Mennonite Weekly Review

Articles : Paul Schrag

Sept. 6 issue

• Not a grand design, just love

  The U.S. war in Afghanistan pursues grand designs of nation-building and the defeat of terrorism. Toward these ends Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars, deploy tens of thousands of troops and sacrifice thousands of lives.

Aug. 2 issue

• The embodied power of presence

  The filmmaker Woody Allen said 90 percent of life is just showing up. The number is debatable, but the basic point is right: Every meaningful act starts with being there.

July 26 issue

• More than symbols

  Baptizing a convert or celebrating communion, we act out symbols of spiritual truths. And yet these rituals are more than that.

July 19 issue

• New friends in peace

  Interchurch relationships can lead in surprising directions. Here’s one: Mennonites and a denomination with Mormon roots have found a common identity as peace churches.

July 5 issue

• Born to sing, and be heard

  Was the song sacred or secular? As always with the band U2, it was sacred if you wanted it to be. “I was born to sing for you,” sang Bono, U2’s frontman. The “you,” of course, was God.

June 21 issue

• True evangelical faith for today

  “True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant,” the Dutch Anabaptist leader Menno Simons wrote in 1539. He went on to describe what a wide-awake evangelist ought to do. The list included acts of mercy — feeding the hungry, consoling the oppressed — as well as teaching the Word of God, praying for persecutors, returning good for evil and seeking “that which is lost.”

• Uninsured take care of their own

  America’s 46 million uninsured include the Amish and plain-sect Mennonites, but they’re hardly typical.

June 7 issue

• Evil from the deep

  Humans long have feared that evil lurks in the ocean. And so, in John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, “there was no longer any sea” (Rev. 21:1). The sea’s disappearance symbolizes the defeat of evil, according to Mennonite Publishing Network’s Gather ’Round Sunday school curriculum for May 23.

May 24 issue

• A test of support for immigrants

  Since Scripture calls us to welcome the alien, can we worship in a place where immigrants feel unwelcome? That is a question Mennonite Church USA leaders need to decide this year. They are asking for advice from across the church.

May 17 issue

• Unofficially, prayer is better

  “Let us pray” are words close to a Christian’s heart. Does it matter who says them? What if the call to prayer comes from the government?

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