BOGOTA, Colombia — The group stood in a prayer circle, holding hands. Some of the hands, figuratively, were likely bloody. They were the hands of guerrillas — high-ranking, longtime members of FARC, the...
[read more]Weapons have no place in churches, whether they are carried by someone concerned with harm or with self-defense. Followers of the God of peace are right to indicate this in a visible way. It is true that a...
[read more]In “Evangelical Evolution” (North of the 49th, Nov. 5), John Longhurst points out that evangelicals have not always opposed abortion. Their evolution on this issue is a positive thing. Martin Luther and...
[read more]“You can’t imagine how it is to be hated,” wrote David Koehn and William Frantz, Mennonite pacifist conscripts at Camp Greenleaf in Georgia, during World War I. Can’t we? Compassion compels us to...
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First Mennonite Church of San Francisco found itself in a unique position to offer support to a Jewish community shaken by the Oct. 27 shooting that killed 11 people and wounded six at Tree of Life synagogue...
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In a few days we’ll observe Thanksgiving. We will pause to thank our Creator for the blessings we have received. But some of us may ask: How can we give thanks in the midst of animosity? In the United...
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“Woman’s Protest Exposes Cruel Political Ploy.” This could be a headline for the present day or for the story of Rizpah. We don’t hear much about Rizpah. Her perplexing narrative is found in 2 Sam....
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After seven years, a suspect has been arrested and charged for the 2011 murder of Goshen (Ind.) College biology professor James Miller. Elkhart County prosecutor Vicki Becker announced Oct. 30 that Winston...
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NEWTON, Kan. — As Mennonites gathered in a church basement Oct. 27 to discuss how they might respond to a shooter in their church, cell phones buzzed with news of a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The...
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Throughout this year a group of us within Mennonite Church USA has been meeting to discuss Mennonite and Jewish relations. We are pastors, scholars and laypeople. Some of us work for Mennonite agencies and...
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Women in Odessa, Kherson, Zaporozhe, Dnipro and Kiev adorn themselves in the colors and fragrances of happy gardens that belie Ukraine’s brutal history. Men without shirts in the villages of what had been...
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While on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., J. Lawrence Burkholder participated in an integration effort on March 31, 1964, in Saint Augustine, Fla., which made headlines in newspapers...
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In 2015, the Delegate Assembly of MC USA passed the Churchwide Statement on Sexual Abuse. It says: “We lament that sexual abuse exists not only in our society but also within our own homes, congregations and...
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The good news is human beings are a lot less violent today than at any other time in human history. The bad news is religion has been — and continues to be — a major contributor to violence. Those are a...
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Nur Jemon remembers that the day she fled her home in the Rakhine district of Myanmar started as it did every other day. The Rohingya Muslim woman was cooking rice when the military stormed her village,...
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TSHIKAPA, Democratic Republic of Congo — More than 200 teachers have received training in Evangelization Through Literacy initiated by female leaders of three Mennonite denominations. The new teachers are...
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For several years, Kenya has been a flashpoint of Christian-Muslim conflict. With each incident of terror, the tension increases. Kenyan Mennonites are finding hope in small incidents of transformation. Kenya...
[read more]Hillary Watson (Column, July 30) challenges Mennonites to ask, “Who are we and who do we want to be in the abortion debate?” Mennonites have defined themselves as people of peace even when the cost is...
[read more]I come from a people called the Banyamulenge. We are cattle herders and live in the high mountains of eastern Congo overlooking Lake Tanganyika. Over the years, my people have been forced from one area to...
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Michael J. Sharp, a Mennonite worker with the United Nations who was killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2017, was awarded the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Medal on June 1 in New York City in...
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The story of the Democratic Republic of Congo casts a long, disturbing shadow. The legacy of colonialism thrusts malevolent roots into the kingdoms of the Congo basin, which sustains the second largest country...
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“Fill me with your love, O Lord,” I say to myself as I breathe in. “And free me from fear,” I think on the exhale. I’m sitting in a black van, parked on the side of the highway in Syria. As I look...
[read more]When James H. Cone, a leading founder of the black theology movement, died last month, I felt the loss personally. Cone’s book God of the Oppressed changed my theological career. Early on, I knew Mennonites...
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Imagine the pain of losing a child to war, compounded by not having a safe space to express grief. This is Claudia Antonovna Ushakova’s story. Her son, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, died in combat at the...
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Agnès Ntumba remembers the day her husband and seven children fled the violence that took over their village in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I saw people being killed. They were...
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