Violence has devastated Meserete Kristos Church (MKC), the Mennonite body in Ethiopia. As of February 12, armed groups had burned 49 MKC churches to the ground, looted and damaged another 81 churches, and killed 1,231 MKC members, including 31 church leaders. Inter-tribal violence in western Oromiya regional state, home to nearly one third of MKC members, has displaced an estimated 80,000 people. The fighting is between different tribal groups. In a February 12 memo to Mennonite Church Canada, MKC leaders shared this news and urgently requested prayer. Over 150 pastors have had their homes an ..read more

It has been more than eight years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report, including 94 Calls to Action that various levels of government and religious communities committed themselves to implementing. Indigenouswatchdog.org is one of the sources I turn to for a thorough and current assessment of the implementation of the Calls. As of March 1, 2024, they report 13 Calls to Action as completed, 47 “in progress,” 19 “stalled” and 15 “not yet started.” When the topic of conversation surrounding Indigenous relations is on the Calls to Action, I have heard individua ..read more

I remember it like it was yesterday. I clutched the oversized cup of bubbly liquid in my hands. The room was dark, and I navigated the stairs frightfully. We were late. I was with my brother, sister and dad. We fumbled our way to our seats. I sat down just in time to glance up as the big blue letters appeared. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….” Then that iconic theme came blasting through the theatre, the title card STAR WARS came into focus and I was in—transported to another universe as picture and sound did exactly what ..read more

I’ve been writing this column for four-and-a-half years, and I’m sure I’ve used the same ideas more than once. In this, my last column, I return to the two core ideas that I get passionate about the most often. There is plenty of danger in a single story, and yet my story is not dissimilar to many others. All my grandparents, and those of my husband, came to Canada as immigrants and refugees who didn’t know English. Our grandparents lived in communities that included many people with the same ethnic heritage, sticking together for church participation and their primary social community. Immig ..read more

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Grace has increasingly become my lens for reading both scripture and other people. I have come to think grace—the wildly undeserved favour dispensed by God—is the most important feature of the gospel. Grace helps me ponder alternative understandings of biblical stories. It reminds me that I may not know someone else’s reasoning or the experiences that map the world they navigate. That is why we need to listen to as many diverse voices as we can. This is my last column for Canadian Mennonite. It has been a wonderful several years, longer than I expected. There will be new writers. Seeing the w ..read more

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I was sitting on Dave Scott’s porch on the Swan Lake First Nation a few years back when he started talking about a handshake treaty between his Ojibwe ancestors and Mennonites. I had never heard of this. Later, I discovered no Mennonite historians had either. Last year, a group of southern Manitoba Mennonites went to Swan Lake, located 160 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, for an afternoon to hear Dave—an historian, language expert and unofficial ambassador—tell the story in more detail. Our latest feature flows from those conversations. The story captures a moment of possibility and neighbou ..read more

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