Readers write: April 18, 2022 issue
Reader objects to terms used in Canadian Mennonite In the last few years there has been a marked increase of “coded language” in Canadian Mennonite. By this I mean terms which have ideological implications beyond their dictionary meanings. For example, back in the 1950s and ’60s the buzzword was “change.” Everybody jumped on the bandwagon,…
Readers write: April 4, 2022 issue
Marriage is a spiritual union of soulmates Re: “God didn’t create you wrong,” Feb. 21, page 4. Nicolien Klassen Wiebe shows how Mennonite churches have been struggling with questions around the growing number of transgender and gender-diverse members in our congregations. One of the key issues is about marriage in the church. In the past…
Readers write: March 21, 2022 issue
A pastoral letter regarding Ukraine Beloved sisters and brothers in Ukraine: Today, war has come to your homeland. We grieve the danger, death and destruction that this plague brings. We stand in solidarity with you as persons of shared faith and hope. In our prayers we lift you to the sovereign God, who says, “Do…
Readers write: March 7, 2022 issue
Thank you for sharing Janzen tribute Re: “Simple wonder, peculiar generosity,” Jan. 24, page 4. I recall meeting Annie Janzen for the first time at an event hosted at/by Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg in the late ’60s or early ’70s. She struck me immediately as someone who was at once dedicated to simplicity,…
Readers write: February 21, 2022 issue
MC Canada executive ministers release statement on ‘freedom rallies’ The day after thousands of truckers and other protesters converged on Parliament Hill in late January to call for an end to COVID-19 mandates and other public health restrictions, Mennonite Church Canada’s executive ministers released a statement decrying the white nationalism being expressed at related protests…
Readers write: February 7, 2022 issue
Writers speak out in support of sexual-abuse survivor Re: “A survivor of sexual abuse speaks out,” Jan. 10, page 13. I love that phrase that you use to describe yourself: “a fierce pacifist.” That is what I want to be, too, and yet it is sometimes just easier to be meek and go with the…
Readers write: January 24, 2022 issue
Talking will hopefully lead to learning Re: “ ‘We might learn something’ ” letter, Dec. 6, 2021, page 8. I definitely agree with Henry Bergen’s comments concerning our need to talk about vaccinations. I am also “fully vaccinated” and have friends and family members who are not. I do not see blaming and shunning the unvaccinated as…
Readers write: January 10, 2022 issue
Thanks offered for ‘defunding police’ feature Re: “Defund the police?” feature, Sept. 27, 2021, page 4. Grateful to Aaron Epp and Canadian Mennonite for taking up this conversation, for featuring Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land’s critical framing alongside reflections on how abolition overlaps with Anabaptism from David Driedger, Michael Pahl and Daniel Friesen, among others. —Jonathan Dyck (Twitter…
Readers write: November 22, 2021 issue
‘We are in a climate emergency’: MC Canada Mennonite Church Canada leaders released the following statement on Nov. 4 during the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland: Climate scientists have been sounding the call for decades, and the urgency of this call is being emphasized again at the COP26 Climate Summit happening in Glasgow, Scotland.…
Readers write: November 8, 2021 issue
Readers respond to ‘living simply’ Re: “What is enough?” Sept. 13, page 11. Randy Haluza-DeLay beautifully draws our attention to a way of life marked by enough—sufficiency. Without discerning what is a need and what is a want, we will never have a sense of sufficiency, and thus no sense of abundance either! Thanks. I…
