Film review: sorrow, joy, anger and faith
What do we do when we are wronged: Nothing? Stay and fight? Or do we leave? These questions form the backbone of Women Talking, a 2022 film directed by Sarah Polley and adapted from Miriam Toews’s acclaimed novel of the same name. The plot is simple, though not easy: A group of women belonging to…
What about the women of Manitoba Colony?
After opening in select movie theatres before Christmas, Women Talking received a wide release last month. For Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, it marked 10 years since she interviewed some of the women who inspired Miram Toews’s novel the film is based on. In January 2013, Friedman-Rudovsky spent nearly two weeks living with the family of a community…
Barns and kerchiefs
Not many farmers walk out of a movie theatre and say, “It’s a lot of fun seeing our farm on the big screen.” But that’s what Chris Burkholder thought after he watched Women Talking at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. Burkholder and his brothers Rich and Ryan own the farm site in Claremont,…
Witness
I stand on the very spot where it all began, in a former Catholic church in the village of Pingjum, Netherlands. Here, the priest Menno Simons was called to account by his superiors. He’d been interpreting scripture for himself, pondering deeply the words of the prophets, of Jesus, of the apostles. Menno rejected the dogma…
Guardians of the past
Through an easily overlooked side door and down two flights of stairs at Bethany Manor Senior Living Complex in Saskatoon one will find the archival rooms of the Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan (MHSS). The cozy basement space holds thousands of Mennonite historical materials including Bibles, maps, newspapers, school yearbooks, Mennonite song books, vinyl records…
One-anotherness in Christ
Based on my first-hand experience with the Mennonite church in Canada and the U.S. over the past 18 years, I suspect that far less than 10 percent of primarily white Mennonite congregations are genuinely interested in embracing or pursuing a truly intercultural church. Of Canadians who identify as Christian, 20 percent are immigrants, up from…
Challenging Holy Land stereotypes
Munther Isaac recently published a book that confronts a longstanding problem in Christian attitudes toward the Holy Land—ignorance, indifference and even hostility to the Palestinian church. Isaac is an Oxford-educated, Palestinian Lutheran pastor who serves as academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College. “When it comes to western Christian attitudes towards Israel,” Munther writes in his…
Women who prepared the way for Jesus
Rahab acts by faith Joshua 2:1-21; 6:22-25; Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:29-31; James 2:23-26. Beyond the narrative in Joshua and Jesus’ genealogy, Rahab is mentioned two other times in Scripture. Both times her name appears in a list of heroes of the faith, and it seems like a miracle that this woman, a prostitute with only…
Listening to the Spirit, with John
At an Anglican church I know, the congregational response after the reading of Scripture is: “Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church.” This response captures the dynamic nature of Scripture that respects the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the lives of the many authors in the biblical…
Five pastoral callings
A quiet, years-long journey. A voice speaking in a mosh pit full of teenagers. A love for the church. An unexpected second career. These are just some of the ways that Mennonite Church Canada pastors from across the country entered into pastoral ministry. Pastors shared with Canadian Mennonite their stories of pastoral calling and what…
