Mennonite Conciliation Service: challenges, successes and learnings

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.

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

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.

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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.

Vida simple, teología de paz y libros de cocina de la comunidad mundial del CCM

[Articulos individuales de la edicion de Intersecciones de Primavera 2020 se publican en este blog cada semana. La edicion completa puede ser encontrada en MCC’s website.]

Hace una década, cuando el CCM cumplió noventa años, tuve la oportunidad de reflexionar sobre la importancia de los libros de cocina del CCM dentro de la historia institucional del CCM y el impacto de esos libros de cocina en todo tipo de comunidades en todo el mundo. Me sorprendió lo profundo a que me llevó mi reflexión y qué tanto de mi identidad como cristiana está relacionada con la trilogía de los libros de cocina de la comunidad mundial: More-with-Less Cookbook, Extending the Table y Simply in Season.

Doris Janzen Longacre y su hija Cara Sue Longacre preparando un plato en un seminario en 1976. El libro de cocina de Janzen Longacre, More-with-Less, se publicó por primera vez en 1976, popular por recetas simples y nutritivas y su énfasis en compartir recursos y elegir vivir con menos. (Foto del CCM/ Ernie Klassen)

Mi análisis y aprecio por estos libros de cocina comienzan con el ensayo de 2005 de Matthew Bailey-Dick sobre “La cocina de todos los creyentes”, en el que argumentó que no hemos podido apreciar cómo las colecciones de recetas son más que artefactos culturales, históricos o sociológicos, sino que también pueden ser recursos útiles para la reflexión teológica. Algunas personas Menonitas en Estados Unidos y Canadá podemos ser pésimas anabautistas-podemos centrarnos tanto en cómo los libros de cocina tienen tradiciones étnicas culinarias particulares que no nos damos cuenta de que incluso un libro de cocina puede “ser testigo del Evangelio” y servir como “un compañero de misión para la obra de Dios en el mundo”. Bailey-Dick continúa identificando al menos ocho formas diferentes en que los libros de cocina Menonitas en Canadá y Estados Unidos comunican las fuerzas que dan forma a nuestra fe: la vida simple, globalización de las personas Menonitas, recordar el pasado, patrones de migración Menonita, roles de género, historia anabautista, aculturación y cooperación intermenonita.

Cuando se trata de los libros de cocina de la comunidad mundial, podría tratar cada uno de estos temas por separado. La idea misma de “más con menos” tiene sus raíces en la crisis alimentaria mundial y las expresiones de la vida simple de la década de 1970. Como organización, el CCM ha contribuido a la experiencia colectiva de globalización de las personas Menonitas, moldeó los patrones de migración Menonitas, sirvió como base organizativa para la justicia de género y figuramos prominentemente en el siglo pasado de la historia Ana bautista mientras hemos trabajado para integrar quiénes han sido las personas Menonitas y en quiénes nos estamos convirtiendo. En este artículo, sin embargo, prefiero mezclar estos temas en una especie de cóctel de fiesta sobre la teología de la paz. Es decir, cuando miro esta trilogía de libros de cocina, veo que todos estos temas contribuyen a una conversación más amplia sobre cómo vivimos como Menonitas anabautistas que buscan practicar y predicar el evangelio de la paz en la aldea global de un planeta que gime.

Algunas palabras sobre lo que quiero decir con “teología de la paz” están en orden. La teología de la paz es un enfoque para interpretar las escrituras cristianas, articular una cosmovisión religiosa y proclamar una forma de fe cristiana que se manifieste en un compromiso de renunciar a la violencia y seguir a Jesucristo, el Príncipe de Paz. La teología de la paz no es solo una cosa, ni tampoco hay solo una forma de teología de la paz Menonita. En 1989, por ejemplo, el CCM patrocinó un proyecto colaborativo de su Comité de Paz y Grupo de Trabajo de Teología Ecuménica de la Paz para describir los diversos tipos de pensamiento Menonita sobre la paz y explicar sus fundamentos teológicos. Con el objetivo de “buscar un consenso sobre una perspectiva que sería útil para el CCM”, como se esforzó por “articular [su] perspectiva en contextos ecuménicos/entre iglesias”, el proyecto produjo la modesta publicación impresa, Teología Menonita de la Paz: Un Panorama de Tipos, publicado por la Oficina de Paz del CCM en 1991. En 2005, el CCM inició otra ronda de este proyecto original, que culminó en una conferencia y libro titulado At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross. Al igual que el panorama anterior, esta conversación buscó resolver preguntas difíciles sobre la vida cristiana diaria y sobre qué sistemas ayudan a crear y mantener comunidades pacíficas. El equipo del proyecto propuso siete “líneas continuas de investigación”, la primera de las cuales fue un llamado para obtener más evidencia empírica: “Podríamos proponer otro proyecto que combine los métodos populares de Doris Janzen Longacre y los métodos académicos de Gene Sharp para reunir más ejemplos de “mejores prácticas” no violentas que contribuyen a la seguridad humana”. Menciono todo esto porque considero que Doris Janzen Longacre, editora y compiladora del libro original More-with-Less y su volumen complementario sobre la vida simple, Living More with Less, es una de las contribuyentes a la teología Menonita de la paz en el siglo XX menos elogiada.

En la década de 1970 el CCM estaba desafiando a sus constituyentes a comer y vivir de manera más simple al disminuir los presupuestos de alimentos del hogar en un diez por ciento. Este llamado a la acción provino del reconocimiento de que los patrones de consumo excesivo en Canadá y Estados Unidos estaban alimentando la injusticia global.

Si bien su capacitación formal fue dietética, el enfoque de Longacre en su trabajo en la Oficina de Asuntos de Alimentación y Hambre del CCM también fue pastoral. En la década de 1970, el CCM estaba desafiando a sus constituyentes a comer y vivir de manera más simple al disminuir los presupuestos de alimentos del hogar en un diez por ciento. Este llamado a la acción provino del reconocimiento de que los patrones de consumo excesivo en Canadá y Estados Unidos estaban alimentando la injusticia global. Longacre se enfrentó a la “sagrada frustración” de querer recortar pero no saber por dónde comenzar, y en ese enfrentamiento surgió un descubrimiento: es posible que desperdiciar, comer y gastar menos realmente nos dé más. En las páginas iniciales de More-with-Less Longacre describe a los Menonitas (blancos) en EE.UU. y Canadá como buenos cocineros que se preocupan por el hambre del mundo, convirtiendo hábilmente un lugar social en uno teológico y ético: “Estamos buscando formas de vivir de manera más simple y alegre, formas que surjan de nuestra tradición pero que se formen a partir de la fe viva y las demandas de nuestro mundo hambriento”. La seguridad alimentaria y la soberanía alimentaria son cuestiones que la teología de la paz debe abordar. El evangelio cristiano, encontrado a través de los libros de Cocina de la Comunidad Mundial, es un mensaje de bienestar encontrado a través de la interdependencia.

A través de More-with-Less y Living More with Less, Longacre identificó formas de saber, ser y hacer que nos ayudan a ver y hacer conexiones entre nuestras vidas, las comunidades de todo el mundo, el mundo natural que necesita tanto nuestro respeto y ternura y el llamado de Dios a la justicia y a las vidas no conformadas que también son vidas de libertad. More-with-Less invita a aquellas personas en el Norte global que son ricas a mirar hacia adentro y hacer preguntas como: “¿Cómo puede mi comunidad redimensionar su huella ecológica para que podamos vivir más libremente?”. En Extending the Table, mientras tanto, volvemos nuestra mirada hacia el mundo, pero con una nueva conciencia de que el mundo de Dios está lleno de recursos. El hecho de que las personas ricas dan a las pobres no es justicia. Se hace justicia cuando las personas ricas y las pobres comparten lo que tienen entre sí. Finalmente, Simply in Season reúne lo externo y lo interno porque la invitación a comer local y estacionalmente se trata de obtener una mejor comprensión de los ritmos y estaciones de los lugares donde vivimos y las complejidades del sistema alimentario global en los lugares donde compramos. De hecho, la coeditora de Simply in Season Cathleen Hockman-Wert nos insta a pensar en comer y comprar comida como disciplinas espirituales porque el primer regalo de Dios para todas las criaturas de la Tierra es la comida y no todas las comidas son moralmente neutrales. Cada vez que recurro a este trío de libros de cocina, algo que hago semanalmente como parte de mi propia práctica espiritual de preparar comidas para mi familia y amistades, estoy muy agradecida de estar despierta y viva ante los desafíos de vivir más con menos.

Malinda Elizabeth Berry es profesora asociada de teología y ética en el Seminario Bíblico Menonita Anabautista en Elkhart, Indiana.

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Aprende más

Bailey-Dick, Matthew. “The Kitchenhood of all Believers: A Journey into the Discourse of Mennonite Cookbooks.” Mennonite Quarterly Review. 79/2 (April 2005): 153-1 78.

Burkholder, John Richard and Barbara Nelson Gingerich. Mennonite Peace Theology: A Panorama of Types. Akron, PA: MCC Peace Office, 1991. Disponible en: https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/sites/ca.grebel/files/uploads/files/Panorama-of-Types.pdf.

Friesen, Duane K. and Gerald W. Schlabach. Eds. At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security and the Wisdom of the Cross. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2005.

Longacre, Doris Janzen. Living More with Less. 30th anniversary edition. Scottdale, PA, 2010. More-with-Less Cookbook. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2000.

Hockman-Wert, Cathleen. “Preaching the Good News with Our Mouths Full.” Vision: A Journal far Church and Theology. 9/1 (Spring 2008): 69-75.

Lind, Mary Beth and Cathleen Hockman-Wert. Simply in Season. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2005. Schlabach, Joetta Handrich. Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1991.

Simple living, peace theology and MCC’s World Community Cookbooks

[Individual articles from the Spring 2020 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog each week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.]

A decade ago, as MCC turned ninety, I had the opportunity to reflect on the importance of MCC cookbooks within MCC’s institutional story and the impact of those cookbooks on all kinds of communities around the world. I was surprised by how deep my reflection took me and how much of my identity as a Christian is connected to the World Community Cookbooks trilogy: More-with-Less Cookbook, Extending the Table and Simply in Season.

My analysis and appreciation for these cookbooks begin with Matthew Bailey-Dick’s 2005 essay on “The Kitchenhood of All Believers,” in which he argued that we have failed to appreciate how collections of recipes are more than cultural, historical or sociological artifacts, but can also be useful resources for theological reflection. Some of us Mennonites in the U.S. and Canada can be lousy Anabaptists—we can get so focused on how cookbooks carry on particular culinary ethnic traditions that we fail to notice that even a cookbook can “stand as a witness to the Gospel” and serve as “a mission partner for God’s work in the world.” Bailey-Dick goes on to identify at least eight different ways Mennonite cookbooks in Canada and the U.S. communicate the forces that shape our faith: simple living, the globalization of Mennonites, remembering the past, Mennonite migration patterns, gender roles, Anabaptist history, acculturation and inter-Mennonite cooperation.

Doris Janzen Longacre and her daughter Cara Sue Longacre demonstrate preparing a dish at a seminar in 1976. Janzen Longacre’s More-with-Less Cookbook was first published in 1976 and quickly embraced not only for simple, nourishing recipes but also for its inspiring emphasis on sharing resources and choosing to live with less. (MCC photo/Ernie Klassen)

When it comes to the World Community Cookbooks, I could treat each of these themes separately. The very idea of “more-with-less” has its roots in the world food crisis and expressions of simple living of the 1970s. As an organization, MCC has contributed to Mennonites’ collective experience of globalization, shaped Mennonite migration patterns, served as an organizing base for gender justice and figured prominently in the last century of Anabaptist history as we have worked to integrate who Mennonites have been and who we are becoming. In this article, however, I prefer to mix these themes together into a kind of peace theology party mix. That is, when I look at this trilogy of cookbooks, I see all these themes contributing to a larger conversation about how we live as Anabaptist Mennonites seeking to practice and preach the gospel of peace in the global village of a groaning planet.

A few words about what I mean by “peace theology” are in order. Peace theology is an approach to interpreting Christian scripture, articulating a religious worldview and proclaiming a form of Christian faith that manifests in a commitment to renounce violence and follow Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Peace theology is not one thing, nor is there one form of Mennonite peace theology. In 1989, for example, MCC sponsored a collaborative project of its Peace Committee and Ecumenical Peace Theology Working Group to describe the various types of Mennonite thinking about peace and explicate their theological foundations. With a goal “to seek a consensus on a perspective that would be useful to MCC” as it strove to “articulate [its] perspective in interchurch/ecumenical contexts,” the project produced the modest print publication, Mennonite Peace Theology: A Panorama of Types, published by MCC’s Peace Office in 1991. In 2005, MCC initiated another round of this original project, culminating in a conference and book entitled At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross. Like the earlier panorama, this conversation sought to sort through difficult questions about daily Christian living and about what systems help create and maintain peaceable communities. The project team proposed seven “continuing lines of inquiry,” the first of which was a call for more empirical evidence: “We could use a further project combining the folk methods of Doris Janzen Longacre and the scholarly methods of Gene Sharp to gather more examples of nonviolent ‘best practices’ that are contributing to human security.” I mention all of this because I consider Doris Janzen Longacre, editor and compiler of the original More-with-Less cookbook and its companion volume on simple living, Living More with Less, to be one of the insufficiently praised contributors to Mennonite peace theology in the twentieth century.

While her formal training was dietetics, Longacre’s approach to her work staffing MCC’s Food and Hunger Concerns Desk was also pastoral. In the 1970s, MCC was challenging its constituents to eat and live more simply by decreasing household food budgets by ten percent. This call to action came from the recognition that patterns of overconsumption in Canada and the U.S. were feeding global injustice. Longacre grappled with the “holy frustration” of wanting to cut back but not knowing where to begin, and in that grappling emerged with a discovery: it is possible that wasting, eating and spending less actually gives us more. In the opening pages of More-with-Less, Longacre describes (white) Mennonites in the U.S. and Canada as good cooks who care about the world’s hungry, deftly turning a social location into a theological and ethical one: “We are looking for ways to live more simply and joyfully, ways that grow out of our tradition but take their shape from living faith and the demands of our hungry world.” Food security and food sovereignty are indeed matters to which peace theology must attend. The Christian gospel, encountered through the World Community Cookbooks, is a message of well-being found through interdependence.

In the 1970s, MCC was challenging its constituents to eat and live more simply by decreasing household food budgets by ten percent. This call to action came from the recognition that patterns of overconsumption in Canada and the U.S. were feeding global injustice.

Through More-with-Less and Living More with Less, Longacre identified ways of knowing, being and doing that help us see and make connections among our lives, communities around the world, the natural world that needs both our respect and tenderness and God’s calls for justice and for nonconformed lives that are also lives of freedom. More-with-Less invites those in the global North who are affluent to turn our gazes inward and ask questions like: “How can my community resize its ecological footprint so that we can live more freely?” Extending the Table, meanwhile, turns our gaze back out at the world, but with a new awareness that God’s world is full of resources. The rich giving to the poor is not justice. Justice is done when the rich and poor share what they have with each other. Finally, Simply in Season brings the outward and inward together because the invitation to eat locally and seasonally is about gaining a better understanding of both the rhythms and seasons of the places where we live and the complexities of the global food system in the places where we shop. Indeed, Simply in Season co-editor Cathleen Hockman-Wert urges us to think of eating and shopping for food as spiritual disciplines because God’s first gift to all Earth’s creatures is that of food and not all foods are morally neutral. Whenever I turn to this trio of cookbooks, something I do weekly as part of my own spiritual practice of preparing meals for my family and friends, I do so grateful that I am awake and alive to the challenges of living more with less.

Malinda Elizabeth Berry is associate professor of theology and ethics at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana.

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Learn more

Bailey-Dick, Matthew. “The Kitchenhood of all Believers: A Journey into the Discourse
of Mennonite Cookbooks.” Mennonite Quarterly Review. 79/2 (April 2005): 153–178.

Burkholder, John Richard and Barbara Nelson Gingerich. Mennonite Peace Theology:
A Panorama of Types. Akron, PA: MCC Peace Office, 1991. Available at https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/sites/ca.grebel/files/uploads/files/Panorama-of-Types.pdf.

Friesen, Duane K. and Gerald W. Schlabach. Eds. At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security and the Wisdom of the Cross. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2005.

Longacre, Doris Janzen. Living More with Less. 30th anniversary edition. Scottdale, PA, 2010.

More-with-Less Cookbook. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2000.

Hockman-Wert, Cathleen. “Preaching the Good News with Our Mouths Full.” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology. 9/1 (Spring 2008): 69–75.

Lind, Mary Beth and Cathleen Hockman-Wert. Simply in Season. Scottdale, PA: Herald
Press, 2005.

Schlabach, Joetta Handrich. Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1991.