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by Jo Rathbone

… or, as Christian Aid in Scotland call it, ALTERnativity…

The Anabaptist vision for church is to provide a critique of the dominant modes in the culture – to affirm where things are in harmony with the gospel of Jesus, and to demonstrate alternatives where society’s values clash with those of Jesus. Anabaptists also choose not to occupy social positions of power, but rather remain at the margins, with the powerless. Christmas has, of course, become a consumer-fest, bowing low to the gods of the market and materialism, and so how do Anabaptists relate to Christmas?! By challenging that idolatry, and choosing to identify with the needs of the planet (marginalized in a consumer culture) and the needs of the exploited.

So Christmas then becomes a fantastic opportunity to go against the flow! How can we imbue this holyday with a sense that the material matters, and that our task is to ‘keep’ creation (Gen 2:15) not plunder it? How do we live in solidarity with those on the margins at this time?

The Canadian Mennonites began www.buynothingchristmas.org, and provide ideas, information, posters, and resources for youth sessions on resisting the spending spree. The Mennonites (one denomination of Anabaptists) have a long history of counter-culture protest, peace activism, and justice work. Other sites to help are www.simpleliving.org for ideas to ‘challenge consumerism, live justly and celebrate responsibly’. Or visit Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping www.revbilly.com...

October 2008 has been a significant watershed for Bridge Builders as we have led the first of our newly-designed Transforming Church Conflict five-day courses. We have run a five-day mediation and facilitation skills course since 1996 to widespread acclaim and consistently positive feedback. But we saw a need to shift from that course for several reasons. In particular we concluded that most church leaders do not need formal mediation training, even if they do need some enhanced skills, and because we needed a course that could be more sustainably offered several times a year by the Bridge Builders team.

So we took the decision in 2007 that we would separate out our training in interpersonal mediation process from our foundational week-long course. In the middle of October we pioneered our new Transforming Church Conflict course, and we were very encouraged by the positive feedback – as good as if not better than the feedback on our old course.

The decision to radically change our foundational training seems to have been the right one, and represents a major step forward for us. We have a course that better meets the needs of most church leaders, that better achieves Bridge Builders’ objectives of equipping leaders to be part of changing the culture of how conflict is handled in British churches, and which can sustainably be offered on a regular basis. Check out www.menno.org.uk for dates of when the course will be running in 2009.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is recruiting Peacemaker Corps applicants for a training to take place in the United Kingdom in 2009. The training could include people from all over Europe. For the training—the first that CPT will conduct outside North America—CPT needs ten applicants by January 2009.

Members of the full-time corps commit to a three-year term of active peacemaking in situations of conflict and crisis around the world. Reserve Corps members are available to serve for periods of two to twelve weeks a year for three years. Corps members engage in public witness, nonviolent direct action, negotiation, conflict transformation, human rights reporting, accompaniment, and regular periods of worship and prayer.

The trainings incorporate a kaleidoscope of role-plays, small group exercises, presentations, and the acquisition of practical technical skills. Days are long and full. Every training includes one or two public witness events. While CPT staff members provide overall coordination of the training, a variety of trainers with significant experience in active peacemaking are brought in to facilitate the different training modules.

"It's exciting to feel the momentum building, and see this dream of a European training transform into a reality," says Dora-Marie Goulet, a London-based organizer. "And it's reassuring to know that God is working through the process, so that whether the training goes forwards or not, the ultimate work of building the kingdom is still being brought about."
Application instructions for the UK training are available at http://www.cpt.org/participate/peacemaker/apply.

In other news, pioneering Christian peace activist, organizer and director emeritus of Christian Peacemaker Teams, Gene Stoltzfus will be in the UK this January, speaking to groups around the UK about nonviolent intervention in situations of conflict and injustice...

In Harm's Way: A History of Christian Peacemaker Teams
by Kathleen Kern

“‘In Harm’s Way’ is the remarkable story of Christian Peacemaker Teams: courageous groups of Christians willing to risk their own lives in non-violent actions that aim to advance peace and justice. Even those of us who are not pacifists will find this moving and honest story of work in such places as the Middle East, Haiti, and Central America compelling...

Jonah, Jesus and Other Good Coyotes: Speaking Peace to Power in the Bible
by Daniel L Smith-Christopher

An original, powerful, and programmatic reading of the Bible that emphasizes the biblical call to peacemaking. Smith-Christopher shows us that biblical peacemaking recognizes and then crosses—or “runs”—borders. All too often, borders and other imaginary lines drawn between groups of people have a way of becoming the basis for conflict, bigotry, and ultimately, war. Danger signs are evident when people use “borders” to talk about the goodness of everyone within “our” border, and the evil of everyone “over there"...

Threatened with Resurrection: The Difficult Peace of Christ
by Simon Barrow

‘Threatened with Resurrection’ examines the traditional stand-off between ‘just-war’ theory and pacifism, and offers a radical alternative rooted in the Gospel. Simon Barrow explains why saying no to ‘war in God's name’ is a serious threat to those (both religious and non-religious) who persist in justifying the use of political violence...Come to the launch event on 26 November at the London Mennonite Centre. Prebooking essential...

The SPEAK Network has just held its twice-annual participatory gathering which brings together teams from the Network to discuss the content of campaigns and events, and future plans.

The focus was the upcoming Soundcheck event in February, on the theme of Response:Ability. Moving ever more to a decentralised gathering, hosted by “pods” that focus on different areas of SPEAK, Soundcheck will be facilitated by national team leaders who focus on different areas such as campaigns, arts, prayer, faith and spirituality, network support and international connections.

Ron Sider, The author of 'Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger' will be helping us to explore the exciting promises of justice and freedom for the oppressed that the Bible offers. How can we respond to the suffering we see in the world around us? How do we balance our responsibility to speak out for global change, while not neglecting our immediate communities? How do we truly empower people to take collective responsibility for our world? Are we ‘Apathetic Christians in an Age of Injustice?’

We’ll be exploring our campaigns and giving you the opportunity to join in the call for:
● Greater legal accountability of multinational companies in Europe, as part of our Big Dress campaign
● An end to government support and promotion of the arms trade as part of our Counting the Cost campaign...

by Sue Haslehurst

In preparing this, I have been very influenced by a paper, “When darkness covers the earth”, given by one of my teachers when I studied at King’s College London, Murray Rae.

Today I’m going to focus on human suffering. And I’m going to assume that for us as Christians, one of the key difficulties of suffering - apart from just the sheer business of getting through it ourselves or with others - is the questions it raises. I’m going to crystallise the problem as follows: if God is good, loving and all powerful, why do so many people suffer so much? What I found helpful in my teacher’s paper was that he pinpointed three beliefs underlying this question and examined ways in which people have tried to explain away the problem by denying one of these beliefs. Those three beliefs are: suffering is bad, God is good and loving and God is all-powerful.

I’ve found it helpful to visualise this as a stool: take away any one of the legs and you no longer have a useable stool. Take away any one of these beliefs and, although you still have to live with suffering, you no longer have the agonising questions about where God is in it all.

So let’s look at these three legs in turn, starting with the belief that God is good and loving. I understand from my Advanced Workshop students (http://workshop.org.uk/advanced) that there are Christians who question this...