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 its refusal to play the anthem on a national talk show. Several local newspapers had also criticized Goshen’s position, citing that other Mennonite colleges including Bethel College, in North Newton, Kan., and Bluffton University in Bluffton, Ohio, play the Star-Spangled Banner.

After the flurry of public attention, Goshen College set up a committee to deal with the issue while Brenneman halfheartedly defended the college in a public letter, saying:

Our practice of not playing the national anthem at our sporting events has been a practice of the college since its inception 114 years ago rooted in the nearly 500-year-old confessions of faith of the Mennonite heritage and in the simple New Testament expressions, “Jesus is Lord” and “God so loved the world.” Such an expansive reign and love includes a deep love for our own country, to be sure, but also for the whole world.

Yet his strong words defending their abstention in one paragraph were quickly subverted as he assured readers that Mennonites are just as patriotic as anybody else.

I believe all of us who are citizens of the United States love and honor our country profoundly and are grateful for the blessings of U.S. citizenship. We fly the U.S. flag on campus, annually read the Constitution, honor the Fourth of July as a national holiday by not working, pray for our leaders, and, many of us vote. Some of us pledge allegiance to the flag, sing the national anthem and are veterans of war. Others choose to be conscientious objectors to war, stand silently when the flag is saluted and choose not to sing the national anthem. In honoring the differences, we honor the best of our country.

So it should come as no surprise that in February 2010, the college demonstrated its real feelings about the 500-year old Anabaptist tradition of nonconformity when they publicly announced that they will not only play an instrumental version of the national anthem at some sporting events, they will also muddy the theological waters further by praying afterward. To make matters worse, the statement frames the act of cowardice in terms of an exciting new adventure in peacemaking: “Playing the anthem offers a welcoming gesture to many visiting our athletic events, rather than an immediate barrier to further opportunities for getting to know one another.”

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I recently finished reading John Howard Yoder’s latest book The War of the Lamb. I sent a full review to Mennonite Quarterly Review, which will come out later this year. This is perhaps Yoder’s best book to date because of the way in which Yoder ties nonviolent peacemaking completely to Jesus and theological analysis. For Yoder, theology is ethics, and ethics is theology (he learned this from his teacher Karl Barth). The publishers chose to write a bizarre claim on the back of the book that states Yoder believed that just war and pacifism were “basically compatible.” This contradicts Yoder’s own words in the book, which could not more clearly reject just war.

I don’t dialogue with the just war tradition because I think it is credible, but because it is the language that people, who I believe bear the image of God, abuse to authorize themselves to destroy other bearers of that image (116).

Yoder rejects it because it does not conform to the reality of the cross. He makes his strongest case yet that Jesus has changed reality, and it is those who work against the grain of the universe and resort to violence and war, who live in unreality. I highly recommend this book.

Get ready folks–this year’s 8th annual anarchism and Christianity conference will be heading to Portland, Ore. on August 6th and 7th. Currently, we are in the beginning stages of the planning process. However, thanks to the work of the co-hosting community, many of the on-the-ground logistics have already begun to come together. We’ll be adding more info to the site over the course of the next seven months. So circle the dates and stay tuned!

Two interviews with Dorothy Day, one on the Christopher Closeup Show and one with Hubert Jesse, have recently been added to YouTube. In the interviews, Dorothy discusses the origins of the Catholic Worker movement, shares her theology on war and nonviolence, and talks about the Christian call to the works of mercy, among several other topics.

Visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMHud0fFUg to start viewing.

If you’re near Grand Rapids, Mich. on January 22-23 and want to start the new calendar year off with a new outlook drop by Calvin College for the annual Wake Up Weekend for nonhuman animal awareness and advocacy.

This year, the featured guest will be Vegan Soul Kitchen eco-chef and bestselling cookbook author Bryant Terry. Other speakers include überActivist Paul Shapiro (Humane Society) who will discuss recent animal protection legislation and the generous and spirited Harold Brown (Farm Kind) who will share about veganic agriculture. More speakers are expected in addition to the vegan eats, art displays and the ever popular vegan chili cook-off. For a full schedule, keep your eyes peeled on the extraVEGANza Web site: http://g-rad.org/vegan/

As a vegetarian and staunch non-vegan, I went to Wake Up Weekend three-years ago as a hard-core skeptic and left as a convert. Listening to passionate presenters Christian and non-, meeting (*gasp*) healthy, happy committed vegans who could articulate their positions well, and most of all seeing with eyes wide open the plight of God’s creatures who we destroy for consumption was one of the most transforming (spiritually, mentally, practically, etc) things I have done. If you are a vegetarian who isn’t sure what the big deal is with “those vegans,” or a “meat”-eater who is open-minded enough for a challenge, or a convinced ethical vegan who wants to meet new people, deepen your knowledge or get some kick-ass new recipes, I highly recommend checking out this event if you can.

We’re happy to report that we have video recordings from the anarchism and Christianity conference to share—and they are free. Thanks to videographer and producer Ljuba Miltsova (Cation Productions), you can see this year’s presentations by Layla AbdelRahim (“A Lullaby for the Planet: Undressing Ourselves for a Viable Parenthood”) and John Zerzan (“Anarcho-Primitivism versus a Darkening Reality”). Ewuare Osayande’s session on “Jesus & the Money Changers: Rioting Against the Economic Crisis” will also be posted soon.

Although the videos are available for no charge, we are asking folks to consider making a “free-will offering” toward the project and the conference. Half the funds will be given to Ljuba in gratitude for all her hard work over the past five months, and the other half will go toward next year’s event. To give a gift or to inquire about DVDs of the sessions, visit the conference video area.

In addition to the videos, the Anarchism and Christianity Primer MP3 is also available as a free-for-all download. Thanks to Jonas for the idea.

Update 1/3: Ewuare’s video has been added.

Thanks be to God for coming to us and being with us in the incarnation of Jesus! We hope that your Advent and Christmas seasons have been filled with as much resistance to consumerism and unnecessary waste as you can muster, and a renewed focus on reclaiming the true reason we celebrate in these days. Thanks to each of you for your support of Jesus Radicals throughout the year(s) as we continue our efforts to nurture conversation about Christian faith and anarchist politics.

Police in riot gear brandishing pepper-spray. Protesters arrested without provocation. Handcuffed bodies sitting on cold concrete streets. Physical abuse on caged human beings. Deliberate humiliation and the denial of so-called “basic rights.”

These are the kinds of mementos thousands of eco-activists will take home after vigorously protesting the failed Cop-enhagen talks on what I like to call climate chaos. As I read the first-hand account of police abuses by Tomas Lundström, I couldn’t help but think of the similarities between his experience and my experience protesting the Iraq war in New York City. If anything, reading his and other stories from the protests just reinforced my view that all police–whether they are notorious NYPD officers or seemingly civilized Danes–will use uninhibited violence to protect the established order if given the opportunity and authorization to do so. Furthermore, they will engage in this brutality even if the order they strive to protect is ultimately detrimental to their own self interest. Read the rest of this entry »

Late last week, an alert on the Catholic Worker e-list caught my attention. The subject line of “War on homeless accelerated in Memphis” grabbed my attention by itself, but given that we just had the annual Jesus Radicals conference in that city, I was even more intrigued. I was sad to read the following message, but glad to see that the Memphis Catholic Worker is doing what they can to challenge this kind of blatant injustice.

Yesterday (Dec. 3) Memphis police began handing out little business sized cards to homeless persons telling them to go to a particular “service provider” for help to get off the streets. Few went rightly fearing it was a set up. At the same time, the police told homeless people that starting next Wednesday, Dec. 9th, they would arrest anyone found sleeping outside or in abandoned buildings, confiscate their belongings and take them to jail. All of this in a city with NO free shelter, NO city run shelter at all, widespread destruction of public housing, and a severe lack of other services for homeless persons to help them get off the streets…

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I wrote this reflection (sans a few minor edits) and tacked it onto my bulletin board at work shortly before Thanksgiving in 2008. It was later posted over at the Young Anabaptist Radicals site.

Thanksgiving makes me nervous.

For years, I’ve gotten a sinking feeling in my stomach as the month of November draws to a close and this day looms. On the one hand, Thanksgiving is about joy and gratitude. It is a time when I travel to see family and friends, welcome a few days of rest and look forward to the holiday season. In my mind, I know it is a good thing to have a day where the sole emphasis is to give thanks to God for all God has done. I also appreciate the opportunity to celebrate all that my loved ones do and are to one another.

And yet Thanksgiving reminds me of a beautiful but altogether itchy sweater. Sure it looks good in my closet. It is slimming, well-made, gorgeous color—everything you could hope for in a sweater. But if I put it on I’m guaranteed to spend the whole day tugging, scratching and feeling downright uncomfortable. Try as I might, I can’t shake that weird feeling about that good ole holiday. It gets to the point where weeks in advance I’m trying to come up with other things to say besides “Happy Thanksgiving.” And since “Happy Day Off” doesn’t cut it I go ahead and mutter the greeting anyway, wheels still turning for a suitable substitute.
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