 We're so glad to be together again today. A brief note that this session is being recorded. So we'll invite you to put the name that you would like to have. And to keep that in mind, if there are particular distractions going on behind you or around you, you may want to, um, to turn off your screen. Um, as Jason mentioned, we have two exciting guest speakers today. I'm so glad that Isaac and Melissa are with us. I'll introduce them in just a moment. I want to just say briefly that. We will hear them speak. And then after their interventions, we'll go into breakout rooms and be able to discuss for a few moments. And then we'll come back and have a little chat. Okay. So, um, without any further preliminaries, I want to introduce you to our speakers today. Melissa floral Bixler is pastor of Riley Mennonite church, Raleigh Mennonite church. Excuse me. She serves as a chair of large North Carolina and on the steering committee for women in leadership for Mennonite church USA. And she writes for sojourners magazine. Perhaps you read a piece in anticipation of the session. She also writes for Christian century, the bias, Anabaptist world and G's magazine. Her book night by fire by night, finding God in the pages of the Old Testament was published last year. And her new book about how to have enemies will be available in July of 2021. And our second speaker is Isaac BJS. Isaac serves as the pastor of Chapel Hill Mennonite fellowship and is the president elect of the North Carolina council of churches. He's a columnist for the Christian century magazine and Anabaptist world magazine. The associated church press presented him with their first place award of excellence for theological writing in 2018. And an award of merit in church. And the award of merit in 2018 and an award of merit in 2019. So you can see that these people are, of course, eminently qualified to do many, many things. The reason that I've, we invited them here today was because of their contributions to help us think about what it means to bear Christian witness amid some of the challenges and the opportunities that exist today. I have really appreciated their contributions that I've read in these various magazines that I've named and the way that I've seen them providing leadership over the years, and particularly in these times. So I thank both of you for making time to be here. And I'm now turning it over to you. I look forward to learning from you and having a rich conversation together. So Melissa, would you start us off? Thanks, Janna for that nice introduction. And it's good to see all of you today, especially one of my church people, Debbie, Debbie Blutzo. So hello to Debbie, who's an AMBS student this year. Lucky, lucky you guys and lucky me. Yeah. And shared a piece with Janna that I had written actually in either March or April of 2019, a different world than the world that we live in now. And I think it's actually, it's helpful every once in a while to look back and see how your work stands up. And this would certainly be an interesting question to think about how much our world has changed from the time I wrote this piece. And that really focused on this question that has been turning around for me. I think in a new way since 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, but what is our, what's the relationship between systemic violence and individuals who uphold that violence? And that really coalesced for me around this one individual, Robert Alfieri, and that's how this essay starts is Robert Alfieri is my enemy. I thought I'd just position, offer just a minute to sort of position myself around, position us around sort of this question about what writing does for me. And just say that I come to writing as a way to work out just the questions that I have at the moment. And writing is an invitation for others to participate in those questions. I am not very original or special. So I assume that if I'm thinking about some of these things, you might be thinking about them too. And this is sort of a space for us to continue this conversation. So I don't really, I don't think about writing as something that necessarily has to sort of stand the test of time. I really do hope that someone takes these ideas and has something better to say in a few years. It would be pretty unnerving to live in a world where that didn't take place. So, so this sort of reflecting back, looping back again and seeing what's still there for us. As the new questions come into us as the new challenges are before us, the sort of opportunity to be here with you and do that today. Yeah, so I wanted to offer this particular piece because I was having these questions about the relationship of violence and individuals who uphold this violence. And all of this was sort of happening around this incident in our community versus a man named Samuel Oliver Bruno, who had been living in sanctuary in Durham. I live in Raleigh a few miles away from Durham, North Carolina. And he had basically been tricked into going to this biometrics appointment and leaving sanctuary to do that. And as soon as he left sanctuary, ice agents don't typically go to places that are sensitive locations, hospitals, schools, churches, so someone had been living in sanctuary for a while. And he was immediately arrested and brought out to this ice van in Morrisville, North Carolina. And this van was almost immediately surrounded by, by people who'd come to support him. Isaac was one of those people. And then all those people were arrested. But what was really fascinating about this moment was the, the reaction from especially the Morrisville police department, which was, they would say things like, we're so sorry, but we have to do this. I don't really believe in this or I'm actually on the side. I'm just doing my job or our hands are tied to sort of these, the sort of echo that was coming. And shortly after this, we had an election that sort of brought in some new sheriffs who all pulled out of the 287 G program that, that was a program that voluntary program from cooperation between ice agents and between local law enforcement. And under that program, Robert Alfieri, who also was the one who was charged with arresting some well and sort of instigating the scheme to pull him out of sanctuary. I announced that there would be a new normal in our area of unscheduled raids, ice raids in this region where we're both Isaac and I live. And so fact, you know, so you go to work in at a factory and all of a sudden I, this van of ice agents pulls up or you are stopped at a stop light and the sirens go off behind you. And this is just living in a state of constant fear. So all of this is sort of co, so this, I'm trying to think about the sort of rising urgency of, of being able to name our enemies and sort of recognizing that the challenge of that for me is then my experience in Anabaptism, but in the church in general, is that it feels like there's a, this leap that happens to the command, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. But I really needed to stay in this space first. And I, I needed to, to get a little bit deeper into that question of enmity to name it to really, because it in making that skip to love your enemies is sort of like, there's, there's a lot of questions there. What does it mean to love, but what also, but also who are your enemies and how do we name who our enemies are. And I realized that I was actually in good company in, in this because the Bible makes a tremendous amount of space for talking about enemies and huge swaths of both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament are concerned with this topography of enmity. And so this, these are stories and letters and narratives that create this map that, that spends so much time helping us to understand the landscape for when we get to Jesus Beatitudes offering this response of, of the beatified community in response to enmities. And so I wanted to take the, in this, in this piece that I wrote for sojourners and to really take some time to, to think about just a general outline. So things like talk a little bit about that article about how the gospel of Luke actually starts out naming the enemies of Jesus day, you know, it's, it, it names Herod and it, it names Caesar, it names all of the, there's no sort of shying away from, from the structural power analysis that's happening in this area. And you need that information in order to understand how and why Jesus progresses on this journey. And then all of that is informed by the Psalms and these Psalms of implication of calling out to God for justice and, and oftentimes for vengeance. That I think that sometimes we see those as sort of separate movements that happening in, in, in the Hebrew scriptures versus the New Testament, instead of this sort of, that this is like a, like almost like a wave that, that, that that is building over time and crashes in Jesus onto the shores of, of creation of, of human life. And so I ended up writing a whole book about this, but the germ of it is here in this article for sojourners. And for me, what, what I, what I think this sort of beginning exploration into the sort of much longer exploration of this book was digging into enmity as a difference that maintains superiority through power. And I wanted to shift away from the sense that, that enemies are imbued with hatred that, that somehow we have to sense this sort of heat from our enemies in order for us to be able to, to recognize them. And enmity certainly can look like rage and destruction, but I think we also need to be aware that enemy, enemies can wear the guise of paternalizing kindness or institutional bureaucracy or passive acceptance of the world in which we live. And when we are looking for sort of an emotional reaction, we are forgetting that so much of our history is actually the sources of enmity in the, in the programmatic every day actions that happen in people willing to seed themselves over to the, to be the instruments of power for systemic violence. So again, our hands are tied. We're very sorry we have to do this. Don't worry. I don't actually believe in this. And to position ourselves rightly before those questions. Is the, is the place we have to go first before we can even begin to think about asking, what does it mean to love our enemies? Yeah, so it's a little bit for me. And I'll turn it over to Isaac. Actually, before Isaac speaks, I want people just to take a moment, because I'm sure that was, that was a lot. That was, that was great. Thank you so much, Melissa. So maybe just take a moment and jot down a couple of your questions and thoughts that then we'll take into the conversation. All right, thanks Isaac over to you. Thank you. Good to be with all of you here. Good to see your faces, your names. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, in a lot of ways, I guess what I'm going to say is just kind of like a, maybe like a perhaps boring footnote to some of what was already shared forgive me for my particularity here. But yeah, I was going to talk a little bit about how some of this, I guess, makes sense in my own Mennonites in a Baptist tradition. These conversations about how to think about ourselves in the world and perhaps in relationship to enemies that we might make along the way. So yeah, so maybe a little boring history lesson you all can let me know. But I thought I'd start with the way that the, in terms of like Mennonite, the Mennonite tradition, our debts to the Schleitheim Confession. Schleitheim Confession was a document that a bunch of people got together and a Baptist got together in 16th century and decided like this is who they were going to be in the world. And one of the things that comes very, comes through very clearly in that document that became a unifying document for anti-Baptists and then later Mennonites was the sense of being a persecuted minority in Europe, in the context of Europe, in Switzerland, Germany, and then other communities throughout Central Europe there. And as a persecuted minority, they were called to separate themselves from the violence of this world. So people who were inflicting violence upon them, you could say, that they wouldn't respond in kind, that they would live out the life of Jesus and not return violence for violence. So their posture was one of separation. I mean, throughout the document, it's a call to, there's just a few lines. Thus all who follow the devil and the world have no part with those who have been called out of the world unto God. And these anti-Baptists were the ones called out from this world by God. Continues to liken the world to Babylon and Egypt, those Old Testament figures, and the church, the anti-Baptist church, as the little flock of, the humble little flock of Christ. That's how they talked about themselves. So yeah, so just in terms of that's how they thought about those, and since they didn't resort to violence, their only form of punishment of people in their community who would be violent or harm one another or whatever it might be, was exclusion, excommunication, what's known as the ban. So since you can't really hurt someone, you can't put someone in prison or jail or anything like that, the worst you could do to somebody was to kick them out of the community, which is still something we, the government decided to prioritize the men and knights practice today, and official capacities, like ordnation, recent news about John Rempel's ordination being terminated would be an example of this kind of this kind of punishment. The Slythethime Confession became significant in the life of US men and knights in the mid 20th century, Manonites here in the United States. Harold Dender was a kind of a, what would you call him? He was the gatekeeper of Mennonite identity for a long time. Dean of president of Goshen College, I think, something like that, but much more larger role in all Mennonite institutions. Anyhow, so he kind of revived this sense of 16th century anti-baptism, these voices as being helpful for our lives today or their lives today in mid 20th century Europe or mid 20th century United States. And these voices against like basically serving in the military. I mean, that was the issue that he identified as most significant for his people. He used his voices to say, you know, we can't be conscripted in these wars and World War One or two. Therefore, we need to be conscientious objectors to those forms of violence. So yeah, so this was a useful document for him in making violence conversations about violence, strictly about participation in war and Mennonites didn't do that. It was an important movement, important, you know, thing not to go off and kill in wars. But there's a lot that was occluded when that became like the central focus of what counts as violence. So we have to look to other places, not as, you know, kind of minoritarian figures within the Mennonite and the Baptist tradition to help reveal kind of like everyday violence is that are part of our lives that the men in Mennonite institutional power really talk about. So, for example, I mean, I, someone who I think is very significant in thinking about our complicity in global violence was Doris Jansen Long anchor. She was kind of awakened through Mennonite Central Committee's work of humanitarian outreach throughout the world, and realize that we participate in violent economies. That are supported by political sovereignties that have their power because of militaries. And we need to take that seriously that you know even though I'm not acting in a form of violence that I can decide like an everyday form of way of hurting somebody that participation in economy and food ways hurts people. So this continues to be significant for us, especially right now in this pandemic as you know people are harvesting our fruits and vegetables. And then getting infected out in the fields. I grew up in California so watching all the images of people migrants harvesting strawberries as they're like being choked by by the fires was very vivid vivid to me. Long anchor Doris kind of made that an important thing for us to care about as Mennonites in terms of institutional energy. Along the same lines MCC was important in paying attention to way that you know violence is not just about war it's also about violence against women. So MCC in the in the 80s started what was called the Committee of Women's Concerns. And it was related to their peace and social concerns committee. I'm kind of out of my league and talking about this I'm sure I assume Janet probably has much more to say about all these interconnections but but just to say that MCC kind of made sure that it's not just about anti-violence intimate partner violence, violence against women counted as part of what it meant to be part of what meant to be a Mennonite in terms of our peace witness. Same sort of thing in terms of race relations in the 70s. People of the mind of what's called the Minority Ministries Council emerged people like Vincent Harding and others confronted Mennonites on their, their what's to say their the comfort with which Mennonites have been able to live in this country and benefit from the power of whiteness is actually what the language he used he talked about the power of whiteness among Mennonites in the 1980s 1960s. Anyhow, I think all of that is just a way of talking about how, for me, coming to the question of what it means to think about our peace witness and to be Mennonites, part of this tradition is to realize that violence has a whole lot more to do than just wars and some of what Mozart and shared one aspect of that in terms of the enforcement of borders. I mean just to say to another way to make that hit home but just to realize that, you know anyone, all of us, those of us on this call who are citizens of the United States. Our rights and privileges depend on the violence of ice on the violence of border enforcement. There is no such thing as US citizens without 500 children being separated from their families. Can't find their parents. That was the news that broke yesterday, what ice has done. So just the thing about this. The conversation about enemies and our identity here in the United States has everything to do with the benefits and privileges of citizenship. Considering all of that this world that we live in. I like to talk, I'm beginning to talk about what it means to be Mennonite is not to not use the old language of non resistance or non violence or those permutations of those words. I think it's important to think about this tradition instead to think about our posture in the world as anti violence. Picking up on this tradition that I laid out here with MCC the women's concerns folks making sure we talk about intimate partner violence. Long anchor making sure we talked about economies and food ways of violence. Mennonites in German town in the 17th century, signing on to their, you know, this anti slavery documents. The ways of confronting the way that our lives are embedded these forms of violence and that the only way to be a Christian in them is to be anti violence to take an active posture of protesting violence that is part of our lives that infuses our lives. That sustains the comforts of our lives. And to make sure that when we talk about violence that we're talking about. Yes, things foreign but also, you know, domestic life. We're talking about things in this in our churches and also in the streets, things at home and also in prisons, that our posture of anti violence involves us in a commitment of peace to peace and all of those different places. We call it a vigilance of vigilance to the abuse of power anywhere, you know this vigilance against the powers of principalities was a language that I remember hearing thinking a lot about. But also, you know, it's a way that that powers and principalities. Yes, I'm all about like in rid of those that's bad but also just to realize that that kind of language, kind of abstracts us from the oppressed violences that we'd rather not pay attention to because they're too much a part of our, our lives so, you know, just the abuse that happens at the hands of the powerful among us in our, in our churches in our world, in our homes in the streets. So yes, I'll stop there. I'm going to say but that's what I got for us. Take it again another moment jot down your thoughts. Thank you so much Isaac, that was really rich. I suspect that we all have a this has been very exciting and provocative. And so I'm looking forward to going into breakout rooms now. And I know that you all have questions and comments because you have been sending them in the chat function already so fantastic. Jason I think that we have two questions that Isaac and Melissa posed ahead of time that draw a through thread from each of their interventions so we'll post those in the chat. And then we'll be going into breakout rooms where you can discuss those questions for seven minutes Jason. Is that what we're doing. Seven minutes. Okay. Please introduce yourself. Please respond to one of the questions, and then continue around the circle. And then if you have a chance, come back to the other continue discussion but want to make sure that everyone has a chance to, to voice a response into these questions or to the presentations. And then we'll come back into our full group session when so Jason's going to send the invitation now I believe. And when that comes, please accept the invitation so that you can enjoy, you can join your breakout room. All right, so you should be getting your invitation here. We'll need to leave. So this could be a time to do so if, if you're not going to join the breakout but I'll call you back here in about seven minutes is that is the story of God's redemptive love through the people of Israel into and then incorporating Gentiles in the church. And so what does it mean to put yourself into the new order. And that that is not a possession that the that the church has is a gift that we receive oftentimes from unusual and unexpected places. And so, and so the ability to recognize that there are, and there are ways that we are invited into the new order into the new sort of social rearrangement and economic upheaval that's happening, even in places that are not in, in church spaces I think is, and is is is the gift that's waiting for us to be received. And I hope we receive it. I just want to highlight one thing before we go on to the other questions that are now coming in quickly. And that is that I think a really helpful, more explicit, in some ways, decentering of the church. A really important contribution of an abaptist thinking has been to recognize the church as a political agent. That's essential. I think it's also helpful to recognize that in, in these situations that in this movement of what you're calling with cone movement towards the new order. And to recognize where the spirit is moving, like say in social movements and what are the ways that we lend our power to that work of the spirit that is going on outside of ourselves. And that decentering work, I think that's pretty hard work. And I think that's a, that's a challenge to us right now. Melissa, a question for you on enemies and it came in two parts. So I'm going to start with it and if the person who raised this question wants to identify themselves are welcome to, but this person wrote, we in our group discuss that other anti-abaptist backgrounds. So an abaptist some people in this, in this conversation have come from an abaptist backgrounds. And this person says, this is very much in contrast to my strongly military family. So, what do you do or what would I do, as I realize that, or I'll just read that here, what do you do as you realize you're Trump supporting Christian nationalist family and friends are in many ways enemies. And then the second part of the question is, in my case, my parents provide childcare and other forms of support for us. And we have an ongoing relationship. They know where we stand in contrast to them but we don't discuss it regularly, because it would rock the boat of us caring for our children together. So, about these kinds of situations. This is me by the way, Laura Rhodes. Hi. Thanks, Laura for posing that question. Yeah, that's a really, that's a good and important question and one, you know that I am there, it does feel like there is this. You know, we have both an interesting dynamic in the New Testament between Jesus, basically telling us we will become enemies of our kin, right to follow Jesus that. It's interesting that he immediately moves into into how he will also call people to lay down their possessions and and give up their and give up their money and everybody shocked right the site and this is to the disciple this is can't believe this. And, and so I think we have this this real strand which strain within the New Testament of the sense of the play like we become enemies to the people who are unexpected like the people who we think that are we have the most natural people of our same religious group, our family members, and then a new family is created out of out of the people around us. And so I think oftentimes the question for me is, are we doing the work to create the kind of communities and families and support networks, so that people can actually be joined to people who are doing the work of Christ liberation, or are we saying like oh actually we need you to become enemies to your families but we don't really have mutual aid support networks and we're not providing you childcare like I, for me it's those are sort of questions on that that we have to be asking at the same time. The reason from Jesus is because there is a better life out there, among, among the, among the family of God, and the kingdom as in a Maria sassidious calls it, and, and, but, but I think that the challenge for the churches are we willing to actually step up into the role of, of being family to one another in the ways that, that oftentimes I, I don't always see that. That's really helpful thank you. Yeah, thanks for asking that Laura. Question for Isaac. This has come from, I'm going to read the question as it's posed here. You can also know that it's coming from different directions and I would also hear a fair amount in my piece of these classes. So this reads, Isaac identified the many kinds of violence in which we are complicit. Is there a hierarchy of violence, suggesting where we might focus our resources, time, money, etc. and assuming one cannot tackle everything. Oh, you're a mute Isaac. Thank you. I wasn't able to myself that for a second. Yeah, no that's really, we are finite creatures. And the world is very big. Yeah, no, that's a really good question one. I don't know if this is helpful at all. I mean, part of me feels like what one answer is just the answer that Jesus offers with the parable of the of the Samaritan who stops and helps the person, you know all other people who ignore this person on the side of the road, because they have more important things to do. And then the Samaritan who decides to interrupt his life and intend to healing the person. So it feels like part of it is, you know, whatever confronts us today is in this next hour is the one is probably the violence we should be paying attention to. I think another image that has been helpful for me at least is from Fred Moten Fred Moten is a black studies professor used to be a Duke now I think is in the UC system in California. But he, he talks about how what it means to live our lives uses the analogy. The analogy of the fort. So settler colonialism operates by establishing forts. Oh actually there's like this great map going around, at least I saw on Facebook the other day people sharing it about how many like places in the United States names of town cities are called like Fort whatever, as kind of a remnant of this imagination of what it means for European settlers in this context. Anyhow, so the image of the fort is what Fred Moten offers us and he says the colonial imperial violent powers of this world impose themselves in our lives like a fort. And the thing about a fort is that forts are always surrounded by people. Forts are always under threat of collapsing. It's actually a very precarious life to live to establish your power as a fort, because you're always worried that the people were going to rise up and breach the walls. And he offers that as an image for thinking about our lives in that the powers of this world present themselves as all encompassing as impermeable to to our efforts to overthrow them. But it's the case that if people organize themselves and confront the violence is everyday violence is in their lives. We will discover that they're all interrelated. We will handle the violence that we see in our own life that confronts us, we will and we, you know, confront that we will discover that somehow it's connected to another form of violence, all because of this power that is this tiny fort in our lives with a lot of guns, but still just a fort. Thank you that's a really helpful image. I wonder if to that we might also think about the tradition of understanding an abaptist communities as part of a broader movement. So that we don't have to ask ourselves how what am I going to do about all of these kinds of violence, but to understand ourselves in relation to and to really cultivate communities that are in the community to cultivate communities and networks of churches and networks of networks that are really working on on these different fronts together and to be a part of the knitting of those of those different efforts and of those organizing efforts. I know that's something that has been important for me to think about. We are at 130. We could continue having a really rich conversation. But I am so grateful to both of you. Thank you Melissa. Thank you Isaac for coming and joining this conversation. We'll look forward to continuing it in the weeks and months ahead in different ways. Let's stay in touch. So thank you. Let's let's everyone give a round of applause to Melissa and Isaac for being today. Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for everybody for your conversation here. Just a word about our next session, our next group session together or our next presenter on November 4. So the day after elections, we invite you to join witness colloquium for a conversation about the elections, the US American landscape and how an abatism features in the bigger picture of political realities with the father daughter duo doctors Leroy and Melinda Barry. For many years as many of you already know Leroy Barry taught history and political science at Goshen College, and he's also a bilingual general practice lawyer. Melinda is of course an associate professor of theology and ethics at AMBS, and she will facilitate the conversation. So, we are looking forward to that, and we hope you join us for that next time. And with that, we will officially conclude our time together. Thanks again everyone for for joining us and being here. Thank you. Take care. Take care.