MWR : Articles : Letters

Articles : Letters

May 13 issue

Close Guantanamo

A prison-wide hunger strike at Guantanamo is now entering its third month, and many prisoners are suffering severe weight loss. Eighty-six of the 166 men at the prison have been declared innocent and were cleared for release in 2009 by an interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force established by the president. In fact, more than 160 men who have never been charged with any offense, much less convicted of a war crime, remain at Guantanamo with no end in sight.
Example of relativism

The April 15 editorial, “The Right to Marry,” seems like a clear illustration of relativism. The editorial seems to be saying that if one espouses secular law and supports same-sex couples’ right to marry, or if one expresses moral disapproval of this, it’s all OK and a matter of one’s own truth — after all, we need to think progressively, which is, in our culture, inevitable.
Study the ‘old’

Our church librarian asked if the “New” New Testament should be ordered for the library (“Scholars Piece Together a ‘New’ New Testament,” April 15). I said, no, we haven’t done the New Testament yet.

April 29 issue

Same-sex marriage

One of the most controversial evidences that Jesus was the Messiah was when he created eyes for the man born blind. In contrast, in these last days, with the pressure to accept same-sex marriage and all its ramifications, we are being instructed to walk in darkness and be blind.
Self-inflicted loss

Long ago I made a promise to myself that in the year I turned 80 I would write a letter expressing my disappointment that my church is not able to connect with the gay and lesbian children of close family friends. This is my year to write the letter.
Women in ministry

The April 1 MWR refers to “the first ordination of a Mennonite woman pastor 40 years ago.” Such statements suggest that events like this are radical departures from historic Christian thought. To the contrary, Janette Hassey’s 1986 book, No Time for Silence: Evangelical Women in Public Ministry Around the Turn of the Century, documents how numerous evangelical institutions, such as Moody Bible Institute, in their early histories, encouraged women to pastor churches. Elizabeth Foth (1884-1975), an early student at MBI and Biola, was a well-known preacher with roots in Grace Hill Mennonite Church of Whitewater, Kan. In reference to Mennonites, Hassey writes, “Women involved at Hesston in the early decades reportedly preached, taught Bible, pastored churches, and received ordination.” Ann Jemima Allebach was ordained a minister by American Mennonites as early as 1911. In the same year, Anna Zernike was ordained in a Dutch Mennonite church she pastored. The GAMEO online Mennonite encyclopedia states that, after 1917, 25 percent of ordained Mennonite ministers in the Netherlands were women. I recently came across an 1897-1908 Annual Conference Minute Book of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church indicating that women were ministers in that group. This openness may date to early Anabaptism. Martyrs Mirror chronicles the lives of some women with “elder” or “minister” designations.

April 15 issue

No immigrant voices

“Churches Question Whether, When to Break Law” (April 1) strikes me as disappointing and strange. The piece disappointingly includes quotations from four Anglos and none from immigrants. I don’t understand why Mennonite Church USA would write a story about how a largely Anglo church is having a difficult time discerning whether to break the law instead of asking immigrants how immigration reform would impact them and what they’re doing in anticipation of potential reform this summer. Immigration reform is not about Anglos. I’m most interested in hearing how immigration reform (or lack thereof) would impact immigrants, their families, their churches and their communities.
No solid rock?

In the March 18 MWR, I checked the Mosaic column to see what Anabaptists are teaching. One writer said we should read the Bible as a story rather than a rule book, which led to his endorsement of “full church membership and participation [for] people in committed same-sex relationships.” Another said reading the Bible “leads to the inability to rest at peace with any stand on any issue.”
Not a biblical ethic

I am responding to “Churches Take Stand of Welcome” (March 18), which reports on Mennonite congregations that accept practicing homosexuals for church membership. A statement from Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., is quoted: “Most members now are open to applying Christian sexual ethics regarding celibacy and fidelity to single persons and couples, regardless of sexual orientation.” How about applying biblical standards regarding celibacy to singles and fidelity to married couples? Scripture simply does not support Christians practicing the homosexual lifestyle or same-sex marriage. I am stunned that members at Community suggest Christian ethics would supercede biblical standards.

April 1 issue

Factions dangerous

It is with great concern that I read of Community Mennonite Church of Harrisonburg, Va., (“Churches Take Stand of Welcome”) breaking with the long-held stance on homosexual practice by accepting “practicing” homosexuals in a way that may appear to approve such practices as acceptable to God. I think this is both a seemingly compassionate move toward inclusiveness and a dangerously deceptive way of corrupting the church into becoming like the world. It seems Satan is pushing the church (not just Mennonite) into two factions with the hope of destroying it through a conflict between self-righteous truth-telling disguised in hatred and those who swing too far on the side of “if the world says it’s OK, maybe the Bible is wrong.” The fight between righteous indignation and compassionate blindness is growing so emotionally violent that it soon will suffocate all those within its path.