineteen o two to nineteen ten,
and of course, later went on to serve two terms
as President of the United States. Princeton named one of
his most prestigious graduate schools after him, the Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs. Wilson did many remarkable and
(15:14):
important things as the head of Princeton and later as president.
But he was a racist, and not a mild one,
a kind of nasty one. So in the fall of
twenty fifteen, activists at the school stage a thirty two
hours sitting in the office of the Princeton president. They
want Wilson's name off the graduate school, perpetuated in ideology
(15:37):
that has led to the continual China side of black
people in this country. He is a murmur We owe
him nothing. This university all name. Jacob Smith, one of
my producers talked to one of the protesters, a sophomore
named will Glory tan John. The promise of Princeton, she argues,
(15:59):
is that all its students will feel at home. This
campus is for you. But everywhere she goes, she sees
pictures of Wilson. Everywhere, in the most random places. There
are rooms that have just all these huge photos of
this white man peering down on you. Right. So when
you see these kind of things, you really feel like,
(16:20):
was this university meant for me? Or is it still
really meant for white men? Now? I happen to agree
with tan John. How do you think Princeton became one
of the wealthiest universities in the world. The place is
ground zero for rich white guys. Just walk around campus.
There's the carl Icon Laboratory. That's Carl Icon, rich white male,
(16:41):
corporate raid billionaire. There's the Frick Chemistry Laboratory. That's Henry
Clay Frick, white male robber baron. The Firestone Library that's
the rich white guy who started Firestone Tires. The Bezos
Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics, you know, the rich white
guy who founded Amazon. Look over there, it's the Lewis
Center for the Arts. That's Peter Lewis, the white guy
(17:03):
who started Progressive Insurance. The John Scully Center for the
Neuroscience of Mind and Behavior. Scully a rich white guy.
Not to be confused, by the way, with the other
John Scully, a rich white guy who used to run Apple.
This is the even richer John Scully, who manages billions
of dollars on Wall Street. Do I need to go
on Rockefeller Hall, richest white guy ever. Of course, there's
(17:28):
also Emma B. Bloomberg Hall. Emma Bloomberg not a white guy,
except wait, she's the daughter of Michael Bloomberg. Super super
like forty three billion dollars, rich white guy. They don't
hide their identities at Princeton. They put their identities on
every single building on campus. A few weeks after the
(17:51):
students sit in, there was a town hall meeting on
the Princeton campus to discuss whether or not to change
the name of the Wilson School. I really hope that
people really think about why we are so tied to
this name, like what really changes if we change the name.
It was held at the Richardson Auditorium, lots of dark
and stone tapestries on the wall. By the way, a
(18:12):
building named in honor of David B. Richardson, class of
thirty three, usefully described in the Princeton promotional literature as
a quote lifelong enthusiast of classical music and a successful
lawyer and investor. Another rich white guy. Think about it,
Princeton literally could not find a single place to discuss
the troubled legacy of a rich white guy that was
(18:34):
not named after a rich white guy. Here's the first
guy who gets up to speak. I'm Harvey Rothburg, class
of the Great Class of nineteen forty nine. I absolutely
believe that the name of Woodrow Wilson should be preserved
at the head of the School of Public and International Affairs.
(18:57):
Rothberg says it's important that everyone know who Wilson was
and what the man did. There could be a memorial plaque,
engraved in bronze and so on, which would detail in
a short paragraph his great achievements as president of this university,
and in a second paragraph his great achievements as president
(19:22):
of the United States and on the international scene as well.
But there could also be a final paragraph, short one
which would say something like Wilson's prejudiced views on racial
matters were undoubtedly influenced and shaped by his background and
(19:44):
his growing up in the postbellum South. Then another alum
gets up and he agrees he's a giant. You can't
just take his name off of schools or colleges. We
have to keep them. All people are flawed. He also
likes to black idea. But this speaker has a quibble
with a short paragraph about prejudice. I think it can't
(20:07):
just say Wilson was influenced by the prevailing war aids
of the time, because a man of his stature should
have seen beyond that. And I think somehow the podcasts
to acknowledge that real harm was caused to real people.
(20:29):
This is what the protesters are up against. I mean,
can you believe these guys. When Wilson took office as president,
the Federal Civil Service was one of the only institutions
in Washington that was integrated. Blacks had jobs next to whites.
One of the first things Wilson does is reverse that policy.
Lots of black federal workers get fired, and it becomes
(20:52):
really hard for educated African Americans to get a job
in Washington. And when a delegation of black professionals comes
to him to complain, you know what he says to them.
Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit and ought
to be so regarded by you, gentlemen. This is the
guy Princeton venerates. And the thing that the first two
(21:13):
speakers are arguing about is the wording of the last
paragraph of the plaque. They want to put up the
plaque as if the whole controversy were really just an
exercise in improving signage. For goodness sake, take the man's
name down. If you don't want to change the school's stationary,
just choose another Wilson. There are lots of Wilson's out there.
(21:34):
Who don't hate black people. Jackie Rita Russell, flip rebel Owen,
how about the Owen Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
But the only way people like this are going to
listen to the protesters is if they think the protesters
care about Princeton, care about Princeton the way it is.
(21:55):
They'll accept generosity only if it comes with some orthodoxy.
They want some acknowledgement that the protesters appreciate what they've
been given, some concession that the rich white guys who
make them so uncomfortable also made it possible for them
to attend a school that looks like Versailles, if versai
(22:15):
by some accident of history, had been built not outside
of Paris, but between Trenton and Newark, New Jersey. But instead,
what do they hear? This university owes everything. I walk
around this campus understanding that this was built on the
backs of white people, and I owe none. If you
guys anything, we all white people nothing, and not for
(22:36):
the evilness and a white hatred in this country, we
would not have to be fighting for our rights. All
of this is mine. My people built this place. She's angry,
she's passionate, Maybe right, now she regrets her choice of words.
When I was an angry young student of Generation ago,
I ended up regretting my words. But I went to
(22:57):
school before every emotional outbursts got immortalized on YouTube. And
those words are what every crotchety old Princeton alum heard
when they went online. All of this is mine. How
do you think they felt when they heard that or
some version of this. I don't feel welcomes When you
walk on this campus and you see the name of
(23:18):
Ujo Wilson on the graduate building, right will Glory Tanjong
complaining about the privileged white guys peering down on her,
But she chose to go to Princeton Ground zero for
the privileged white guy. It's not like the school covered
over the names on those buildings when she came for
her campus visit. She's basically saying that the school I
(23:39):
chose to attend, the school that makes no attempt to
hide what it is and what it stands for, is
not I suddenly realize a place that makes me feel comfortable,
and so I want to change it. These are not
arguments that are going to convince anyone. I don't need
(24:00):
to tell you what happens after a decent interval. A
few months later, the Wilson Legacy Review Committee comes out
with the university's decision. Head of the committee says, at
the end of the day, what we learned was that
Wilson was a complicated and flawed individual. But when you
look at the pluses andes, we didn't feel that the
mines were enough to eliminate his name a whitewash. Here's
(24:26):
what the protesters should have done instead. They should have said,
Wilson's name makes us so uncomfortable that we're not coming
back next semester unless you change it, and we're going
to tell other prospective Princeton students, minority and otherwise to
do the same. Instead of talking about what they were
(24:47):
owed by Princeton, they should have talked about what they
were willing to give up for Princeton. I am willing
to give up my position at the New Jersey Versailles
in order to make the school a better place. That's
how much I care about Princeton. Generosity mixed with orthodoxy,
Now would that have worked? Idea? But the best and
(25:11):
brightest standing up and saying I'm giving up my place
at one of the world's great universities in order to
save it from itself. Certainly has a better shot than
a sleepover in the president's office. Yes, it would have
been a costly strategy. It would have required a real sacrifice.
That's why generous orthodoxy is so hard. When he was
(25:44):
twenty nine, Phil Wenger fell in love with a man
named Steve. They have been together ever since. Then, about
ten years ago, Jean Robinson became the first openly gay
bishop in the Episcopal Church, and Phil and Steve found
themselves a new spiritual home. I was confirmed and joined
the Episcopal Church, and I invited mom and dad to
(26:07):
come and participate in that service, and a couple of
other siblings game. And after I rejoined the church, my
father could hardly stop weeping his tears of joy. When
a state at Pennsylvania legalized gay marriage in twenty fourteen,
Phil and Steve raced down to the courthouse to apply
for their marriage license. They were a second in line,
(26:28):
and the couple in front of us offered to let
us go first, but we let them go first because
we knew each other. Then they had a big party
at the Hamilton Club in downtown Lancaster as they waited
for their marriage certificate invited four hundred people. Phil's rector
from the Saint James Episcopal Church performed a ceremony. Phil
had his father say a blessing at the end, but
(26:49):
afterward he shared with me that he sort of was
a little bit envious that I had not asked him
to actually marry us. So as soon as we got
the wedding certificate, and as soon as I knew we
were going to get married, I went to Dad. I said,
would you be willing to do this officially sign our
wedding certificate, our marriage certiget, and would you be willing
(27:10):
to do the vows with the told us. They gathered
in Phil's backyard, Phil Steve, two witnesses, Chester and his
wife Sarah Jane. I asked Chester Wenger about that day.
Why would it matter to him that someone else would
officiate at his son's wedding. He told me that the
mayor offered to marry him. Well, I was his father,
(27:33):
and I was an ordained clergy in our church, and
I didn't say a word. He just waited quietly, and
when he asked, I said sure, So I was I
appreciated he let me do that and sign a certificate.
(27:56):
With that act, Chester Wenger made his family whole. He
welcomed his son back into the fold of family and
religious community. But he knew what that meant. It meant
that he had broken the rules of his own church,
which do not acknowledge same sex marriages. There was no
work around this time, like when he had women preach
from the pulpit of Blossom Hill. They had to discipline,
(28:19):
and so they lifted my credentials. He was no longer
I met a night pastor. You've had credentials as a
clergyman for how many years? Since nineteen forty eight? How
did it feel to be stripped of them? It didn't
make any difference to me, because I'm the same person
I am. I'm respected in my congregation. I don't intend
(28:42):
to marry anybody else. I don't intend to be an
authority for anyone. I just have a heritage life that
I've lived. So they took away something that I'll never
use anyway. I did think you might want to marry
one of your great grandchildren someday, he laughs. But of
(29:07):
course it made a difference to him. It made all
the difference in the world. He gave up his profession
his position within the church, his identity, so he could
officiate at the marriage of his son. He sacrificed, He
gave something up because his son had been excluded from
the world of church and family for a Mennonite, the
(29:28):
most grievous kind of harm. And he's my child, He's
my son, precious, precious child. Then Chesterwenger wrote his letter,
an open letter to the Mennonite Church, the letter that
went viral, written by the man who wasn't even sure
(29:51):
what viral meant. It's a long letter, but here are
the two sentences that struck me the most. When my
wife and I read the Bible with today's fractured, anxious
church in mind, we ask, what is Jesus calling us
to do with those sons and daughters who are among
the most despised people in the world, in all races
(30:12):
and communities. What would Jesus do with our sons and
daughters who are bullied, homeless, sexually abused, and driven to
suicide at far higher rates than our heterosexual children. That's generous,
Chester Wenger, open to seeing the world in new ways,
but there's no anger in his letter. Alongside the generosity
(30:38):
is Orthodoxy respect for the body he is trying to heal.
He goes on to say that he reported his transgression
to the church leadership himself. He told them what he
had done, and they responded, and these are his words
with grace filled pastoral listening. And then he writes, I
(30:58):
am at peace with their decision and understand their need
to take this action. Chester Wenger is going to win.
Maybe not right away, but he'll win because he makes
(31:21):
plain not just how beautiful, generous orthodox he is, but
how powerful, which is something that everyone who stands up
in protest needs to remember. You must respect the body
you are trying to heal. Are you going to read
something to his chest adversity? I thought I wanted to
(31:43):
read from Romans. It's very familiar. For I'm not ashamed
of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. It is the power
of God for salvation to everyone who has faith. The
Gospel is open. I just think that's so precious. You've
(32:15):
been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It helps.
You can get more information about this in other episodes
at Revisionist history dot com or on your favorite podcast
app our show is produced by mil La Belle, Roxanne
Scott and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music
(32:39):
is composed by Luis Gera and Taka Yasuzala. Flan Williams
is our engineer and our fact checker is Michelle Saraca.
Penalty management team Laura Mayer, Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg.
I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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