Blurring Mission and Development in the Mennonite Central CommitteeI thank the participants at the Deakin Religion and Development Roundtable for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper and also Christine Helliwell, Patrick Guinness and Iris Lee for their helpful and constructive comments. I am especially grateful to the many staff at the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) who welcomed and assisted my research.

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
The Many ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee

scholarly journals Creating a Space for Peace-making: Burundi and Beyond

Refuge ◽  
1997 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Tim Wichert
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
International Volunteers ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee

Mennonites and Quakers have historically renounced the use of violence for resolving conflicts. From 1994 to 1997 the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) ran a program of civilian peacemaking in Burundi at the request of local Quakers. Their goals were modest, hoping that international volunteers could assist in reducing the level of violence and creating space for positive things to happen. Lessons learned were discussed at a seminar hosted by the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva in May 1997.

scholarly journals Fetishizing Dialogue and Commodifying Peacemaking

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-152
Author(s):  
Mahdi Tourage
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Student Exchange ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee ◽  
Ongoing Dialogue ◽  
Research Institute

This paper assesses the ongoing dialogue and student exchangebetween the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and one ofthe most violent institutions in Iran, the Imam Khomeini Educationand Research Institute (IKERI). I will use this relationshipbetween theMCC and IKERI to examine the broader question ofinterreligious transnational dialogue and peacemaking.After a brief background of this somewhat “secretive” dialogue/student exchange, I will evaluate its effects. Of particular interestwill be the following questions: How do we responsibly shapeMuslim–non-Muslim dialogue for peace and understanding in aglobal context that is inevitably shaped by an imbalance of powerand representation? How are the acts of resistance undertaken bythe disenfranchised local/diasporic Iranian communities and thesustained systematic violence against them impacted by a peacefulfaith community such as the Mennonites? How does the absolutizationof “dialogue” coupled with self-proclaimed theologicalmandates effectively strip away the archives of violence from livingmemories and histories?What can examining the decade-longdialogue between the MCC and IKERI reveal about the mechanismsof perpetuation and dissimulation of imperial dominationand control? How can transnational interreligious interventions bethe nexus for infusing sensitivity and expecting accountability?I argue that a fetishization of dialogue and a commodification ofpeacemaking took place between the MCC and IKERI, resultingin the patronage of the sign systems of existing normative ideologiesof violence ...

scholarly journals Cinema for the “Soviet East”: National Fact and Revolutionary Fiction in Early Azerbaijani Film

Slavic Review ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-678
Author(s):  
Michael G. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Simple Expression ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moving Frames ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

Before the eyes of the vast, ignorant masses of the eastern nationalities, the fast-moving frames of cinema will reproduce the many achievements of human knowledge. For the illiterate audience, the electric beam of the magic motion-picture lamp will define new concepts and images, will make the wealth of knowledge more easily accessible to the backward mind.Bakinskii rabochii, 18 September 1923Pictures, so the first Bolsheviks believed, speak louder than words. Visual propaganda was essential in their campaign to reach the illiterate and poorly literate masses, to engage them in a new Soviet style of life. By the end of the civil war, every leading member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party valued the political uses of film. As commissar of nationalities, Iosef Stalin recognized its potential; in his simple expression, film was “the greatest means of mass agitation.” Like cinema, the Bolsheviks appeared at the confluence of two worlds, the traditional and the modern. For them, film was the perfect medium by which to critique the old and celebrate the new. Film viewed the world as they did, with one measure of hard realism, another of soft utopianism.

An Experiment in Competition: The 1987 Elections to the Local Soviets

Slavic Review ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 434-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Hahn
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Many ◽  
Policy Shifts ◽  
General Secretary ◽  
At Home

For western observers, one of the most striking policy shifts articulated by Mikhail S. Gorbachev since he became general secretary of the CPSU in March 1985 has been his insistence on greater democratization (demokratizatsiia) and self-government (samoupravlenie). In his speech to the Communist party's Central Committee on 28 January 1987 he explicitly identified “the many-sided development of democracy and selfgovernment“ as a key component of what he meant by the reconstruction (perestroika) of Soviet society. His speech to the plenum dealt in large part with this theme. In it, Gorbachev startled his audience both at home and abroad with proposals for the introduction of a degree of competitiveness in the elections of party leaders, state officials, and enterprise managers.

Lois Gunden et le Secours mennonite aux enfants (France, 1941-1943)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-376
Author(s):  
Stéphane Zehr
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee ◽  
Seconde Guerre Mondiale

Le Mennonite Central Committee a commémoré en 2020 les 100 ans de son existence. Peu connu en France, le principal organisme « de secours » mennonite a pourtant œuvré sur le territoire dès la fin de la Guerre d’Espagne, en ouvrant, notamment, des maisons de convalescence pour enfants pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. En dirigeant la Villa Saint-Christophe, à Canet-en-Roussillon, de 1941 à 1943, une jeune volontaire mennonite a ainsi participé au sauvetage de plusieurs enfants Juifs. Lois Gunden, reconnue « Juste parmi les nations », incarne le rapport privilégié des activités de « care » avec le sauvetage des juifs persécutés, ainsi que l’évolution du statut des femmes dans les églises mennonites américaines par le biais de l’humanitaire.

“There’s some colonial in my postcolonial”: Community Development Workers’ Perspectives on Faith-based Service Learning in a Guatemalan Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Geraldine Balzer ◽  
Luke Heidebrecht
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Development Organization ◽  
Faith Tradition ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The People ◽  
Global North ◽  
Development Workers ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee

Faith-based relief and development organization Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has been involved in the country of Guatemala since 1976 when they responded to relief needs in light of the devastating earthquake at the time. Since then MCC has invested in a number of communities throughout Guatemala in various capacities, one of which has been the development of service and learning opportunities aimed at exposing and connecting students/participants in the global north with the people and issues within the global south. As researchers of service learning, who are also committed to a faith tradition and have participated in or have been in relationship with MCC in some capacity, we are interested in evaluating how their faith tradition has helped to both construct their practice as well as critique it. One of the aims of our research is to collaborate with MCC practitioners in assessing and examining their current practice of service/learning in Guatemala in an effort to discover ways in which they are creating opportunities for positive societal change – both in the lives of the student/ participants and the communities in Guatemala, while critiquing the traditional colonial and neocolonial approaches to development.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document