A Global Anabaptist and Mennonite Dialogue on Key Issues Facing the Church in Mission VOLUME 7 / ISSUE 2 / OCT 2020 A Global Anabaptist and Mennonite Dialogue on Key Issues Facing the Church in Mission Editor Jamie Pitts, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary Editorial Staff BOOK REVIEW EDITORS Steve Heinrichs & Isaac S. Villegas MARKETING COORDINATORS Carmen Andres Matthew J. Krabill COPYEDITOR Heidi King STUDENT ASSISTANT Marcos Acosta WEB EDITOR Laura Carr-Pries PRINT DESIGNER Matt Veith Creative Editorial Committee Sarah Augustine, Suriname Indigenous Health Fund and Dispute Resolution Center of Yakima and Kittitas Counties Jessica Stoltzfus Buller, Peace Education Coordinator, Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Steve Heinrichs, Mennonite Church Canada Indigenous-Settler Relations Matthew J. Krabill, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, USA Laura Carr-Pries, Mennonite Voluntary Service, Canada Patricia Urueña, Iglesia Menonita de Ibagué, Colombia Isaac S. Villegas, Pastor of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, North Carolina, USA About Anabaptist Witness is published twice a year (April and October) and is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database® (ATLA RDB®), http://www.atla.com. It is a publication of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Mennonite Church Canada, and Mennonite Mission Network. The views expressed in Anabaptist Witness are those of the contributing writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the partnering organizations. Subscriptions, Additional Copies, and Change of Address The annual subscription rate is $20 (US) plus shipping. Subscribers will receive an invoice to send with remittance to Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Single or additional copies of Anabaptist Witness are available for purchase through Amazon.com. Change of address or questions about purchasing the journal may be directed to the editor at the address below or by sending an email to [email protected]. Editorial Correspondence The editor makes a public call for submissions for each issue of the journal, soliciting contributions that facilitate meaningful exchange among peoples from around the world, across professions, and from a variety of genres (sermons, photo-essays, interviews, biographies, poems, academic papers, etc.). All submissions to Anabaptist Witness undergo a double-blind peer review process. For full details of the current call for submissions, visit www.anabaptistwitness.org. Questions or comments about the journal’s print or online content may be directed to the editor: Jamie Pitts [email protected] Copyright Unless otherwise noted, all content in Anabaptist Witness is licensed by contributors under the CreativeCommons copyright license Attributions-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (cbd, CC BY-ND 4.0). Under this license, readers may distribute journal content in any medium or format for any purpose, so long as the content is not adapted and so long as attribution is given to the contributor. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/. ISSN 2374-2534 (print) ISSN 2374-2542 (online) Cover photo: JP Valery / Unsplash / CC 4.0 Anabaptist Witness Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary 3003 Benham Avenue www.anabaptistwitness.org Elkhart, IN 46517 USA Anabaptist Witness A global Anabaptist and Mennonite dialogue on key issues facing the church in mission VOLUME 7 / ISSUE 2 / OCT 2020 Displacement: Indigenous Peoples, Land, and Mission Editorial 7 Jamie Pitts ARTICLES Land, Neoliberalism, and Mennonite/Maya Interconnections 11 An interview of Manuel May by Katerina Friesen Land Conflict in Mexico between Mennonite Colonies and Their 25 Neighbors Rebecca Janzen Acompañamiento en la compra de tierras en El Tabacal: La 45 historia bíblica enfatiza el rol integral que juega la tierra en el proceso de convertirse en el pueblo de Dios. Sin tierra no hay shalom Luis Acosta Seeing Samaritans: Subversive Othering in Kenyan-Somali 57 Relations Peter Sensenig 73 Journeying toward Reconciliation: Reflections on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Lessons for Canada in Its Post-TRC Era Andrew G. Suderman 93 Unsettling the Radical Witness of Peace: A Decolonizing Investigation of Mennonite Migration from Russia to Manitoba in the 1870s Hyejung Jessie Yum What Does Shalom Mean? Comparing Anabaptist and Indigenous 1 1 5 Perspectives Randolph Haluza-DeLay Turning Plowshares into Swords: An Ethnohistory of Violence 1 3 5 Devon Miller Whose Land Is It? 153 David Rensberger A Community of Creation, a Calling to Friendship 1 5 9 a Conversation between Steve Heinrichs and Adrian Jacobs PROCEEDINGS FROM THE AAR/SBL MENNONITE SCHOLARS AND FRIENDS SESSION: "MIGRATION, BORDERS, AND BELONGING" Past Encounter, Present Resonance 1 6 7 Jennifer Graber 1 7 7 Race, Religion, and Land in The Gods of Indian Country Joseph R. Wiebe 183 The US/Mexico Borderlands in the Mennonite Imagination Felipe Hinojosa A Postcolonial Response to Felipe Hinojosa’s Latino Mennonites 1 9 3 Hyejung Jessie Yum REVIEWS Jen Gobby, More Powerful Together: More Powerful Together: 1 9 9 Conversations with Climate Activists and Indigenous Land Defenders Reviewed by Zoe Matties Bryan Stone, Evangelism after Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian 2 0 1 Witness Reviewed by Russell P. Johnson John G. Flett and David W. Congdon, eds., Converting Witness: The 2 0 3 Future of Christian Mission in the New Millennium Reviewed by Sarah Ann Bixler Editorial hristian mission is often described in positive terms as a commitment to Ccross every boundary in order to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. This description perhaps has its origins in the Acts of the Apostles, which contains Jesus’s call to witness to him “to the ends of the earth” (1:8, NRSV). The Acts narrative shows Paul, in particular, as a border-crossing witness; if Peter’s re- sponse to Cornelius begins to overcome the Jewish-Gentile boundary (10–11), Paul’s expansive ministry spreads the message of interethnic reconciliation throughout the Roman Empire. Beyond Acts, Christians have looked to the model of the wandering Israelites and even to the incarnation—in which Jesus is said to have crossed the barrier between divinity and humanity—to inspire and to justify an account of mission as inherently border-crossing. There has been less reflection, to my knowledge, on the implications for mission of the limited geographical scope of Jesus’s ministry, or even of Paul’s ministry, confined as it was largely to the Eastern Mediterranean provinces of the Roman Empire. Paul, according to Acts, was even restricted by the Holy Spirit from ministering in the imperial provinces of Asia and Bithynia (16:6–8). What does it do to our conception of mission as border-crossing if we accept that the Spirit sometimes stops us from crossing borders? Is there anything to be learned from the tension between Jesus’s command to go to the ends of the earth, and his Spirit’s containment of missionary expansion? Those questions are important to consider when we reflect on the history of mission, especially (but not only) on its past five hundred years, during which mission has become thoroughly entangled with colonialism. Would a theology of mission more attentive to the Spirit’s no have prevented, or at least signifi- cantly modified, European Christians’ journeys to the ends of the earth? As Christians are increasingly challenged to learn about the importance of personal boundaries—to heed, for example, women’s no to abuse—it seems clear that we need a more nuanced conversation about mission and borders. That conversation will need to take up as a central topic the theme of the present issue of Anabaptist Witness: the historic Christian contribution to the displacement of peoples and land. The legacy of boundary-crossing colonial mission includes massive displacement—of native peoples from their home- lands in Africa and the Americas, and of the produce of many lands, such as sugar, tobacco, and opium, for imperial purposes. The coerced movement and violent destruction of bodies and goods entails further displacements of psyches and families, cultures and languages. Any theology of mission that commends Anabaptist Witness 7.2 (Oct 2020) 7 8 | Anabaptist Witness Jesus’s call, that advises packing up and moving across borders, must reckon with the history of missional displacement. This issue consists of two primary sections. The first section contains peer-reviewed articles submitted to address the issue theme. These articles are framed by two interviews conducted by white, settler Mennonites with indige- nous leaders. In the first of these interviews, Katerina Friesen speaks with Maya scholar Manuel May about his work to engage Old Colony Mennonites whose farms are displacing Maya people in southern Mexico. Rebecca Janzen’s article then addresses related conflicts over land stemming from the arrival of Old Col- ony Mennonites to northern Mexico in the early twentieth century. While these articles give a glimpse into the history of Mennonite displace- ment of others, Luis Acosta’s essay shows that Mennonites have sometimes helped displaced others recover their land. Acosta narrates his work with Men- nonite Mission Network’s team in the Argentine Chaco to support a Mocoví community in their efforts to buy back some of their land. Peter Sensenig writes of Christians in Kenya who refer to Somali refugees— many of whom are Muslims—as “Samaritans,” thereby highlighting the com- plex bonds of solidarity forged in the face of terrorism. For Sensenig, seeing Muslims as Samaritans