At the women’s conference in February, the importance of talking in person about complex and personal issues struck me in a new way. Close to 200 women gathered at the All You Need is Love: Honoring the Diversity of Women’s Voices in Theology conference in Leesburg, Va., Feb. 20-22. Several powerful themes emerged: women’s bodies, self-love, and racial and sexual identity …
On my first day at my new job, my husband and I were hustling to get out the door, since we were also going to do the dance of car sharing so that we could get our state inspections taken care of. Wrangling two small children, winter gear and the bags of stuff I was taking in to my office had pushed us about 10 minutes behind my schedule …
There is something to be said about leaders and how they deal with stressful situations. Anyone can lead during times of peace, but it is trial by fire that often shows us what type of people we are …
The internet was alive for weeks with discussion about Millennials leaving the church, Millennials’ desire to change the church and Millennials’ effect on the church. The conversation, begun by Rachel Held Evans at CNN’s Belief Blog, inspired hundreds of blog posts and untold hours of handwringing about culture, Christianity and our life together as people of faith …
Cleopas and another disciple are walking the long road from Jerusalem to Emmaus when a stranger interrupts their sullen conversation with a question: “What are you discussing?” …
Violence is part of everyone’s everyday life in Brazil, even though certain groups are disproportionally more affected. For instance, the homicide rate of blacks is twice as high as that of whites. Two well-known movies show how violence is commonplace for all—City of God and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within …
On the morning of May 27, 1918, my grandfather James Hostetler of Baltic, Ohio, joined dozens of other young men on a train bound for Camp Sherman, a military training facility at Chillicothe, Ohio …
How do you save a conference from destroying itself? We are facing potentially grim times in the Mennonite church in the second decade of the 21st century. Homosexuality and church process, once thought to be dealt with, is rearing its head again in mystifying ways, with dust kicked up from both progressive and traditional camps …
The book of the Revelation to John has with good reason been called the most revealing book of the Bible. Its message is a call to relentless persistence in the work of witnessing to God’s way to run the world, which was lived and taught by Jesus. And it is an ear-splitting proclamation that the ways of greed, consumption and homicidal violence will fail miserably, while those who practice love and generosity will endure forever.
We live in a culture that glorifies war and violence. We are taught—paradoxically—that this is the way to peace. How do we, as followers of Jesus, who taught us instead to love our enemies, question this assumption? How do we offer other ways to go about bringing change in our world, ways that build up rather than destroy? As Christians we need to live into and tell another story, one that we know is life-giving, right and true …
