Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
So this evening I looked at a Google Alert I got for the word Mennonite. Most of the time there’s little to nothing of interest to me in these Alerts.
But I saw David Roth, 10, and Winston (Oregon) mentioned. He’s my cousins’ son!
So I “had” to chase down the article: Read it all
Somehow, that seems like a good title for this:
As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to speak in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, a major international evangelical Christian group based in Jerusalem plans to send a petition to the U.N. Secretary-General calling for the arrest and indictment of Iran’s president on charges of incitement to genocide against Israel. The petition from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (I.C.E.J.) has gathered signatures from tens of thousands of Christians around the world, as the group joins the chorus of prominent voices from many countries demanding that Iran’s president be brought to justice.
“We feel a profound and telling moral duty to speak out against the growing Iranian nuclear threat to Israel,” said David Parsons, media director for the I.C.E.J.
“The silence of most Christian clergy in the face of Germany’s horrific bid to annihilate European Jewry left a deep stain on the churches,” said the I.C.E.J.’s executive director, Rev. Malcom Hedding. “Yet from it has arisen a sense among multitudes of Christians today that we have an inescapable moral duty to earnestly speak out whenever another genocidal campaign threatens the Jewish people.
Have you signed the petition? I haven’t.
To my credit, though, I say (as a Mennonite), “Leave me out of it!” to this next piece as well:
The I.C.E.J.’s Hedding also slammed the leaders of certain Christian groups, among them the Mennonites and the Quakers, who plan to further honor Ahmadinejad by hosting him at a special reception during his visit to the U.S., in which the Christian leaders hope to engage in a “dialogue” with the threatening leader.
To read the entire article: Christian Group: Indict Ahmadinejad for Threatening a Holocaust
Help thy neighbor through crisis
|
I bought the Wall Street Journal at the airport. On the opinion page was a letter from James S. Martin, a Mennonite from Scurry, Texas. When it comes to health care and meeting social needs, Martin sees little advantage to insurance and entitlement programs offered through the federal government and private sector.
"Our communities have been successfully meeting our own financial needs for 500 years," Martin wrote. "How relieved I am to rely on the voluntary sharing of my own church community." If our policies were built upon the simple faith of the Mennonites, this crisis would have never happened because the good of the community would have been put ahead of personal gain. The families who made it through the Great Depression helped and relied on one another. It may be that we all have to do that again. Martin believes the Mennonite and Amish form of mutual aid and a community support system will endure. "After all, it springs from a 2,000-year-old imperative," Martin writes. "Bear one anothers burdens" Galatians 6:2. |
OK. I won’t do this often. Very rarely, in fact. For the record: I am not a YouTube fan.
I learned about this video from one of the singers (and fellow blogger), Hans Mast.
I’m calling your attention to it because my family and I heard them live in Lebanon (Oregon). We really enjoyed that program, even if the venerable Urie Sharp wasn’t the director.
Oh, I didn’t mention these are the Sharon Singers from Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute (SMBI).
May this song encourage you. And warn you.
Behold, He comes!
We live in perilous times, as in the days of Elijah and as in the days of Noah.
Prepare!
The Liberties of Nonresistant Christians. Some Americans supported neither side in the Revolution. Instead, as Mennonite and German Baptist leaders said in 1775, “We have dedicated ourselves to serve all men in everything that can be helpful to the preservation of men’s lives, but…we are not at liberty in conscience to take up arms to conquer our enemies, but rather to pray to God, who has power in heaven and on earth, for us and them.” Chief among these nonresistant Christians were the Quakers, Mennonites, German Baptists, Moravians, and Schwenkfelders.
Most nonresistant Christians were quite content with their lot as British subjects. As three Mennonite bishops in Pennsylvania wrote in 1773, “Through God’s mercy we enjoy unlimited freedom in both civil and religious matters.” Ironically, once the fight for liberty started, the freedom of nonresistant Christians became sharply limited.
Militia Duty. The first issue that peace-promoting Christians faced was militia duty. After Lexington and Concord, patriot committees called all able-bodied men to join a voluntary association “to learn the art of war.” The associators noticed that the nonresistant Christians did not join in the drills. They demanded laws requiring everybody to serve.
In November 1775, Mennonite and German Baptist ministers sent A Short and Sincere Declaration to the Pennsylvania assembly. They suggested an alternative to militia duty. They would donate money to help poor families left destitute because their men were off fighting. Instead Pennsylvania passed a law levying a special war tax on all non-associators. Later it said nonresistant Christians could hire substitutes or pay a fine. Most nonresistant Christians refused to do either, because as the Short and Sincere Declaration stated, they found “no freedom in giving, or doing, or assisting in anything by which men’s lives are destroyed or hurt.” Therefore, Patriot officials confiscated their property to pay the tax and fines.
Who is Caesar?
Independence created another problem for the nonresistant Christians. Was King George III or was the Continental Congress the Caesar they were to obey? Many of them had promised obedience to the king when they came to America. Breaking their word was seen as a serious sin. Also, the king had protected their liberties. Now the patriots were taking them away.
In the end the nonresistant Christians put their trust in the words of the prophet Daniel in the Bible, “He removeth kings and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21). They patiently waited for the outcome of the war to find out who God would set up as Caesar. In the meantime they followed a pattern of strict neutrality. They refused to help either side to fight.
However, when hungry, sick, or wounded soldiers, whether patriot or redcoat, needed aid, the nonresistant Christians gave it. As a Hessian officer said, “They are the most hospitable to us.” The patriots did not understand this impartial love. They threatened men like Mennonite Christian Weaver with a whipping for feeding runaway British prisoners even though he had done the same for Continental soldiers.
Source: US Anabaptists during the Revolutionary War (excerpts from the fifth grade social studies course produced by Christian Light Publications)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, tonight we had a bishop ordination at our church.
The lot fell to our deacon, who is also one of my best friends.
My Dad formally retired tonight as bishop and turned the reins over to Jake Kropf.
Thank you, Dad.
And you too, Jake.
God bless you both for your service.
Mennonites may flee Quebec town:
| Members of Quebec’s only Mennonite community say they may move to Ontario or New Brunswick so they can keep their children in a private school that suits their religious beliefs.
Fifteen English-speaking Mennonite families in this small community in the Monteregie region say they won’t send their children to government-approved schools, balking at the teaching of evolution, the acceptance of gays and lesbians and low “morality standards.” They say they are considering relocation out of fear that child-protection officials will seize their children. Other townspeople here — mostly francophone Catholics — support the primarily English school, deemed illegal by Quebec’s Education Department. |
The story continues:
| He said about 30 members of the community — young couples and their school-aged children — will have to move before school starts. The others will follow.
News reports last year about unsanctioned schools led to a complaint to the Education Department about the Mennonite school. Parents were warned they would face legal proceedings if their children aren’t enrolled in sanctioned schools this fall. That could lead to children being taken from families |
And this:
| In Roxton Falls, the vast majority of non-Mennonites strongly support the school, said the town’s Mayor, Jean-Marie Laplante. This week, he wrote letters to the education department and Education Minister Michelle Courchesne in an effort to save the school. |
We’ll see how it all shakes out.
I empathize (or at least sympathize) with my fellow-Mennonites and fellow-parents, but I wonder if Mr. Goosen didn’t overstate his case with this comment:
| “It boils down to intolerance to our religion” by education officials, said Ronald Goossen, who in the early 1990s was among the first Mennonites from Manitoba to move to Roxton Falls, a sleepy town on the Riviere Noire, about 100 kilometres east of Montreal. |
If they truly fail to meet whatever standards the state has, then change or move or appeal, but please don’t play the intolerance card.
Thanks.
🙂