By Celeste Kennel-Shank
Mennonite Weekly Review

	Participants in a civil disobedience action opposing the war in Iraq and torture kneel to pray before being arrested inside the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., March 7. — Photo by Kirk Johnston/Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

For four Mennonites, among several dozen other Christians, it meant getting arrested while kneeling in prayer in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., March 7 as part of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq.

For all four, the experience expressed their strong objection to the war while inviting conversation with neighbors, church members and even the police.

Organizers had offered nonviolence training that morning and coordinated numerous worship services at noon.

“The whole event was being prepared in a spirit I could very much identify with,” said André Gingerich Stoner, pastor of missions at Kern Road Mennonite Church in South Bend, Ind.

Stoner spent nearly a year considering whether to participate, seeking counsel from members of his church and its pastoral team, local church leaders and his spiritual director, among others.

In conversations with colleagues and the congregation, people did not always agree with the idea of civil disobedience but respected Stoner’s decision to take such an action, he said.

“The conversations before and after the experience are every bit as important as the experience itself,” Stoner said.

It was important to engage in such conversations because of his role as a pastor and because of his baptismal vows to give and receive counsel, he said.

“We so often make important decisions — whether it is where to buy a new house or to take a job or to participate in this kind of public witness — on our own without engaging in conversations in the body,” Stoner said.

In conversations with his church, Stoner heard concerns that the consequences of the arrest would be too severe, as well as concerns that they weren’t serious enough to have an effect.

After the U.S. Capitol Police arrested the group of more than 40 on a charge of unlawful assembly — though the charge may be dropped — many of the demonstrators, including the four Mennonites, chose to pay $50 and return home. Others in the group chose to return and stand trial.

Stoner felt the arrest was important in his faith journey, especially occuring furing Lent. Last October, he had heard John Dear, a Catholic priest, speak of the cross as nonviolent resistance.

“I experienced that dimension of the cross in a new way,” Stoner said.

When Stoner contacted other pastors and church workers in northern Indiana as he discerned his next steps as a peacemaker, he invited them to join him. Karl Shelly, a pastor of Assembly Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind., accepted the invitation.

Shelly wanted to object to the war more dramatically, he said.

“It has been five years since we invaded Iraq, and the killing and carnage continues without an end date in sight,” Shelly said. “This war was becoming familiar background music in our daily lives.

“I feared for my own spiritual well-being if I allowed my country’s war to become background music in my daily life as well.”

Shelly also noted the power of the event occurring during Lent, a time of awareness of sin.

“Lent, when Jesus turned his face to Jerusalem, was an appropriate time for me to turn toward D.C. and the ongoing sin of war,” Shelly said.

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