advocacy | Intersections

Advocating for justice in the name of Christ

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Posted on December 28, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Fall 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

For more than 50 years, policy advocacy and public engagement in Canada and the United States have been integral ways MCC has carried out its mission of relief, development and peace in the name of Christ. MCC uses advocacy as a tool to address systemic causes of poverty, oppression and injustice. The advocacy network is comprised of the Washington, D.C., Office (started in 1968), the Ottawa Office (1974) and the United Nations Office in New York (1990). Building on MCC’s unique relationships with churches and community-based organizations around the world, the network is tasked with engaging decisionmakers on both national and international levels to address policies that contribute to poverty and injustice, as well as with offering proposals and affirming policies that can lessen suffering and promote justice, peace and human dignity.

“Advocacy has given MCC legitimacy on a local level, as MCC’s work in advocacy demonstrates a commitment to righting relationships distorted by war and legacies of colonialism and responding to partner realities.”

This work has not been without controversy, including some Anabaptists raising concerns about how advocacy conforms to the proper role of Christians in relating to government authorities. In the years leading up to the opening of the Washington Office, MCC staff, board members and Anabaptist church leaders had hearty debates on the subject. Some preferred a “quiet in the land” approach, maintaining a strict two-kingdom theology that drew stark divisions between the church and the world. Others saw a less clear distinction between the “sacred” and the “secular” and argued that the church should instead set an example for the broader society. An MCC church-state study conference in 1965 concluded that “Where the church’s concern for human welfare overlaps with the state, in such areas as civil rights, the church will urge (1) an emphasis on just laws, which protect and uphold the human dignity of all citizens and (2) the fair and just administration of all such laws.” This approach helped lay the foundation for MCC’s future advocacy work.

Advocacy has also given MCC legitimacy on a local level, as MCC’s work in advocacy demonstrates a commitment to righting relationships distorted by war and legacies of colonialism and responding to partner realities. During the Vietnam War, recipients of MCC’s relief efforts urged MCC to advocate to the U.S. government to end the war. More recently, some partners in Palestine and Israel have expressed concern about only receiving humanitarian aid and support, stressing the importance of MCC being willing to speak publicly about Canadian and U.S. policies that perpetuate systemic injustice in the region.

MCC’s advocacy work is based on partner knowledge and experience and builds on grassroots peacebuilding and advocacy work already taking place in a variety of local contexts. Advocacy network staff meet regularly with MCC staff from around the world, who serve as a communications channel between partners and the network. Advocacy staff then pass on those communications to policy decisionmakers and to MCC constituent churches and supporters in Canada and the U.S. In some cases, the offices may speak on behalf of those who are not able to do so directly, but they function primarily as a megaphone to amplify partner concerns. These relationships give legitimacy to MCC’s voice in Canada and the U.S. An Anabaptist faith witness also informs and guides the work of advocacy, as MCC’s commitment to nonviolence and to grassroots peacebuilding form the foundation through which MCC understands and speaks into policies.

“An Anabaptist faith witness informs and guides the work of advocacy, as MCC’s commitment to nonviolence and to grassroots peacebuilding form the foundation through which MCC understands and speaks into policies.”

In Ottawa, the connection between MCC’s program partners and its constituent churches is a pillar of the office’s work, with this connection fueling advocacy that strives to be relational. Education to encourage advocacy is a way to share stories and lived experiences, often between churches in the global south and the global north. Through awareness raising activities like the Mining Justice Campaign and A Cry for Home (MCC Canada’s campaign on Palestine and Israel), the Ottawa Office has connected people from around the world with Anabaptists in Canada, with the goal of learning that will lead to political action. For political change to take place, Canadians must understand global connections and the impacts of Canadian policies and then take action to encourage change. The Ottawa Office provides spaces for reflection and learning, including ways of communicating with elected officials. These acts of relationship building often take place through educational resources, such as fact sheets, blog posts, student seminars and social media. However, the Ottawa Office has also facilitated direct bridges between people, such as strategic learning tours to Palestine and Israel or encouraging Mennonite Brethren (MB) churches in Canada to visit MB churches in Colombia to learn about how the churches in Colombia respond to conflict in their country, a conflict exacerbated by the presence of Canadian extractive industries.

The Washington Office functions similarly. From its humble beginning in space rented from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the office has long recognized that it brings a small but distinctive voice to “the empire.” Congressional foreign policy staff generally welcome the opportunity to hear from MCC staff and partners, with many saying that it gives them more insight into what is happening on the ground in various countries than what they can get from news sources or the U.S. diplomatic corps. The Washington Office works closely with and values ecumenical and interfaith advocacy colleagues. But on occasion, the perspective provided by MCC’s partners has led to a different emphasis than what our D.C. colleagues are supporting. A recent example is the advocacy carried out by some colleagues in Washington to maintain a U.S. troop presence in Syria for the purposes of civilian protection. While understanding that perspective, MCC continues to advocate for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Syria, following the lead of our partner organizations within the country. As is the case in Ottawa, the Washington Office also devotes significant time to ensuring that church members in the U.S. are informed about U.S. policies and have the tools they need to take action.

“Our faith cannot be confined to the private sphere. It spills out into the public sphere as we call on our governments to implement more just and peaceful policies.”

As Christians, if we believe that Christ is indeed Lord of all, that includes the powers and principalities described in the first chapter of the letter to the Colossians. Our faith cannot be confined to the private sphere. It spills out into the public sphere as we call on our governments to implement more just and peaceful policies. This work for systemic justice, following in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, is often less obvious than sharing a cup of cold water (Matthew 10:42). But as MCC’s partners in the U.S., Canada and around the world have made clear, it is no less important.

Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach was director of MCC U.S.’s office in Washington, D.C., from 2007 to 2020. Anna Vogt is MCC Canada’s Ottawa Office director.

A theory of change for MCC’s work

How does MCC understand change? At the level of specific education, food security, health, livelihoods, humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding initiatives, a variety of localized factors help determine what will effectively bring about desired changes. So, for example, when seeking to improve food security outcomes for displaced peoples, MCC and its partners use a variety of approaches to bring about change, from giving displaced families cash disbursements to vouchers to monthly food baskets, with each of those approaches emerging from context-specific determinations about what will contribute to change in each situation.

“Lasting change requires long-term dedication and happens when all members of a community connect across lines of difference to actively participate in shaping and implementing visions for just social, environmental and economic structures.”

While MCC can thus be said to have multiple context- and sector-specific theories of change at the project level, more fundamentally MCC has an overarching theory of change captured by core commitments (referred to internally as operating principles), which name key dimensions that MCC considers essential for durable change: who is involved in lasting change and where and how it comes about. These core commitments, fleshed out below, encapsulate MCC’s conviction that lasting change often requires long-term dedication and happens when all members of a community connect across lines of difference to actively participate in shaping and implementing visions for just social, environmental and economic structures.

Serve in the name of Christ: Undergirding all of MCC’s program is the conviction that when people serve in the name of Christ, change can happen, with God’s Spirit taking our incomplete and sometimes fractured attempts to follow Jesus’ example and using and transforming those efforts for the purposes of God’s reign. All of MCC’s other core commitments are rooted in this foundational commitment to service in Jesus’ name.

Accompany the church and other partners: MCC believes that local communities are best positioned to identify community assets and needs and to determine what types of changes or outcomes towards which they want to work. Local institutions and organizations within those communities that have the trust of community members are essential to the process of identifying, planning for and mobilizing efforts to realize desired change. Specifically, churches and other local faith communities are vital actors for bringing about change: they inspire and offer hope to communities with a theologically-rooted vision of peace, justice and reconciliation; they have a lasting presence within communities and relate to networks of other churches; they mobilize and motivate volunteer efforts; and they are influential shapers of community norms. MCC thus prioritizes long-term partnerships with community-based organizations, and particularly with churches and other local faith communities, because they are critical agents for bringing about lasting change.

Act sustainably: MCC understands human beings to be part of, rather than separate from, God’s good creation. MCC operates from the conviction that any type of lasting change must contribute to, rather than undermine, the sustainability of the ecological systems in which all human beings, including the communities with which MCC works, are enmeshed. MCC recognizes that ecological, social and economic sustainability are interdependent and are thus all essential for enduring change.

Build just economic relationships: Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, is with the “least of these” (Matt. 25:40), found among persons marginalized by economic systems. In his inaugural sermon (Luke 4:16-21), Jesus proclaims the fulfillment of the Jubilee year, with its promise of liberation from economic captivity and the radical transformation of unjust systems that oppress and exclude. Because Jesus is present and God’s Spirit is at work among the economically disenfranchised, MCC understands durable change not as something done to or for the poor, but rather as led by economically marginalized communities and shaped by their strengths and visions.

Connect people: In the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13), God binds together a new people from diverse languages and backgrounds. The new creation inaugurated by God through Jesus connects people across various divides into a shared body. When people come together crossing lines of difference, the opportunity arises to learn from the rich diversity of humanity created in God’s image. From such learnings, positive changes in the lives of communities can emerge. MCC thus supports initiatives that create bridges of connection across difference.

Dismantle oppression: Lasting change occurs when the talents and gifts of all community members are valued and nurtured. Discrimination and oppression mar the dignity of persons created in God’s image and prevent the full use of God-given abilities. In its relief, development and peacebuilding efforts and through public policy advocacy, MCC works with partners to dismantle discriminatory and oppressive barriers so that all persons might use their talents and abilities to their fullest.

“MCC endeavors across its programs to bring about positive change by doing no harm, supporting peacebuilding efforts and integrating activities that transform conflict into its relief and development.”

Practice nonviolence: As followers of Jesus, who taught his disciples to love their enemies, MCC believes that violent, armed conflict does not bring lasting and positive change. Entrusted with a ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19), MCC endeavors across its programs to bring about positive change by doing no harm, supporting peacebuilding efforts and integrating activities that transform conflict into its relief and development work. MCC also believes that lasting change flows from love and mutual care for one another, including “strangers” and “enemies.”

Seek a just peace: With the Psalmist, MCC understands lasting change within a vision of justice and peace embracing (Ps. 85:10). Inspired by that vision, MCC supports efforts that address the structural barriers that prevent broad participation and leadership in communities. MCC supports community-based efforts and public policy advocacy at local, national and international levels that build durable peace by naming, dismantling, and transforming structures of injustice and their legacies.

Developed by MCC’s international program directors in May 2018.

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

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Posted on October 22, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

Beginning with the decision by some MCC workers from the United States to remain in Vietnam after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country on March 29, 1973, one form MCC’s peace witness has taken has been a witness of presence within so-called “enemy” contexts. Such peace witness included placing graduate students behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War tasked with connecting to and supporting churches in the Eastern bloc, assigning aid workers to live and work in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2002, placing more graduate students at an Islamic studies center in Qom, Iran, seconding staff to work with health ministries in Afghanistan and sending agronomists to make extended program support visits to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). Below are reflections from MCC workers who were involved in such peacebuilding-as-presence initiatives on the joys and challenges they faced.—The editors.

Iraq

We often think of two U.S.-led wars in Iraq. One began in January 1991 in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, ending just over a month later. The second Iraq war began in March 2003 and ended in December 2011. But it is more accurate to say that it was just one long war. The no-fly zones established over northern and southern Iraq from 1991 to 2003 included multiple air strikes and dozens of cruise missiles bombing Iraqi targets, coupled with a debilitating sanctions campaign and a long legacy of depleted uranium.

I arrived in the middle of this long war. From January 2004 to June 2006, I was the MCC Iraq program manager. My job had two components. First, I was to teach English at Babel College, a Chaldean Catholic college and seminary in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. Second, I was tasked with cultivating relationships with potential MCC partners, whether churches, Islamic organizations or emerging local NGOs. In doing so, I was merely continuing the work that had begun in 1998 with Wanda Kraybill, the first MCCer in Iraq. From 1998 to 2003, Wanda, and later Carmen Pauls and then Edward Miller, were in Iraq as a gesture of solidarity, especially with the churches there. Placing these MCC workers in Iraq was a way of saying: “Not all Westerners share the U.S. government’s position and not all Christians in the U.S. think their citizenship is more important than their baptism.” MCCers worked alongside the Middle East Council of Churches, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and the Australian branch of CARE to mitigate the effects of the U.S. sanctions and to call attention to the slow violence of depleted uranium munitions, but they did so with limited resources. Importantly, this was a time when there was virtually no Western presence in Iraq. The MCC difference was, first and foremost, simply being there as friend instead of enemy, despite our U.S. citizenship. We took a stand against the sanctions campaign, both as advocates at home in Washington, D.C., and through aid projects on the ground in Iraq.

Placing MCC workers in Iraq was a way of saying, “not all Westerners share the U.S. government’s position and not all Christians in the U.S. think their citizenship is more important that their baptism.”

But after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, all that changed. Specifically, two things shifted dramatically and both made MCC’s position harder to maintain. First, instead of a few western NGOs with limited resources, Iraq was flooded with western NGOs with billions to spend. Instead of being a lone NGO in defiance of the international community’s aggression, MCC was now just one small cog in a giant aid industry. That industry, as I came to see it after I arrived in January 2004, had three distinct factions. The first were what we might call the “occupying NGOs,” indebted to USAID and the U.S. State Department and (some eagerly, some reluctantly) a key part of the U.S. war effort. The second was what I affectionately called the humanitarian fundamentalists. These were primarily European NGOs committed to the principled tradition of humanitarian neutrality that is best represented by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins Sans Frontière (MSF). The third were the left-wing activist NGOs who were willing to abandon the neutrality of the second group in pursuit of their anti-war agenda.

MCC was an odd fit with these three groups. While philosophically, practically and socially most distant from the U.S. NGOs, we couldn’t get away from the fact that most of the MCCers involved were U.S. citizens. We became closest to the humanitarians and the activist NGOs, but for that to happen they had to overcome their wariness of both our citizenship and of our faith commitments.

The second change was that aid workers were now vulnerable in a way they had not been before 2004. In April of that year, the Iraqi insurgency began taking hostages. A Wikipedia page, “Foreign Hostages in Iraq,” lists over 200 hostages, the vast majority between 2004-2006. At least eight of those were close colleagues of MCC and of those eight, three were killed. It would be convenient if the ones kidnapped were the ones with the closest ties to the U.S. and the invading military coalition. But that wasn’t the case. It was the ICRC compound in Baghdad that was attacked in 2003. In the eyes of the insurgency, we were all enemies. In other words, it became harder to imagine that MCC, or any non-coalition aid agency, was either neutral or on the side of Iraqis. The whole notion of ‘sides’ had gotten scrambled.

Sister Elham Degaly and Sarah (age 12) in the courtyard of St Anne’s Orphanage. St Anne’s Orphanage was an MCCsupported Global Family project from 2009-2016. Sarah’s last name is not used for security reasons. Iraqi families have been torn apart by poverty and war. Some families have been unable to care for their children. Some children have watched their parents die. The Daughters of Mary of the Chaldean Christian Church provide a loving home for children (mostly girls) with traumatic childhoods. In partnership with the Daughters of Mary, MCC buys textbooks, tutoring resources and other supplies. (MCC photo/Kaitlin Heatwole)

Evacuated to Jordan, the humanitarian fundamentalist and activist NGOs had a standard explanation. “Humanitarian space,” the space in which aid agencies could carry out their mission to the most vulnerable, was only possible when aid agencies maintained their distance from the U.S. coalition power and when the U.S. coalition power respected that distance. Since so many NGOs had effectively become extensions of the occupation, whether willingly or because of USAID arm-twisting, that space no longer existed. In other words, the ICRC hadn’t been bombed because it was an enemy, but because the occupying NGOs had so muddied humanitarian space that it was no longer possible to tell the difference between the humanitarian fundamentalists and the occupation. In the space of just a year, MCC went from being the sole inhabitant of humanitarian space, to one of many organizations claiming humanitarian space, to witnessing the end of that space.

Meanwhile, the suffering of our Iraqi friends and colleagues increased exponentially. Caught between the coalition forces and the growing Iraqi insurgency, tens of thousands of Iraqis died and millions were displaced and remain displaced to this day. Those who remained had their lives disrupted and upended in all the countless ways that war wrecks societies—struggles to obtain food, healthcare, education and employment and lives of constant fear. From my apartment in Jordan in 2005, communicating with Iraqi friends and colleagues by phone and email and learning daily about the deteriorating conditions, we weighed commitments to solidarity with Iraqis alongside the risks. The former won out and MCC agreed to let me return to Baghdad, to an apartment above the flat where members of Christian Peacemaker Teams lived. CPT had never left. But just a week before my return flight, four of those CPTers were kidnapped. One, the only U.S. citizen, Tom Fox, was killed. Fifteen years later, MCC Iraq still does not maintain a presence in Baghdad.

Peter Dula is professor of religion and culture at Eastern Mennonite University. He worked with MCC in Iraq from 2004-2006.

Paticipants at an interfaith workshop in Abeche, Chad, hosted by Ethics, Peace and Justice (EPJ) in 2016, discuss challenges to interfaith collaboration in their communities. MCC partnered with EPJ for over 20 years in peacebuilding initiatives, bringing Muslim, Protestant and Catholic leaders together to foster cooperation and community resilience. (MCC photo/Mark Tymm)

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

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Posted on October 15, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website. This article consist of five reflections which will be posted separately.

DPRK (North Korea)

MCC’s provision of humanitarian assistance during the 1994 famine in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) initiated a quarter century relationship and over US$22 million in aid, assistance that has supported disaster responses, agricultural education and pediatric hospitals. While MCC has received wide recognition for this humanitarian work, we might also ask: Have these efforts furthered the “peace” element in MCC’s commitment to “relief, development, and peace in the name of Christ?” This question is critical in the context of MCC’s wider mission, as a lack of peace in the region has shaped life on the Korean peninsula for 70 years.

My work with MCC has introduced me to many North Koreans who are caring rather than threatening.

Prior to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the Korean peninsula thrived for 1,300 years, united under a distinctive culture and language. In the 70 years since, however, ten million Koreans have lived permanently separated from their families. A formal peace agreement to end the war was never signed, leaving the peninsula split by a heavily militarized border and a bilaterally-enforced ban on cross-border travel and communication. Despite near complete isolation from one another, the longing for eventual reunification runs deep on both sides of the divide.

With this broader geopolitical context in mind, I propose to consider how MCC’s 25 years of humanitarian work in North Korea has provided a platform for a reconciliatory “peace witness” in three critical ways: people-to-people contact between North Korea, the U.S. and Canada, advocacy with the U.S. government and education work in South Korea.

First, as in any deep national division, political peace is critical. The absence of a peace treaty is an enormous barrier to a new future in Korea. Yet lasting peace also requires the overlooked work that scholar Cecelia Clegg calls “societal reconciliation” (Clegg 84). Speaking from her research into healing in Northern Ireland, Clegg argues that “there is no substitute for . . . a sustained level of new contact, the act of deliberately seeking out a meeting or encounter with the [threatening] ‘other’” (90). Sustained contact is precisely where MCC’s North Korea work has mattered in relation to what Clegg calls “the will to find out the truth about the ‘other’ [as] an essential dynamic in any reconciling process” (89).

Amid a hostile climate that has often condemned positive engagement toward North Korea, MCC’s presence has been catalytic as one of only a handful of agencies with work on both sides of the border.

Mutual isolation has created profound misunderstanding between people in North Korea and the U.S. In North Korea, dominant “enemy narratives” of the U.S. include the U.S. military’s indiscriminate bombing during the war and the complicity of U.S. missionaries in violence. But MCC’s relief work has provided a different face of both U.S. citizens and Christians. Over many years of face-to-face monitoring visits, MCC delegations have shared the story of where MCC’s canned meat comes from—not a factory, but from the hands of tens of thousands of volunteers and churches across Canada and the United States.

These encounters also defy the narratives held by many Canadian and U.S. Anabaptist constituencies accustomed only to threatening images of North Koreans. My work with MCC has introduced me to many North Koreans who are caring rather than threatening. I think, for example, of a dedicated tuberculosis sanitorium director who, while compassionately caring for his patients, eventually contracted and succumbed to the disease himself, as well as government officials who witnessed the impact of a U.S. couple’s work with cerebral palsy and approved the construction of provincial pediatric rehabilitation centers.

A second critical dimension of MCC’s peace witness in North Korea is political advocacy. Even today, 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea. Economic and social collaboration on the peninsula is subject to the mercy of the United States. In 2017, the U.S. State Department banned travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea and the United Nations (under U.S. leadership) instituted sanctions severely limiting imports to North Korea. This threatened the sole avenues for aid to vulnerable North Korean people and endangered future diplomacy. Alongside other faith-based agencies, MCC engaged in direct advocacy to the U.S. government, pushing for humanitarian exemptions and to make signing a peace treaty a top priority in the ongoing U.S.-DPRK negotiations.

During a 1998 visit to Pyongyang, DPRK, MCC staff member Kevin King learns about medicinal plants from Mrs. Kim at the city’s Botanical Gardens. (Photo courtesy of Kevin King)

The third dimension of MCC’s peace witness on the Korean peninsula is its peace education in South Korea. Amid a hostile climate that has often condemned positive engagement toward North Korea, MCC’s presence has been catalytic as one of only a handful of agencies with work on both sides of the border. One South Korean pastor said his encounters with a Canadian agriculturalist who worked with MCC in DPRK “changed my concept about North Korea from missiles and ever-marching people of nationalistic madness to the same common people like us in South Korea.” Another young South Korean I know had grown up distant from the trauma of the Korean divide. Her indifference was challenged in college when she joined an InterVarsity Korea visit to the China-North Korea border. A boat ride to view the North offered her a sight many South Koreans never see: two North Koreans up close, two soldiers sitting on a beach. “One of them looked exactly like my brother,” she said. “Only then did I understand that we are one people.” This transformative experience led her to MCC’s IVEP program, an experience which shifted her career toward peacemaking. If, as described here, MCC humanitarian work in North Korea has become a platform for peace witness, we might ask: witness to what? Perhaps to what scholar Marc Gopin describes as a distinctly Anabaptist approach to peacebuilding where true transformation requires building new relationships over many years across divides. Such peace work bears witness to “the inherent moral value of building relationships” across divides and with adversaries where the “moment of relation becomes a moment of religious fulfillment, of imitatio dei, in [the case of Anabaptists] emulating Jesus. The person in relation becomes an end in herself” (Gopin, 242, 246). With U.S.-DPRK relations tense and fraught, such long-term relationship-building is more critical than ever.

Chris Rice is director of the MCC United Nations Office. Editorial assistance was provided by Abby Hershberger, communications and advocacy assistant at MCC’s UN Office in New York City.

Learn more

Gopin, Marc. “The Religious Component of Mennonite Peacebuilding.” In From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding. Ed. John Paul Lederach and Cynthia Sampson, 233-255. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Rice, Chris. “Contested South Korean Identities of Reunification and Christian Paradigms of Reconciliation.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 42/2 (2018): 133-142.

Reconcilers. Blog for Chris Rice. https://reconcilers.wordpress.com/.

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

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Posted on October 12, 2020 by mccintersections

Iran

As our plane landed in Iran about 20 years ago, my thoughts swirled with hope and fear. What will “blessed are the peacemakers” look like as our family’s daily work in a religiously and politically foreign land? My spouse, Maren, and I had just finished studying Persian, Shi’ite Islam and Women in Islam the previous months at the University of Virginia. We both had seminary degrees. Fear of the unknown swirled around our hope for maintaining and strengthening an MCC peacebuilding bridge of trust in Iran. Many MCCers had visited Iran before to lay a deep foundation of relationships with Iranian partners through earthquake relief efforts and short-term medical work. We were called to be the first MCC staff to take up residence in the country.

Our presence in Iran as the only Christians living in the religious capital of Qom was marked by hospitality: giving and receiving tea, fruit and words of honor and welcome

Entering Iran meant not only arrival into a religiously and politically different world. It also unfolded within a legacy of no diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. and strained Canadian-Iranian relationships. Both Maren and I were bicultural, something that helped us see two worlds. When we landed in Tehran, Maren had to put on a chador (“tent” in Persian) and I had to replace my gold wedding ring with a silver one.

Our presence in Iran as the only Christians living in the religious capital of Qom was marked by hospitality: giving and receiving tea, fruit and words of honor and welcome. How do we find and create shared meaning in the presence of our supposed enemies? Respect became a learned behavior in relationships.

Near the end of one meeting, a student said that he needed to leave early for the “Down with America” rally.” The word for “Down With” or “Death To” sounds a lot like the word for “chickens” in Persian, so I responded, “Do you mean ‘Chickens for America?’ Thank you very much.” He replied with a smile, “It is our seminary’s day of the month and the rally bus is coming soon—don’t take it personally!’

As we sought to build relationships, we focused on listening and answering questions as asked. We met many who wondered, “Why did you come here?” Over time, as trust was built in some relationships, legacy traumas and deep political and religious differences came on the table beside the tea. More time to listen, more words flowed. Some conversations went on for hours. After nine previous years in Egypt and Syria, I had come to enjoy this kind of conversation.

How do we find and create shared meaning in the presence of our supposed enemies? Respect became a learned behavior in relationships.

We usually had Friday lunch with other families. Each Tuesday I joined a group studying religions at the graduate level. I taught them some dimensions of Christian history and theology. At the end of each session, I noted one act of faith that changed the world. In one session I shared about Habitat for Humanity. The course coordinator researched Habitat online and came back the next session saying: “We need a Muslim Habitat for Humanity.” Maren spent time with various women at the Women’s University. We both studied Persian in the morning.

What do Mennonites, who seek in their daily lives to live out the politics of Jesus, do when encountering Iranian Shi’ites for whom the Rule of the Jurists (religious leaders) means the merging of national politics and religious practice? Many persons practiced their English with us and my knowing some Arabic helped a lot in conducting in-depth discussions about these differences.

Other MCC couples followed us to take up residence in Iran, while scores of Mennonites from Canada and the U.S. visited Iran as part of MCC-organized delegations. MCC also worked with Mennonite colleges, universities and seminaries in the U.S. in hosting Iranian delegations and in organizing academic conferences in Iran and Canada. Many other forms of encounter emerged, with Iranian delegations going to Canada and Iranian scholars-in-residence appointed for short terms at Mennonite universities in the U.S. and Canada. These delegations and exchanges continued—until the political winds changed here and there.

Evelyn Shellenberger (right) converses with a faculty member (name not provided) after a general meeting of MCC visitors with the faculty of the University of Shiraz in Shiraz, Iran. Photo was taken during an MCC peace delegation to Iran, December 28, 2007, to January 13, 2008. Shellenberger and husband Wallace Shellenberger lived in Qom, Iran, 2001 to 2004 as part of an MCC-sponsored student exchange program. (MCC photo/Doug Hostetter)

As I look back 20 years later, I hold more fear than hope. There are many ways to destroy the potential for peace and I am watching it happen stage by stage with increasing fervor on both sides. The Shi’ite legacy trauma of persecution has led to increased militancy in various countries. The U.S. assertiveness in the Middle East has shifted to Iran more intensely through sanctions and threats. There were and are forces very willing to sabotage peace on both sides, those very willing to push open the gates of hell and those working to close and seal them in acts of peacebuilding. We have yet to see the outcome.

Roy Hange worked with MCC for over a decade in Egypt, Syria and Iran. Together with his spouse, Maren, he pastors Charlottesville Mennonite Church in Virginia.

Learn more

Kauffman, Richard A. An American in Persia: A Pilgrimage to Iran. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2010.

Pierce, Laurie Blanton. What is Iran? A Primer on Culture, Politics, and Religion. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2009.

Peacebuilding as presence: MCC assignments in “enemy” contexts

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Posted on October 8, 2020 by mccintersections

Behind the Iron Curtain

In 1977, during our second year of marriage and study at Fuller Theological Seminary, we were invited to serve in what was portrayed as an innovative, daring, bridge-building peace witness in what was then Yugoslavia. To go behind the so-called “Iron Curtain” was the stuff of myth and spy fiction. We were among the first of what later became a sizeable group called the East Europe fraternity—a group of students who offered a Mennonite presence in at least eight Eastern European countries from 1977 to 1990. Ours was a peacebuilding venture largely comprised of on-the-ground presence and relationship building.

For Mennonite church leaders in the United States and Canada to assess that our people were vulnerable to fear and manipulation was both far-sighted and sober.

For people in Canada, the U.S. and western Europe, the specter of communism around the globe created widespread and often irrational fear. For Christians, including Mennonites, the fear was complicated by how political and economic threats of communism versus capitalism matched so closely with understandings of religious freedom and the persecution of the church under atheist regimes. For Mennonite church leaders in the United States and Canada to assess that our people were vulnerable to fear and manipulation was both far-sighted and sober. The way they chose to meet that danger was to send volunteers across the borders of the Iron Curtain to study at universities and spend time with real people on the ground—listening, offering friendship, assisting as invited and sharing the gospel of peace by being present and available for collaborative work when possible. We agreed to be among those volunteers, arriving in Yugoslavia in the fall of 1977.

This was truly an educational venture and we had student visas to prove it, but the education was meant to flow both ways. In the East, our message was meant to be that not all Christians see your land and your people as hated enemies. In the West, the educational thrust was to help our people see that real folks live with real challenges in socialist societies, but it is not the end of the world as we know it. A remarkable religious vitality is sustained in faith communities even though constrained by systemic and ideological challenges.

A couple and their daughter from the Orenburg Evangelical Christian Baptist congregation, Orenburg, Soviet Union (Russia) are looking at a scrapbook sent as a gift from Groffdale (Pennsylvania) Mennonite Church in this 1988 photo. An MCC delegation visited the Soviet Union from February 21 to March 4, 1988 at the invitation of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians/Baptists (AUCECB). (MCC photo/John A Lapp)

Our assignment, though sponsored by MCC and Mennonite mission agencies, was not formally missionary or relief and development work in the classic sense. An embodied presence on the ground was deemed the most strategic way to work at relational peacebuilding. Sharing the everyday life of ordinary Christian believers in a communist setting seemed to be our best hope of subverting the fears and overcoming the ignorance of our own people back home. And indeed, as we would return home for brief visits, circulating in our sponsoring communities, people had real questions and showed genuine interest. We were not planting Mennonite churches or starting programs or institutions. We were instructed to come alongside existing communities of Jesus-followers, who became our best instructors. Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics and Orthodox, as well as Muslims and Marxists, were all helpful in showing us their complex realities.

Our assignment included freedom to pursue any contacts which could help us toward our goal. We traveled extensively in several regions, engaged with churches and helped with educational efforts in several schools. In addition to relating to primarily Catholic Croatian and Orthodox Serbian contexts, we spent two years in Muslim neighborhoods of Sarajevo. We were welcomed by active Protestant leaders who quickly embraced and included us in their educational efforts. And since we were not setting up our own programs, we could selectively bolster anything that was constructive, collaborative and designed to serve purposes larger than self-interest.

There were plenty of challenges as well. While we had directors from MCC and Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities (EMBMC, now EMM) to provide guidance from the distance, and the “fraternity” of our Mennonite peers in other East European settings, we didn’t have formal local partners. We observed freelance operatives from other Western parachurch and mission agencies whose work was not subject to review by any local group and became problematic. We worked hard to maintain relationships that could incorporate local accountability. There was also our own isolation as the only Mennonites in-country, including the need to negotiate what was best for our children in education, community and church life. Meanwhile, although the political ideology was explicitly egalitarian, the general culture was very patriarchal.

That MCC had a presence on the ground was crucial to mobilizing tons of material aid, peacemaking responses and refugee care in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia in the wake of Yugoslavia’s dissolution.

It seems clear, looking back more than 40 years later, that the parallel assignments across Eastern Europe accomplished significant components of the goals we set out to achieve. The practical ecumenism of cooperating with people of other faiths was strategically fruitful during the subsequent war years in the Balkans. That MCC had a presence on the ground was crucial to mobilizing tons of material aid, peacemaking responses and refugee care in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia in the wake of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Evangelical faith communities came to see Mennonites as allies. They showed openness to Anabaptist theology and many made tangible commitments to peacebuilding in their local communities. And the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolized the triumph of the hopes we came to share with many people in the region.

Gerald and Sara Wenger Shenk worked with MCC Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia) from 1977-83 and 1986-89 (jointly with Eastern Mennonite Board of Mission and Charities, now EMM). Sara went on to serve as president of Anabaptist Biblical Seminary and Gerald as professor of church and society at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Learn more

Jantzen, Mark. The Wrong Side of the Wall: An American in East Berlin during the Peaceful Revolution. Nappanee, IN: Evangel Press, 1993.

The hard work of anti-racism: the good, the bad and the ugly

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Posted on September 7, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

It seems ironic that I would be writing about MCC’s work on racism from the mid-1990s to the first part of the decade of this century. Our nation finds itself in such troubling times of overt racism and hatred and our churches are struggling how to respond. Why is it so hard for us, as Mennonites, to find ways to address racism? I hope that sharing the story of MCC’s work on racism from within the organization and external work with other agencies can help us understand ourselves. I hope that learning our history will give us the foundation we need to respond and the good sense not to repeat our mistakes.

MCC has worked to address racism from long before the 1990s. MCC, along with other Anabaptist groups, sought to counter racism during the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, for example, Vincent Harding and Rosemarie Freeney Harding led MCC’s Voluntary Service house in Atlanta and became friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. Other Mennonites joined, but in the end, for many Mennonites, the cost of challenging racism was too great. For Mennonites in leadership, engaging in overt activism went too far: although Mennonites at the time did not fully articulate their concern in this way, one can see white Mennonite fear of giving up white privilege. Unfortunately, Mennonite reluctance to undertake the costly work of challenging racist structures led to the loss of the Hardings, two giants in the faith, who had left the Mennonite tradition by 1967, frustrated by Mennonite and MCC hesitancy to combat racism with greater vigor.

I came to work for MCC U.S. in the fall of 1996 as Director of Peace and Justice Ministries. By then, MCC U.S.’s Damascus Road Training was underway under the direction of Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Jody (now Tobin) Miller Shearer. What came to be called Damascus Road developed over the course of a long labor process starting in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, MCC hired John Chapman part-time to work on MCC becoming more ethnically and racially inclusive, both in its staffing and in its engagement of the full racial and ethnic range of Anabaptist groups in the U.S. Staff worked to make human resources policies more inclusive. Lynette Meck, then MCC U.S. director, wrote the first draft of a paper entitled Broadening the Vision in August 1994, in which she outlined a future of MCC becoming more inclusive of people of color. These efforts sought to build on relationships with people of color while resisting systemic racism within MCC.

As we worship, consider the realities of racism in the Anabaptist community, and share ideas and experiences out of our attempts to resist that racism, may our sight be restored… As we discuss the difficulties of power and privilege, may we be clear and compassionate.
— Invitation letter to Restoring
Our Sight conference, 1995

The Damascus Road program started to take more concrete shape in 1994. That year, Tobin Miller Shearer published Enter the River: Healing Steps from White Privilege toward Racial Reconciliation. In 1995, the MCC U.S. Racism Project hosted a conference in Chicago entitled Restoring Our Sight. Invitations went out to leaders in U.S. Anabaptist institutions and in MCC U.S. and MCC Binational. A total of 250 people attended. The invitation letter sent out on March 1, 1995, stated the conference’s purpose: “As we worship, consider the realities of racism in the Anabaptist community, and share ideas and experiences out of our attempts to resist that racism, may our sight be restored. . . . As we discuss the difficulties of power and privilege, may we be clear and compassionate.” This event birthed what we came to be called the Damascus Road process.

That same year, MCC U.S. produced a video, Free Indeed, as a resource for congregations and other groups seeking to learn about white privilege and the importance of addressing privilege in order to dismantle racism. The video became one of the most widely requested videos in the MCC resource library for many years.

When MCC U.S. established the Damascus Road training program, it set as the program’s goals the preparation of teams within all Anabaptist agencies, including MCC,to dismantle racism within our Anabaptist institutions. The focus was looking at the systemic reality of racism. This work, though promising, also became controversial and threatening. In response to our work at becoming anti-racist and in confronting “whiteness” [racialized ideology that produces white privilege], we began to receive threatening letters. Tobin Miller Shearer, director of the Anti-Racism Desk in 1996, got a death threat from a white supremacist group. He also fielded many angry and negative comments from within the church. As a person of color, I found that very frightening. We consistently received pressure from some within MCC to focus on work on interpersonal relationships rather than on systemic issues, because white people were more comfortable discussing interpersonal relationships rather than confronting their own white privilege and the systemic barriers that kept white people in control, not just in society but within church institutions as well, including Anabaptist institutions.

John Powell, of Buffalo, New York, pins a square of cloth onto a piece of fabric as part of the first night of the Damascus Road conference, “Damascus and Beyond: seeking clearer sight, bolder spirit,” held in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2005. Damascus Road used trainings about systemic racism to organize teams to work on dismantling racism in their own institutions or congregations. In 2005, Damascus Road was developing a system of chaplains and organizers in order to better nurture teams and link them together. (MCC photo/Matthew Lester)

Despite this pushback from various segments within MCC, Damascus Road did make an impact both on MCC and within the broader Anabaptist world in the U.S. This past year, my congregation welcomed Julie Hart as a guest speaker. Julie had been a sociology professor at Bethel College in Kansas when we organized a Damascus Road training there many years ago. When we talked briefly this past summer, Julie shared how her academic training had not previously introduced her to concepts of whiteness and white privilege: the Damascus Road training equipped her with analysis that has now become standard within sociology. Damascus Road anti-racism training has had an impact not only on individuals but also institutions. For example, today we have many more people of color in leadership positions within and on the board of Mennonite Church USA than when this anti-racism work first began. People of color groups, meanwhile, have been able to find places to be heard and contribute within Mennonite Church USA in ways that did not happen twenty years ago.

Regina Shands Stoltzfus, Tobin Miller Shearer and I co-authored a book together, Set Free, in 2001 while working for MCC U.S. In that book, we named the reality of racism and highlighted how power is used to maintain the status quo. We repeatedly found that many white people named racism as an issue of relationships, while people of color identified the issue of racism as systemic. The truth, of course, is that racism has both relational and systemic dimensions, but it is the systemic piece that affects people of color the most, from access to resources to the toll on our physical and mental health.

Anti-racism work often faces backlash, with the impact falling most frequently on the people whose voices are marginalized, who are silenced when what they have to say becomes uncomfortable and who are terminated when they become a threat to white institutions.

The Damascus Road program found that it was imperative for white people to address their racism if the task of dismantling racism could gain traction. The MCC U.S. anti-racism program thus developed a training module entitled Fire and Clay, a workshop for white people to confront the white privilege they carry. The first Fire and Clay gathering was held in April 2003. People attended, but MCC leadership, for the most part, did not participate. Earlier in June 2002, the Damascus Road program had developed a training called Set Free for people of color to work on internalized racism. Set Free trainings helped to inspire events like the Hope for the Future gatherings sponsored by Mennonite Church USA, in which people of color began to amplify their voices and make connections to one another to work together on issues that were important to them.

By the first decade of this century, the difficulty of working both within and beyond MCC U.S. to confront racism was taking a toll on people of color, who frequently felt they had to be the bridge builders and teachers for white people. In June 2006, MCC Binational and MCC U.S. jointly hired Rick Derksen, a white man, as coordinator of MCC’s Anti-Racism Accountability Council. Rick did a lot of good work, but by then many people of color tasked with anti-racism work were exhausted. Eventually, after much internal consultation, Damascus Road trainers determined that they wanted to undertake a broader, more intersectional, approach to anti-racism work, while also reaching out beyond Anabaptist communities. These discussions led in September 2012 to Damascus Road spinning off from MCC, becoming part of the independent organization, Roots of Justice.

Anabaptist institutions continue to work with Roots of Justice to hold Damascus Road anti-racism trainings because it has proven so effective in transforming their boards and leadership structures. To be sure, the gains made by this anti-racism work has come at a cost, taking a toll on people of color and white allies. Anti-racism work often faces backlash, with the impact falling most frequently on the people whose voices are marginalized, who are silenced when what they have to say becomes uncomfortable and who are terminated when they become a threat to white institutions. The work within our institutions needs white people to take ownership. Funding must be available for the work if the church is serious about dismantling racism. I pray and hope that MCC U.S. will come forward again in a bold way in its anti-racism work to name and speak against the renewed racist nationalism and xenophobia we are experiencing in our society and in our churches and that MCC will stand with congregations and institutions that are speaking up in defense of those at the receiving end of racism and hate.

Iris deLeón-Hartshorn is associate executive director for operations of Mennonite Church USA.

Learn more

DeLeón-Hartshorn, Iris, Tobin Miller Shearer and Regina Shands Stoltzfus. Set Free: A Journey toward Solidarity against Racism. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001.

Shearer, Tobin Miller. Daily Demonstrators: The Civil Rights Movement in Mennonite Homes and Sanctuaries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

——. Enter the River: Healing Steps from White Privilege toward Racial Reconciliation. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1994.

Mennonite Conciliation Service: challenges, successes and learnings

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Posted on September 3, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

In 1975, the seed for Mennonite Conciliation Service (MCS) was planted. MCC had a well- respected reputation for responding to basic human needs, such as the provision of food and shelter. Yet those carrying out these responses realized more could be done—something was missing. There were needs not being met, and this missing piece impacted the success of the material responses. This need for a Mennonite Conciliation Service (MCS) parallel to Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) was a need for an organization that would address conflicts and crises before they become violent. Such an MCS would also advocate for justice. This ministry would be collaborative with other Anabaptist organizations and with other Christians active in the work of conciliation, mediation and conflict transformation. In this article, I offer my reflections as a former MCS staff person on the challenges MCS faced, the successes it experienced and learnings from the MCS story.

Ron Kraybill, director of Mennonite Conciliation Service (MCS), addresses a conciliation meeting in Salunga, Pennsylvania, in October 1983. MCS developed educational and training materials around conflict resolution skills, including the Conciliation Quarterly. (MCC photo/Nancy Witmer)

I joined MCS in July 1999. Having never lived east of the Mississippi, I experienced culture shock upon moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to work for MCC. I had lived in Dallas, Texas, for close to 20 years, working as an insurance claims examiner. In many ways, being an insurance claims examiner stimulated my interest in resolving conflict. During my off-work time, I trained with and volunteered for many years at the Dallas Mediation Center. When I received the call to join MCS, I was on a personal journey to determine how I could make my avocation my vocation. I therefore accepted the offer, moved to Lancaster and took on the position of associate on urban peacemaking. I eventually became MCS’s director and then later co-directed the Office on Justice and Peacebuilding with Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz when MCS merged with the MCC U.S.’s Office on Crime and Justice. I continued in that position until 2011, when I left MCC to pastor (and then later rejoin MCC as executive director for MCC Central States, the position I hold today).

MCS certainly faced challenges throughout its history. The earliest documents outlining the origins of MCS make for fascinating reading. From the beginning, MCS’s creators were mindful of two challenges that would be ongoing concerns for MCS: first, the theological, historical and cultural approaches to conflict among traditional Anabaptist groups and, secondly, racism. In a 1976 study on the possibility and parameters of MCS, William Keeney placed MCS within a history of MCC peace witness: “Mennonites have often expressed their opposition to violence and war by the refusal to participate. We have offered alternative service as a demonstration of our positive contributions to society. Mennonite Conciliation Services would seem to be another positive contribution we could make by minimizing the consequences of evil conflict and violence.” In the beginning of his study, Keeney acknowledged that the realities of violence to and in African-American, Latinx and Indigenous communities related to “discrimination” and being “excluded from the benefits of American Society.” Keeney did not use the same language for people of color I use here (that is my translation to the contemporary vernacular), but Keeney clearly understood that ongoing racism was a primary source of violence. If MCS was to take seriously the mandate to address and respond to conflict and harm before it turns to violence, Keeney recognized, then it must contend with the “social disasters” leading to it.

Mennonite Conciliation Service named, from the beginning, that addressing conflict or harm without acknowledging systemic oppression is hypocritical.

Ron Kraybill’s report to the MCC Peace Section regarding the proposal to establish a Mennonite Conciliation Service was more forthright and explicit about the challenges. Informed by discussions with non-white Mennonites, Kraybill found affirmation for the MCS proposal, yet also heard strong caveats, including from Mennonites of color. These caveats included the following points:

People of color must be included in the effort to establish MCS;
Emphasis should be placed on mobilizing local resources, rather than on maintaining a “flying squad of intervenors”;
MCC needed to ask if Mennonites were ready to take on questions of justice as it sought to establish MCS;
Involvement in conflicts should be contemplated only in those situations where Mennonites have “earned the right” to speak;
Mennonites have a lot of “in-house” conflicts that need to be addressed;
To be credible, MCS would need to develop slowly: MCC would need to be committed to the MCS venture for at least five years before judging it as a success or failure.

I arrived at MCS twenty-three years after these preliminary discussions. During my tenure with MCS, the issues identified at MCS’s inception continued to come up in our internal discussions. We knew that naming, addressing and acknowledging concerns around justice and racism were always at the core of the work as we continued to resource, train, mediate, facilitate and participate in conciliation efforts. As a woman of African descent whose chosen faith expression has been in the Anabaptist tradition, it was important for my credibility and sanity to keep these challenges in the forefront of our work.

Although MCS faced persistent challenges, we also had many poignant successes. For me, to work with people who were called to be peacemakers was a gift. The people who worked for and collaborated with MCS were committed to mediating, educating, practicing and growing. Together, we were committed to work at our internal conflicts just as we worked with others beyond our doors. We acknowledged injustice and advocated for justice. And we knew our limits: we did not think every case or referral could be addressed by MCS. However, we maintained relationships with others to whom we could refer cases. We were constantly challenging our work and the conciliation field to be anti-racist and anti-sexist in our approaches to conflict and harm.

To be credible, Mennonite Conciliation Service would need to develop slowly: MCC would need to be committed to the MCS venture for at least five years before judging it as a success or failure.

The most laudable success MCS experienced was the production of conflict resolution resources—books, training manuals, videos and periodicals—that became widely-used within the conflict resolution, mediation and restorative justice fields. Carolyn Schrock-Shenk, while MCS director, joined Lawrence Ressler in editing Making Peace with Conflict, a seminal book for churches to understand conflict as neither good nor bad, a resource that encouraged Mennonites (and other Christians) to face and learn from conflict. Schrock-Shenk was also responsible for a video, also directed at churches, called Conflict and the Church. MCS published four editions of its Mediation and Facilitation Training Manual, a resource used as a core text in many colleges and universities. The fifth version of the manual (Conflict Transformation and Restorative Justice Manual), produced jointly with the Office of Crime and Justice, was similarly widely used. And, for 23 years, MCS published a periodical called Conciliation Quarterly that highlighted learnings and grappled with challenges from the conflict mediation and restorative justice fields. Although MCS, the Office of Crime and Justice and the Office of Justice and Peacebuilding no longer exist at MCC, their contributions continue to be respected across the conflict transformation and restorative justice fields.

MCS spurred Anabaptist communities in the United States to expand their understandings and theologies of nonviolence and nonresistance. MCS encouraged churches and communities to develop new understandings of and healthier approaches to conflict. MCS named, from the beginning, that addressing conflict or harm without acknowledging systemic oppression is hypocritical. MCS provided a space and opportunity for the non-dominant voices to be heard in venues such as the MCS-produced manual and in Conciliation Quarterly. It has been an honor and blessing to be part of MCS’s legacy: my hope for MCC is that it will find creative ways to extend MCS’s legacy of creatively addressing conflicts in ways that take questions of justice and racism seriously.

Michelle Armster is executive director of MCC Central States.

Learn more

Amstuz, Lorraine Stutzman and Michelle Armster. Eds. Conflict Transformation and Restorative Justice Manual: Foundations and Skills for Mediation and Facilitation. Fifth edition. Akron, PA: MCC Office on Justice and Peacebuilding, 2008.

Schrock-Shenk, Carolyn. Ed. Mediation and Facilitation Training Manual: Foundations and Skills for Constructive Conflict Transformation. Fourth edition. Akron, PA: Mennonite Conciliation Service, 2000.

MCC advocacy for Indigenous rights in Canada: reflections from history and the present

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Posted on August 31, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

MCC Canada has a long history of speaking to the Canadian government about militarization and participation in armed activities. Over the years, this advocacy has evolved as relationships with Indigenous nations in Canada have opened the door to new understandings of peace and nonviolence. Yet these new understandings have come with challenges that continue today. MCC advocacy in support of various Indigenous communities of Labrador in protesting against NATO military activities at the end of the Cold War and later against a hydro-electric dam initiative illustrates both challenges and opportunities for MCC’s advocacy in Canada more broadly.

University students from across Canada attending MCC Ottawa Office student seminar February 12-14, 2015, on advocacy and faith gather around Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill as part of a witness walk in Ottawa. (MCC photo/Monica Figueroa)

Since the early 1950s, MCC Canada sought meetings with prime ministers to advocate for the rights of conscientious objection and alternative service. Over time, those petitions began to shift focus, moving from requests for the respect of Mennonite religious beliefs to including asks for government actions to reduce international conflict. Speaking to government about matters of conflict and war gradually became a part of MCC’s relief, development and peacebuilding work. This change, along with a recognition that a listening post in Ottawa would further the work of MCC, led to MCC opening its Ottawa Office in 1975.

Over the ensuing years, MCC advocacy became increasingly linked to MCC’s model of accompaniment and community service. As Esther Epp-Tiessen writes in her history of MCC in Canada, MCC service workers living in communities around the world and witnessing firsthand the harm of military action began to increasingly share about the impacts of Canadian policies and military action. These concerns began to form the basis of MCC’s advocacy communications and shape the way MCC understood its dual responsibilities—to its Anabaptist constituent in Canada and to the communities and partners MCC accompanied.

During the final years of the Cold War, MCC Canada undertook advocacy related to the impact of global militarization in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador. MCC have had an ongoing, long-term presence in Labrador, with work in the province stemming back to the 1970s (and with partnership with Innu communities beginning in 1983). In the 1980s, NATO began testing low-level military flights over Innu traditional territory in Labrador, taking off from and landing at the Canadian military base in Goose Bay. More than 8,000 flights took place each year, harming wildlife and disrupting the Innu community’s traditional way of life. As the Cold War progressed, NATO proposed building a larger, more permanent training base in the area. Despite some hesitation from its governing board, MCC Canada began to highlight the concerns of these Innu communities through advocacy, as part of a larger advocacy campaign against Canada’s participation in NATO in general.

If the Innu are not requesting military defence, and if Mennonites from a Christian peace position are saying the same things, how would it be if we would find a way of making a joint statement between the Innu and Mennonites to that effect?
— Menno Wiebe

For several years, the Ottawa Office had consistently voiced concerns around NATO and Canada’s participation in the Cold War arms race in their correspondence to government. Now, the office began to include Innu voices and experiences in their communications to government officials, connecting advocacy against Canadian militarization with Innu concerns about how NATO flight were upending their traditional way of life. Advocacy against NATO began to include requests to also resolve land claims and to look for shared points of connections between Mennonites and Innu communities, including shared understandings of relationships to the state.

In a 1989 letter to MCC Canada program leaders, Menno Wiebe, director of MCC’s Native Concerns program, asked: “If the Innu are not requesting military defence, and if Mennonites from a Christian peace position are saying the same things, how would it be if we would find a way of making a joint statement between the Innu and Mennonites to that effect?” Wiebe highlighted a meeting between Peter Penashue, an Innu community leader, and five liberal members of parliament, in which the Innu stated that they were not asking Canada to defend them. For Wiebe, the Innu assertion of their sovereign right to refuse being defended by NATO and the Canadian military opened potential fruitful connections to Mennonite concerns about militarization.

MCC’s Ottawa Office raised further concerns about the NATO flights over Innu territory through its partnership with Project Ploughshares. These advocacy initiatives encouraged Canadians to send letters and request meetings with government officials to voice concerns about the NATO flights, arguing that “in the name of ‘security,’ such fighter-bomber flight training is imposing insecurity on the Innu peoples.” Other letters seeking to mobilize advocacy efforts referred to the lack of a just relationship between the Government of Canada and the Innu, calling on the Canadian government to re-examine its commitment to the proposed NATO base.

During this time, the Innu invited Rick and Louise Cober Bauman and their children to live in the more rural community of Sheshatshit, in part based on their increased trust of MCC through MCC’s willingness to advocate. Rick recalls sending faxes encouraging advocacy and providing updates from the local Innu resource centre, connecting Mennonites and many other interested supporters not only in Canada but also in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. The family living room was the site of planning sessions to block fighter jets from taking off by occupying the runway at the military base. MCC was intimately involved in witnessing the devastations of colonization, the struggle for self-determination and the impacts of Cold War politics on those far removed from the causes of conflict.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ending of the Cold War, flights from and construction on the NATO base stopped. Without the push around direct militarization, Ottawa Office advocacy on the Innu issues declined. The Indigenous communities in Labrador, however, continued to face challenges to their right to live on their land. Structural violence, rather than overt military presence, continued. A hydro-electric dam built at Muskrat Falls and completed in 2019 has posed concerns around land and water contamination.

MCC workers sought to discern how to respond to such ongoing colonization, especially as shifts in approaches among Indigenous communities varied. Overall, the Innu did not oppose the dam, as the project approval was a part of their land claims agreement. The Southern Inuit and Northern Inuit communities downstream from the dam, however, engaged in advocacy over their concerns of methylmercury poisoning, with the support from only a very few members of the Innu community.

MCC workers, up until 2019, engaged actively in responding to these shifting concerns and nuances within the region. They built relationships with land defenders in the Inuit communities opposing the hydro project and actively facilitated community organizing processes. Instead of working with Chief and Council, as they had with the Innu, MCC workers connected with strategic individuals. They worked to bring members of the different communities together, along with working behind the scenes to support public statements and actions. MCC workers intentionally tried to keep a lower profile and focused on raising the voices of individual land defenders, rather than the voice of MCC.

The advocacy component of MCC’s local presence was strong, but public Anabaptist support of advocacy against the hydro project was not the same as with advocacy against the NATO flights, despite heavy RCMP presence at the site to arrest and remove protesters. Other grassroots organizations across Canada and the U.S. advocated against the hydro project, but there was very little Anabaptist outcry. The Ottawa Office was unable to offer much support, due to changing MCC priorities in Canada. Without the direct connections to militarization, there was no longer the same tangible draw for Mennonites or peace activists.

Rick Cober Bauman reflects that “mines and dams didn’t have the same impact as women running in front of jets. We may believe we can live without defense, but can we live without nickel or hydro? Things got more complex.” This complexity was seen not only in lack of Canadian Anabaptist support for advocacy against the hydro project, but also in the important nuances MCC workers navigated each day, as they responded to the different concerns and relationships they had built, relationships that included the different perspectives of multiple Indigenous groups, nuances that were easy to overlook when only focusing on a response to overt militarization or communicating a more simple story about MCC’s presence.

Elizabeth (Tshaukuish) Penashue, photographed in 2011, an Innu elder from Sheshatshit, north of Happy Valley Goose Bay, N.L., is deeply concerned about the future of her community and culture which she believes is closely linked to the wellbeing of the environment. Penashue organizes an annual canoe trip to increase awareness of the importance of protecting land and water from pollution and to pass on knowledge of Innu culture, traditional survival skills and food. MCC has a longstanding relationship with Penashue and has provided assistance for this and other initiatives that are in line with MCC’s values of caring for creation and improving relationships between broader Canadian society and Indigenous peoples. (MCC Photo/Nina Linton)

This history is relevant today as the Ottawa Office has been mandated to look for opportunities to engage in MCC advocacy around Indigenous justice, as MCC seeks to come to terms with its historical identity as an organization founded and supported by Canadian Mennonite settlers on Indigenous land. How do we understand and respond to state violence, such as colonization manifested as control over territory, when it isn’t obviously militarized? Can we use the language of state violence and our complicity to engage with constituents, in a way that engages on a national level, including in regions where extractive and mega-projects are major employers of MCC supporters? Additionally, MCC no longer has workers living with and directly supporting Indigenous communities in Canada, making it more difficult for us to “hear” Indigenous voices, including their diversity and nuances, in the ways that have traditionally shaped our advocacy work. How do we understand and portray nuance, without holding those active relationships? Addressing structural and colonial violence in Canada, reflecting on our own participation in that violence and then engaging in advocacy for Indigenous rights in Canada should be vital elements of MCC’s evolving peace advocacy, even as MCC faces multiple challenges in doing so.

Anna Vogt is director of MCC’s Ottawa Office.

Learn more

Brody, Hugh. The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World. New York: North Point Press, 2002.

Heinrichs, Steve. Ed. From Wrongs to Rights: How Churches Can Engage the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Winnipeg: Mennonite Church Canada, 2016.

A steady witness for peace: MCC in Washington, D.C.

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Posted on August 27, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

In Washington, D.C., in November 1969, a small group of Mennonites stood in the early morning chill to participate in the March on Washington, one of many peace marches held during the Vietnam War. (MCC photo/Burton Buller)

As the year 2002 wore on, U.S. military action against Iraq seemed imminent. J. Daryl Byler, then-director of MCC’s Washington Office, worked with staff of Mennonite Church USA to mobilize church members against the impending war. They set a goal of gathering 5,000 signatures on a letter to President George W. Bush. In two weeks, more than 13,000 Mennonites representing nearly 250 congregations throughout the country, had signed the letter. [Eventually over 17,000 people signed.] Printed out, the signatures were 300 pages long—a six-inch stack of paper that Jim Schrag, Mennonite Church USA’s executive director, held up at a press conference in September 2002 to demonstrate the church’s opposition to the war. Ultimately, these advocacy efforts opposing U.S. military action were unsuccessful and the U.S. military invaded Iraq in March 2003. But it was a key moment in a steady witness for peace over the past five decades by the MCC U.S. Washington Office (originally named the Peace Section-Washington Office).

The time has come when we can no longer maintain faith with the homeless, the hungry, the orphaned and the wounded to whom we minister unless we speak out as clearly as we can against the savage war in which our country is engaged.
— MCC letter to President
Lyndon Johnson, 1966

Even before the office opened in 1968, U.S. Mennonites had been communicating with government officials about conscientious objection concerns, including a meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937. Between 1940 and 1967, Mennonite leaders testified 13 times before congressional committees about conscientious objection. Concerns about the rights of conscientious objectors continue today, with the Washington Office helping to convene a gathering of Anabaptist church representatives in June 2019 to respond to recommendations from the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service.

MCC’s work around the globe has also helped Mennonites understand that their advocacy to the government needs to extend beyond the protection of their own rights as conscientious objectors to calling for an end to war and militarism. During the U.S. war in Vietnam, MCC staff heard a clear plea to advocate for an end to U.S. military involvement in the war. MCC leadership conveyed this message in a 1966 letter to President Lyndon Johnson. “The time has come,” they wrote, “when we can no longer maintain faith with the homeless, the hungry, the orphaned and the wounded to whom we minister unless we speak out as clearly as we can against the savage war in which our country is engaged.” MCC opened its Washington, D.C., office for public policy advocacy in 1968. In its early years, MCC vigorously advocated for an end to the Vietnam War. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, this advocacy shifted to urging the U.S. to normalize economic and diplomatic relations with Vietnam and Laos.

Delton Franz, right, and Senator Mark Hatfield (R-Ore) discuss issues they worked on together during their time in Washington at the 25th-anniversary celebration of the MCC Washington Office in 1993. (MCC photo/David Schrock-Shenk)

The Washington Office has also spoken out against U.S. militarism more broadly throughout its history, including the increasingly steep levels of funding for the Pentagon. In 1975, the office’s director, Delton Franz, lamented the Secretary of Defense’s use of Scripture to introduce a military budget that topped $100 billion for the first time. “If the Defense Secretary’s understanding of Scripture is found wanting,” Franz wrote, “perhaps equally serious is the ignorance of all too many of us in the Christian community on the realities of the militarization of our economic and political system. Do we understand the immensity of the military juggernaut that we are being asked to buy into?”

Drawing on the experience of MCC’s partner organizations in situations of conflict around the world, the Washington Office has consistently opposed U.S. arms sales and foreign military assistance. So, for example, in the 1980s, the office arranged meetings between MCC workers in El Salvador and congressional delegations who visited the country, helping members of Congress understand the impact of U.S. involvement in the civil war.

In 2000, Colombian Mennonites issued a plea to U.S. church members, urging them to oppose “Plan Colombia,” the U.S. anti-drug initiative that sent billions of dollars to the Colombian military. “Just as lighter fluid among flames produces more fire,” they wrote, “more arms produce more war.” The Washington Office worked persistently—and successfully, in some cases—to change the voting record of members of Congress on the issue. The voices of MCC’s constituents were critical in bringing about this change.

Karen Ventura was a consultant in the new office for Mennonite Hispanic Immigration Service in Washington, D.C., in 1978. The MCC Washington Office began doing advocacy on immigration in the late 1970s. (MCC photo/Lynn Roth)

An August 2013 action alert from the Washington Office generated more than 5,000 emails to policymakers, urging them to oppose U.S. airstrikes against Syria. Washington Office staff heard from congressional aides that congressional office phones were ringing off their hooks, with the vast majority of callers opposing military action. In the end, this grassroots pressure helped move the U.S. to support a diplomatic resolution to the immediate crisis. More recent work by the office to address U.S. militarism includes calling for a formal end to the Korean War and opposing arms sales to the Nigerian government in its fight against Boko Haram. The office also opposes efforts to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border, calling instead for more humane responses to migrants arriving at that border.

The MCC U.S. Washington Office is certainly not the only organization in Washington, D.C., that advocates for peace and against militarism. But since its founding over fifty years ago, a vision of peace rooted in God’s justice and care for the marginalized has guided the Washington Office’s work. This work has mobilized Anabaptists to engage in public policy advocacy as part of their Christian witness, and has been undergirded by testimonies and calls from churches and peace leaders around the world about the destructive impact of war and militarism and the need for transformative, peaceful approaches to conflict. Over the past five decades, public policy advocacy through MCC’s Washington Office has been an essential element of what it means to work for peace in the name of Christ. May this witness continue as MCC begins its second century.

Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach is director of MCC’s Washington Office.

Learn more

Miller, Keith Graber. Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves: American Mennonites Engage Washington. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee, 1996.

Washington Memo. Available at https://washingtonmemo.org/newsletter/. Published three times a year by the MCC Washington Office.

MCC Canada peace programming: a ministry for or to the churches?

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Posted on August 24, 2020 by mccintersections

Individual articles from the Summer 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog twice per week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.

Peace programming has been an essential element of MCC’s ministry in Canada since the organization was formed in 1963. But an ongoing tension present from the very beginning was whether this ministry was intended as an outward witness or an inward strengthening—whether it was a ministry for and on behalf of the Anabaptist churches in Canada or a ministry to those same churches.

When MCC Canada (MCCC) was formed in the closing days of 1963, one of its mandates was to further the peace mission of the Mennonite, Mennonite Brethren and Brethren in Christ churches who founded the organization. MCC was to act as a united voice for Canadian Anabaptists in matters of national concern, such as “peace witness, alternative service, immigration and other matters” (Epp-Tiessen, 78). The 1965 MCC Canada constitution confirmed “peace witness” as a core area of its responsibility.

This emphasis on peace witness indicates that MCC Canada’s founders envisioned a vibrant outreach program, inviting people beyond the Mennonite community to embrace a vision for nonviolent peacemaking, even while they saw a need for peace education in the MCC member churches. One of the first peace witness projects the new organization undertook was to host a peace booth at Toronto’s annual Canadian National Exhibition. The volunteers who staffed the booth shared literature and engaged passersby in conversations about peacemaking alternatives to war.

As the office addressed government on issues of defence policy, the arms trade and Canadian military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, MCCC heard charges from some constituents that it should not engage in such ‘political’ activity.

Within a short time, it became clear that some of MCC Canada’s constituent churches were not supportive of the organization’s peace witness efforts. A key issue which surfaced this tension was MCC Canada’s support for young men from the United States fleeing to Canada—either to evade the draft or to desert the military—because they refused to be part of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. MCC Canada allocated a small amount of money to meet the immediate needs of some of these thousands of draft “dodgers” and resisters and encouraged Canadian Mennonite churches to offer to support to these young men. Constituency reaction was swift and strong. Letters to MCC, additional letters sent to the editors of Anabaptist periodicals and conference resolutions condemned MCC Canada’s stance. People opposed support for the war resisters because they suspected the young men of being drug-using hippies and not “true” conscientious objectors since many lacked a well-articulated faith-based conviction. MCC Canada made the case that Mennonites’ own historic stance of conscientious objection and resistance to war should lead them to support the resisters, but many constituents did not see it that way. Dan Zehr, director of the MCC Canada Peace and Social Concerns Program, asked why constituents were generous and open in helping people overseas, but were only prepared to help the “right kind of people” at home (Epp-Tiessen, 115).

Therefore, almost from the beginning, MCC Canada staff and volunteers realized they could not assume an Anabaptist constituency that would whole-heartedly embrace peace witness work. In order to do the “external” work of peace witness, they would need to do the “internal” work of strengthening constituents’ commitment to peace. Over the years, MCC Canada invested significant resources in doing just that. MCC Canada’s peace program staff devoted significant time speaking in churches, organizing special events and producing Christian education curricula and other resources with the goal of fortifying member churches in their commitment to biblical peace theology. One of the longest standing projects was a Peace Sunday Packet, developed initially by MCC Ontario in 1987 that then quickly became a national project. The packet was a special worship, reflection and action resource produced for church use in conjunction with Remembrance Day in November.

To remember is to work for peace.
—MCC Remembrance
Day button.

The notion of an MCC Canada ministry to Anabaptist churches was not unique to MCC Canada’s peace program. Programs that worked with Indigenous people, persons with disabilities, victims of domestic violence and other marginalized individuals—many of these programs birthed by the MCC Canada peace program—also found it important to minister to the churches. MCC Canada staff preached and made presentations in churches, created resources for churches and engaged churches in efforts to help Anabaptists in Canada understand and embrace work that was often quite removed from their own lived reality (Epp-Tiessen, 135-36).

Despite these efforts at ministering to the churches, MCC Canada peace witness initiatives continued to rouse the concerns of individuals, congregations and conferences that purportedly held to a peace church tradition. In the early 1980s, for example, the Mennonite Brethren Conference raised concerns about MCC Canada’s work in Indigenous communities and its advocacy on military spending and nuclear disarmament. A task force was established to explore these concerns and respond to them. About the same time, a well-positioned observer noted an “anti-MCC feeling” among conservative Mennonites in southern Manitoba because of its work in “the peace section and native concerns.”

Through the 1980s and 1990s, much of constituency critique was aimed at the peace witness work of the MCC Canada Ottawa Office. As the office addressed government on issues of defence policy, the arms trade and Canadian military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, MCC Canada heard charges from some constituents that it should not engage in such “political” activity. According to J.M. Klassen, long-time executive director of MCCC, the charge of being “political” frequently surfaced when critics disagreed with MCC’s point of view (J.M. Klassen, Jacob’s Journey).

By no means all parts of MCC Canada’s Canadian Anabaptist constituency opposed public peace witness. In 2001, for example, in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, MCC Canada organized a special cross-country hymn sing for peace as a way of calling Canada to resist joining the U.S. in military engagement against Afghanistan. In Ottawa, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Abbotsford, MCC constituents gathered to pray and to sing publicly for an international order of peace. In 2003, over a thousand people in many countries joined a weekly “women’s fast for peace” as a way of registering their opposition to war on Iraq. Additionally, over 2,000 constituents across Canada signed a joint letter from MCC Canada and denominational leaders to the prime minister with the same intent.

Laura Dyck, from Sterling Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ontario, wears the MCC peace button at a 2015 walk for reconciliation between settler and Indigenous Canadians based on justice and honoring of treaties. (MCC photo/Alison Ralph)

Nevertheless, by the first part of this century it was becoming more and more difficult to engage Canadian Anabaptists on the issues that formed MCC Canada’s traditional peace mandate: war and armed conflict, conscientious objection to military service, military spending and the arms trade, a peace tax fund and so on. Constituents more happily embraced such growing emphases in MCC on peace as mediation, dialogue, conflict resolution, cross-cultural relationship-building and non-partisan humanitarian assistance. They were less eager to embrace peace witness initiatives that somehow put them at odds with the broader society or government.

In 1989 MCC Ontario produced a simple red button with the message “To remember is to work for peace.” It encouraged people to wear the button around Remembrance Day as an alternative to the poppy worn to commemorate war veterans and as a gentle call to seek non-violent alternatives to war. The button was well received, and over the years thousands were sold and distributed across the country. But as the years passed, the message of the button lost its power. Indeed, a growing group of constituents identified it as “preachy,” “naive” and “offensive to veterans.” A lengthy conversation on Facebook in 2015 surfaced many of these opinions, prompting an in-depth survey within MCC Canada and the provincial MCCs as to whether it was time to lay the button and its slogan to rest.

Around the same time, MCC Canada also quietly ended staffing for a national peace program. The rationale was that the organization hoped to channel further staff time into the work of the Ottawa Office. This was supposedly a temporary measure, but the move became permanent with no discussion. Many of the provincial offices of MCC discontinued their peace programs soon after. To be sure, MCC Canada continued to support peacebuilding initiatives, primarily in its international program, but it had more or less abandoned the task of ministering to the churches, of resourcing Anabaptist congregations in their basic commitments to Anabaptist-Mennonite peace theology.

Why this major shift? Many possible reasons surface. For one thing, MCC Canada peace staff had not been very successful in reaching out to some of the more evangelical or conservative congregations and denominational conferences. With some exceptions, MCC Canada peace staff mostly found themselves preaching to the choir and were ineffective in stemming the gradual erosion of peace theology and practice among Canadian Anabaptists. Some may have asked: why continue an outreach that did not produce the intended results?

Secondly, it had been decades since military conscription had tested the convictions of Mennonites, Mennonite Brethren and Brethren in Christ in Canada about non-participation in war. Consequently, it was increasingly difficult to engage church audiences in exploring the beliefs and practices that might one day be required to authenticate a stance of conscientious objection. Instead—or as a result—MCC Canada peace staff increasingly found themselves focusing on pressing justice issues where there was interest, issues such as care for creation, economic justice and justice in contexts such as South Africa, Colombia and Palestine and Israel. Finally, MCC Canada’s relationship with constituent churches was changing. As time passed, MCC Canada could no longer count on the automatic support of Anabaptist denominations and congregations in Canada. By 2020, some Anabaptist conferences had withdrawn their official membership in MCC Canada. Within this rapidly changing and challenging environment, MCC Canada positioned itself increasingly as a ministry of and for the church rather than as a ministry to the church. MCC Canada thus continued to work for peace by supporting churches and community-based organizations around the world in their efforts for peace, but its peace ministry no longer included sustained work to foster and shore up Anabaptist peace convictions about war, armed conflict and conscientious objection among churches in Canada.

Esther Epp-Tiessen is an historian and author and served as peace program coordinator for MCC Canada from 2000 to 2010.

Learn more

Epp, Frank H. and Marlene G. Epp. The Progressions of Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section. Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee, 1984.

Epp-Tiessen, Esther. Mennonite Central Committee in Canada: A History. Winnipeg: CMU Press, 2013.

Klassen, Jacob M. Jacob’s Journey: From Zagradowka to Zion. Self-published. 2001.

Intersections

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Category Archives: advocacy

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MCC Canada peace programming: a ministry for or to the churches?

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