Speak without fear amid political turmoil

April 10, 2013 | God at work in the Church
By Dick Benner | Editor/Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta.
Matt Groenheide, left, a well-known local percussionist specializing in classical percussion and world drumming, and Scottish singer/cellist George Fowler, provided the entertainment for Canadian Mennonite Publishing Service’s annual banquet held last month in Lethbridge, Alta.

Canadian Mennonite was urged at its annual banquet last month to “pass on the best of the Anabaptist faith” to its Mennonite readership and to speak without fear in the face of political turmoil to its own community and, increasingly, to the larger public sphere.

Speaking on the role of Christian journalism in the public sphere, David Goa, a University of Alberta professor whose work focuses on religious tradition and modern culture, appealed to the magazine to “speak out of the heart of ecclesia [the called-out church] across the boundaries of political self-interest, shedding light where shadows are in danger of extending our ignorance.”

He lamented the shallow reporting of the secular media in stories where faith and politics intersect, as reporters, caught up in current ideological conflicts, focus only on the “the struggle between the two institutions.” They seem to understand the vested interests involved, but fail to grasp the depth and richness the two sides bring to the conflict, he said.

Citing a 1978 court case in Three Hills, Alta., when a Holdeman Mennonite pastor was charged with violating the Truancy Act for taking children out of the public school system and into the church’s own school, he said local journalists were not prepared to investigate what was behind this conflict, only pitting one side against the other—the religious leaders against the school administrators, teachers’ union and the provincial board of education.

“They missed the ‘back story’ entirely, miss-
ing the Mennonites’ urge to recover spiritual disciplines in the rearing of their children, feeling a deepening responsibility to their children and bringing a certain critique of what was accepted as ‘progress and development’ in the public school system, and their longing for community bonding,” he said.

What would the story have looked like if the journalists had dug deeper into the story? Goa asked. If they had studied the 16th-century Anabaptist history of the Mennonites, they would have discovered what the early Anabaptist church contributed to European humanism of the Reformation, he said. “They would have discovered the clear thinking these religious reformers did about the reach of the state and the cost of sponsorship by the state in its religiosity, and thus would have understood where these present-day Anabaptists were coming from.”

Likewise, the reporters didn’t highlight the “gifts of the public education system,” he said, something that could have been educational for the public.

The tragedy of missing the “back story,” he said, is that this separation of the religious and the secular just reinforces the “political silos” in which Canadians live. “And we end up with the worst of both worlds.”

By contrast, he said the responsibility of Christian journalist is to tell readers that these political acts and policies are “acts of faith”: “You reflect for us what we hold dear, including our values, . . . what we aspire to and with whom we wish to align ourselves.”

Why is this important? Because religion (ecclesia) binds things together, and Christian journalists, through their work, “bind us together to be mutually responsible.” On the other hand, he said politics binds people to a new bondage, to new forms of limitation and marginalization.

Speaking to those in attendance, he said their Anabaptist heritage brings a special insight to the tormented public discourse today, because all “party politicians” of every party are anti-ecclesial, forming alignments that amount to a form of warfare. “Parties square off against each other, defining the terms of their relationships in opposition, and seek to defeat the ‘other.’ ”

“Party politics is in danger of reducing each person to a uniform set of single issues,” Goa said. “The other parties are the enemies, reduced to symbols of what is driving our world to perdition. Each party occupies its own tree house and once you know the password—a single set of issues—you are granted admission.”

But journalists with a “stance of faith” know no political allegiance. They are called to participate in politics, he insisted, not to engage in its “organized inadequacies,” but to bring the church’s call to healing enmity, to “making all things new,” because they share the divine image with each and all, and are taught to treasure the mystery at work in every human being, including those thought to be their enemies.

Goa was invited to address the banquet by his fellow professor at the University of Alberta, Roger Epp, a Canadian Mennonite Publishing Service board member. In his introduction, Epp said he invited Goa who, through his work as director of the university’s Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, has “created a space inside a public university where faith communities, the public and religious thinkers can engage each other.”

Some 65 people attended the annual event, that included musical entertainment by well-known local percussionist Matt Groenheide, and George Fowler, his Scottish sidekick singer/cellist. For a short clip of their performance, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/waterlooish?feature=mhee.

Matt Groenheide, left, a well-known local percussionist specializing in classical percussion and world drumming, and Scottish singer/cellist George Fowler, provided the entertainment for Canadian Mennonite Publishing Service’s annual banquet held last month in Lethbridge, Alta.

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