Opinion

“The car [is] the child and charm of modernity,” writes sociologist Donald Kraybill. A century ago, this new technology became another dividing line between Mennonites who contested or accepted—even embraced—modern life. This photo of horse sheds outside Elmira Mennonite Church, Ont., in 1955, captures a moment of embrace.

Jonah suddenly became a favourite book of mine after I went to Iraq.

Forget the fish! The book is a comedic satire against ethnocentrism, nationalism and a narrow-minded exclusivity regarding God. In the story, the whiny fellow is sent 900 kilometres to Nineveh, now the site of Mosul, the second-largest city of Iraq. Nineveh was the capital of the reigning superpower at that time.

A sombre revelation for a former neighbour
Re: “ ‘What will happen to us now?’ A son recalls his mother’s experience of the 1918 pandemic,’ ” Jan. 18, 2021, page 24. 

I struggle often with my relative wealth and privilege. Working with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for 20-plus years helped give me something “to do” to address inequities in our world. Working with Mennonite World Conference (MWC) makes me even more aware of the inequities of wealth and privilege, and how we might respond as the church. 

After a long period of waiting, we learned in December that a COVID-19 vaccine had been approved and distribution was beginning. We were told that, by the beginning of September, we all should have received the vaccine, and life can begin to return to “normal.”

Readers weigh in on MCC's research on National Socialism
Re: “Committed to seeking a deeper understanding: MCC begins research into historical connections to National Socialism,” Feb. 1, page 13.

In 1984, a local reporter interviews Gary Snider, dressed in clothes his grandfather wore when he arrived as an immigrant from the Soviet Union 60 years before. Three hundred people took part in this commemorative walk, retracing the route of a group of 1924 Mennonite immigrants from a railway siding in Uptown Waterloo, Ont., to Erb Street Mennonite Church.

I like Lent. I wonder how many Mennonites practise this season in the church calendar. And if so, what they do.

The two most influential attempts at Mennonite self-definition in the 20th century were Harold Bender’s Anabaptist Vision and John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus. Both legacies have come under scrutiny, with Yoder’s more pointed due to the abuse he levelled personally.

Many of us are taking crowds very seriously these days and avoiding them as much as possible. For the sake of public health, I cannot encourage this enough. But there’s a crowd we have been avoiding since long before the pandemic started.

I believe it is important that we are called to belong to a faith community that is beyond our own congregation. My main question today is: “How do we belong, how do we connect with the people in our Anabaptist church (regional, nationwide, international) beyond our congregation? 

In the aftermath of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, and the violence that boiled over in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 of this year, it feels as though tensions are rising in our society. As fear escalates, we wonder how to find a way for everyone to get along without violence.