As we enter the year 2012, one of my goals for Canadian Mennonite and for its primary readership—members of the faith community of Mennonite Church Canada—is to maintain a high level of conversation that fills the pages of this publication.
An Ontario pastor raised the question of not defining proof-texting and challenged my guideline of wanting only “new information” when calling for a “reasoned discussion” on sexuality, in his letter to the editor, “Let the Bible speak on sexual matters,” Nov. 28, page 13.
“Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed” (Psalms 2:1-2; Acts 4:25-26)
What are we to make of the Occupy Wall Street movement gathering steam in North American cities and around the globe?
“Enough already.” I can already hear groans of despair as we, once again, open up the conversation about sexuality in all of its manifestations. In a search of our database, our managing editor, Ross W.
How is it that we have turned our one national holiday asking us to give thanks into a day of self-indulgent feasting, marching bands and watching tough guys beat up on each other while chasing a football down the field?
As a person old enough to be their grandparent, I have to be careful with my words about young people. Having grandchildren of my own, I have learned, sometimes the hard way, to regard the boundaries which respectfully guard the integrity, identity and idealism of the younger generation.
The question isn’t, “Has our world changed since that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001?” It is rather, “How have we changed 10 years after?”
What is it with Mennonites and food?
I have never met César García, but I am impressed with his story as told by Meetinghouse freelancer Kathy Heinrichs Wiest on page 4. García is the general secretary-elect of Mennonite World Conference.
Maybe it was the downright gorgeous summer weather before the heat wave swept into central and southeastern Canada. Maybe it was the powerfully inspired music led by Paul Dueck and his gifted musicians in University of Waterloo’s Humanities Theatre.
Although the thousand delegates and locals attending the annual assembly of Mennonite Church Canada represent only 3 percent of our 32,000 members, the event has the feel and dynamic of a family reunion.
Have we learned anything about resolving church conflict in the past 50 years?
After reading the painful account of the German/English language dissension resulting in several congregational splits (“Changing the language of worship is a test of love,” page 4), our faith community should take a contemplative look at how to redeem this blot on our past.
“If we step back and review the letters to the editor in this magazine over the past several years, we generally find debates in the church and religion framed in terms of conservative and liberal.
“Each side thinks the other is at best misguided, perhaps even profoundly wrong, and misinterprets Scripture. There tends to be a fair bit of each side yelling at the other.”
The case for Mennonite schools is an increasingly complicated one as the values of our religious system and that of the dominant culture, of which we are a part, both change.
As an American living and working in Canada, I am both intrigued and saddened by two political events of the past ten days in these two North American countries—the take-out of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. military and the take-over by a militaristic Conservative majority government in Monday’s elections in Canada.
Not in my lifetime did I imagine that neuroscience and the Anabaptist construct of “community” would come together as a paradigm shift “away from the cult of the individual and back to nurturing relationships,” as one planner of a recent weekend seminar on “Attachment Theory” put it.
While we won’t endorse candidates of the five political parties in the upcoming May 2 election, or tell you how to vote, we do ask Mennonite voters to both examine the political views and voting records of candidates regarding our deeply held core beliefs in peacemaking, compassion for the poor and care for creation before placing your ballot in the ballot box.
“I have never heard the editor’s vision for the magazine,” said a reader when asked what she thought of Canadian Mennonite. The observation caught me up short. Assuming my vision was implicit in the biweekly conversation I engender, being explicit with my goals and aspirations didn’t seem necessary.
At age 65, he was too young to die. For Stan Benner, my brother whom we just remembered this past weekend, it was especially incongruous. Living life at full throttle, he had big plans for the last leg of his journey.
The church, or congregation, as a “royal priesthood” was announced as one of our core beliefs by the Anabaptist Reformers nearly 500 years ago, setting us apart from our Catholic-Protestant counterparts who, in that time and place, were perceived to have corrupted the faith with their vertical view of a believer’s relationship to God.
It’s been some week. As I write this several days after a stubborn dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has finally stepped down in Egypt, there is a feeling of relief even though the event has transformed an oppressed country half a world away.
We do have a website, dear readers, a recently re-designed one, in fact.
And we know many of you are reading Canadian Mennonite online. Our Google Analytics tell us that as many as 2,400 unique visitors a month are coming to the website for some 16,000 page views and staying an average of three minutes to read something of interest.
Joe Neufeld puts his finger on an important artificial divide in our congregational care-giving (page 4) when he raises the spectre of perceiving some aspects “sacred”—and thus safe and legitimate—while others are considered “secular”—and thus suspect.
As a people of hope, what should we, as a Mennonite faith community, expect on the road ahead in 2011?
If the past is prelude, as the adage goes, there are road signs, some of them giving helpful direction, others giving us warnings. At the risk of oversimplifying, we will deal with only three: cultural shifts, ecumenism and a new mission/service focus.
