In the 1950s, dictator Fulgencio Batista and the rich and powerful of Cuba oppressed countless Cubans. On April 9, 1958, rebels against Batista called a strike. Batista fought back, including in Sagua la...
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Last month, Netflix released The Great Hack, a fascinating documentary focusing on the scandal that resulted after the revelation that British company Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of an...
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The 17th century has been called the Dutch Golden Age, when the Nether-lands rose to international prominence in commerce, art and science. It was a gleaming era of prosperity for many, including...
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Jeff Gundy’s new book of poems is described on the cover as “sprawling,” “ambitious,” “probing and expansive.” I would add “roving and restless,” as Gundy ranges over a myriad of...
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The formal title of this lesson is “Faith and Doubt,” but the twists and turns in the complex narrative comprising Genesis 18-19 are worthy of a more dramatic title. How about “Debate, Destruction and...
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In Ruth 3, a young widow heads to the threshing floor. If you were an ancient reader of this story, if you heard it recited by your friends around a campfire, if you listened to it whispered to you by the...
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There is only one place in the world where I can walk into the local TV station and get instant coverage just by picking up the mic, smiling into the camera and announcing myself. That place is a First Nations...
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The timing of information entering our thoughts can create loud clashes. The same week I was rereading the story of Hagar, I heard a plea to not compromise on God’s Word, to hold on to the Bible as our moral...
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We all live in bubbles. That truth hit home this week as I caught up with my friend Eric at Panera Bread. He described in his travel last fall along the “justice road” of the Civil Rights movement of the...
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“Change Gonna Come” was one of the staple songs during the Civil Rights era. Immigrants who came to America found the change they were looking for. Now newly arriving immigrants are discovering our society...
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Growing up as a girl in the 1980s was not a positive experience for me. I often felt ostracized because I didn’t fit cultural expectations for what it meant to be female. I hated dresses and dressing up. My...
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One of the greatest stories of friendship in the Old Testament, a story of choosing God through friendship, comes to us in the Book of Ruth. It is the story of a pagan from Moab who decides to join her life to...
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The first thing you notice when you pick up Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong, is that Rachel Held Evans wrote the foreword. Her recent death, and the hole that leaves in the Christian...
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Noah’s ark now rests in Williamstown, Ky. Or rather, a $100 million “Ark Encounter” building shaped like the biblical boat has attracted millions since opening there in 2016. The 510-foot-long...
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This month I celebrated my 36th birthday. If the average U.S. life expectancy is a useful measure of what to plan for — it’s currently 78 years — I am nearing the midpoint. This has prompted reflection...
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What do you do if you are committed environmentalists who plan to get married? Have a green wedding, of course. That’s what Winnipeggers Bethany Daman and Sasha Schellenberg are doing. The couple, graduates...
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Mennonite Church USA’s MennoCon19 at Kansas City, Mo., was a reminder of who is still in the room after about a third of the denomination has exited. MC USA has weathered a difficult transition with the...
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What do you get when you cross a Mennonite pastor with a blacksmith? Someone who forges weapons into plowshares! But this is no joke. A new movement is afoot in the United States to turn guns into garden...
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When I rewatch films, I often pick up on something new. Occasionally, I notice something that changes the way I see the film. That was the case with Field of Dreams, which turns 30 this year. The film opens...
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When I was growing up in Mexico, a son of missionaries who saw Jesus as the light to share with those they believed lost, I listened for hours as round and round on the Wollensak turned the tapes on which Roy,...
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In the 10th-floor conference room of the Church Center for the United Nations, Romelia Tenezaca’s story entered the air line by line, first in Spanish and second in English. Ben Clark, family network...
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Christian (1788-1846) and Christiana Buzzard Holdeman (1788-1865) had Mennonite church leaders in their family tree. Christian’s father had been a minister, while Christiana’s great-grandfather was the...
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You are not the worst thing you have done. These are the words that pervade each moment of my time with the women at the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women. Our congregation has volunteered at the...
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Twenty years ago, Ed Cyzewski left his Roman Catholic faith to become an evangelical. This led him to a hard-driving way of faith that required doing good things for God but left him stressed and anxious. Then...
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For most of my life I read the Beatitudes as instruction, a mild if not righteous scolding. What if, instead of new commandments for people to follow, the Beatitudes are a description of the people Jesus sees...
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