…while I am operating with the happy assumption that the people gathered here are eager to participate in God’s ongoing new creation activity in the world, I do want to issue a warning that such participation is extremely difficult and demanding.

Gene Stoltzfus (1940-2010) was the Director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) from its founding in 1988 until 2004. He was married to Dorothy Friesen of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. They lived in Chicago for 25 years until his retirement to Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada.

We are so busy congratulating ourselves for moving into poor neighborhoods, for practicing alternative modes of hospitality, for growing our own food and for living simply that we have lost track of the fact that we’re not really making any significant difference.

No too long ago, a leader from a large, suburban faith community – one for which I have great respect – told me that they don’t discuss politics in his church. Its not allowed in the pulpit, he said, and the people who plan worship are very purposeful to avoid anything that might sound “political.”
On [...]

I’m thoroughly biased but I think everyone should read Sara Miles new book Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead.  My bias is not just grounded in our shared love for the theology of  James Alison and William Cavanaugh. It’s less cerebral and more intuitive. My bias has something to do with the tears that have rolled [...]

Now after all of the fancy words were spoken and the lofty ideas were batted around, came the actual work of doing these things.

Andrew Stack was right to call for revolt. And, it isn’t altogether wrong-headed to believe that violence is the answer. After all, unjust systems don’t really change from internal “tweaking;” revolutionary action is required. And conventional wisdom holds that violence is a necessary part of revolt.

Goshen College president, Jim Brenneman, recently announced that the Mennonite college will begin to play the National Anthem at their sporting events. The move to overturn 114 years of resistance to the war song came in response to local pressure and press after 300 people — mostly non-Mennonites — contacted the school after hearing about [...]

“They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars… What do they know that we’ve forgotten?”
This is an excerpt from the beginning of a National Geographic article on the Hadza, a small hunter-gatherer tribe in northern Tanzania.  Reading this challenged the usual assumptions I’ve had celebrating civilization.  As I read about [...]

One of the benefits of reading a wide spread of news sources is that very different publications seem to talk to each other. I found myself in the midst of an unintentional dialogue between Christianity Today and Dissident Voice a week or two ago, as they wrestled with some of the less comfortable implications of widespread adoption. This [...]

C.R.E.A.T.E. is a new intentional community launching in Boston Massachusetts. Specifically, we will be serving in Mattapan, a neighborhood on Boston’s southern edge. In this section of Boston, about a third of the residents fall below the poverty line, there are over 5,000 single parent households. Regardless of the fact [...]

“The true Church
is to be married to
the dignity of the poor
this is the true Church”

I’m a foodie. I love the artistic challenge of whipping up a complicated-to-make dish that tastes deceptively simple. I seldom meet an ingredient I don’t love. In early 21st Century America, it is easy to be a foodie. Whenever I walk into the grocery store, even in the middle of a Minnesota winter, I can [...]

This boy is a little embryo who is destined to offer the world a fresh alternative to suicidal systems and seductive power structures.

Today, according to some accounts, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The Holy Innocents are those boys under the age of two who Herod (out of fear of coming King of the Jews) killed in Bethlehem. Many traditions regard these masacred children to be the first martyrs, for they (in a very literal sense) [...]

Traditional kingship (with absolute power, hoards of wealth, and power over the weak) has nothing to do Jesus; it’s something Jesus rejected (John 6:15). Traditional kings demand allegiance and servitude, but Jesus is about liberation—from suffering, sickness and death, exclusion, persecution, and our own sin. Jesus is a “king” who serves the “least of these”, [...]

This is called MY introduction rather than AN introduction due to the fact that everyone is unique and has their own take on these ideas. It would be misleading to assume that I could posit an introduction to these ideas that would be collective, embodying the thoughts of all people dealing with these issues, and [...]

I am the happy father of a happy toddler. Part of my job description is to shield little Jonas from the dark things of this world. Later on, I’ll have to figure out how to explain to him things like war, poison ivy, pedophiles, drugs, bullies, etc.  Since I’m new to this whole parenting thing, [...]