We did a bit of updating on the back end of this here radical blog. You’ll notice it if you log in. We’ve gone all 2.5, but it took a bit to work out the kinks. Sorry if we had you worried. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on the latest. If you notice anything suspicious, let us know. Anything. Especially unattended baggage.

This is another proxy-post by Rich, written for CPTnet and copied here with permission:

North American media have again found one of their favorite stories in the fighting between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza – Palestinians bent on killing, incapable of arranging their political lives without massacres. Without claiming to have the complete story, I can at least interject some additional perspectives that call for deeper interpretation. For example, I saw Fatah and Hamas legislators in Hebron walk arm-in-arm down Ain Sara Street, on a day when five of their colleagues died in a gun-battle in Gaza. OK, at least that says that Hebron is not Gaza. But what is behind the fighting in Gaza?

Last week in Gaza, Hamas fighters finally drove Fatah fighters out of the Office of Preventive Security – that’s a police headquarter building, basically. Maybe North American reporters have forgotten that there was an election in Gaza and the West Bank early in 2006 – by all accounts a free, fair, multiparty democratic election. The voters chose new government, Hamas, by an overwhelming majority. Now, another way to describe this result would be to say that the electorate “sent the Fatah incumbents packing.” At least, in most places, it would mean that. But in this case the United States government objected to the choice of the Palestinian voting public, and acted in a variety of ways to stop the incumbent party from handing over the institutions of government to the winning party. So the Fatah legislators, bureaucrats and officials did not pack up – they stayed. That’s why they were still there in control of this police station more than a year later.

The US government convinced the Fatah party that just because they lost the election didn’t mean they had to hand over power. We convinced them that maybe losing the election meant they should offer to share power, or form a “unity” government, but in any case, they could stay in their offices. Hamas agreed, for a time, to try some of these creative alternatives to actually implementing the election results, no doubt in part because it seemed the only way to avoid suffering the full effect of embargoes and sanctions imposed by the US and Europe.

What happened last week was that finally the election results of last year took effect. After considerable US-imposed delay, Fatah was removed from offices of power, and Hamas took over. It is a tragedy that twenty-five more people were killed in this stage of the transfer of power – that isn’t supposed to be how it works in the hand-over after an election. But when the US imposes an artificial governing regime (here as in Iraq) then the US needs to accept some of the blame for the resulting mayhem.

What about the differences between Gaza and Hebron? There are a lot of differences. One difference is that Israeli troops continue to patrol and control the roads, streets and intersections throughout the West Bank with constant military presence – Israel is still in control, holding power over daily life, determining who can travel, build, buy or sell. There are not that many scraps of power for Palestinian politicians to fight over. Unlike in Gaza, in Hebron district Fatah didn’t “hold onto” much – they never had that much to begin with. And perhaps in Hebron, they didn’t have much reason to follow the American suggestion that they should frustrate the will of the people.

Fatah needs to do what any political party does after a drubbing at the polls – accept the judgment of the voters, regroup and reform, clean up their act and prepare for the next elections. Instead, by cooperating with the US (and Israel) in attempting to hang onto power, Fatah is being further discredited. After the many who died in this fighting, the big loser is Fatah, especially Fatah leadership.

The interparty killings of the last months should be seen for what they are – another consequence of bungled US policies, of preventing democratic processes when they don’t fit our distorted picture of how we want the world to look. The US decision to punish Palestinians for voting has claimed enough victims – it’s time for the US to change policy directions. As a next step, how about trying to see if Palestinians would respond better to offers of respect, hope and opportunity instead of disrespect and denial of hope or opportunity?

Debbie Says:

How many young adults of color are authors on this blog??? Think about it. This should be called YWAR - Young White Anabaptists Radicals.

There are some, though you might not know it from the pseudonyms, and I’m sure it isn’t representative.

There’s also a good post on a related topic from Skylark earlier called How do we get the straight white men to shut up?. Here is another place to talk about it:

As I read through various YAR posts the other morning, I was struck with a realization about God. More accurately, a realization about my belief in, and loyalty to God. Here it is:

If God really is a white male hetero-bigot he can shove it for all I care.

That’s right. Not my God. I’ll take damnation over worshiping that crap.

So where does that leave us?

Fortunately that’s not the God I believe in, and so I can move forward with faith in a God that loves creation and all that it is.Does that color my interpretation of scripture? Absolutely. Have you ever met someone free of that particular problem of subjective interpretation? But that said, if I learned tomorrow that God was planning to damn people to hell for having sex with the wrong people, I’d call the whole thing off. That is one petty pathetic God, and not one that deserves any respect. Since when is omniscience, omnipotence or omnipresence a good reason for me to like you, or follow your word? So what if you are the one and only true god, if you are a petty, spiteful tyrant.

So the question raised is: Why do you worship your God? Is power a good enough reason? Fear of hell? Allow me one hypothetical: what if God does want you to kill your neighbor for their transgressions? Do you do it, just because God says so? Do you have any morality outside of your belief in God? Should you? Are you loyal to whatever God is, to the best of your understanding, no matter what? Or do you have some limits?

And it’s not good enough to say this is all hypothetical, because all theology is somewhat hypothetical. You believe you are right about God, and I believe different from each of you, so one of us (at least) is dealing in fictions of some sort already. And the actual question itself is not hypothetical in the least:

Does “The Bible” or “Gods Word” over-rule all your ethical and moral understandings, and on what basis?

From the New York Times: Justices Limit Discrimination Suits Over Pay.

From 2001 to 2006, workers brought nearly 40,000 pay discrimination cases. Many such cases are likely to be barred by the court’s interpretation of the requirement in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that employees make their charge within 180 days “after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.”

In a vigorous dissenting opinion that she read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the majority opinion “overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination.” She said that given the secrecy in most workplaces about salaries, many employees would have no idea within 180 days that they had received a lower raise than others.

According to NPR, one of the cases cited as “precedence” for this ruling has been overturned by congress. If you find the details, link it up.

I suppose this begs the question: What do Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton look like?

I don’t have the time to comment on this as well as I should. But I think it’s worth pointing to:

Pope’s Opening Address for Latin America and Caribbean ‘Aparecida’ Conference.

It gives me great joy to be here today with you to inaugurate the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is being held close to the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, Patroness of Brazil. I would like to begin with words of thanksgiving and praise to God for the great gift of the Christian faith to the peoples of this Continent.

The problems here are fairly obvious, I think. It’s a frustrating follow-up to his comments on the excommunication of pro-choice legislators in Mexico City.

Convo talk for Bethel College (Kansas) November 13, 2006 by Rich Meyer

[Rich sent this to me, and not having time to post it himself, I am posting it for him. Here’s a few quotes to whet your appetite:]

Part of my concern here is with how we process the diversity of voices within the canon – this collection of books that we today call “The Bible,” (singular) as if it were one book. In Greek, Ta Biblia is plural, it means “the books.” What we call “the Old Testament” (singular, again) Jews call “the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.” Names are important, how we name things carries a lot of freight. We all know that the Bible is a collection, a library, and includes a number of voices, voices often engaged in debate. I think it would help our understanding if our vocabulary gave us that picture. Instead we’ve got it all wrapped up in a leather cover.

I think we have wanted to stop short of talking openly and honestly within the church about the implications of this diversity of voices, and what it means if we want to study with intent to get direction. Because that requires us to commit, to weigh in on the Bible’s internal debates. Failing this, we are stuck defending some really damaging racism and sexism, just because it is between leather covers. Rabbi Michael Lerner names it thus: he says that we have, in the Torah, the voice of God, and the voice of accumulated pain and hurt.

[The full lecture, after the jump.]

—

For most of my ten years in Christian Peacemaker Teams my focus has been our work in Israel/Palestine; our team has been there eleven years. I spend several months a year in the Middle East, working with Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers. Among these friends and co-workers are members of Rabbis for Human Rights, and Palestinian Christians from Sabeel, an ecumenical Liberation Theology center. In both of these contexts I have heard people agonizing over the pervasiveness of chosen-ness in the texts that their communities hold sacred, and the terrible, literally deadly effect on intercommunal relations that unreflective use of this theological theme and language has had and continues to have. This alone might be sufficient explanation as to why I believe this subject cries out for critical re-examination.

The idea that we, our group, our people, are special, Chosen, loved by our God in a unique way – I wonder if this isn’t a near-universal element of creation stories or origin stories, in ethnic groups around the world. A story about how we were created, as a unique and special people. The creator God loved us, and gave us this, our own place on earth, to care for. I’ve done no careful research on this; I’m aware of the attachment of the Lakota and other tribes to the Black Hills. I lived in Lesotho for six years, in southern Africa, and I know that in Sesotho, only the Batswana the Baswati are with them in the noun class for “us.” All other tribes and peoples are in a different noun class.

Chosen-ness is a powerful Biblical theme, claimed daily by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank as justification not just for being there in occupied territory, but as justification for trying to force the Palestinians to leave, and go somewhere else, anywhere else. (I’ve heard one commentator say that the crime for which the Palestinians are being punished is their refusal to auto-evaporate.) This use of chosen-ness theology is disturbing to many Jews of conscience, who repudiate the actions of the settlers. I have heard them try to deal with this in different ways. Rabbi Arthur Waskow suggests that maybe all of us are chosen, just for different things. Jews were chosen to bring the Torah, what were you chosen for?

Nice try, but linguistically, it doesn’t work. Whether in Hebrew, Greek or English, “chosen” also implies that some are “unchosen.” You don’t use the word “choose” if you take all of what is there. If I offer you a chance to choose some books from my shelf, and you take them all, it is precisely at the moment when you take the last book that we would not describe this as your “choice” of books. If God loves everyone, that is an “embrace,” not a “choice.” Semantically, you could say that God “loves” all people; you would not say that God “chooses” all people. Even if we think of this divine choice or election as a burden and responsibility, it still divides the universe into “us” and “them,” “chosen” and “unchosen.” It did and continues to do that for Jews, it does that for many Christians.

Once when I was in Jerusalem I asked Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, a former leader in Rabbis for Human Rights, how he thought of biblical texts of chosen-ness. “Well, it’s juvenile,” he said; then he corrected himself: “No, infantile. I mean, when a child is an only child, or thinks he or she is an only child, then it is OK for them to be the most wonderful baby in the world. When another comes along, maybe you can now have the most beautiful boy AND the most beautiful girl in the world. But when there are three, or more, then the kids have to grow up – all can be beloved children, but they have to get past thinking they are the favorite. The texts claiming to be God’s favorite, those are from an early developmental stage.” Trying to hang onto that is arrested theological development.

For children, learning to tell “us” from “them” has important survival value. Children need to be able to recognize friend, caregiver and protector, from foe or enemy. But in adulthood? What happens when people carry the “us” versus “them” polarity into their adult lives, and into the wider world? And what does it do if in addition they add divine sanction to treating the other as less human, with fewer rights than our tribe?

Of course, not all of the biblical writers got stuck there. There are strong voices in both the Hebrew and Greek proclaiming God’s inclusive love, God’s eagerness to embrace all people of the earth.

So part of my concern here is with how we process the diversity of voices within the canon – this collection of books that we today call “The Bible,” (singular) as if it were one book. In Greek, Ta Biblia is plural, it means “the books.” What we call “the Old Testament” (singular, again) Jews call “the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.” Names are important, how we name things carries a lot of freight. We all know that the Bible is a collection, a library, and includes a number of voices, voices often engaged in debate. I think it would help our understanding if our vocabulary gave us that picture. Instead we’ve got it all wrapped up in a leather cover.

[I have an idea for a project, you could call it a “publishing” project or maybe some student here could take it on as a class project, for credit. I would like a Bible that I would take to church in a milk-crate or a cardboard box. I would like each book of the Bible to be in a physical form somehow indicative of its literary form. Letters would be just that, letters, several sheets folded and stuffed, each in their own envelope. Some of the prophets might be leaflets like someone might hand out on a city street-corner. Some would be well laid-out with a few eye-catching graphics, others typed edge to edge with no white space, small type, and a lot of shouting caps and exclamation points. I imagine Song of Solomon might be on pink, scented stationery, with the “I”s all dotted with puffy little hearts. There might be some books printed like newspapers – I think that’s called tabloid style? Proverbs might be a stack of index cards with a rubber band around them. I know some of Paul’s writing would be doodling. I imagine the Psalms as a hymnbook, but emphatically, the books would be separate. And I would have room in my box to bring some other inspired materials to church, like maybe King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I haven’t got this all figured out, but I think if we carried Bibles like this, it would make a big improvement in how we study and use the Bible.]

Separating the books might make it easier for us to see that some of these voices are fighting others for the right to define what it means to be “in” – in God’s family – and to say who is out. To take just one example, the book of Ruth, which tells of a woman from Moab who enters the community and becomes an important figure, directly clashes with Deut. 23:3. It also clashes with the view of the authors of Ezra and Nehemiah, whose influential leadership included ousting foreign wives from the community.

Group identity is a normal and valuable part of identity formation. But as we grow, if we start to see ourselves as part of a variety of groupings, we may see the edges of a group we earlier identified with as blurred – the term “mixed marriages,” for example, is a common, yet very revealing label. What comes to mind when you hear that term? White and Black? Jew and Gentile? Albanian and Serbian? Mennonite and Catholic? Mennonite and MB?

I am troubled by how carelessly we handle the texts of chosen-ness in the Bible. [Comparison of the words of #897, “My soul is filled with joy,” (David Haas) to Luke 1:49b-50. Note esp. “those who fear him,” changed to “the people he has chosen.” In Judaism contemporary with the Gospel writers, “god-fearers” were gentiles who chose to join synagogue worship. The text of this song inserts gratuitous chosen-ness where it is not present in the biblical passage – same problem occurs in three of the five verses. Note textual changes we sing at Benton Mennonite.]

Within the Bible there’s this debate going on over whether God has favorites. But instead of engaging the debate, Christians have mostly just appropriated the language of chosen-ness and decided (or assumed), it must mean us. Never mind where that leaves Jews; in any case, if some are chosen, then others are not.

It was at Sabeel that I encountered Michael Prior’s book, The Bible and Colonialism, where he works with three case studies, looking in each case at the devastating use made of biblical texts to justify and give theological support to colonial conquest: the European conquest of what we often now call “the Americas”; the Afrikaaner conquest of South Africa; and the establishment in the twentieth century of a Jewish state in Palestine. In all of these cases, the colonizers explicitly cast themselves in the biblical role of God’s chosen people, with a divine assignment of killing or subjugating the indigenous population as part of claiming God’s promise to them.

In the preface to the second edition of his book The Land, Walter Brueggemann credits Michael Prior with helping him to see (quote) “a shortcoming in my book [that] reflects an inadequate understanding” of his when he wrote the book, published 1977. He goes on to say that this (quote) “also reflects the status of most Old Testament studies at that time that were still innocently credulous about the theological importance of the land tradition in the Old Testament . . . as it impacted other people as a NECESSARY COST OF THE AFFIRMATION OF ISRAEL’S LAND CLAIMS.” (end-quote) Do you see what this is saying?

Brueggemann says that (quote) “Prior has most fully and explicitly considered these matters,” yet from all I can determine, no Mennonite publication has ever reviewed his book. I have found it on one bibliography of one professor at EMU. Other than that, I have never heard it mentioned by any Mennonite college or seminary prof; not that they ignorant or unaware. Perhaps it is that Prior was too quick, at least for Mennonite taste, to relativize the biblical texts of promise. Brueggemann is able to say that these texts of land promise are “not an innocent theological claim, but . . . a vigorous ideological assertion on an important political scale.” He further recognizes that the “traditions of land promise and land violence [are] twin claims that are decisive for the tradition and cannot be separated out,” but in another context I have heard Brueggemann says regarding what he calls “difficult texts,” we must “wrestle with them until they give us a blessing.” Brueggemann’s high view of scripture is surely more acceptable to most Mennonites.

Prior seems to be more willing to simply acknowledge that these scriptures are written from and for one tribe. When within the texts we find ethnocentric nationalistic ideology described as God’s will, we could simply note that people WILL do this, and these texts can join many others that we do not in fact consider authoritative for our life and practice.

Now, that phrase by itself may be provocative, but it is incontrovertible fact. Even the most passionate fundamentalists do not take all scripture as authoritative for themselves, whether or not they say so. Sometimes we explain this decision in language that borders supersession – “interpreting the Old Testament through the New Testament,” or “letting the prophets critique the Law,” or “reading the Bible through our understanding of Jesus as the fullest revelation of God.” That’s the approach taken by an article in “The Mennonite” this week. In another phrasing, pastors and Bible teachers often describe what they see as a “trajectory” through the Bible. I have heard all of these phrases in our churches and in our college classrooms, and for my purpose here I don’t want to debate them. I simply want to point out that however it is stated, it means that there is a passage there that we do not want to defend as reflecting the will of God. A trajectory, after all, goes AWAY from every point it passes. These are all particular ways of describing an interpretive decision that removes some of the authoritative weight of a specific passage of scripture.

I want us to be clear about this, because part of the problem we have in dealing with the destructive force of passages supporting violent enforcement of exclusive claims of God’s favor is a certain duplicity. We want, after all, to be “biblical.” (A seminary near my home in Elkhart County has “biblical” as its middle name.) The Anabaptist tradition is a biblical tradition if nothing else, and I don’t think that our increasing appreciation for the diversity of early Anabaptism even remotely challenges that.

I am afraid that sometimes this takes the form of a double-standard: during the week, or with people who have an understanding of dates and context of authorship, and of different literary genres, the church leader or teacher can be open about the influences and events surrounding the writers and editors of the text, but then we are afraid that with folks in the pews this commentary might be seen as faithlessness.

I think we have wanted to stop short of talking openly and honestly within the church about the implications of this diversity of voices, and what it means if we want to study with intent to get direction. Because that requires us to commit, to weigh in on the Bible’s internal debates. Failing this, we are stuck defending some really damaging racism and sexism, just because it is between leather covers. Rabbi Michael Lerner names it thus: he says that we have, in the Torah, the voice of God, and the voice of accumulated pain and hurt.

When Lerner names it that starkly, the reaction of many Christians is that this is a slippery slope. Once we acknowledge that our interpretation goes so deep as to discern that certain texts are not authoritative for us, are we making God in our own image? Is each of us then just deciding for ourselves what Bible to read, instead of being willing to be read by the Bible, to be challenged and changed by the word of God?

I believe in discerning the word in community, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And I do not think we are aided in that by an often-anachronistic and binary application of a pretty uninspired verse from 2 Timothy about inspiration. We need the spirit’s guidance in figuring out how to deal with oppressive material in the Bible, and we can’t do that if we can’t see the need. Our sacred texts were in large part forged in contexts of polarized, entrenched violent conflict. Well, what do you expect will characterize those texts? Rigid group identity, turned into dogma, with claims of divine preference, claims that God hates our enemies and wants them dead! I will forever be grateful to J. Denny Weaver from Bluffton College, who had the courage to say this during Q & A after giving a lecture at Goshen: “My wife told me not to say this because it will get me in trouble, but sin entered into the writing of scripture.”

John Paul Lederach has listed four characteristics he notes in people who are able to break out of cycles of entrenched, polarized violence. First he describes the ability to imagine relationship with, or that somehow you are connected, lives intertwined with the enemy. A second is curiosity, interest in seeing what more there might be out there to learn. Imagination, imagining new options, is third, and willingness to take risks is fourth. Lederach defines this last as taking actions where you don=t know what might happen – you are not in control.

In contrast, when intergroup conflicts take on a religious overtone, they become MORE polarized, and there is less room for compromise. If God is involved, then compromise is seen as faithlessness, perhaps apostasy. Secondly, truth is seen as finite, something that can be possessed, owned by one side, and there is no reason to hear or listen to the other.

It may be that chosen-ness is not too much of a problem within a mono-cultural society. In a multi-cultural society it will break down or cause problems. In a polarized conflict it is deadly.

It makes some sense to me that if Lederach has done a good job of identifying characteristics of people who can become peacemakers from within entrenched, polarized violent conflicts, then some of those same characteristics might be important in third-party intervention, in those of us who have the temerity to think that we can contribute something to peacemaking coming from outside. We also need to be able to imagine relationship with anyone – and I think that has to include seeing everyone as equally, fully loved by God. We need to be curious, interested in what more we can learn or what new truths may come into our lives through listening to others. I have another Lederach quote where he says that becoming a peacemaker means becoming comfortable with ambiguity. We need to be creative, imaginative, ready to try new things, and willing to take risks.

(Story: Neal Loevinger overnights with the Al Atrash family)

I probably could have stayed on safer ground today if I had just told you inspiring stories of brave CPTers doing peacemaking work in conflict zones. But you know, it is in the character and discipline of Christian Peacemaker Teams to look for trouble and head toward it, so here I am. And we cannot be peacemakers in conflicts loaded with religious baggage if we aren’t willing to confront our own religious baggage.

Why is there so much talk about “sex” around here? What is this “sex” thing that we are saving for marriage? And what is this marriage thing?

The whole conversation is based in hetero norms and assumptions. Dictionary.com mainly defines “sex” the way we talk about “gender.” It also links to Coitus, which it defines as hetero intercourse - a penis penetrating a vagina. According to all that, I don’t have any gay friends who have ever had sex (coitus) in their lives (though most have had sex (gender) since birth or soon after).

So much for promiscuity. By hetero norms, Gay and Lesbian people are generally celibate, and it all gets confusing when you start talking Trans-gendered.

And don’t say “you know what we mean” because I don’t. Where’s the line? What’s the definition? Holding hands? Kissing? Petting? Nudity? Orgasm? Genital to genital contact? It’s not only a continuum without clear delineations, it doesn’t all even line up. Which is worse, clothed orgasm or nudity without touching? What about orgasm without touching? Where is oral or anal sex in the mix? What makes them more “sex” than, say, petting? There is no answer. Coitus is a hetero concept, and a false delimiter.

Language is important.

And then you have marriage. You can claim that it’s only for heteros because God said so, but it’s a tenuous claim and along the lines of claiming slavery was instituted by God. Or you can claim psychological/relational reasons for marriage, only what you mean is long term committed relationships with church, state and community support. Because that’s what marriage is. “The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.”

Oops, the definition is hetero again.

Gay marriage doesn’t exist because we said it doesn’t. But the psychological part has nothing to do with that. Long term committed homosexual relationships with church and state and community support CAN happen, and do some places, with as much success as hetero ones. Without that opportunity, there’s not a fighting chance. I’d certainly give up on the church’s definition of sexual morality if it clearly excluded me from loving who I love. Sex nothing, I’m just talking romance. Then I would end up in a series of short, secretive relationships doomed to fail because of the pressure. Then we could all call me “promiscuous.”

There’s another failure of a term. Promiscuous is someone who’s getting more than I am. Promiscuous is someone who might be more picky about life-long partners than I am. Where’s the line?

The entire conversation and the language involved is skewed to keep the terms straight. Now that’s broken.

There has been some concern about the Y in our name being exclusive to aging Anabaptist Radicals. Of course, all three of the letters are meant to narrow down the target contributers. Interesting to me is the breakdown of how much we care about each letter. According to an earlier poll, we care most about the A, quite a bit less about the R, and almost not at all about the Y.

There’s a lot of talk on here about being Anabaptist. As that is what differentiates us from all the other young radical blogs out there, I won’t act too surprised. But I am a little surprised. The R seems fairly central to why this blog exists. Or am I wrong? As a founder, I know that was a main reason for starting it - a forum for radicals among the Anabaptists. The Y and A were more descriptive of ourselves and our context (we were all young Anabaptists) than purpose in my mind.

What about that R? Does it matter to you? Are you radical? What makes you radical? Would you join a YAM for moderates or a YAC for conservatives? Do you care?

There’s a lot of talk about wanting to be a church open to people who disagree. On the one hand that sounds like a great idea, on the other hand where does it end? How do we define ourselves as a church? Even assuming a model with more focus on central mission than fringe cases, how do you keep your mission strong while remaining somewhat democratic and having such divergent members? How do you keep it strong after, say, 500 years of people joining the denomination for no other reason than they grew up in it? What does it mean to be a “historic peace church” once you are left with only a minority in the church claiming that all war is sin (see the recent church member profile conducted by MCUSA). Who cares what we are historically, if we’re something different now?

Here’s the point:

If we believe in a church with differing voices, and are opposed to schism, why have a Mennonite church at all? Why not just add to the diversity of a mainline protestant denomination? Why not reunite with Catholicism to create the Ultimate Diverse Universal Christian Super-Church?

OR

If we believe there are things worth splitting over, and reasons to have a distinctly Anabaptist or even more distinctly Mennonite church, what issues are worth it? Why not split over ordination of women? Why not split over beliefs about war? Why not split over acceptance and support of GLBT people? These all seem like fairly important issues to me, much more so than coat buttons or the mustache or even child baptism. You wouldn’t include white-supremacists in a civil rights organization just for the diversity of opinion, so why include militants or homophobes in a peace church?

I can see the argument for going either direction boldly, and could stand behind both. What I don’t understand is a middle ground where we want to be a unique and special church without actually standing by anything unique or special, because that would be exclusive to someone else’s opinion. Let’s make a choice. Either the church is a place for everyone together despite our differences, in which case we are reneging on the entire Anabaptist movement and have some major unifying to do, or let’s start excluding people and splitting over important issues like the early Anabaptists did.

Instead we claim to be open to all various perspectives, including the ones that would exclude people. And, so as not to lose those “equally faithful brothers and sisters” who would exclude women and homosexuals (that would be exclusive!) we just go ahead and exclude women and homosexuals. This is another case in which being open to one group or opinion is itself being exclusive to another. Complacency in the face of injustice is consent with that injustice. Or, as MLK would say, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Despite our rhetoric to the contrary, we always seem to side institutionally with the more powerful group because of “tradition” or some other nonsense. Blessed are the meek, as long as they are straight, white and male.

I digress. What will it be? Intentional and clear exclusion? Universal inclusion? Or just try to keep any exclusion hush-hush and hope no one notices?

I hear it all the time.

But why should I tolerate intolerance? Why should I be open to hearing an argument in favor of sexism or racism or homophobia? Why should I respect hate and violence and oppression as equal ideologies?

Discuss.

We have issues

From: Indexed

like this.

I don’t have the heart to comment.

That’s right. Today is not only International Women’s Day, but Blog Against Sexism Day - and it’s not over yet, so I can still slip in under the wire, because do you know how awful it would be to blog against sexism on the wrong day? That’s right, if we went off blogging about sexism more than one day of the year, women would start to feel like they “deserved to have equal rights” (Thanks Conservapedia! (via Twisty Faster)).

There are actually many women out there already blogging about this much better than I will. Here are links to just a few of them:

• I Blame The Patriarchy
• Ilyka Damen
• Feminist Law Professors
• Feministing
• Feministe
• Pandagon
• Shrub

If it hasn’t been mentioned before, Shrub has a very good primer on privilege for men. There are also some great posts from a few good men out there. Please link to more blogs by men or women in the comments. Link it up against sexism!

I’ve been thinking lately about my position of privilege - the first tenet of which is “I don’t have to care or even notice that my privilege exists, so please don’t bring it up or I’ll get defensive.” It’s the first part that I’ve been thinking about, because not getting defensive (not reacting negatively) is much easier than acting positively in the first place. And it’s not radical to boot. No golden stars for that.

I do theatre. I write and direct plays. Theatre and the movies are historically radical on all issues except one. This one. Oh, theatre will talk tough about sexism, but take a look under the hood and you’ll see us reflecting the same patriarchal hierarchies, the same crap roles for women, and a lot of sexual harassment disguised as ’sexual liberation’ and ‘post-PC’, because we’re beyond sexism, us men, and we’d rather not talk about it any more.

As men we dominate the writing, and we write about ourselves (like this!), and we hire other men to direct our work, and since we’ve written about men, it’s men who get hired to act and men who rule the stage. Sure, there are some women - the wives, the daughters, the femme fatal, the “prize” - all the women that need to be there for the men to lust and fight over. Surprisingly, all these stage women ever talk about is men.

And I’ve been doing the same thing under this guise, which just came to light for me as the silliness it is: Characters in plays are weak, otherwise the play isn’t interesting. I know I’m not supposed to write weak women, and therefor I won’t put women into my plays unless I “need them” to fulfill some purpose. It’s brilliant, except it plays right into the problem that’s already there. It assumes, again, that men are the default and women are the extra. It also assumes that “a strong women” is perfect and free from all faults. What we need isn’t more plays full of robot women. What we need is plays with real, interesting, three dimensional women with minds of their own - the weak and the strong. What we need is simply more, different representations of women on stage. [And don’t even get me started on who’s responsibility that is. Hint: You don’t get to ignore millennia of oppression just because it wasn’t your idea.]

I just finished writing my first full play with a female protagonist, and it took way too much poking and prodding from women I know for me to do it. I love the play, and the women who pushed me to write it. Thank you, and I’m sorry.

[And here’s something else: That’s nothing. All I’ve done there is stopped oppressing in one small way. That should be assumed, not praised. Oh well. I guess culture and I still have a ways to go on this one. Thanks again to all the women who are pushing us on it and keeping us honest.]

Iraqis must step up! I’ve been hearing this all over the place so I looked into it…

They’re right! Look at this guy:

He’s just sitting there!

I got this from Susan Mark Landis, Peace Advocate of Mennonite Church USA, today. Thought I would put it out there…

Friends,
Sometime early next year, my office will be sending postcards to
Mennonite youth in high school, encouraging them to
Choose life!

(If you go to a Mennonite congregation that has given addresses of youth
to the Mennonite Education Agency, your youth will receive the postcard.
If not, you may send names/addresses to LisaA at Mennoniteusa dot org and she
will do a special mailing. The postcard is intended for Mennonite youth,
but we’re glad to send it to high schoolers from other denominations.)

The postcard will refer youth to a NEW! webpage for youth, about peace.
We’re looking for several youth who are articulate, willing to have
their words looked over before posting (it IS a church website),
thinking about peacemaking and willing to write at least weekly. As I
understand, this is called a blog.

Please talk to youth you would recommend and have them send me a note
expressing their interest, telling me what they would write about, how
they feel about the idea. (do NOT click return, please):
SusanML at MennoniteUSA dot org

Peace,
Susan

radical self love
a roommate once wanted to start a “masturbate for peace” campaign. he was shot down by everyone he talked to. i now wish i had backed him up. but this isn’t really a post about that…

“love your neighbor as you love yourself.” is that a command or a statement of fact?

make someone happy - buy yourself an iPod.
maybe this is a post about that after all…

world peace
i’ve discovered the key to world peace.
i’ll sell it to you for a dollar.

yar summary

• tradition is good and/or bad
• the church is too inclusive and/or exclusive
• hierarchy is bad and/or good
• people should be nicer/better people
• don’t throw the bath water and/or the baby out
• change is good as long as it’s good change

jesus wasn’t a social worker
sometimes there really aren’t two sides to an issue - and listening is an act of treason.

i’m serious. not treason to god and country - treason to a peace process.

a belief (it seems to me) mlk, gandhi, bush, bin laden and jesus have in common.

goshen high school niggers
that’s right, i’m proposing a new mascot for goshen high school. the redskins have run their course (we cattle-prodded them to kansas, remember?). and i talked to this one guy who has a black, like, second cousin, and she wasn’t offended by the idea.

There isn’t actually a YAR Madlib in this post, because I haven’t taken the time to write one, but I think it’s a fantastic idea and someone should. I would love to see the results of our middle-school selves filling in YAR-post blanks with various middle-school crudities, and giggling our little heads off. Yes, that’s a potty joke in the title of my post. Yes, I’m immature.

I have a friend who is becoming a novice member of Reba Place. People do that. And Reba place is radical, right? Emerging church and all that? I mean, it is in Chicago, and has an intentional community attached to it. They are also still fighting over women in leadership - let alone LGBT rights or couples holding hands before marriage. And that’s not something new - that’s all fairly well rooted in Anabaptist tradition.

I can’t really pick on Reba, as I don’t know the details well at all, but sometimes the earnestly ‘Anabaptist’ church scares me as much as the fundamentalist/evangelical. And what really does define the Anabaptist tradition? Is it really a peace-making stance, or is it mainly an obsession with perfection, passive-aggression and boundary-drawing? Our defining issues in history have been buttons, mustaches, pianos, women, divorce, and queers. Keeping the church clean for Jesus. Go us.

Pastor Mommy (my mother, a Mennonite pastor) blames Menno Simons and his Divine Flesh theology for the whole pure-church ideal that has been central to Mennonite and Amish tradition ever since. We’re talking hard core Anabaptist roots on that one.

But when was the last time you heard Jesus talk about the spotless church? Jesus didn’t argue over who was in or out - Jesus stayed up late partying with prostitutes. Oh, and tax collectors. We’re not just talking about the marginalized, but the marginalizing. We’re also talking about alcohol, and lot’s of it. So much that they ran out and Jesus had to magic some more of it into being. Quite a party trick, for quite a party-animal. Make a pure church out of that one. Where is the Mennonite church or intentional community committed to getting smashed with friends and enemies alike on a weekly basis? Where’s the accountability on that one? We should be running bars, not charities.

According to the current poll results (so far), the majority of us identify mainly with ‘Anabaptist’ out of ‘Young Anabaptist Radicals’. I suppose that is the most distinctive feature of the site. Young is a somewhat broad group, making it much harder to care about membership. Even radical doesn’t have a lot holding it together - so Anabaptist does seem to be the niche clincher.

But why Anabaptist? What’s in it for you? Is it just an ethnic thing? We’ve never learned how to be normal people, or fit in anywhere else, so we cling to our YAR support group? That wouldn’t be a bad thing - I’m all for support groups - but it seems like no one ever wants to say it. Because we want to downplay the ‘ethnic’ thing so we look more inclusive? Why? What’s so brilliant about inclusiveness? If we’re mainly defined by our ethnicity (and by that I don’t just mean birth, but culture and way of thinking) then why not admit to that? I’ve never heard of any other support group wanting to be inclusive to members from outside the defining criteria.

I’m drawn to my Anabaptist family, a bunch of people who have grown up with a similar world view to myself, but the tradition is a mixed bag - just like any other religious tradition. Catholicism is a mixed bag, as several people have pointed out.

As for calling the church to go pee pee, I’m not quite sure how we can call the church to anything in particular, besides discernment meetings or bible studies. The mission of the church seems so vague and diluted - pandering to individualism, inclusiveness and ‘the movement of the spirit’ - that I’m not sure how the church could function as anything more than a support group. Is this a problem with what church has become, or is this exactly what the church should be? What is the mission of the church, and how can it be held accountable to that mission?

another Eric A Meyer (who happens to be a more prominent web designer than i am (you’ll find him, not me, if you google us)) made a google maps air strike simulation called HYDEsim. it shows on a map the basic range of an explosion using variables that you set.

he’s recieved some flack for ‘aiding the terrorists’ (ha), or the simulation being to simple (it doesn’t take into account some wider effects of an explosion), etc - though he points out that it’s not an easy thing to mock up with simple javascript.

it’s a nifty little learning tool, but more interesting to me is his recent blog post about it, talking about various places it’s been used and various people’s responses to it.