Gerald Mast’s letter (“Merging, then dividing,” October) deserves a few additional comments. First, he is right to point out that ending up with (at least) four Mennonite denominations in the U.S. and Canada rather than one “is a perfect example of the unintended consequences of policy changes.”   

That is true: We sit down all the time to a banquet of unintended consequences of our intentional actions, personal and collective. But the larger point is that these backfiring merger results should not have been unanticipated, had we listened to voices urging caution based on the experiences of other denominations.   

Second, his statement that “already in the adopted merger we conceded to move from two denominations (Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church) to two denominations (Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada)” is inaccurate: In the 1990s the decision to merge two denominations into one predated by at least four years any formal discussion or decision to create two national denominations.  

The 2002 creation of MC USA was the cobbled-together response to a Canadian withdrawal from what was intended to be one binational Mennonite denomination — which is what those in the U.S. who backed the merger, even with some reservations, thought they were approving. Going from two to one, OK; going from two to two, what’s the point? And now going from two to four, maybe even five? Our cobbling has come undone.

J Robert Charles, Brooklyn, N.Y.