To Minister or Administer

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-186
Author(s):  
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Global South ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Orientation Program ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Spatial Design ◽  
International Funding ◽  
Global Operations ◽  
Mennonite Central Committee

Across the Global South, missionary and religious organizations served as state proxies in “secular” modernization projects. In Bolivia, Protestants flocked to new colonization zones at the invitation of the MNR. This chapter explores the Methodist Mission Board and the Mennonite Central Committee (a North American relief agency). Each made Bolivia a center of its global operations and joined with several Maryknoll nuns in an improvised United Church Committee (CIU) in the wake of a devastating 1968 flood. The CIU would go on to administer the San Julián Project, the largest colonization program in Bolivian history during a period of authoritarian rule ushered in by General Hugo Banzer’s 1971 coup. Faith-based development practitioners worked on the ground with colonists, gained the confidence of Banzer, and channeled international funding. During that time, San Julián attracted a range of academics and planners who were drawn to its unique orientation program and spatial design. The chapter follows the trajectories of these mobile actors who leveraged their work in Bolivia into new roles with international agencies and NGOs across the Global South. These “go-betweens” crossed boundaries separating the revolutionary and the authoritarian, the secular and the sacred, and the frontier and the academy.

“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.

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 Local Faith Actors and the Global Compact on Refugees

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Wurtz ◽  
Olivia Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Global South ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Good Practices ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Global Power

Power dynamics of global decision-making have meant that local faith actors have not been frequently heard in the context of refugee response. The development of new global refugee and humanitarian frameworks gives hope that there will be greater inclusion of Southern-led, faith-based responses. A closer look, however, demonstrates discrepancies between the frameworks used in global policy processes and the realities of local faith actors in providing refugee assistance. We present primary research from distinct case studies in Mexico and Honduras, which counters much of what is assumed about local faith actors in refugee services and aid. Interventions that are considered to be examples of good practice in the global South are not always congruent with those conceptualized as good practices by the international community. Failure to recognize and integrate approaches and practices from the global South, including those led by actors inspired by faith, will ultimately continue to replicate dominant global power structures.

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.

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