This
blog is mostly concerned with examining the construction, maintenance and
viability of a specific ethnic religious identity. While no one really bothers getting excited
over such a project, it is none-the-less a bit controversial – not in its
particular expression but in the perception of its aims. Does this project contribute towards the
preservation of a particular and valuable ethnic “particular’ experience or
does it contribute towards further divisiveness and discrimination.
It
is important to reiterate that just because one identifies a particular ethnic experience
as viable and worthy of study, that one does not necessarily denigrate or
negate the viability and value of all other ethnic or ethnic-religious
experiences. Just as a single rose can
be examined and cultivated along with many other roses in the garden, or just
as the genus rosa is worthy of study
but no more so, nor more to be preferred than is iris or syringe or paeonia…
each is worthy, necessary and valued both in and of itself and also for
the contrast and complementary impact each unique group has on the others and
on the inclusive group as a whole.
Nor
is this conundrum the sole propriety of the ethnic Mennonites, or even of
ethnic-religions in general. Similar
questions and dilemmas have been grappled with in many other examinations or
manifestations of “unique” identity – at various national or regional Jewish
heritage institutions, at the Swedish-American Museum (SAMAC) in Chicago, or even in defining
participation in and inclusion in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights now
under construction in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
