This Is My Story, Part III

A rare photo of me, at age six.

Regina Harlow, an ordained member of the Church of the Brethren, and I were recently asked by the Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center to share our stories around four themes, 1) peace, 2) covenant community, 3) alienation from our surrounding culture and 4) being a neighbor in a world of need. She grew up Old Order Mennonite and I was raised in an Amish community. This is the third of my four presentations at the Sunrise Church of the Brethren October 17.

From earliest childhood I was always aware that our family and church family were very different from our surrounding culture. There were the obvious differences in the way we wore our hair and in the kind of plain clothes we wore, suspenders for boys and men, head coverings for our sisters and mothers, all signs that we were not a part of “them,” the “English” as we referred to outsiders. For we even spoke a different language, Pennsylvania Dutch, or Deutsch, when I was a child, using Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible in our Sunday services and singing our hymns in church in High German.

There were times when this was a source of embarrassment and discomfort, but it was also an important part of my identity. Being different gave me a sense of belonging to a kind of monastic community whose reputation I needed to uphold. 

Strange as it may seem, it may have also contributed to a subtle form of pride, even though its opposite, demuth (humility) was constantly being drilled into us. Thus in spite of the motto displayed in our house, "Demut ist die schönste Tugend" (Humility is the most beautiful virtue) I grew up feeling most outsiders were not quite as godly as we were, and not as skilled at farming, gardening or preparing great meals as we Amish. 

Even our singing was better, I thought. While we still used the old German hymns in our Sunday services, we were learning English hymns and singing four part harmony at home and in some informal gatherings of young people, something new we did a lot of, since we didn't have radios, stereos or TV's to entertain us. So our English neighbors might have their organ music and church choirs, but they didn’t sing as heartedly or as harmoniously as we, or so I thought.

Then there were my four formative years at EMC, which was still very conservative during the early 60’s, it being the only accredited college in the world at that time that required women students (the Mennonite ones, as most were in those days) to wear prayer coverings in public. And no one wore shorts even for athletic activities, and sports were all intramural. 

The years after my graduation, when became a Mennonite and served as pastor at Zion Mennonite (while teaching part time at EMHS) were marked by rapid and dramatic changes as far traditional signs of our non-conformity were concerned. During that time most congregations went from women members all wearing prayer coverings, especially for church services, to only a minority doing so. Plain suits for men, and even for pastors, were mostly replaced by conventional suits and ties, and we began accepting into membership couples who had been divorced and remarried but who were committed to a faithful new start in their life. And for the first time congregations began using musical instruments for some of their congregational music. 

As you can imagine, I’ve witnessed several centuries worth of change in my own short lifetime, mostly in the direction of Anabaptist congregations becoming more enculturated and Americanized. But looking back I’m concerned that we’ve gone from being at least outwardly non-conformist to now doing everything we can to prove that we’re just like every other nice vanilla-flavored Protestant group. Thus I fear many of us Mennonites have become ever less the counter-cultural expression of Jesus’s upside down, inside out, worldwide kingdom, and ever less the radical demonstration of what heaven’s will being done on earth might actually look like.

The Amish in me believes that would include dressing simply and modestly, and doing more of our shopping at thrift stores and far less at the downtown mall. That it would mean renewing our covenant with the soil, growing and preserving more of our own food, and doing less mowing and more hoeing. And that it would mean investing far less in the stock market and more in Calvert retirement funds in which we put our savings to work in doing good around the world, offering micro-lending opportunities to startup businesses in poorer countries, for example, rather than engaging in Wall Street gambling in hopes of optimal profit. 

To me, being truly non-conformed would also mean adopting a policy of moral housing, downsizing or resizing so that we would have small houses or apartments for small households and larger homes only for larger households. It might mean expecting all of us, young and old, to invest time in voluntary service as an expression of service-minded living. It might mean adult children offering more care of their aging parents in a Dawdy house arrangements, and relying less on institutionalized care of our aging. It might mean commissioning more lay leaders and ministers in our congregations and relying less on professional clergy--in fact doing away with the distinction between lay people, as in the laos, the people, and ordained persons. And it would certainly mean beginning to look a lot more like, and sharing a lot more like, the church that was born at Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, thus modeling the church’s eternal future rather than its imperfect past.

I know this is an old man dreaming dreams. But this kind of dreaming has always been a part of my story.

This Is My Story, Part II

photo of the Amish Mennonite meeting house near Stuarts Draft

Regina Harlow, an ordained member of the Church of the Brethren, and I were recently asked by the Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center to share our stories around four themes, 1) peace, 2) covenant community, 3) alienation from our surrounding culture and 4) being a neighbor in a world of need. She grew up Old Order Mennonite and I was raised in an Amish community. This is the second of my four presentations at the Sunrise Church of the Brethren October 17.

When I was four years old my parents moved to an Amish community in eastern Kansas and slowly began recovering financially from years of drought and the devastating effects of the Great Depression. Nevertheless,  they missed the close knit community life they had experienced in their congregation in Oklahoma’s Nowata County, a close-knit church family that managed to stick together and support each other in extreme hardship and poverty. One of my cousins wrote an article for Mennonite Life about those dustbowl years in Oklahoma, with the title, The Lean Years of Prosperity, referring to the community's spiritual and emotional wealth. 

In Kansas, while we began to do better financially, my parents agonized over fears of the potential negative influence of the young people in that Amish community on our growing family. My older siblings were already in their teens, and my dad and mom worried about whether they would join many of their peers in the kind of partying and “rumspringa” that was all too common there, and how and whether they would find good marriage partners in that congregation.

So just over 75 years ago, my parents Ben and Mary Yoder decided to make a 1400 mile move from Garnett, Kansas, to Stuarts Draft, Virginia, with their family of eight children.

I was six then, the youngest, and my oldest sister was 19. My father accompanied a freight car packed with our furniture and other belongings--including some farm machinery, two of our horses and the family dog--half way across the country to the Shenandoah Valley. My mother herded the rest of us on the long trip east by passenger train.

Their primary reason for moving was to become a part of a church family that would better reflect their values, and not to better themselves financially, though with my uncle Ed Mast's help they were able to build a small dairy and poultry operation on a 120 acre farm that supported our family. We always struggled financially, but when they sold the farm and went into semi-retirement, they found themselves rewarded for their hard work and many sacrifices.

Meanwhile, all but one of my seven older siblings had found good marriage partners in that Augusta County congregation and established stable and healthy families. My one older sister who remained single became an admired nurse and midwife who served in numerous locations both in the states and abroad. My two brothers and I each became ordained ministers, as did eight of my parents' grandchildren.

If it takes a whole village to raise a child, I believe it takes a whole congregation to raise a faithful child of God and a follower of Jesus. The church of some 30 households that nurtured me and my siblings in Augusta County wasn’t perfect. Our Sunday services were unremarkable, the Sunday School classes held every other Sunday had no professionally prepared study material (just the German Bible), the sermons were by untrained and unsalaried ministers, and the singing was slow, unaccompanied and all in unison.

But we grew up with remarkably good people, individuals and families who had moved to Augusta County from communities all over the east coast, and who were constantly doing things for and with each other, threshing, hay making silo, filling quilting, neighboring, doing building projects (events they called “frolics”) and visiting in each others homes virtually every Sunday noon. Our nearest neighbors, Sam and Mattie Yoder, not related to us, became our best friends, and were among the kindest and most Christlike people you could find anywhere, as were many of our Mennonite neighbors.

It was partly through the influence of a Mennonite public school teacher I had in the 7th grade at Stuarts Draft Elementary, Paul Wenger, that I decided to enroll at Eastern Mennonite College, which I did at age 21. After graduation in 1964 I married the wonderful woman I met there who became my wife and together we joined a local Mennonite church. Both of us taught at Eastern Mennonite High School, another highly nurturing group of people.

Our congregation at Zion Mennonite, where we lived and served for over 20 years (while doing part time teaching at EMHS) was a wonderful source of support for us and our children, as was the close-knit house church we’ve been a part of for over 30 years. 

In 2019, after never having had a medical procedure in my life more serious than a tonsillectomy, I had triple bypass surgery at UVA, followed by another surgery several months later to remove the parotid gland in my left jaw that proved to be malignant and required extensive radiation treatments, I/we were overwhelmed by the generous support of our friends and especially of the church community. 

So if I were asked, “Which should come first, one’s biological family or one’ spiritual family?” I’d have to say both--equally--the nuclear family desperately needing the nesting and the nurturing of the family of faith if it is to survive and thrive.

This Is My Story, Part I

Harold S. Bender made the point that love
for enemies and returning good for evil were
an integral part of the church's mission.

Regina Harlow, an ordained member of the Church of the Brethren, and I were recently asked by the Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center to share our stories around four themes, peace, covenant community, alienation from our surrounding culture and being a neighbor in a world of need. She grew up Old Order Mennonite and I was raised in an Amish community. This is the first of my four short presentations at the Sunrise Church of the Brethren October 17.

I was born in a very rural northeastern part of Oklahoma in 1939, just two months before the German invasion of Poland that set off WWII in Europe. When I was four my family moved to Anderson County in eastern Kansas, after years of Depression and dustbowl drought. My father, then in his late 30’s and with 8 children—me being the youngest—avoided the draft with a farm deferment, and the tragedy of a world at war seemed really remote and distant, even though I remember times when an airplane flying overhead triggered fears of an invasion by Japanese or German bombers!

But I don’t remember hearing much talk about the war back then, but do remember some of the excitement about it finally being over six years later. And I don’t remember hearing much about pacifism or about our Amish church’s stance on loving our enemies based on the Sermon on the Mount and demonstrated by Jesus’s response to evil and violence, but there was never any doubt in my mind growing up that followers of Jesus should never, ever, take part in training for, or engaging in, the killing of fellow human beings or destroying their land and property. 

My father subscribed to publications like the Herald der Wahrheit, (Herald of Truth) published by and for Amish communities, as well as Mennonite papers like the Gospel Herald and the Youth Christian Companion, which supported pacifism and occasionally ran articles about Christians taking up the cross rather than taking up arms. And I also heard stories about the horrors of war through some veterans who had experienced it first hand, and who became friends with us while wiring our house and farm buildings for electricity when we moved to Virginia in 1946. One of them loaned us a set of books that were an illustrated history of WWII. I was horrified.

As a teen I ran across H. S. Bender’s the Anabaptist Vision, in which he made the case that for our Anabaptist forebears, loving our enemies and refusing to resort to violence in the face of attacks, was a central part of our faith, and represented a kind of witness the whole world needed to hear and heed. I was greatly inspired by that vision. 

When I left my Amish community and went to school at EMU, then EMC, and became a part of Virginia conference Mennonites, I thought I was joining the church of peace advocates like Harold Bender and John Howard Yoder back in the day. It took me awhile to realize how much Anabaptists of all shades, across the board, including the Amish in my own community, had been influenced by a kind of Pietism in which a primary focus was being prepared to escape earth and get to heaven, rather than praying for heaven to come down to earth to recreate the peace and shalom God intended, and in which Christians were to be about peacemaking and justice-promoting. 

I realized that even so-called peace churches had become more focused on experiencing an inner, personal peace rather than about practicing the kind of restoration and reconciliation represented by Jubilee justice--and on the kind of shalom in which nothing is marred and nothing is missing, and in which peace is far more than just the absence of war.

Today I grieve over the hostility and polarization in our world and in our nation, more than I’ve never witnessed before, and over the many church divisions I’ve seen in my lifetime right here in our community. And I agonize over our silent support of the US spending more on our military budgets than all of the next ten top spending nations in the world, and where most of us have more of our money going to support military budgets than missionary budgets.

But my prayer remains, with all of God’s people, “Let there be peace (with justice) here on earth, and let it begin with me, and with all of us together, Mennonites, Brethren, Protestants,  Catholics, all of Jesus’s followers and people of goodwill everywhere.” 

This is a part of my peace story.

1939: German Mennonites In Canada Rally In Support Of Making Deutschland Great Again

I am posting the following excerpt of a recent piece by  Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Theology at the Seminary at Tyndale University in Toronto, with his kind  permission. His research shows that support of Hitler was especially strong among German speaking Mennonites in western Canada who had recently emigrated from Russia:

Mennonite support for Hitler and his vision for Germany was very real and public on the Canadian prairies until the start of WWII. The most read newspaper in Manitoba, the Winnipeg Free Press, reported on a large Winnipeg pro-Hitler rally (January 30, 1939, page 3) with the byline: “Hitler Salute: Local Germans hail re-birth of fatherland under Fuehrer.” 

The photos show the Mennonite Young People's Choir performing at the event. The choir was led by John Conrad, a Russländer (1920s Mennonite immigrant). Conrad founded an ensemble in 1935 that evolved into the Mennonite Symphony Orchestra; he actively directed choirs with the Manitoba Mennonite Youth Organization. 

The pictures also show the youth and others giving the Hit!er salute with arm raised. On the prairies upstanding Russländer Mennonites were praising the Führer two years before German armies would enter Ukraine and convince Mennonites there to do the same. 

Reference in the article to the "ill will" of a "certain press" is a thinly veiled reference to one of Hit!er’s anti-Semitic tropes of the “Jewish press.” Russian Mennonite émigré and leader Benjamin Unruh in Germany, and German Mennonite pastors like Gustav Kraemer, for example, did the same. Unruh was only one—but the most powerful—of a handful of Russian Mennonites in Germany who regularly, but especially in 1938 and 1939, fanned the flames of pro-Nazi sentiments in the Canadian Mennonite paper, Der Bote. Their voices were complemented by a few of their “followers” primarily “in and around Winnipeg,” as David G. Rempel recalled (a contemporary to Unruh). 

Unruh was adamant that Mennonites had a role to help purify and sanctify Germanism and support Hitler’s effort to bring wholeness and fulfillment to the German people. “Being true to God implies being true to one’s Volk, which in turn requires faithfulness to the nation,” as Frank H. Epp summarized Unruh’s Bote arguments. 

...It is not surprising that MCC in North America remained entangled with Unruh and National Socialism through the 1930s—years before Mennonites in Ukraine (living under a news embargo) would get to know Hit!er as a liberator. ---Notes--- Pics: Winnipeg Free Press, January 30, 1939, p. 3; Winnipeg Evening Tribune, January 30, 1939, p. 3, https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A1368295/manitoba_metadata; picture with J. P. Klassen and John Konrad, Winnipeg Evening Tribune, July 20, 1936, p. 2, https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/island

Notes:

• “MCC and National Socialism,” MCC Intersections, Fall 2021, https://mcccanada.ca/media/resources/12017.

• D David G. Rempel, Recollections, summer 1939, pp. 65-69. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, David Rempel Papers, MS Coll. 329 2B Annex, box 36, file 29.

• Cf. Frank H. Epp, “An Analysis of Germanism and National Socialism in the Immigrant Newspaper of a Canadian Minority Group, the Mennonites, in the 1930’s” (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1965), 227, 228, 229

• David G. Rempel , Recollections, summer 1939, 65-69. ” See Klassen's articles in Der Bote, February 2, 1938, pp. 2f; March 30, 1938, p. 2; December 14, 21, 28, 1938, pp. 2, 2f., 1f. respectively. For Walter Quiring, see especially “Staatstreu und Volkstreu,” Der Bote, January 11, 1939, pp. 2f.

• Letter to David G. Rempel (English), from D.R. (illegible), Sept 25, 1935. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, David Rempel Collection, Box 1 Correspondence, 1932-1991. Box 1, file 1.

Here's a link for more background and detail: 

https://mcc.org/sites/mcc.org/files/media/common/documents/intersectionsfall2021.pdf

Brad's Song For A Special 40th Anniversary

Brad lives, works and composes songs in Pittsburgh.

Through the recommendation of a friend, our son Brad recently received a request from an appreciative husband to compose a song to be played for his wife on the occasion of their 40th wedding anniversary.  The following is the result, based on key parts of their story. 

Needless to say, the wife was completely surprised and totally amazed by the recorded piece, one in which the husband joins Brad in singing the harmony in the chorus. 

Listen to it here:  

https://bradyoder.com/songs/you-were-there-for-me/

You were There For Me

you were there for me

when I struggled to believe,

when I couldn’t sleep

you were there for me

the way you care for me

when I’m broken, when I’m weak,

I’m amazed to see

how you care for me

CH: I have said “I love you” half a million times,

they’re still the truest words that I will ever find,

every day is better with you by my side,

you keep my faith alive  

walking on the beach,

like that couple in our dreams,

is that you and me

walking on the beach?

CH2: let me say “I love you”, ‘cause it’s always new,

let me praise this life I have because of you,

I’m not afraid to face tomorrow by your side,

you bring my heart to life,

you keep my dreams alive...

now you’re here with me,

and I wonder where I’d be,

(I’m) smiling gratefully,

‘cause you’re here with me…

157 Broken Hearts And Dashed Hopes At Augusta Correctional Center

Members of the Virginia Parole Board do not meet in person to do their work but render their decisions online, based on a review of data complied for each parole candidate and their reading of a summary of a personal interview done on site by someone hired by the Board. 

From January through August of this year a total of 157 such interviews were conducted at the nearby Augusta Correctional Center with eligible "old law" prisoners, men who were incarcerated prior to parole being abolished in Virginia in 1995. Many of the men felt their interviews went well, and large numbers of them had created impressive records of achievements in the 26 or more years they had spent behind bars, along with their demonstrating years of infraction-free behavior in prison. 

After decades behind bars, more and more of these men are eligible for geriatric release as well. Not only have they "aged out of crime," but many have worked hard at becoming truly changed men who deserve a second chance. And many of their counselors and members of the prison staff agree.

Yet as of this date none of the 157 have been granted release. None. Not one. 

This gives the remaining 24 men yet to be interviewed this year scant hope of getting a favorable decision. And the ACC prisoner with whom I've had the most correspondence has a wife and family of grown children to go home to, a congregation that has pledged its support, and had the assurance of employment upon his release. All to no avail. https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2021/08/another-heartbreaking-parole-denial.html

This is heartbreaking, and to me reflects a failure of the board to carry out its mission. I understand the political pressure they feel, and that of their jobs being dependent on the will of the governor who in turn is under pressure by tough-on-crime legislators who resist having anyone found guilty of a violent crime returned to society. As a result there have been a total of only 131 releases this year of the over 2000 men and women in state prisons who remain eligible.

As the name implies, the mission of our Department of Corrections is to correct, and not merely to punish. But if we fail to acknowledge and release truly deserving men and women in our prisons, aren't we admitting failure?

Here's a link to send messages to the Parole Board: https://vpb.virginia.gov/contact/

Every SOS Dollar Makes A Difference

Everence volunteer Patty Skelton attaches an "I donated"
sticker to donor David Detrow. (photo courtesy of Jim Bishop)

The preliminary (and still tentative) result of the SOS (Sharing Our Surplus) fundraising effort for refugee relief, a part of the Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale efforts yesterday, was $35, 519 according to the Sale treasurer Rodney Burkholder. 

Another $500 has been pledged, and those unable to donate at the Sale are still adding to that number by donating online at https://vareliefsale.com/donate/ or by sending a check to Relief Sale, 601 Parkwood Drive, Harrisonburg, VA 22802 (with SOS on the memo line). 

The Chair of the Sale Board, Dave Rush, as you can see below, listed the preliminary total at $35, 520, a dollar more.

That $1 difference reminded me of a moment yesterday when I stopped by the Everence giving tent and noted an unnamed teen coming to the giving table and contributing a dollar bill from his wallet. Not a large amount, but I wondered if that may have represented a greater sacrifice on his part than that of many others of us who helped raise income for the October 11-2 Sale.

Sample SOS giving amounts are as follows, gleaned from information provided by the Everence staff:

$7000 1

$2500 1

$1000 1

$500   5

$400   2

$300   2

$250   2

$150   1

$100   11

$50     4

$40     1

$20     7

$15     1

$10     3

$2-$9  6

$1       1  

Due to some generous early givers, over $20,000 was contributed to the SOS fund prior to the Sale, and the above simply represents my own rough count of Friday and Saturday's results.

Moral of the story? Every gift counts, and every dollar contributed through SOS goes directly for refugee relief around the world.. Let's keep this going!

Here is Dave Rush's preliminary report, which doesn't include 2020 as that was a very different year due to Covid restrictions, but which brought in the Relief Sale contributing the largest amount to MCC ever:   

                                                    2021       2019         2018         2017       2016 

Preliminary total proceeds 355,000  381,033  370,000   360,000  338,300              

Actual Final Proceeds   ??????      406,098     370,181       393,467    360,728         

Auction                            138,988    128,083    115,489       131,894       141,124            

My Coins Count              16,052     24,804      23,542         26,084          22,184                

SOS Giving Campaign    35,520     22,777      31,508          40,989 

Special Local Project       3300       5750           5300             10,650         13,200         

Friday night supper          11,753      13,498      12,569          13,772         13,021               

Saturday breakfast           14,222     19,992       17,531          18,263         16,903