I have known walls, 150 year-old walls, erected and fortified by the Mennonite Brethren community of ‘believers’.
January 6, 1860 – January 6, 2010.
Mennonite Brethren celebrate 150 years of their own uniquely Mennonite walls – enclosing, protecting.
I bear witness to what I have seen inside the Mennonite “kingdom of peace”:
Mennonites who rape their child, Mennonites who enable the rape of that child, Mennonites who turn a blind eye to her agony, and Mennonite ‘men of god’ who cover up the crimes, who hold the victim accountable to grant them absolution, and who shield the Mennonite perpetrators – behind their “historic peace church” walls.
I have heard Mennonite Brethren leaders assure Mennonite Brethren violators that “nothing can harm nor condemn them (or hold them accountable), since they are ‘believers’ ”.
Adult, water-baptized, Anabaptist ‘believers’.
I have seen self-serving Mennonite Brethren pastors retreating behind their walls, saying, “peace, peace”, when there is no peace.
I know of Mennonite leaders at the highest echelons of power, united in their “peace position” edifice, smug within their Mennonite walls of silence,
die Stillen im Lande.
They have shut their ears. They have pretended they neither heard nor understood the Mennonite victim’s cry for justice.
Instead, they have averted their eyes, and diligently built up their wall and daubed it with untempered morter.
They want nothing to disturb their Celebration.
All throughout 2010 they will celebrate and congratulate themselves on their success in covering up the crimes of their members; to present their “glorious church” walls without any visible “spot or wrinkle”.
Die Stillen im Lande.
They have responded to the Mennonite victim who dares to raise her voice to ask for justice by rallying to build ever higher walls of recalcitrant obduracy.
And if she lives, or even if she dies for lack of justice after being ostracized outside their walls, the Mennonite Brethren church leaders wash their hands of the injustice, and proclaim that “that action has concluded”
when the process of justice has never even begun.
