As you may know, Jesus Radicals has a podcast–the Iconocast. For about two years, we’ve interviewed a wide array of guests. We don’t always interview Christians or anarchists. Rather, we interview those who we believe have some wisdom to share for those who are exploring the intersection of Christianity and anarchism.

One of the things we enjoy about doing the podcast is that it is a collaborative effort. We have a number of co-hosts (including the occasional guest host), a couple producers, and a sound engineer. Each episode of the podcast requires over ten hours a week in-studio, recording, editing, and engineering the podcasts. This doesn’t include any of the time involved setting up or preparing for interviews. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. But we’re proud of our work. We know, based upon the responses we get, that folks deeply appreciate what we’re trying to do with the Iconocast. And we’d like to continue providing quality interviews and even go further.

However, we’re struggling to do that. For a while, we’ve been including a request for donations with each episode. However, very little has come in. I get that; podcasts are abundant and free on the web.

But the Iconocast is unique. In order to put it all together, we’ve had to rely heavily upon Orrin Pratt (from Sangha Studios). Orrin has committed hundreds of hours in his studio, working to make the Iconocast great. And he’s also helped with videography for the most recent Jesus Radicals conference. He has done this without compensation, even though this is his trade. And we think that needs to change. He is a worker, and workers are worthy of their wages.

And so, here’s what we’re going to do. You can still download the podcasts for free if you want. But we’re changing things a bit so that it is easier to donate. For each archived podcast, you will be asked to donate before donating each podcast. There is a suggested download of 99¢ for each episode, but you are free to edit the price to as low (even to zero) or as high as you’d like. This won’t interfere with regular podcast subscriptions. And you will still be able to listen to the most recent podcasts in-browser.

It is a minor change. But by putting the call for donations more upfront, we’re hoping that folks will feel compelled to donate a little bit when they download an episode.

And, of course, you can donate money to the Iconocast anytime you’d like, even without downloading.

We are happy to announce that the Jesus Manifesto and Jesus Radicals websites have been combined. We are still working out some of the kinks, but all the content from both sites are now available.

We will be bringing you new content on a regular basis in the near future, including posts from regular contributors throughout each month, new Iconocast interviews with leading theologians and activists, and reader contributed essays. The regular contributors section will not begin till October.

About four years ago now, I attended the first Wake Up Weekend vegan event at Calvin College as a skeptical pseudo-vegetarian. (Yes. I admit that at that time I was–for some inexplicable reason–still convinced that fish were not animals.) I could see why killing cows, pigs, chicken and other animals for food was problematic–especially from a health perspective. But these vegans seemed to be making a bigger deal about eggs and dairy than I thought were warranted at the time. As the two-day event unfolded, Harold Brown (Farm Kind), Adam Durand (Compassionate Consumers), Nicole Matthews (PETA), and Nathan Runkle (Mercy For Animals) made their case for veganism as a matter of ethics and slowly I began to see things differently than when I arrived. However, it was really the first release of the documentary Peaceable Kingdom, that transformed my skepticism, nixed my pseudo-vegetarianism, and propelled me toward seeing veganism as an integral part of my commitments to social justice, creation care and to my walk as a follower of Christ.

To say that watching the earlier version of the Peaceable Kingdom was a powerful and transforrming experience for me would be an underwhelming way to put it. Watching that film made my heart ache as it opened my eyes to the reality of processing animals for food, be it meat, eggs or dairy. I was blind to the reality of what was happening each day to bring certain items to my table, and the film gently called me to a different way of being, even as it exposed my incredible naïveté. Even so, the producers of the film Tribe of Heart recognized that there were shortcomings in the storytelling, the main one of which was the focus solely on factory farming. Issues of “humane meat” production were not included in a significant way and as this industry grew and the veneer of “free range” and “grass-fed” labels increased, people responded to images of outright cruelty in films like Peaceable Kingdom by simply switching brands and glossing over the heart of the matter.

Now a second edition of Peaceable Kingdom has been created to posit that the source of animal cruelty (and this includes for me unnecessary killing for food when alternatives are available) is not simply the particular system in which they are reared. The source lies in the basic view of these creatures as commodities, resources and products and, I would add, the persistent need human beings have to see themselves as wholly distinct from (and therefore more worthy of care, compassion and mercy) than other animals. The new documentary tried to address this core by interviewing both farmers who once participated in industrial methods, and people who have tried to adopt more humane alternatives. Of particular interest to me is the story of Jim Vandersluis and Cheri Ezell-Vandersluis who find that their “their idyllic vision” of starting a small goat dairy farm in which excess animals could avoid the slaughterhouse “crash head-on with the economic realities of animal farming.” Then there is the story of Cayce Mell who discovers that–even after her training to become a police officer dedicated to humane animal issues does little to address the real underlying problems.

Although I have seen the first version of the film, these improvements make me want to see and hear the story told anew. I encourage others who haven’t seen it before or who wonder if it might be worth seeing it again to think about watching it. Currently, there are screenings scheduled for this June at the Berkshire International Film Festival in Massachusetts, the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, and at the Mindful Metropolis Event in Chicago. A DVD will hopefully be available for purchase soon. For more information, visit www.peaceablekingdomfilm.org

On April 17, 2010, Hans Kung wrote to Catholic bishops everywhere via an open public letter distributed around the world. He explains his reason for writing the letter this way: “I am motivated by my profound concern for our Church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation.” He articulates clearly why he thinks this credibility crisis exists. But what must be noted is what he does not say: that the Church has had a severe credibility crisis before and since the Reformation because of its ongoing support for, and endorsement of, the killing and maiming of hundreds of millions of human beings by Christians who thought—because they were so taught by the Church—that this was acceptable behavior for a Baptized Christian, that doing these things was consistent with being a faithful follower of Jesus. This credibility crisis is ignored, even though Christians by the tens of millions to this very second are perpetrating these things, promoting these things, and justifying them as faithful discipleship? Hans Kung never even hints at nor suggests that there is, or should be, a crisis of Church credibility over this.

That he does not is, however, consistent with just about every “reform” movement and reformer in the Church—right, left, and middle—before, during, and after the so-called Reformation. Reforming the Church so that the Church teaches what Jesus taught about violence and enmity is not the reform that the overwhelming majority of reformers want—be they Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Evangelical. It is not the reform that Church hierarchs or clerics want, nor is it the reform that Church laity want. They do not even want to raise it as the possibility in their “reform” agendas and—speaking from firsthand experience—they will not do so even when requested to do so with solid scholarly and spiritual reasons presented to bolster the request.

The discordance between what Jesus teaches and what the Church teaches on violence and enmity—a discordance which has permitted and has often encouraged Church membership to engage in slaughter, maiming and mayhem on a grand scale for more than a millennium—is a credibility crisis that most of humanity sees as obvious. It also sees this discordance as vitiating the Church’s proclamation that Jesus is the incarnation of God who teaches the Way to eternal life. The discordance with its resultant credibility gap is exposed with lucidity by the words of the world-renowned Catholic biblical scholar, the late Rev. John L. McKenzie:

We have tried to produce a form of Christianity that will be tolerable to those who believe that the best way to deal with your enemies is to beat their heads in. And, we have done this. We have produced the Christian ethic of the just war. This is not the New Testament and every theologian knows it…

If Jesus did not reject any type of violence for any purpose, then we know nothing of him. No reader of the New Testament, simple or sophisticated, can retain any doubt of Jesus’ position toward violence directed to persons, individual or collective, organized or free enterprise, he rejected it totally…

Jesus presents in His words and life not only a good way of doing things, not only an ideal to be executed whenever it is convenient, but the only way of doing what He did.

If Church reform is not reform in the direction of restoring conformity to what Jesus commanded the Church to teach and to obey (Mt 28:20), and if it is not directed to bringing Church members back to following what Jesus taught by word and deed and commanded his disciples to follow in word and deed —Teach them to obey all that I have commanded you—then just what is being reformed? Furthermore, if reform is not directed toward restoring conformity with Jesus’ new commandment, love one another as I have loved you—the commandment which, according to the Catechism, contains the entire Law of the Gospel and summarizes all others and expresses the entire will of the Father—then what is being reformed? Is Church reformation about a change in who is going to be boss? Is it about who is going to get his or her hands on the levers of power and the spigots that control the flow of money in the Church? Is it about whose philosophy of life is going to be raised above or made equal to the teaching of Jesus regarding the will of the Father, which is to be done on earth as it is in heaven?

No rational person with even a minimal knowledge of the workings of the hierarchy and the Vatican could reasonably conclude anything other than that its members are so enmeshed in a pietistic form of secularism and are so far beyond the pale of witnessing to the truth of the teachings of Jesus as laid out in the Gospels, that they are in dreadful need of epoch-making top-down reform, if they are ever to do the task they were explicitly commissioned to do by Jesus (Mt 28:20).

Let me, however, seemingly digress for a moment, but only seemingly. My friend, Elbon Kilpatrick, a Protestant minister in Tennessee, feels called by God over the last several years to stand silently, every Sunday, on public property outside of Catholic and Protestant Churches in various parts of the state. He carries signs that say something about the Jesus of the Gospel about whom worshippers are hearing on Sunday. The signs say that the Jesus of the Gospels whom they worship and to whom they are praying is nonviolent, teaches a Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, and therefore cannot be followed by people engaging in the mass human slaughter and enmity of war. Well, the ferocity of the viciousness, vituperation and vilification, of the threats, meanness and ugliness with which he is universally bombarded Sunday after Sunday, by Christians going into Church and coming out of Church, is such that any non-Christian observer of the scene would be sickened by what he or she heard and saw. Unless one wishes to argue that this vehement, systematic rejection of the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and of His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies is but a quirk of these Christians and their Churches in Tennessee, then something far more profound and far-reaching than structural reform is imperatively needed in the Church—and it is not just the hierarchy and the Vatican in critical need of this reform, although it is indeed needed there. The time has certainly long since come for priests and laity also to reform, to remove the gigantic beam of grotesque untruth from their own eyes—the beam that permits them to believe that they can faithfully follow Jesus by way of violence and enmity. No one, outside those in the Constantinian Christian war Churches, gives an ounce of credibility to such a logical and spiritual absurdity. It radically and fundamentally undermine not only the credibility of the Church and every Christian who clings to its self evident preposterousness, but also undercut belief in the person of Jesus, who He is, what He did and how He did it.

There is indeed, as Hans Kung correctly states, an exceedingly dour credibility crisis in the institutional Church. But, it is not at root a crisis regarding the institutional structures through which the truth of Jesus should be proclaimed, lived and fostered. Nor, is it primarily a crisis about the type of personnel who oversee the proclamation, the living and the fostering of the truth of Jesus. The credibility crisis in the Church is about the institutional Church—via its personnel and structure—presenting and nurturing as the truth of Jesus the opposite of the truth that Jesus explicitly taught and explicitly commissioned His Church to teach and to obey (Mt 28:20). As Mahatma Gandhi once reflected, The only people in the world who do not see Jesus as nonviolent are Christians! What does this mean in terms of Church credibility. Yet, what Church, Church leader or Church reformer gives a hoot?

The truth of the premise upon which a structure is built or reformed determines that structures validity as a means to accomplished a desired end. Means chosen that cannot accomplish the ends desired are illusions. The ends that the Church and every Christian must desire are the ends that Jesus desires. Therefore, the means that the Church and the Christian must choose to achieve these ends are the means that Jesus chose—not their opposite. Contradictory things cannot be the means of salvation, publicly declares Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps to the detriment of his own earthly self interests. To again note and emphasize what the Gospels note and emphasize without a scintilla of ambiguity: Jesus presents in His words and life not only a good way of doing things, not only an ideal to be executed whenever it is convenient, but the only way of doing what He did.

There lies the rejected truth, premise, cornerstone, the absence of which has generated the culture of violence, of untold forms of justified violence in the Church—from the mass slaughter of war to what Church officers euphemistically called the unseen, covered-up world of the daily piccole brutalita (little brutalities). It is a culture that has gone on in the Church from sunrise to sunset since the time of the Constantinian alteration of the institutional Church right on through the Reformation to today without missing a beat. From that time on popes, patriarchs, bishops, priests, ministers, deacons have had as the premise from which they were operating the title and theme of Frank Sinatra’s song, My Way. And “my way” for them means the use and spiritual justification of violence and enmity, that is the use and spiritual justification of dominative power, the power to get done what one wants to get done by the means of fear grounded in the threat and use of violence. “My way” obviously requires a rejection of His foolish Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies unto death, if necessary.

So, here is the institutional Church’s primeval and overarching credibility crisis today—which non-Christian humanity well knows and rightly fears—writ large in bold upper case letters:

WE, CHURCH LEADERS AND LAITY, BELIEVE JESUS IS GOD, BUT WE DO NOT BELIEVE HE KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO THE FATHER’S WILL AND HIS FOLLOWERS DOING THE FATHER’S WILL IN THE FACE OF A WORLD DRENCHED IN THE EVILS OF VIOLENCE AND ENMITY. SO, WE, THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH, TEACH AND JUSTIFY DOING THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE TAUGHT AND TEACH DOING IT IN HIS NAME.

Talk about a Class-A Church credibility crisis! And yet, no crisis! Talk about required reform! Yet, no call at any level of the Church—by the conservative or the liberal gatekeepers of what is and what is not to be considered needed reform—for reform here!

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

The Naked Anabaptist, published on April 1, is not a joke. It is a remarkably accessible presentation of Anabaptism as good news for people today of all traditions who want to follow Jesus. Its author, Stuart Murray, is English and writes from the experience of the Anabaptist Network in the UK. The Network’s members, like Murray (a Baptist), did not grow up as Mennonites and are not Mennonites. But they have found that Anabaptism is relevant to their lives in a post-Christendom western society, and they are happy to call themselves “hyphenated-Anabaptists”: Anabaptist-Anglicans, Anabaptist-Baptists, Anabaptist-Pentecostals, etc. Their vision, according to Murray, is Jesus radicalism – or as he puts it, “a passionately Jesus-centered approach that impacts every area of life.”

The book is both modest in tone (we don’t have all the answers; we need other Christian traditions) and bold in content. The heart of book is an exposition of the “bare essentials” of Anabaptism, the seven core convictions that have emerged from lengthy conversations among members of the Anabaptist Network. I reproduce them below in a shortened form because they serve as a taster for the book. If you resonate with these convictions and are interested in a clear, earthy, undefensive discussion of them, and think that Anabaptism might have something to contribute to followers of Jesus today, The Naked Anabaptist could be an important book.

The Core Convictions of the Anabaptist Network (UK)

1. Jesus is our example, teacher, friend, redeemer and Lord.
2. Jesus is the focal point of God’s revelation.
3. Western culture is slowly emerging from the Christendom era when church and state jointly presided over a society in which almost all were assumed to be Christian.
4. The frequent association of the church with status, wealth and force is inappropriate for followers of Jesus and damages our witness.
5. Churches are called to be committed communities of discipleship and mission, places of friendship, mutual accountability and multi-voiced worship.
6. Spirituality and economics are inter-connected.
7. Peace is at the heart of the gospel.

You can read the foreword of the book by Greg Boyd on the Herald Press Web site.

– Alan Kreider

The Goshen College Journal has produced a video of some of the events that happened April 5, 2010 when we delivered the first wave of signatures to Goshen College asking them to repeal their decision to play the national anthem at some sporting events. The video is well-done and accurately depicts what happened. For those who could not be there, this shows some of the spirit of that event, which is also coupled with an ongoing online “pilgrimage” to email the Goshen College Board of Directors to voice concerns as well. The Mennonite Weekly Review also did some coverage of it.

On Thursday, Fox News interviewed two students, including David Jost who recently wrote a piece for this website and Ekklesia.uk. Given the context in which David was being interviewed, he did a good job explaining why this is an issue of religious concern.

Jesus is Lord! Post-Easter Pilgrimage and Celebration

A festive celebration of our allegiance to the risen Christ and witness to Goshen College.

GOSHEN, April 5, 2010—On Monday April 5, the day after celebrating the resurrection, we gathered for a post-Easter celebration and pilgrimage to Goshen College. As part of this celebration, we sang hymns that shape Christians to be people of the Resurrection and brought with us the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) flag and the Earth flag—two symbols of Jesus’ peace that promote a wider hospitality than the symbols Goshen College has decided to endorse.

In addition to the primary task of publicly celebrating our risen Lord, the aim and end of this pilgrimage was to deliver a physical copy of the Letter of Resistance to the National Anthem at Goshen College. This letter contains more than 1260 names and hundreds of comments from Christians across the North American Mennonite Church and beyond. There are theologians, lay persons, pastors, priests and students who have signed. Together, these signatures and comments express disappointment, concern and sadness at the school’s decision to break with its 114 year old practice and longstanding witness of nonconformity to this nationalistic ritual.

This week, we will also mail a physical copy of the letter and the names to each member of Goshen College’s Board of Directors. Moreover, people who could not be present with us have been invited to participate in a “virtual pilgrimage” by emailing Jim Brenneman and members of the Board to respectfully express their thoughts on the college’s decision. That “pilgrimage” will continue for some time.

The people that walked to and gathered at Goshen College represented a small segment of all of those voices who are imploring, praying and hoping that the college will reverse this decision. We hope this worshipful action can speak into the process when the college reviews their decision in 2011. Even though we have delivered a physical copy to the board and the college, we plan to continue allowing people to sign the petition, and will send hard copies periodically to the college and the board of directors over the next year. So please consider signing it.

About the Agnus Dei Flag
Agnus Dei art reaches back into the early church and was used throughout the Middle Ages. The blood pouring from the heart of the lamb represents Jesus’ suffering and death, poured out for the whole world. The lamb standing with the banner is a symbol of Christ’s triumph over death in the resurrection. The image, which represents Jesus’ victory over the cross, is a nonviolent one.

About the Earth Flag
Seeking a symbol through which all people of the world could find hope, John McConnell created the Earth Flag in 1969. There are no land masses to represent territory, boundaries and borders. Adorned only with a full-color photograph of Earth, taken from outer space, the Earth Flag is still the only flag for all people.

All photos taken by David Horstkoetter, friend and fellow Anabaptist at Marquette University. For video see Video of Jesus Is Lord Pilgrimage to Goshen College

On January 21 2010, Goshen College administrators announced the decision to begin playing an instrumental version of the national anthem at the beginning of some sports games. To the outside media, as well as many of those who celebrated the decision, the 116-year tradition of not playing the national song was rooted in some sort of arcane defiance of worldly practices, or perhaps a simple distaste for the violent words of the Star Spangled Banner itself. The change sparked a flurry of community debate, media coverage, and extensive dialogue.

A typical presentation of the issue in news periodicals includes the following: a mention of the policy change itself, a brief description of Goshen’s Mennonite heritage (often mentioning our Amish cousins), and an explanation for the change, usually involving Goshen’s changing demographics. Many Goshen students who support the anthem similarly view the issue in cultural terms, although they tend to see the change as a transition toward an explicitly nationalist rather than a pluralistically hospitable culture, which is the stated goal. Even Goshen’s administrators have on several occasions compared the decision to historical church decisions to allow pants and dancing, as if this were just a question of appearances. For many of us who oppose new policy, however, the decision is not primarily about a cultural tradition, nor is it even necessarily about our peace stance in the Mennonite church, although that is intimately related. It is about our uncompromising allegiance, as Christians, to Jesus Christ our Lord, and our unwillingness to give anyone the false impression that our allegiance is to any state.

Along with the pledge (to which it is often closely tied), the anthem ritual represents a certain offering of allegiance to the American state, an action which Goshen College President Brenneman and the Goshen administration apparently deem perfectly acceptable. On several occasions, Brenneman has said that he believes that Christians can have multiple allegiances, and that for most Americans, these are roughly arrayed in the correct order. There are several serious problems with these assertions. Taken at face value, they put Brenneman at direct odds with Article 23 of the Mennonite confession of faith, which gives our allegiance as a church to God alone (though, granted, he may have been using the term “allegiance” differently). These statements also do not reflect reality in America at all; if most Americans meaningfully gave their allegiance to God, this country would presumably be much more charitable, peaceful, and servant-like. Ultimately, however, the rationale given for the decision is that we must, as a community that includes both Mennonites and non-Mennonite Christians, honor the wishes of the large part of our collective body that wants to give allegiance to our country. It is here that the deepest problems with Goshen’s decision lie.

The significance of the anthem, as with all rituals, is in the eye of the beholder. Those pushing for its use on campus, along with Americans who celebrate it generally, make no secret of the fact that they see the anthem as a symbol of our country’s freedoms and young men and women in the armed forces. Students on campus and members of the community have made it clear they see honoring our troops as a motivator for playing the anthem, and that they feel Goshen should honor our country for allowing us religious freedom, as if the freedom to worship God was America’s to give. As Goshen representatives have pointed out, our accompanying prayer (that of Saint Francis of Assisi) and statement of core values make it clear that we are not endorsing war by playing the anthem. But when we play the anthem, we encourage nationalists among us to claim Christian identity while offering allegiance to our nation and praise to our troops. The new policy tells the many students and community members who (by their own admission) connect the anthem with nationalism and war that we endorse theirs as a valid Christian stance. Theirs is not a valid Christian stance, and we should not be dishonest and pretend it is.

To love one’s country by working to help the downtrodden and speaking truth directly to power is arguably Christian. But civic rituals in the United States honor American military arms for the protection they offer citizens, and they honor the country itself as a source of freedom, which in fact comes from the Lord. Supporters of the anthem do not hide their misplaced sense of where our faith is rooted. As one pro-anthem student claimed, “we should honor this country because it allows us to worship God.” But a child of God does not ask permission of the state to worship the Lord properly.

From Shadrach to the early-Christians, from the children of Israel in Egypt to the Anabaptists of Europe, God’s faithful have no interest in even pretending to share the values of the violent powers of the world. The American state’s promise to kill anyone who would try to kill its citizens does not need or deserve to be reciprocated with thanks, and the fact that the American government does not kill us (at this particular point in history) does not mean we owe it what God has already claimed. The United States simply does not deserve our allegiance for its false promises and attempts to give what it does not own, namely, our right to worship God almighty. Anthems, flags, and similar rituals to the nation (in the United States, at least) are closely intertwined with the promise of lethal force to guarantee rights and freedoms, and as such are not appropriate for Christians to participate in.

Certainly we, as Christians, should commit ourselves to things outside the church. But when other commitments come into conflict with our allegiance to God, we must not shy away from differentiating ourselves, publicly if necessary. American civic ritual, with its endorsement of violence and implication that freedom comes from the state, conflicts with allegiance to God. Goshen recognizes this, and as such attempts to send a strong signal that it disapproves of the inevitable connotations of the anthem by juxtaposing it with a prayer—a practice which can be seen as further needlessly entangling church and state. But playing it nonetheless, while recognizing that nationalist students will understand the gesture as an acceptance of their viewpoint on this issue as legitimate is dishonest, and the policy should be rescinded.

–David Jost, Goshen College, ’12
(cross-posted at http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/11681)

April 5, 2010
Jesus is Lord! Post-Easter Pilgrimage and celebration

10:45 a.m. Gather at Rogers Park*
11 a.m. Start walk to Goshen College
Noon Arrive at Broken Shield on campus†

You are invited to a festive post-Easter celebration of our allegiance to the risen Christ and his way of shalom! Over 1,200 people from across the Mennonite Church and beyond have added their names to a letter of resistance, expressing disappointment with Goshen College’s decision to play the national anthem at several sporting events.

On Monday, April 5, we will walk to the college in vibrant colors, singing songs of praise as we go. Once we arrive, a small group will deliver the signatures as others share in prayer and song. We hope this worshipful action can add to the dialogue and welcome all who share this spirit. Please bring instruments to play (flutes, kazoos, buckets for drumming). You will be welcome to join us at point along the route which will proceed down Lincoln Avenue and then down 8th Street to Goshen College (we have a permit).

For details, or if you are coming from afar and need housing e-mail jesusradicals@jesusradicals.com and let us know.

*Rogers Park is on the corner of Chicago Ave. & Lincoln Ave in Goshen
†The sculpture is located in the quad area at the center of campus.

If you are interested in participating in any of these actions please sign up to receive updates about the pilgrimage so we can send you details as they become available. Thank you again for adding your name to the letter to Goshen College and for your continued support in engaging this issue.

From Christian Peacemaker Teams

Gene Stoltzfus, founding director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, died March 10 after a heart attack. He served as CPT director from its founding in 1988 until 2004, when he retired and moved to Fort Frances, Ontario. He was born in 1940.

Gene traveled to Iraq immediately before the first Gulf War in 1991 and spent time with the Iraq CPT Team in 2003 to facilitate consultation with Muslim and Christian clerics, Iraqi human rights leaders, families of Iraqi detainees and talking with American administrators and soldiers.

From mid-December 2001 to mid-January 2002, Gene and current CPT co-director, Doug Pritchard, were in Pakistan and Afghanistan listening to the victims of bombing and observing the effects of 23 years of violence.

Gene’s commitment to peacemaking was rooted in his Christian faith and experience in Vietnam as a conscientious objector with International Voluntary Services during the U.S. military escalation (1963-68).

In the early 1970′s Stoltzfus directed a domestic Mennonite Voluntary Service program with a view to engaging with the social justice and peacemaking needs of that day. In the late 1970s, he and his wife co-directed the Mennonite Central Committee program in the Philippines during President Marcos’ martial law era focusing it on human rights and economic justice; and then they went on to help establish Synapses, a grassroots international peace and justice organization in Chicago to connect the United States and people in the developing world.

Gene Stoltzfus grew up in Aurora, then a rural town in Northeast Ohio. He graduated from Goshen (Ind.) College and held an M.A. in South and Southeast Asian Studies from American University, Washington, D.C., and a Master of Divinity from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.

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. After retiring from CPT, he traveled widely to speaking engagements, blogged regularly at Peace Probe and made twig furniture and jewelry as a contribution to the greening world.