In 1993 Ron Phillips committed a horrendous crime.  He beat, raped, and murdered a three year old child.  Her name was Sheila Marie Evans.  Phillips confessed his guilt and was given the death penalty.  He is scheduled to be executed by the state of Ohio – that’s you and me – tomorrow at 10am.  It will be the first state execution in three and half years.  More details can be read HERE. There are many reasons to be opposed to the death penalty: It disproportionately targets people of color, with the courts and appeals processes it is more expensive than lifetime imprisonment, it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, sometimes innocent people are killed. From our beginnings, Mennonites have also taken a moral and spiritual approach to opposing state killing.  Way back in 1556, our namesake Menno Simons wrote this in the context of European Christendom: “It would hardly

  It’s church conference/convention season.  Last weekend was the Central District Conference annual meeting in Bluffton, Ohio.  Next week is the biennial Mennonite Church USA convention, held this year in Orlando, Florida….conveniently close to Harry Potter World, which will be a Christmas in July for our girls. I was so disheartened by the last convention in Kansas City that I have largely disengaged from denominational discussions.  My main involvement has been through conversations around “Seeking Peace in Israel and Palestine,” the only resolution we’ll be voting on this year.  Yesterday I had two separate conversations with Columbus rabbis, leaders of BREAD congregations, as a way of being accountable to local relationships for what we’re saying in this resolution. A key part of the Orlando Convention will be the Future Church Summit.  The national level of the denominational structure is recalibrating its role and seeking input from delegates and stakeholders.  There

  “Try not to think in terms of superimposing our own tastes and objectives on the lives of others but rather to make our energies and talents available to those who would want us to work amongst them.” — Judith Tokel, meeting notes from the American Addition Neighborhood Council, December 9, 1968 ———————— I’ve been doing some poking around in the CMC archives.  They’re in the back of the Upper Room, the last stop of the elevator.  The celebration of CMC’s 55 year anniversary this August, combined with the more casual pace of summer, makes it a good time to poke. The very first file in the first drawer is labeled “American Addition.”  It was, and still is, a small predominantly African American neighborhood on the near east side.  In the late sixties and early seventies, this congregation, then called Neil Avenue Mennonite Church, became heavily involved in working alongside

  2016 was a big year for news, dominated by the US Presidential campaign.  So guess what the top read New York Times article was for the whole year?  It was an essay by Alain de Botton titled “Why you will marry the wrong person.” The title, and article, is meant as an insight that frees us, rather than dooms us, in marriage.  I’m presently doing pre-marriage counseling for two couples, and this article is a newer part of their homework.  De Botton writes: “For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart