Phoenix 2013, Mennonite Church - USA Convention

Phoenix Convention Center courtesy City of Phoenix

PHOENIX   2013 

and the Ghosts of 1898

    In choosing to maintain Phoenix, Arizona, as the location for the national Mennonite Church – USA conference, over the objections of many in the Hispanic, immigrant and pro-LGBTQ Mennonite community, church leaders have resurrected age-old conflicts and divisions that have often haunted those in the Mennonite diaspora since the first national conferences beginning in 1898.

   In 2011, Iglesia Menonita Hispana, MC-USA’s Hispanic identity, confronted the national church over the then-scheduled Phoenix Convention for 2013.  Iglesia was concerned about recent Arizona legislation putting Hispanic and minority or immigrant Americans at risk for being detained by Arizona law enforcement officers and being forced to carry and demonstrate proof of legal citizenship.  At risk were numerous Mennonites in the United States who lack proper citizenship papers, not just those of Hispanic culture. 

    Iglesia was concerned about the risks MC–USA was asking Latino Mennonites to endure in order to travel to Phoenix.  Responding to MC-USA’s decision, Iglesia responded that it was “hurt by the symbolic message this sent to Latino Mennonites,” and that it would not participate in the conference.  (Sarah Thompson, Christian Peacemaker Teams).

 “In order to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are undocumented, we choose to stand with them and advocate on their behalf before the church and government, and also choose to abstain from attending the 2013 convention if held in Phoenix.  If the Phoenix site is chosen, we will bless the people who will be attending the event and will continue to pray.  While we are blessing the people and the event, it does NOT mean that we endorse the location.  We would also ask that ANY staff or board member (of any ethnicity) that would choose not to attend the convention if held in Phoenix be allowed to do so without question.” (quote from IMH letter of Dec 2011)

Members of the Iglesia Menonita Hispana board and other leaders at IMH’s May 3–4 “Celebrating Immigration” event: Gilberto Cortéz from Oregon, IMH Board; Soledad López from Pennsylvania; Stanley Green of Mennonite Mission Network; Samuel López, IMH moderator from Pennsylvania; David Maldonado, IMH moderator-elect from Florida; Madeline Maldonado, IMH director of finances from Florida; Leona Diener, board member from Texas; Juanita Nuñez, board member from Florida; Tania Guzman, board member from New York; Nicolás Angustia, board member from New York; Juan Montes, California board member, and Rafael Barahona, Mennonite Education Agency. (Photo: Rafael Barahona) courtesy MC-USA.

    As early as 2010, other groups voiced their support for Iglesia noting that they share in a common cause. 

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"

Ghosts of Identity

courtesy callmetaphy.blogspot.com

Faith, Place and Cultural Memory

En Jeista

The Jewish Cemetery at Penang

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,

That pave with level flags their burial place,

Seem like the tablets of the law, thrown down,

And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base.

    “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” – Longfellow

In a patch of flattened weeds in front of the graves

where a Kohane’s stone-carved fingers part to bless

the remains of Penang’s departed congregation,

barefoot Malaysian boys were playing badminton,

a sagging string strung pole to pole their net.

Our Chinese trishaw driver, too old to read

the map without his glasses, with five hairs long

as my five gingers growing from a mole,

waited for us.  He’d found the street although

the tourist map was wrong:  the name no longer

Yahudi Road, but Zaimal Abidin.

Settling the Boundaries

ne Je'ren t(w)eschen twee Jrense

This essay is a purely brainstorming essay used to critic Seth Schwartz, Marilyn Montgomery and Ervin Briones’ The Role of Identity in Acculturation and Assimilation of Immigrant People.  As such, this is neither a scholarly essay nor submitted for classwork, discussion or publication, rather just some amateur theoretical doodling mosty intended to help process and develop other concepts for further development, review or rejection.  Danke. 

    As part of the assumptions set into their thesis, Schwartz, Montgomery and Briones (collecting ‘The Authors), review prominent Modern and Postmodern definitions of their key terms (excluding ‘immigrant’ which seems to be relatively accepted):  Acculturation, cultural identity, culture, Personal identity and Social identity.  They seemingly desire a more technocratic or applied theoretical tone rather than a theory building perspective and preference for stability and structure in these definitions, desiring that it be “possible to define acculturation and identity in terms precise enough to support specific theoretical propositions, calls for empirical research, and rationales for interventions to promote identity development in acculturating individuals.” (p 2). 

    A short criticism is apparent immediately in their assumptions that acculturating is a positive goal and that they, as members of the dominant recipient culture, are in a position to and morally empowered to intervene.  Postmodernists should be leaping up from chairs and rattling glasses in alarm.

    While they slough off liability to theoretical criticism against Postmodernism supplied by M. J. Chandler, and R. Brubaker and F. Cooper in a manner that would make an American Congressperson blush, they do have a point – but one that I think we can help mitigate.

Finally, a Definitive Word on Tatarstan and Mexico's Mennonites

Time to add a new decal?  Russian Mennonite - Tatarstan

The American press has finally discovered the story about Mexican Mennonites possibly returning to Tatarstan, Russia.

Please follow this link to Tim Johnson's excellent coverage of this story in the Kansas City Star:

Johnson, Tim, "To Some Mennonites in Mexico, Russia Looks Like Promised Land," 11 Nov 2012

Neu Bruderthaler's comments:

An excellent article.  Thank you Tim for taking the time to research this story properly.  It is very informative.

I do have some unease with Dr. Koth's remark which might indicate a clearer connection and gross oversimplification between the Russian Revolution and the immigration of the Mennonites out of Russia and Ukraine than is the case.   The primary immigration to North America, as most Kansans recall from their state history courses, immigrated in the 1870s when Alexander II's policies towards minorities became increasingly irrational and ambivalent and Mennonites were faced with the threat of losing their freedoms of religion, individual conscience and from mandatory military service.  Many Mennonites chose to immigrate to North America while many chose to stay during this time and negotiate further regarding these freedoms with the Czar.  The farms of those leaving were sold to either Mennonites who remained in Russia-Ukraine or to Russians and Ukrainians desiring new farmland.

Arguably, it was the unrest created by the Revolution and contact with invading German armies who promised stability and protection during WWI and WWII that caused the greatest impetus for further immigration amongst those who stayed.   But land appropriation was only one concern -- much more important was the general level of social and political violence encouraged by the early Soviet regime and Stalin's administration, natural and man-made famines, the imposed atheism of the Soviet state and the horrors of the Holodomar -- one of the darkest periods of Ukraine's history.

Mennonite and Jewish Leprechauns?

En Häselmenschkje

     Today is St Patrick’s Day – an international celebration for Irish immigrant and cultural communities around the world.  In true Irish fashion, they have opened this day of celebration and festivity to all of their friends and neighbours – everyone is ”Irish for a day.” 

    For many in the United States and Canada, St Patrick’s Day is an annual celebration of immigration and our continuing ties to our immigrant pasts – Irish, Ukrainian, Mennonite, Jewish or Latin American – everyone celebrates.

    While most of us will be headed out to parades and parties (perhaps even quietly slipping out to local pubs and bars to celebrate with friends), there are also numerous opportunities to celebrate our shared immigrant heritage a bit more soberly, culturally and historically before we start tipping back the “Sláinte.”

225th Anniversary of Russian Mennonites Decals

TM 2011, (c) Agassiz Media, 2012

TM 2011, (c) Agassiz Media, 2012

TM 2011, (c) Agassiz Media, 2012

Russlander or Russian Mennonite Base Flag TM 2011