Nancy Kauffmann is a denominational minister for Mennonite Church USA. This post first appeared on Mennonite Church USA's Menno Snapshots blog. “Significant events create markers—or signs—in
In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” That comment resurfaced after riots by African-Americans in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore in the past two years. Deaths of young African-American men at the hands of police officers precipitated the riots.
The discussion in Mennonite Church USA about LGBTQ people in the life of the church seems not to welcome the conservative voice. Although many parts of the denomination still are largely represented by the conservative voice and exclude LGBTQ people, the MC USA convention last summer in Kansas City, Mo., represented a dramatic and recent shift.
Though we desire peace and justice to prevail in the region holy to the faiths of Abraham and find the injustices that happen there abhorrent, we believe the “Resolution on Israel/Palestine,” tabled at the Mennonite Church USA convention at Kansas City this summer, is counterproductive to the cause of peace.
