Oct. 20, 2008 issue
MCC hosts forum on Ahmadinejad meeting
By Kathy Heinrichs Wiest West Coast Mennonite Central CommiteePage:
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FRESNO, Calif. — About 80 people attended an Oct. 1 forum hosted by West Coast Mennonite Central Committee on the topic of MCC’s Sept. 25 meeting with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York.
Robb Davis, former MCC executive director, opened the discussion with an impassioned explanation of why, in the past, MCC felt called to engage with the Iranian leaders.
He reflected on the time in 2006 when an invitation for the first such meeting came to MCC from Iran. MCC saw the invitation as an opportunity to witness, he said.
“We wanted to give [Ahmadinejad] a glimpse of God’s kingdom,” Davis said.
Davis recalled MCC conversations with U.S. representatives who expressed fear of being the first to meet with Ahmadinejad.
By talking with him, MCC could open the way for other conversations and witness that “Jesus’ way is not the way of fear.”
In meeting with the Iranian president, Davis said, MCC leaders recognized that “in human terms it was naïve and would be misunderstood and misused,” but they felt that by failing to act in faith “we would limit the power of God.”
Richard Kriegbaum, former Fresno Pacific University president, moderated the dialogue that followed Davis’s remarks.
Several people who stepped to the microphone expressed support for MCC’s engagement with Iran. A few raised cautions about MCC’s involvement in what they viewed as “political activity.”
In conversation after the forum, many participants who had come with reservations about MCC’s involvement with the Iranian leader expressed satisfaction that their questions had been answered.
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Comments
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Kathy Wiest must have been at a different forum from the one I attended and participated in by speaking from the floor! To my count, there were only three people who voiced any concern with MCC's dialogue with Ahmadinejad. As one seasoned Mennonite mediator said afterwards, those who deplored the dialogue simply did not view this forum as a place where it was safe for them to speak.
Of the three who did, though, one may have used the term political activity and deplored Mennonite involvement in it; another closed his comment saying that if he had to choose between Israel and Palestine he would choose Israel (not exactly an indictment of political activism); and the third was yours truly, who believes that politics and faith are effectively inseparable. I pointed out that Jesus taught that the church was the new Israel, which certain relativizes the importance of a political entity that calls itself Israel. I also critiqued MCC for not being willing to really listen to Iran's president on the subject of "the Holocaust" and its enshrinement and use for political reasons, notwithstanding all of the talk about dialogue, and recently adopting a statement acknowledging the "fact of the Holocaust," even though there are many orthodox accounts of the Holocaust that are subject to dispute.
Mine are comments regarded as unfit for public consumption in America, however — and apparently in the pages of MWR, too.
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