Rocky Cape Christian Community

In the Mennonite village of Blumstein-Rudnerweide, far back on a dirt road beneath cottonwood trees in a deep valley sur­rounded by range upon range of blue mountains in Mexico sits an old adobe house. In its cool, semi-dark, back bedroom with a high wooden ceiling and windows almost hung shut with dark green shades sits a frail lady in a long black dress who pulls her black head-scarf far out and tucks it around her sombre face. 

She's sick.

In a tiny, sad, voice she tells us: "Ja, its my ner­ves again and now I've got the Kopfkrankheit."

How strange this sounded to me during my first years in Mexico. Kopfkrankheit (head sickness). What's that? I wondered.

I never did discover its exact definition, but after so many years of hearing about it and after moving to these United States I have a hunch. I have a hunch that more people than not may be afflicted with this potent malady—perhaps of a yet more virulent strain that which was known to the old woman in Mexico.

I think we are standing on the verge of a breakthrough in medical science: the detection of a continent wide epidemic of Kopfkrankheit (head sickness) yet more devastat­ing, more con­tagious, and more rapidly spreading than AIDS. Since I have learned to detect the symptoms of this subtle and dangerous dis­ease I keep identifying them everywhere, especially within my own cranium.
Kopfkrankheit runs rampant through these United States in two major strains: Swollen Head Disease, and Shrunken Head Dis­ease. Both are equally debilitating.

Swollen Head Disease

The first wave of Kopfkrankheit to hit America was the Swol­len Head Disease (SHD). During its process of expanding certain brain cells and merging and killing cells of lesser importance, this disease causes human beings to think that "bigger is bet­ter." Earlier on in this century it brought death and disaster to the green grocer, the private bakery, the little red schoolhouse, locally owned industry, and the corner restaurant. Then it spawned a brood of monsters. . . corporations like Kentucky Fried Chicken, consolidated schools, Del Monte, Proctor and Gamble, McDonald's, and Westinghouse, to take their place.

Bigger is better. . . bigger and bigger is better and better and better. . .  becomes the mania of human beings afflicted with SHD. If ten cows are better than five, a hundred cows are better than ten. If two trucks are better than one, eight trucks are better than two. If fifty employees are better than fifteen, five hundred are better than fifty. If three classrooms are better than two, thirty are better than three. Thus the mania rages on.

Americans struck with SHD would visit us in Mexico and "ooh" and "ah" and giggle and make cute remarks about how Mexicans lived and did things: "Why don't they at least paint their huts? Why don't they use their money for tin roofs and nicer floors? Why? Why? Why?
"Well friends," I would tell them, "Its because they're smart and know how to do right now what you hope to do once you get old and rich."
Bigger is not better for most Latin Americans and I know they reap thousands of homey pleasures from life which U.S. citizens (Mennonites included) do not.

American Christianity did not escape the ravages of SHD.

When our Anabaptist-Swiss Brethren ancestors arrived on this continent they formed little congregations in Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, along the Oregon trail and in Canada. For two hundred years this is what they were: scattered congregations eventually known as Mennists or Mennonites, with a smattering of ministers throughout to serve their needs. Then in the l880's the first Mennonite conferences were organized. Select standards became universal "conference standards". The "bigger is better" spirit of the U. S. took over as congregations got tied together in ever widening circles until they operated as vast multi-national congregations: Mennonite "religious corporations" that eventually blotched the face of the whole earth.

Brother to brother, local, connections and activities faded away as higher levels of organizations, committees, and boards, and "bishop bodies" swung into focus. Mere bench warmers and bump-on-a-log church members escaped notice as everyone glued their eyes onto more exciting scenes on the political and inter­national levels of their religious corporations.

Bigger and bigger and "better" they grew. . . . Millions of dollars in buildings, rugs, P.A. systems, ministerial and mis­sionary transport, multi-national meetings, computerized equip­ment, more vehicles, more paid personnel, more important sounding programmes, higher telephone bills, higher aspirations, more names in the yearbook, more congregations every year. . . . Big­ger and befuddled, and bogged down in problems and debt.

SHD is an awful disease. It's an illusion. It lures men onward into global opportunities only to leave them looking and acting like fools when they get there.

Shrunken Head Disease

By taking an overdose of cure for SHD, millions of Americans have contracted the second strain of Kopfkrankheit: Shrunken Head Disease (SKHD). This disease, in the process of dissecting and isolating the cells of the human brain, tears down and breaks apart the structure of the world in which we live. "Smaller is better" for the SKHD victims. Thinking that the fabric of our society has grown too large and complex they take it apart and sit morosely holding on to their single threads.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" they ask. "Am I responsible to anyone else? Is it safe to belong to a group? Isn't is suicidal for me to lose my identity in the masses?"

SKHD, a more recent malady than SHD has produced a rash of "do-it-yourselfers" in America. Individualized expressions in clothing, architecture, music, and "do-it-yourself" codes for religion and ethics. Nobody is bound by another person's rules or ideas. No-one "infringes upon the rights" of anyone else. No-one, not even husbands and wives or parents and children, is respon­sible to anyone else. Groups disintegrate. Cohesion and confor­mity go out of date. Leadership and governments end in chaos. Armies flounder. Religions falter. Schools flunk. Everything rots at the seams and falls apart.

SKHD victims tend to ignore the laws of humanity which brought our nation and our society into existence. They forget the solid group structure of such successes as the Han dynasty in China, the Romans, the Spanish Empire, the Pilgrims in Mas­sachusetts, the Abolitionist movement, or the revived Chris­tianity of the Anabaptist era. SKHDers—the anti-authority folks—have the serious weakness of ignoring the need for unity, order, con­tinuity, established forms, cohesion, traditions, stan­dards, rules, deadlines, restrictions, laws, punishments, responsibilities, submission, and group inter-action. Most al­ways they fail to recognize their own and others' God-given niche in society. Then after a life of rebellion and reaction they lose themselves in the garbage dump of 20'th century ideas that failed.
SKHD hit American Christianity just before my generation. (I was born in l960.) First it swept across the "conferences", turn­ing every man into his own boss and setting everyone free to do what appeared right in his own eyes. Then, gradually, the virus wormed its way into the grassroots of evangelical faith, killing in ever widening circles the elements of Christianity.

SKHD, also known as the "Individualist syndrome", so truly American, so typically Satanic, is a "strong delusion." It is the problem of the man who could agree only with his wife and God, and sometimes he wasn't so sure his wife was "on track" anymore.

Friend, have you learned to detect the symptoms? Has God shown to you the need for backing away from the dangerous "bigger is better" philosophy? Have you stepped out of the unions, the corporations, and the multi-national organizations in which Satan is trying to trap you? Have you returned to seeing the important things God wants you to do in your own home, in your local as­sembly of believers, in the community in which you live?

On the other hand, are you sure you haven't backed so far away from the SHD problem that you've fallen into dangers on the other side of the road? Have you found your balance? Have you found the middle way? Have you found peace and joy and health and blessing by looking to Jesus and serving Him?

Are you part or becoming a part of a group of Jesus' fol­lowers, a church where you hold responsibility, submit to author­ity, and work closely with others? If not, you're a typical Amer­ican. And like the old woman in Mexico would say: "Ja, Ja, just a little sick in the head."

Peter Hoover
Farmington, New Mexico
1988