ELKHART, IN
When word got out that legendary Canadian rock band The Guess Who was playing the small Mennonite town of Elkhart, Indiana this weekend, students at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary gathered to debate the theological implications.
“The Guess Who? That sounds a bit too much like Doubting Thomas to me,” said 3rd-year seminary student Neil Shenk. “Next thing you know we’ll be asking questions on the very nature and existence of God.”
After poring through tomes by everyone from Soren Kierkegaard to Paul Tillich, the young theologians discovered an even more pressing issue.
“I hear all they’ve got left is their original drummer. It’s basically a cover band,” said Rebecca Good. “These are not the dudes who wrote the songs or played on the recordings. This is like that time Danny Wenger tried to recite a 16th century sermon by Menno Simons and pass it off as his own. Nice try, Danny.”
Still, Mary Bender argued that there is nothing more Mennonite than a band with hardly any of its original members.
“Geez, that’s no different than my home church back in Yellow Creek,” said Bender. “We don’t have any of our original members there either.”
The arguments went back and forth like this for quite some time. Some said the band was from Winnipeg and that shouldn’t be held against them. Others pointed out that there was a certain level of duplicity involved in calling a band The Guess Who and then not including anyone but the drummer.
“Kind of like that gross zucchini cake Mrs. Miller tried to sneak past us as a chocolate cake at the last church potluck,” said Good. “This current iteration of The Guess Who is like the zucchini cake of rock bands.”
The drummer from the original Guess Who, plus a bunch of random dudes, are playing this Friday at the Lerner Theatre in Elkhart. AMBS students are reminded that the ticket prices are out of range for any fine upstanding Mennonite.
