HALLE, Germany — Eastern Mennonite Missions workers here say refugees need Jesus more than clean bedsheets, but they want to give them both. As Germany deals with Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, EMM workers in Halle have joined in the emergency relief efforts.
Unity and division crossed paths in Pennsylvania this summer as Harrisburg hosted the Mennonite World Conference assembly and Lancaster Mennonite Conference moved to leave Mennonite Church USA. Word of Lancaster’s proposed withdrawal spread during MWC’s weeklong celebration of global fellowship. The timing heightened the sense of contrast between Anabaptists drawing closer across national borders and splitting apart within one of them.
Consecutive issues of MWR carried opinion pieces speaking negatively of the nonviolent movement to oppose Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory. “Resolution on Mideast Harms Efforts for Peace for All Faiths” (Oct. 26) equates last summer’s Mennonite Church USA resolution on Israel-Palestine with the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement and calls it “counterproductive” to the cause of peace. The piece never uses the word “occupation.” In “Pray for Peace of Jerusalem” (Nov. 9), J. Nelson Kraybill encourages us to be “agents of healing” rather than participants in “coercive boycotts.”
The Mennonite Church USA Executive Board staff cabinet has called together a panel to continue the work of healing and prevention of sexual abuse within the denomination. The panel’s formation is a response to the Churchwide Statement on Sexual Abuse passed this summer by the delegate assembly at the MC USA convention in Kansas City, Mo.
