Young Anabaptist Radicals

Author Archive: TimN

A novel about anime, peacemaking and kidnapping

This is a letter to YAR readers from Kathleen Kern, a colleague of mine at Christian Peacemaker Teams as well as a novelist. I was a fan of her first novel, Where Such Unmaking Reigns and I’ve also read the manuscript she describes below.

Hi,

Last year, I completed a second novel featuring the work of a fictitious group called Reformed Anabaptist Peace Teams. I’ve posted the following on a number of anime websites, and checked with the local anime club at Rochester Institute of Technology, but have had still had no takers for more
than year. A YAR suggested I post my request here:

This year, I completed my second novel, the main character of which, Spike Darbyfield is emotionally invested in only two things: her younger sister, Margie, and higher end Japanese Anime series [the ones I mention the most are Blood+, Samurai Champloo, and Cowboy Bebop.] From others in her family,
colleagues, clientele, and the rest of humanity, she maintains an ironic or contemptuous detachment. When an Iraqi militant group kidnaps Margie while she is working for a human rights organization in Iraq, the crisis creates openings in what Spike has perceived as her invulnerable exterior, allowing
those who care about her to begin relating to her (and her to them) in different ways. (more…)

September 22, 2009 Books, Peace & Peacemaking Read more >

3 Years of YAR: Curate your own top 6 list

Three years ago today, Eric wrote the first post here on YAR. We’ve been through all sorts of interesting things in the past 3 years. I think we’re old enough now that we can start doing some looking back. In celebration of those 3 years, I’d like to invite YAR authors to curate their own top 6 lists of past blog posts. For example, what are your top 6 funniest YAR posts or most discussed. Or most provocative. Or most outrageous. Be imaginative.

Here’s an example for you. It’s a modified list of the most often viewed posts on YAR over the last little while. You’ll notice in reading this list that some of those with the most views are ones that happened to connect with popular Google search terms. I also only included one blog post per author, so we can spread around the love. Two other notes: I’ve adjusted for length of time that the post has been up and the recording of page views started on June 8, 2008.

Top 6 most viewed blog posts on YAR in the last 15 months

#1 pink Menno campaign

This one paragraph post by Luke owes its top spot on this list to its high positioning in the Google results when one searches for Pink Menno. At one point it came in second to the main Pink Menno site. It received a couple hundred of hits after Pink Menno made the Associated Press at the Columbus convention. It’s also had its share of drive by comments by ticked off Mennonites. Luke’s longer high page view piece was his review of Love is an Orientation. (more…)

August 31, 2009 Anniversary Read more >

What do you know about Ervin Stutzman?

Yesterday, the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board named Ervin R. Stutzman the next executive director of Mennonite Church USA. Given that we’ve had three posts (by ST, by me and by Steve K) and 15 comments here on YAR about the search process for this position, I thought it would be worth talking about whether or not this appointment meets your expectations and hopes.

But the first step is finding out more about Ervin. I, for one, have never heard of him before. Do any of you know much about him? The highlights from his official bio in the Mennonite article include:

August 26, 2009 Mennonite Church USA Read more >

Bullet holes and Resurrection Ivy

Crossposted from As of Yet Untitled

On Wednesday morning at 3:33 am, Charletta woke up and said that she had heard a noise. I blearily nodded. She was gone for a minute or two and I tried to go back to sleep. Then she came back and said, "I think there’s a bullet hole in the window." Hmm, I thought, that’s unexpected. My brain gradually began to wake up.

I walked out into the living room and woke up all the way (or as much as is possible at such an hour). Our apartment is on the fourth floor, so the bullet had come in through the window and gone out the ceiling 4 feet away. It had plowed through a tight stack of venetian blinds which had exploded across the room, leaving little white pieces of plastic on every visible surface.

(more…)

August 24, 2009 Community, Guns Read more >

Jarrod McKenna hiding in training area to halt US and Australian military training exercises

A few years ago I published an interview on YAR with Jarrod McKenna, an Australian Christian and activist. Since then, Jarrod has occasionally participated in discussions on YAR and I’ve had a number of phone conversations with him as part of building a Christian Peacemaker Teams presence in Australia. He’s a committed and passionate advocate of Christian nonviolence.

The Bonhoeffer 4
photo via Indymedia

Today, Jarrod and 3 other Christians are hiding in the Shoalwater Bay military training area in order to stop joint training exercises by Australians and US troops in which they practice invading a Muslim town. (more…)

July 13, 2009 activism, Military, Nonviolence, Peace & Peacemaking Read more >

Would you like to train with Christian Peacemaker Teams in London?

For the last couple years, I and others been working to organize a training for new CPTers in Europe. Earlier this year we announced that we had enough applicants to move ahead with a CPT training for new corps members in London in October. This week, we are on the brink of having to cancel that training due to lack of participants. In this final push for trainees, we are opening it up to those of you in North America (or others outside Europe) who might be interested in traveling to London for the month long training from October 1st through October 31st. Aside from the transportation costs to get there, all other costs would be covered including room and board. (more…)

July 9, 2009 Peace & Peacemaking Read more >

What an Anabaptist aproach to the Bible means for me

Jesus Bible icon

A few weeks ago, in a discussion thread over here, folknotions asked the question (seconded by Tim Baer): “What do radical anabaptists believe about the Bible?”. I’ve been pondering this question for a few weeks and I haven’t come up with anything definitive, but I do have a few thoughts to share. It just so happens that DenverS posted a piece two weeks ago that very much speaks to this question as well. I’d love to hear what others of you (especially women) think as well. We’ve already got a quite active The Bible so if you add your piece to that category, we could even have ourselves a “YAR on the Bible” series.

My awareness of how I read the bible has been strongly shaped by my experience of British Anabaptism through working Anabaptist Network. The second of the Anabaptist Network’s seven core convictions is:

Jesus is the focal point of God’s revelation. We are committed to a Jesus-centred approach to the Bible, and to the community of faith as the primary context in which we read the Bible and discern and apply its implications for discipleship.(read more from the AN)

(more…)

June 18, 2009 Anabaptism, The Bible Read more >

Corporations, Scriptural Sacrilege and Saucepan Revolutions

Crossposted from As of Yet Untitled

Every once in a while, I stumble across a bunch of links all at once that don’t quite have the coherence to link together in one story, but each offer a compelling perspective. Here are the links that caught my eye this week with brief summaries of the stories:

  • Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back – I first became aware of Douglas Rushkoff last month after he published two of the best articles on the financial crisis I’ve read (here and here). Now he has a new book out on corporatism that lucidly illuminates the ruthless role of corporations in our economy as they extract maximum value while giving as little as possible in return. The article above includes brilliant excerpts from chapter 8 and chapter 9 of his book.
  • Onward, Christian Soldiers – GQ magazine got their hands on cover sheets from Donald Rumsfeld’s reports to Bush featuring bible verses superimposed on images of war machinery. I don’t use the term lightly, but these images are sickeningly sacrilegious. In the lower left hand corner you can see the dates of each report. They were used during the first days and months of the Iraq invasion. These images go along way to cement the invasion in people’s minds as the face of US Christianity.

(more…)

May 27, 2009 Awesome Stuff, Change, Corporations, Nonviolence, Politics, US Military Read more >

A Review of After the Mayflower, We Shall Remain

Chris Eyre working with cast while filming at Red Clay. (c) Billy Weeks

adapted from As of Yet Untitled

Sunday evening I watched the first episode of We Shall Remain, a five part PBS series you can watch for free on their website. If you have 75 minutes to spare, don’t bother reading this review, just go watch After the Mayflower, the first episode, for yourself.

Contrary to its name, After the Mayflower starts slightly before the Pilgrims made landfall in Plymouth and provides a brief, but rich window into the way of life for the Wampanoag, the local Native American tribe near Plymouth, before the Pilgrims arrived. What was it like to be Wampanoag, the people of the first light, stretched out along the ocean, clearly aware of your place in the continent, welcoming the sun before all others? We also learn about the broad strokes of their political relationships with other local tribes as well as the plague that arrived just before the pilgrims killing 9 in 10 Wampanoag.

The documentary goes on to span the first 60 years of Native American and English relations, beginning with the first treaty between Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag and ending with King Philip’s war, one of the bloodiest wars in North American history proportional to the population. It offers some challenging questions for pacifists. Especially Christian pacifists.
(more…)

May 20, 2009 Change, Civilization, History, Reviews Read more >

Resurrection hope for new Mennonite Church USA executive director

I was originally writing this as a comment responding to the Search for next Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA post by ST, but it got quite long and so I posted it on As of Yet Untitled too.

Over on Young Anabaptist Radicals, we recently had a post asking for opinions and thoughts regarding the search for a new Mennonite Church Executive director. I asked to hear more about the job of the current executive director and Dave S responded with an overview of the work Jim Schrag does. One of the things that struck me about his response was the amount of time Jim spends focused on structures. Dave mentions "agencies, conferences, schools… many groups, convention planning, several boards, committees and leadership groups, and so on".

Reading Dave’s comment led me to a clearer sense of my hopes for the new executive director: that he or she can facilitate the de-bureaucratization of Mennonite Church USA and its agencies.

(more…)

April 12, 2009 Mennonite Church USA Read more >

Invitation to sign open letter to Mennonite Church USA

The Open letter movement is now inviting non-pastors to sign on to their letter as well. Here’s their invitation for all of you from one of the organizers:

I thought some of YAR’s readers might be interested in this: More than 100 Mennonite pastors and people in ministry have signed a letter calling for Mennonite Church USA to extend full welcome to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). The signers invite the church to confess its exclusion of LGBT people and witness to Jesus’ Good News of “radical hospitality and extravagant love.” Everyone who considers themselves part of MC USA is invited to sign the letter, which can be found at www.openlettertomcusa.org.

Thanks –
Sheri Hostetler
Pastor, First Mennonite Church of San Francisco and one of the Open Letter’s authors

April 10, 2009 Uncategorized Read more >

This is not a riot: an effective, nonviolent response to attacks by riot police

In my experience, there are few things more intimidating then an advancing line of fully suited, helmeted, baton wielding riot police. They move forward with the full weight of the state behind them (if not the law) and stomp or beat everything in their path with a chilling methodical certainty. Charging riot police are meant to activate our deepest fight or flight instincts. I’ve witnessed both responses, though I’ve always chosen the latter. I never felt like I had much choice as a committed pacifist.

On Wednesday, in London, disciplined climate change activists found a remarkably simple third way. They stood their ground, put their hands in the air and chanted “This is not a riot”.

(more…)

April 3, 2009 activism, Nonviolence, Police Brutality, Tactics Read more >

Of Playgrounds, Chicago Housing and Ning

crossposted from As of Yet Untitled

Last Saturday I rode my bicycle out to First Church of the Brethren for meetings. along Van Buren Street. As I biked away from the loop, west along Van Buren St., commercial properties gave way to the brand new condos where young urban professionals have recently arrived from the suburbs. As I went farther west I began to see a mix of older, more run down housing mixed with blocks full of brand new condos, a combination typical of neighborhoods in transition driven by property speculation and developers. I was reminded of the abrupt halt that the economic crisis has brought to the gentrification process. For some this has meant a major loss of invested capital, for others it has meant welcome breathing space on the brink of being pushed out of their homes due to rising rent costs and property taxes.

Just after the last block of new condos, I noticed remnants of an apparently under construction playground abandoned amidst dead tree branches and litter:

Playground at former Rockwell Gardens site

(more…)

March 27, 2009 City, Community, Economics, poverty Read more >

Christians: the vanguard of American anti-capitalist sentiment?

Shane Claiborne breathes fire

I’ve been wanting to write up a longer introduction to this link for two weeks, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Zach over at Revolution in Jesusland was visiting European lefties and told them that Christians are on the vanguard of American anti-capitalist sentiment:

So when I bring up the “Revolutionaries” of the American church, people over here completely freak out. They cannot believe it. They will not believe it. Their faces wince up, because they know I can’t be making this up completely, but it’s just too much to process. They dismiss it. There’s a strong stereotype of the “ignorant protestant preacher” and they can’t reconcile it with what I’m saying.

Somehow, eventually, these two mainstream forces that are questioning capitalism on both sides of the Atlantic will have to get to know each other, but that’s probably a while off.

(more…)

March 25, 2009 activism, Economics, liberation theology, Power, Wealth Read more >

US gun manufacturers fuel Mexican drug cartels

Crossposted from As of Yet Untitled

It’s rare I pick up the newspaper in the morning and read an article about the war on drugs that leaves me feeling encouraged. In fact, I don’t think its every happened before. But this morning, I read about hearings in congress that are identifying the role of the US government in fueling the growth of massive drug cartels just across the border in Mexico.

If you’ve been reading the news on the drug trade from Mexico over the last couple years (if not see the wikipedia article), you’ll have heard about the increasingly powerful and violent cartels that have infiltrated the Mexican police and who regularly carry out kidnappings and assassinations. Reading this news its often easy to put the blame solely on the shoulders of corrupt Mexican government officials or lack of legitimate economic opportunity in Mexico. But it’s not that simple.
(more…)

March 20, 2009 Current Events, Foreign Policy, Guns, Military Read more >