04 July, 2013

 A look at the present through the lens of the past.... 

(26 Jun, 2013)    It has been an interesting two days for SCOTUS... the results being more-or-less meh for both sides...  and a hardening of pre-existing, yet increasingly impermeable, social, political and religious national divisions.  A sad legacy on this 150^th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50^th Anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, both aimed at ending many related and not dissimilar divisions.

  Perhaps the most significant result is not necessarily that voting discrimination on racial, linguistic and economic grounds will now be winked at by powerless Federal overseers but that so many American states still prefer to look backwards into the darkness of Dixie’s Confederacy rather than towards the light of the Constitution of the United States for inspiration and political understanding.  A dread day has descended for all descendants of those who gave their lives, including a President, horribly assassinated, for the vision of a nation unified in rights, dignity and liberty for all and for all children of all immigrants who came to this country in the increasingly dubious hope of liberty and justice for all. 

 

  Similarly, while the Prop 8 decision places limits on the right to interfere in state politics by third parties, but together with the DOMA overruling, leaves our nation equally divided again along similar geographic and political lines between those states that practice, celebrate and recognize freedom, equality and due process for all, and those who would restrict the rights of their fellow citizens based on the social, economic and religious  prejudices of an increasingly minority privileged political class.

  It seems to me that we have seen established today, two Americas:  One that is the home of the brave, land of the free and a beacon of light and welcome to the world, against an America that continues to persist in those most egregious political errors of our history -- a Confederacy grounded in and inspired by a love and toleration for institutionalized inequality and voter intimidation between classes of supposedly and naturally free and equal citizens, all in the name of a privileged caste and a privileged religion. 

  While I would like to celebrate the hopes and victories of friends and family today, I find my joy tempered with the sadness of apostate clerics  chanting divisive propaganda and slogans in hopes of resurrecting the ghosts of the White Sheets and the Grey Army to obscure and rend the vision of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, LaFayette and the Adams, or to turn blind, intolerant, bigoted eyes to the historical and natural customs of the majority of those First Nations whom God prior-established in this land as a hope, inspiration and example to those immigrants, and to all lovers of liberty, community and equality in this land, into two separate and unequal Americas. 

  Intolerable. 

  Let me clarify, lest some mistake this for a mere rant, this is not a SCOTUS failing.  SCOTUS, like Providence, is merely giving us over to the results and consequences of our own limitations as a body politic and mutually responsible, if increasingly hostile and unequal, community of citizens. 

  150 years after the battles of Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, 150 years after Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, 150 plus 1 years after the Siouan Uprising for freedom and self-determination, and 50 years after MLK, Jr. promulgated his dream of America to America, we find ourselves divided now as much as ever, but worse, for now too many of us have not learned from the past but continue to strive for a privileged caste of unequal citizens and incompatible states.

  We now perpetuate and encourage these divisions in pursuit of caste and inequality, but not in the naïvité of our forebears, but rather in the hardened consciences of those who knowingly and willfully deny the promise of America to ALL Americans.

  Today, as for no other day in the past, increasing numbers of our fellow world citizens look upon the light and promise of a divided America with the same reaction  ~ meh. 

  Let’s fix this.



6:14 pm -
later, similar tho'ts from other sources ... 


Meyerson, Harold, "Start the Border Fence in Norfolk, Va.," Washington Post

The Onion "Supreme Court Leaves Final Decision On Gay Marriage In Capable Hands Of Texas, Alabama, Georgia"

Are Evangelicals Anti-intellectual? A Response to Tom Airey (Part 1 of 3)

Steven Wall and Randy Smart

    Are Evangelicals anti-intellectual?  Are we, as Tom Airey of California recently claimed, overly susceptible to cult-hero-worship?   Are we naïve thinkers content to follow the path of least resistance in a struggle to maintain backwards, redneck theologies and opinions?

    Both raised in traditional evangelical Mennonite (EMB), or Brüderthaler, communities and churches, Rev. Randy Smart, currently of Winkler, Manitoba, and I, originally of Lustre, Montana, hardly know where to begin in answer to Airey’s very simplified world of clean cut definitions and judgments.  Clearly, Airey finds little of value within the Mennonite Evangelical tradition.

    To review, Airey criticizes Evangelicals for being:  suburban, white, anti-big government, anti-crime, anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc., etc.  He quotes Cornel West that evangelical conservatism is a back-lash against Civil Rights and Dr. King.  Seemingly, Airey, a “post-evangelical church leader,” or Emergent, has it all figured out.

    Smart and I had difficulty determining whether to address the simple historical inaccuracy of Airey’s perspective or to focus on his charges of cult-hero worship, naïve thinking, and anti-intellectualism by indicating how current practice does not easily conform to Airey’s convenient definitions against Evangelicalism.

Best Election Backers, Ever!

Daniel Friesen
2013 Mayoral Re-election Campaign
Buhler, Kansas

 

 

 

all images courtesy Re-elect Friesen for Mayor, Facebook, 01 April 2013.

Mennonites and Democracy

courtesy of theindependent.com

wälle; 

ne Re'jiarung derjchem Folkj

  I n the 29 Oct 2012 issue of Mennonite World Review (MWR), Berry Friesen pondered the question:  If neither major candidate sufficiently reflects Christian values, why support one?  

    Inside his essay, he ponders not voting -- not as a return to Mennonite "quietism" or "separation from the world," but rather as a political statement.   But once we, as an ethnicity or as individuals, have determined the possibility of voting or have actually voted, our participation in the democratic process would seem to co-opt us.  Our decision to vote or to not vote merely reflects our general agreement with one or none of the available candidates -- to not vote is still to vote.  

    I would submit that the only way one could remain free to reflect a personal stance rather than a united democratically corporate stance within the larger society, would be to refrain from voting altogether.  In placing ourselves "outside" of the system, Anabaptists become an "Other" that is not associated with the "system."  We are then freed to express our own political perspectives and pursue personal and social policies that most conform to our individual consciences and within the general consensual guidance of the congregation.  But we can only be an "other" if we are not part of the system.

Are We in a Rush for Cultural Allies?

Fleeing a Bank Robbery mural Lake Placid, New York

spoode

  Never far from the center of contemporary American politics, questions of the separation of church and state have hit an new high (or low) under the Obama administration’s recent decision to require religious organizations to cover reproduction and contraceptive technologies and devices as part of their employee health care benefit packages – tricky in that apparently most organizations are now required to provide a minimum health care benefit to their employees. 

Suzuki, Plett and Gadamer

rotschlone

  Southern Manitoba is probably the closest Russian Mennonites will come to again realizing the concept of an integrated Russian Mennonite commonwealth. So the region commends itself for study in the areas of sociology and political science.

    Recently, (21 March 2012), noted Canadian scientist Dr. David Suzuki and PC Senator for Manitoba, Don Plett, got into an exchange that clearly illustrates the concept of openness, or rather its lack, in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s discourse theory or “rules of play.” 

    In as much as both Plett and his hometown of Landmark, MB, are of strong Mennonite heritage, this brief “exchange” between the two ideological social leaders is notable for its reflection as to the potential evolution of Russian Mennonite norms and values.  

De hejchste onn de ellste Foda

Part 2:  Kirill I's warnings resonate in the US, Canada

     As of 07 January, Sophia Kishkovshy, writing in the New York Times (Church Hints it May Serve as Mediator in Russia (p A7), continues her series of articles on the possibility of the Russian Orthodox Church repositioning itself in a middle position between the newly re-elected Putin government and the street protestors demanding an accounting for perceived incidents of potential election fraud.

    In this, Patriarch Kirill I speaks as clearly to members of the United States and Canadian electorates as he does to his fellow Russians.  While many would like to see Kirill’s recent public remarks as supporting one side or the other in this debate, it seems clear that Western observers, perhaps hoping for a public endorsement of the protestors similar to that by members of the British Anglican clergy, are probably reading into Kirill’s remarks a bit much.

    While Kirill has both addressed apparent scandal and corruption within the Russian government, and more importantly, he has quietly allowed other priests relatively free reign in criticizing the government and identifying with the protestors, Kirill is by no means clearly on side or the other.

Fundamental Definitions of Evangelical

[Note that this essay neither utilizes nor refers to the work of Mr. Calvin Wall Redekop or Mr. Kenneth Rempel-Enns, but rather relies on personal experiences within the Brüderthaler Mennonites and documents produced and released by their primary church organization.]

    Post-Modern religious writer, Kathleen Norris writes of the term Evangelism, “’Evangelism’ is a scary word even to many Christians.  I have often heard people who are dedicated members of a church say “I hate evangelism” or “I don’t believe in it,” or, usually from the shy, more introverted members of a congregation, ‘I’ll do anything else for this church, but don’t ask me to serve on the evangelism committee.’ … The word comes from the Greek ‘euangelos,’ meaning a messenger (or angel) bringing good news.  The authors of the four Christian gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- are referred to as evangelists, as are those who preach the gospel.  The bad news about evangelistic might be personified as the stereotypical glad-handing Christian proselytizer,” (Norris, Kathleen, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (1998), Riverhead Books, New York, NY, p. 300).

    Part of the problem that the Brüderthaler - EMB communities have always had is the definition of Evangelical -- a word as prevalent and eventually longer lasting than either the words Defenseless or Mennonite in their tradition.  In a sense, this is not their fault -- Mr. Martin Fast, of Montana’s Grand Prairie community, once defined Evangelical, quite correctly in my understanding, as the mission that Christ’s church inherited from the angels who gave to the shepherds that first Evangel or message -- Evangelical means to spread the message or evangel of Christ, more or less in response to the Great Commission.