Short stuff

Photo: Dorothy Bartel

One cold morning this winter, Mandy Neminishen, a student at Bethany College, Hepburn, headed to a hairdressing salon that had offered to shave her head at no cost. (Stylist Gail Robinson, right, does the honours.) While some friends said she was crazy, this event inspired others and raised more than $6,000 for Mennonite Central Committee programs supporting children orphaned by AIDS. Neminishen in turn was inspired by another student, Alison Berg, who had shaved her head as a fundraiser for AIDS orphans in 2004. Neminishen found that her bald head after the dramatic haircut was also a great way to talk to others about AIDS and its impact on children. “God opened a lot of doors to speak to people about what I did, and why I did it,” she said.

—MCC release

Pressures in and on Zimbabwe: Mennonite World Conference has appealed to the United Nations and the African Union to exert their influence on the government of Zimbabwe to change its destructive actions against its own people. MWC general secretary Larry Miller wrote the two organizations after a violent police attack on participants in a peaceful prayer meeting near Harare in March. News sources indicate President Mugabe’s grip on Zimbabwe may be loosening, although it is too early to predict the regime’s collapse. African neighbours are beginning, if weakly, to speak up against Mugabe’s violations of human rights.

—MWC, Mennonite Weekly Review, Maclean’s

When Jim Wallis, president and founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, preached during his seminary days, he took along an old Bible with all references to the poor cut out of it. He’d say, “This is an American Bible; it’s full of holes.” Today, Wallis says, citing the example of megachurch leader Rick Warren, “A whole new generation is taking a Bible full of holes and putting it back together and making it into a whole Bible.” Speaking at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wallis said, “We’ve had too much bad religion for too long . . . it’s time for some good religion.”

—Evangelical Press News

Have you canned? Mennonite Central Committee is inviting anyone who has participated in their meat canning efforts to celebrate 60 years of work Aug. 11–12 at Syracuse, Ind. The mobile meat canner first went on the road in 1946. Today crews can at 34 sites in the U.S. and Canada, with nearly 3 million cans of meat processed over the last 6 years. Contact MCC for more information.

—MCC

Many Roman Catholics in Quebec still claim their church, even though they no longer subscribe to many of its doctrines or attend much, according to a new study of Catholicism in Quebec by Alberta sociologist Reginald W. Bibby. While regular attendance is the lowest on the continent, Catholicism remains “highly pervasive,” Bibby writes, and large numbers indicate they would be open to greater participation “if the church can touch their lives in a significant way.”

—Winnipeg Free Press

Alternatives to coca: Mennonite Brethren churches in Colombia’s Chocó region have created a project to give farmers an alternative to growing coca, an illicit crop used to make cocaine. The project, supported by Mennonite Central Committee, will work with 37 families in 11 communities, providing material assistance such as seeds, chickens, and pigs, and technical and transportation help. Farmers are often lured into coca production by the hope of quick money; they need concrete production alternatives.

—MCC

Religious nonprofits in Canada: There are 31,000 religious organizations in Canada. They form the second largest sub-sector (19%) of Canadian nonprofits (sports and recreation is first), though they account for just 6% of total sector revenues. These organizations benefit from 1.3 million volunteers and employ more than 100,000 staff. Most (94%) are registered charities.

—“A Portrait of Religious Organizations in Canada,” Imagine Canada

I don’t need this house after all: Don Schrag, 72, a former Wichita, Kan. psychologist, spent years planning and building the house he would live in after he retired. Now he has donated it to MCC’s House Against Hunger project. Volunteers will complete details on the house and it will be sold. Being diagnosed with cancer 3 years ago brought Schrag’s priorities back to a focus on service, he says. “We many times get sidetracked by the American way of being successful and professional.”

—MCC

Only 1.4% of adults engage in homosexual behaviour, according to a report by Drs. Paul and Kirk Cameron of the Family Research Institute that analyzed a 2003 Canadian Community survey of 121,300 adults. The report also presented evidence that “federal bureaucracies in three countries exaggerated the size of the homosexual footprint.”

—CanadianChristianity.com

Christian Peacemaker Teams have left Iraq for “healing, examination, and discernment” after the death of a Muslim peacemaking partner and a brief abduction of several team members. Says Peggy Gish, “We want to respond responsibly but not be dominated by fear. We all still feel a deep love for the Iraqi people. . . . We continue to question whether or how we could work now in Iraq. Is it time to close the project? To withdraw for a time? We appreciate your prayers.”

—Mennonite Weekly Review

Aid to come north: Americans can now receive student aid from the U.S. Department of Education to study at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), Winnipeg. Tuition costs are lower at Canadian schools; this approval, which took about 2 years to obtain, makes it an even more attractive option for U.S. students, says David Leis, CMU’s vice-president for advancement.

—CMU

Violence erupted in DR Congo in March after provocations by former vice-president Jean Pierre Bemba, who was defeated in recent presidential elections. The young democracy is under threat again, says Mennonite pastor Mukambu, coordinator of the Council for Peace and Reconciliation in the Congo. “Our challenge is to continue the peace-building process. . . . We will remain vigilant to protect what has been achieved at considerable cost.”

—Mennonite World Conference

Nearly 35 tons of food is going to pediatric and tuberculosis hospitals in North Korea after more than a year in which Mennonite Central Committee was unable to send aid to the country. The government had put heavy restrictions on humanitarian organizations, but MCC recently found a way to send the food – canned turkey, dried soup mix, and dried apples – through Christian Friends of Korea, which provides aid to hospitals. North Korea faces widespread malnutrition.

—MCC