Anabaptist Association of Australia & New Zealand | Community organisation

Anabaptist Association of Australia & New Zealand

Phone: +61 2 6351 2896

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24.01.2022 What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was At The Centre Of Life? THE ATLANTIC - Many of those who place a friendship at the centre of their life find that their most significant relationship is incomprehensible to others. But these friendships can be models for how we as a society might expand our conceptions of intimacy and care We’re also in the midst of what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called a growing public-health crisis in the United States: loneliness. In a 20...18 survey, one-fifth of Americans reported always or often feeling lonely. Being alone does not portend lonelinessnor does being partnered necessarily prevent lonelinessbut these data suggest that plenty of people would appreciate a confidant and a regular dose of physical affection, needs only amplified by the pandemic. Americans, who’ve long been encouraged to put all their eggs in the marriage basket, may come to rely upon a wider array of social relationships out of necessity. See more

23.01.2022 First Saturdays: AAANZ’s Monthly Online Gathering Let us be concerned for one another, to help one another to show love and to do good. Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer. Hebrews 10:24-25, Good News Bible With the goals of connecting and encouraging AAANZ members and friends around OZ and NZ, AAANZ hosts a monthly gathe...ring via Zoom on the first Saturday of each month. We meet for an hour, 4-5pm AEDT, with the following format: a short meditation, some input from a speaker/speakers, and - most importantly - time to hear from people around the network. 6 November’s speaker will be Diane Coleman on the topic Hidden Patriarchy: The Silent Killer. Diane Coleman has over 30 years’ experience specialising in working with families impacted by Domestic and Family Violence. She has worked with many women who have experienced violence and conducted numerous Men’s Behaviour Change Programs (Domestic and Family Violence). In 2018 she developed a series of short courses for professionals who encounter males within their work contexts to safety engage, determine the predominant aggressor (DFV) and refer men who use coercive control to specialist Men’s Behaviour Change Programs. In 2018 she was instrumental in developing and establishing the Graduate Certificate in Men’s Behaviour Change Individual and Group Work Interventions. Diane currently provides clinical supervision to workers in directly engage with men who use violence and coercive control towards their partners and children. Register your interest at [email protected] by Friday, 5 November to receive the Zoom link. See more

22.01.2022 Remembering Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ON BEING - Rabbi Sacks was one of the world’s deepest thinkers on religion and the challenges of modern life. He died last week after a short battle with cancer. When Krista spoke with him in 2010, he modelled a life-giving, imagination-opening faithfulness to what some might see as contradictory callings: How to be true to one’s own convictions while also honouring the sacred and civilizational calling to shared life indeed, to love the stranger?

22.01.2022 Feeling Disoriented By The Election, Pandemic And Everything Else? It’s Called ‘Zozobra’ THE CONVERSATION - Ever had the feeling that you can’t make sense of what’s happening? One moment everything seems normal, then suddenly the frame shifts to reveal a world on fire, struggling with pandemic, recession, climate change and political upheaval. That’s zozobra, the peculiar form of anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into a single point of view, leaving you with qu...estions like: Is it a lovely autumn day, or an alarming moment of converging historical catastrophes? On the eve of a general election in which the outcome and aftermath is unknown, it is a condition that many Americans may be experiencing Naming the present crisis is a first step toward dealing with it. But then what is to be done? Portilla suggests that national leaders can exacerbate or alleviate zozobra. When there is a coherent horizon of understanding at the national level that is to say, when there is a shared sense of what is real and what matters individuals have a stronger feeling of connection to the people around them and a sense that their society is in a better position to deal with the most pressing issues. With this solace, it is easier to return attention to one’s own small circle of influence. https://theconversation.com/feeling-disoriented-by-the-elec See more

19.01.2022 A Male Scholar Looks At The Bible’s Women CHRISTIAN CENTURY - McGrath draws connections between various texts to give readers new insights and evoke appreciation for the New Testament’s women. For instance, his approach to the woman at the well (John 4:142) is not to portray her as an adulterous sinner who is shunned by everyone in her town. If she were, he asks, why would everyone follow her back to meet Jesus? Instead, McGrath portrays her as the real person behind Jesus...’ hypothetical teaching in Mark 12:1827, Matthew 22:2332, and Luke 20:2738 To counter the suggestion that because Jesus was divine he didn’t need to learn anything from anybody, McGrath repeatedly emphasizes that unless Jesus was able to learn, he wasn’t truly human. In addition to naming what Jesus may have learned from each of these women, McGrath makes the case that we have something to learn from them too. By offering us new perspectives and creative connections, he helps us create new lenses for viewing the Gospel women. See more

18.01.2022 The Sound Of The Genuine: Traversing 2020 With ‘The Mystic Of The Movement’ Howard Thurman ON BEING An hour to sit with and be filled. Two voices one from the last century, one from ours who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited, it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himself the son of one of those leaders, is a bridge to Thurman’s resonance in the present day, and between the Black freedom movements then and now.

17.01.2022 The Struggle To Live In Unity When Everything’s Divided CHRISTIAN CENTURY - Sometimes change can feel like nothing but loss. But right now the world is showing us how violent intransigence can be. Is Christianity more than stubborn tradition or a dry husk for White supremacy? Does the incarnation mean that transformation is always possible, that human flourishing is more than holding on to the world we knew? I am praying so; I am living for it.

17.01.2022 Women At The Peace Table Yields Better Results NEW YORK TIMES - Female peace builders and female-led organisations are often the ones running toward the problem while everyone else is running away, says the author Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini If the women aren’t at the table themselves, their issues are negotiated away. And it’s not only women’s issues around what women’s safety and security means, but also women’s perspective on what matters.

16.01.2022 A Parable Of (All-American) Violence: Accountability And The War Of Terror INFORMED COMMENT - The final events in Afghanistan crystallized an important truth about our post-9/11 history: the madness of making war the primary method for dealing with potential global conflict and what’s still called national security. Throughout these years, our leaders and citizens alike promoted delusional dreams of violence (and glory), while minimizing or denying the nature of that violen...ce and its grim impact on everyone touched by it Violence isn’t a simple tool or clothing you can simply take off and set aside once you’ve finished the job. Just listen to morally injured military service members to understand how deep and lasting violence turns out to be and how much harder it is to control than people imagine. Once you’ve wrapped your country in its banner, there’s no way to keep its barbs from piercing your own skin, its poison from dripping into your soul. See more

14.01.2022 Twelve Steps Of Forgiveness TABLET - As we approach Yom Kippurthe holiest day of the Jewish year, set aside for fasting and forgivingI’ve found it’s easier to atone for my own sins than to pardon someone else’s. That was the case when a long-time mentor lied to me, refusing to explain or apologize; I wanted to get over it but couldn’t. A Hasidic colleague told me Jews are required to ask forgiveness three times. If the injured party won’t forgive, the sinner is forgiven and... the nonforgiver has to seek forgiveness for not forgiving. But I couldn’t reconcile with someone who showed no regret and never asked even once for my forgiveness. In search of advice, I wound up embarking on a forgiveness tour, interviewing religious leaders, doctors, and 13 people who suffered wrongs that were never righted. Here are 12 ways they taught me to let go of anger, forgive without an apology, and move on. See more

14.01.2022 'Anti-China' Military Pact 'Threatens Peace And Stability' In Pacific, Groups Warn COMMON DREAMS - "The announcement of the new Australia, Britain, and U.S. military allianceAUKUSrepresents a serious escalation of the new Cold War on China." "It should be noted," the coalition continued, "that New Zealand is not participating in this aggressive military alliance and it's no nuclear policy means that Australian nuclear-powered submarines will be banned from New Zealand's p...orts and waters." "It was only a few weeks ago that a generation-long war in Afghanistan came to an end," Alison Broinowski of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, said in a statement shared prior to the official launch of AUKUS. "Instead of reflecting on the pointlessness and horror of U.S. militarism, Australia and the U.S. are already talking about their next military adventure." See more

12.01.2022 The Mess Created By Trump Will Be With Us For Years DER SPIEGEL - Trump has managed to create a kind of parallel universe in which his words are all that matter. In the vast majority of cases, those words have very little to do with reality, but his most loyal followers don't seem to care. If Trump has ever uttered a true sentence, then it was his claim that his followers would continue to love him even if he was to shoot somebody dead on Fifth Avenue Trump alone isn't responsible for the deep divisions in American society, but is just a symptom of a much deeper crisis. And it is a crisis that won't disappear if he is voted out of office.

12.01.2022 USA: Why I’m Not Participating In This Weekend’s Faith And Blue Event For Churches And Police CHRISTIAN CENTURY - As the pastor of a Mennonite church, I suspect I read the letter from Faith and Blue from a different theological vantage point than many of my colleagues. As part of the Anabaptist tradition, Mennonites recognise that we live within a world of competing loyalties. But our sole allegiance is to Jesus Christ, God who came in the body of a member of an ethnic minori...ty and was murdered by the state. Because of this, we do not take oaths, and we don’t participate in institutions like policing and the military, institutions that ask us to enact state violence on people made in the image of God. It is an absurd and radical conviction, and it has a history of getting us killed The problem in this moment is not a failure to see that there are both good and bad police officers. It is not that Black people aren’t familiar with their local beat cop. It is not that the call for abolition is too fast, too aggressive, or too polarising. The problem is our acceptance of a broken system. See more

10.01.2022 Family Split Over Son’s Support Of Trump Politics Threatens Billy Graham’s Legacy THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER - My grandfather’s goal was to introduce people to the saving love and grace of Jesus and he stayed out of politics for the most part because he knew that he would alienate an audience if he was involved, Jerushah, 42, said, then adding a reference to her uncle: He is too polarising of a personality to be introducing people to Jesus. People outside the church are not going to listen to Franklin. Her brother, two years older, said that his uncle Franklin’s public claim about Billy Graham voting for Trump was such blatant baloney that he couldn’t resist responding with the sarcastic tweet. Tchividjian said that he now regards his uncle and Trump as two peas in a pod.

10.01.2022 USA: How Law-And-Order Evangelicals Helped Shape Today’s Criminal Justice System RELIGION NEWS SERVICE - Evangelicals have largely championed the rise of mass incarceration, writes Aaron Griffith in his new book. They've also undertaken novel ministries to try to bring compassion, healing and conversion to those behind bars As a student of evangelicalism, I’d been trained to think most evangelicals are suspicious of the state and want less government and more personal respon...sibility. But what I learned writing this book is how the profoundly large presence of our criminal justice system is a form of state power, and it’s a form liberals and conservatives see as a positive good. Evangelicals have a flexible conscience of being very anti-state when they need to be. But they can be supportive of the state’s use of force and violence when they want to be. We need a more expansive understanding of evangelicals in this way The moves many evangelicals are making are repeating the mistakes of the past. The answer for so many evangelicals is to double down on the idea that policing can be reformed and prisons made better. There is not an interrogation of the assumption that policing and prisons themselves are the problem. They are seen as reformable and redeemable. See more

09.01.2022 Online Event: Pacifism And Non-Violent Alternatives To War ENGADINE UNITING CHURCH Thursday 7 October, 7:30 9 pm - After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is back in control. Trillions of dollars and millions of lives over 20 years have achieved nothing. This week has seen the Australian government sign up to a nuclear submarine fleet to counter a supposed threat from China. The cancelled submarines were to cost $90 billion, and the cost of the new contract is unknown. Is there an alternative? Is it possible to avoid violent conflicts and solve international issues non-violently, or is that just a naive fantasy? Join John McKinnon in conversation with our guests Mark and Mary Hurst, Pastoral Workers for the Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ).

08.01.2022 N. T. Wright And Walter Brueggemann Look To The Bible For Wisdom During The Pandemic CHRISTIAN CENTURY - They both resist easy answers to the problem of suffering Some have criticised the early release of these books, wondering whether they were written too soon to know what to make of our plight. But the assumption that we cannot know what pandemics mean until they are over, properly explained in light of their resolutions, belies the flat thinking of secular theodicies. Al...l acute suffering has an anachronistic character, Sölle claims. Those who aren’t suffering rush toward the future; the afflicted remain stuck in another time, which passes with agonising slowness. Cheap consolations try to pull them forward, assuring them that everything happens for a reason and will work itself out in the end. Such explanations don’t help. We can only help, says Sölle, by stepping into the timeframe of those who are suffering. It is there that suffering means something. Otherwise it’s best not to try. See more

08.01.2022 Podcast: Miroslav Volf On Christian Witness In Turbulent Places CHRISTIANITY TODAY - Miroslav Volf’s writing is considered some of the most significant theological work of the last century. He was born into a family of Pentecostal Christians in Croatia, under oppressive Communist rule, and a minority of a minority (as he would later describe it). For almost four decades, his writing has been a testament to the power of the gospel for reunification and healing in the aftermath of war and political turmoil, as well as a vision for human flourishing in an experience of Trinitarian love. On this episode, we talk about his emergence as a theologian, the development of his work, and his perspective on the turbulent times we’re experiencing today.

05.01.2022 From The On The Road Archive: Community, Accountability, Connection And Belonging - Young Adults And The Church ISSUE #41, JUNE 2009, pp. 14-16 By Moriah Hurst - Young adults want accountability. They want community and to be connected to something spiritual and real. They want to belong and to hear the story that goes before them and that will be there after them. Young adults are asking hard questions and while they will rarely take easy answers, they acknowledge that the...re is mystery in life and in God. There are communities that are working well inter-generationally and are mentoring young adults in faith, I know this because I am the product of such a community. But, sadly, they are few and far between. The more that young adults are burned by lack of community, by missing accountability and mentoring, by not seeing spiritual life and the actions of faith lived out together, by floundering around without wise elders to help them call out gifts and move them to action, the more they will shy away from religious institutions. They are longing for what church could be but they don’t see it as what church is. Young adults hold a great potential for the future of the church but also present an enormous challenge. So, what are we going to do? http://anabaptist.asn.au//2/02/OntheRoad41-July-2009-2.pdf See more

05.01.2022 Anabaptist Story: The World In Colour - Shaping Biblical Imagination CANADIAN MENNONITE - The Bible takes a much more ambitious approach to human formation than a simple rule-book could provide. God is not shaping automated drones but artists in the image of a MasterThe Bible provides the essential information we need to creatively lean in. We were made for so much more than paint-by-number religion. We were made to cast the dreams of God on many different canvases, in all the diverse shapes and vibrant, Spirit-saturated colours of true life. The Bible trains our eye for the divine aesthetic and then sends us out with a brush in hand to paint with the help of the Master.

03.01.2022 https://www.palestinechronicle.com/sharett-israel-and-zion/ HAARETZ - The moment Zionism called for the Jews to immigrate to Israel, in order to establish here one home for the Jewish people, which will be a sovereign state, a conflict was created. The Zionist idea was to come to a place where there were people, members of another people, members of another religion, completely different. "Have you seen anywhere in the world where the majority would agree to give in to a for...eign invader, who says, ‘our forefathers were here,’ and demands to enter the land and take control? The conflict was inherent and Zionism denied this, ignored it as the proportion of Jews to Arabs changed in favour of the Jews, the Arabs realized that they were losing the majority. Who would agree to such a thing? How did it happen that this new place, that was to have brought innovations, became the blackest place, controlled by the nationalist ultra-Orthodox? How is it that here of all places, there’s reactionism and zealotry, messianism, the desire to expand and control another people?https://www.palestinechronicle.com/sharett-israel-and-zion/ See more

03.01.2022 To Solve The Climate Crisis, We Must First Repair Our Relationships GRIST - The climate crisis we face has been caused by the breakdown of our relationships over time, and to solve the crisis we must repair those relationships first The urgent issue is not just that there are environmental perils coming, but rather that the climate crisis was built off of generations of inequity, Whyte said. If people don’t recognize that it’s a crisis of justice, as well as a crisis of the environment, then they’re going to continue to propose these problematic solutions.

01.01.2022 Bearing Witness In Afghanistan A Conversation With Kathy Kelly On Ending War And Listening To Its Victims INFORMED COMMENT - Only when we truly look at Afghanistan, when we see it and its people in all their rich complexity can we come to a better understanding of what they want and need. Only by actively listening to individuals and groups on the ground will we learn how we might be able to join them in finding ways to resolve conflicts and rebuild. And all this depends on... a firm commitment to nonviolence, genuine humility and honest self-reflection I think also we need maybe to recognise that the dominant religion, I believe, in our country today has become militarism. I think a lot of the rituals that take place in houses of worship, in a way, are smokescreens, and they prevent people from seeing that we really place our faith in the ability to dominate other people’s resources, control other people’s resources, and do that violently. And because we have that or we have had that dominance, we’ve been able to live quite well maybe with too much consumption, with too much control of resources because we expect to get other people’s precious resources at cut-rate prices. See more

01.01.2022 Peace On The Screen CANADIAN MENNONITE - Focusing on who is in the room helps me view social media disagreements not as ideological debates but as human interactions between real individuals, people God actively pursues with his kindness and grace. Peacemaking facilitates environments where people experience the living presence of the Prince of Peace. Healthy Christian communication makes room for the movement and activity of God. What does digital reconciliation look like for you? Does your online presence reflect your role as an ambassador of God’s peace?