Building an alternative

Creating the first portable meat canner put nonresistance in action — and was a highlight of a lifetime of service to others

May 11, 2015 by Ivan Kauffman

I remember walking down the street in Hesston, Kan., in 1946 toward Aden Holdeman’s machine shop. In the lead was my father, Jess Kauffman, then 35 years old and pastor of Hesston Mennonite Church.

Two men work on the portable meat canner built in Hesston, Kan., in 1946. — MCC archives

With him was a young volunteer, just out of Civilian Public Service. I was 8, allowed to tag along. People called me “Little Jess.”

Holdeman was a member of the local Church of God in Christ, Mennonite (Holdeman) community. His machine shop was a quonset building on the edge of town. When we arrived, he, dad and the volunteer cleared a space on the floor and began building the first Mennonite Central Committee portable canner. I remember it as a rather crude flatbed trailer with enclosed sides that folded down to make space for a canning crew.

Dad had conceived the idea of a portable canner when he heard people were facing starvation in Europe after the war. Some Mennonites had already responded by sending food in glass jars, but much of it did not survive the trip across the ocean. If food from America was to arrive in Europe, it had to be in tin cans.

When he went to Kansas City to present his plan to the American Can Co., he was told it was impossible. It had never been done. But he finally convinced them. They agreed to lease him canning equipment if he would buy the cans from them.

My next boyhood memory is of a boxcar of empty tin cans arriving in Hesston and being unloaded at the local grain warehouse, owned by a member of the Hesston Mennonite congregation. The men involved were in their 30s, like my father. Some had donated the money to pay for the initial load of cans.

Then came the test run. The canner was towed into our yard, and one rainy, muddy Saturday, volunteers from the church who had found a recipe for pork and beans cooked and canned a huge batch. It lasted our family for years. I can still remember the taste of those beans.

Apparently the test run was a success, and Kansas Mennonites began canning food and sending it across the Atlantic.

‘They kept us alive’

Some years ago I was speaking to a group of Catholic lay people in Philadelphia, charged by their bishop with helping them understand their Mennonite neighbors.

One woman in the audience had grown up in the Netherlands during the war and had vivid memories of the Nazi occupation. When she learned that Mennonites had been conscientious objectors during World War II, she grew angry. “Why wouldn’t they help free us from the Nazis?” she asked, rather indignantly. But later in the talk, when I told the story of the portable canner, a huge smile came over her face. “Those cans of food kept us alive after the war!” she told the other Catholics.

I told her, “You can’t have it both ways.”

Positive pacifism

What motivated my father and the other members of Hesston Mennonite Church to take this risk, putting money and time into something that others considered impossible?

None of them are now living to ask, but I think they were looking for something positive to do that showed their non-Mennonite neighbors they had not simply been avoiding war — that they were willing to make sacrifices to save life.

It is known that shortly after this a Sunday school class at Whitestone Mennonite came up with the vision that would eventually produce Mennonite Disaster Service.

During the war, Dad was faithful to the Mennonite nonresistant tradition and continued to teach it from the pulpit. But at the same time he had a younger brother who was in combat with the Marine Corps in the South Pacific. He had been like a father to his kid brother after their father died, and he knew that any day the family could get the news that his brother had been killed.

The brother survived, rejoined the Mennonite Church and became a health insurance salesman known as someone who would sometimes pay his customers’ premiums when they could not.

His son, my cousin, became an Air Force fighter pilot. Now retired as a high-ranking officer, he volunteers each year with his wife for a week of service with MDS.

Once this cousin was a guest in our home in Washington, D.C., at the same time that one of our Mennonite colleagues was visiting. It was an interesting conversation. The military officer had never talked to a pacifist. The antiwar activist had never talked to a military officer. My cousin said to our Mennonite colleague, “I hope you can do your job so I don’t have to do mine.”

Voluntary poverty

A year or so after the canner began operation, it was turned over to MCC, and Dad turned his gifts to other things. He left his pastorate at Hesston and for three or four years was one of the first employees of what would become Hesston Corp., founded by local Mennonites, which became a major agricultural equipment manufacturer.

Had he stayed in the business world he could have been wealthy, but instead he moved to Colorado Springs, where he founded Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp. From there he moved to Camp Friedenswald in Michigan, and then to Lakewood Retreat Center in Florida. In retirement he wrote a history of Mennonite camping.

For much of their life together my parents lived in voluntary poverty, working at odd jobs when necessary to survive financially. In a memoir for his grandchildren, Dad wrote, “I was never able to find anybody who could pay me for doing what needed to be done.”

He was also fond of saying “You can get a lot done in this world if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

He died at age 89 at the Mennonite-founded Sunnyside Village retirement center in Sarasota, Fla. On his bedside table when he died was a model of the portable canner, given to him by MCC. He considered it his major accomplishment.


Ivan J. Kauffman is a poet and historian who has been a leader in Mennonite-Catholic ecumenical dialogue since the 1990s. He lives in Philadelphia.

Republished with permission from Mennonite World Review (mennoworld.org).

Continue reading “Building an alternative”

Mennonite Daniel Hostetler becomes executive director of Parliament of the World’s Religions

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4.14. 2015 Written By: Parliament of the World’s Religions

Daniel Hostetler, a member of Christ Community Mennonite Church in Schaumburg, Ill., is the new executive director of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He begins this role on April 20.

He is the first Anabaptist to hold this position and will be based in Chicago, Ill.

Since their first worldwide gathering, or “Parliament,” in the year 1893, the Parliament of the World’s Religions has sought to bring followers together in peace so that knowledge and acceptance of attendee’s diverse religious and cultural beliefs could reduce the ignorance and confusion that creates conflict.

See the full news story at The Mennonite and an introductory biography on the Parliament Blog.

Praying with Jesus for unity

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1.30. 2015 Written By: Alan Kreider and Eleanor Kreider

The difference praying for unity can make in our lives and congregations

Silence, prayer, work, worship. Mennonites living like this? We tried it. Thirty years ago we were guests for 11 weeks of the Community of Grandchamp near Neuchâtel, Switzerland, whose sisters live by the Taizé rule of life as a part of the Swiss Reformed Church.

The sisters’ noon prayer, centered on the Beatitudes, always concluded with Jesus’ own prayer for his followers: “May they all be one” (John 17.21). They want Jesus’ prayer to shape their day and change their world—that there may be unity among Christians.

We were astonished by this daily repetition. After all, we were Mennonites. We thought, Weren’t we the ones committed to do what Jesus taught and did? Unlike other Christians who paid too little attention to the Sermon on the Mount, who fought their enemies and swore oaths, we Mennonites were faithful to Jesus. Yet the Grandchamp sisters also listened to Jesus. Further, they prayed with him, using his very words, that his followers may all be one, as the Father and the Son are one …


 

To read the full article by Bridgefolk participants Alan and Eleanor Kreider, visit The Mennonite.

Mennonite and Catholic relief agencies partner

From Disaster News Network:

Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen (CCDOM) and the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) have partnered to repair and restore homes destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. More than a year after the Storm, thousands of families are still unable to inhabit their homes in New Jersey.

The partnership between CCDOM and MDS is making it possible for families to return to their homes and neighborhoods, in homes rebuilt by volunteers recruited by MDS.

“This partnership is consistent with the mission our organizations share:  to help others in their time of need,” said  Larry Stoner, Disaster Response Coordinator (East), MDS , and Marianne Majewski, Executive Director of Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen.

Continue reading “Mennonite and Catholic relief agencies partner”

C.J. Dyck, Mennonite observer at Vatican II, dies Jan. 10

News Release
Mary E. Klassen
Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
January 13, 2014

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Cornelius J. (C.J.) Dyck not only researched and taught Mennonite history, he lived it, and he will be remembered for the wisdom, wit and commitment with which he did all three.

Dyck (92) died Friday, Jan. 10, in Normal, Ill., where he and Wilma, his wife, had been living for several years. For 35 years he worked in administration at Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Chicago, Ill., and taught at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Ind. In addition, he made significant contributions in the General Conference Mennonite Church, through Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) assignments in Europe and South America, in Mennonite World Conference (MWC), and as an ordained pastor.

Dyck was executive secretary of Mennonite World Conference in the early 1960s at the time of the Second Vatican Council. The MWC did not seek official observer status at Vatican II, but approved Dyck’s request to attend as a journalist. His reports were published in various Mennonite periodicals and are available here. Continue reading “C.J. Dyck, Mennonite observer at Vatican II, dies Jan. 10”

Researcher speaks on religious freedom, meets pope

By Kelli Yoder, Mennonite World Review
Pope Francis receives a book from Thomas Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University. The pope greeted the 40 or so conference participants at the Vatican Dec. 13. — Photo by Donald Miller
Pope Francis receives a book from Thomas Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University. The pope greeted the 40 or so conference participants at the Vatican Dec. 13. — Photo by Donald Miller
Halfway through a conference on Christianity and freedom, Chad Bauman and his fellow presenters were told the schedule had changed.

The next morning they crossed the street from the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome and met the pope.

“In my wildest imagination I had thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be cool if I’d be able to meet the pope,’ ” said Bauman, who is associate professor and chair of religion at Butler University in Indianapolis. “But there was nothing on the schedule to indicate anything like that might happen.”

The international conference, held Dec. 13-14 to discuss Christian contributions to the idea of freedom and restrictions Christians face with regard to religious liberties, had come to the attention of Vatican officials.

Continue reading “Researcher speaks on religious freedom, meets pope”

Nigerian EMU graduate building peace

Nigerian grad has had huge impact on peace in West Africa

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Gopar Tapkida (left) is transitioning from his role as Mennonite Central Committee’s regional peace advisor for West and Central Africa to jointly serving with his wife Monica (right), a former teacher, as MCC’s country representatives for Zimbabwe. Tapkida, a former pastor who holds an MA in conflict transformation from EMU, has seen his seeds of peace take root and grow well despite adverse conditions in Nigeria and the surrounding region. (Photos by Bonnie Price Lofton)

After decades spent establishing a network of Muslim and Christian peacebuilders in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, Gopar Tapkida says he is ready to leave his home country for the challenge of doing leadership and peace work in Zimbabwe, one of the poorest countries in Africa.

Tapkida, who earned a master’s in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in 2001, has seen Nigeria move from having virtually no leading citizens committed to peacebuilding to having a network of Muslim and Christian peace practitioners who monitor their neighborhoods and faith communities for signs of budding violence and who intervene to head it off. Continue reading “Nigerian EMU graduate building peace”

Sharing Peace: Mennonites and Catholics in Conversation now available

SharingPeacePapers from our  2007  conference at the University of Notre Dame on the Mennonite-Catholic dialogue report “Called Together to be Peacemakers” have now been published.  Edited by Gerald Schlabach and Margaret Pfeil,  Sharing Peace: Mennonites and Catholics in Conversation, is available directly from Liturgical Press or other booksellers.  Copies will also be available at the upcoming Bridgefolk conference in Ontario.

Sharing Peace brings together leading Mennonite and Catholic theologians and ecclesial leaders to reflect on the recent, first-ever international dialogue between the Mennonite World Conference and the Vatican. The search for a shared reading of history, theology of the church and its sacraments or ordinances, and understandings of Christ’s call to be peacemakers are its most prominent themes. Continue reading Sharing Peace: Mennonites and Catholics in Conversation now available”

Marlene Kropf: A pope who resonates with Mennonites

Bridgefolk perspectives on Pope Francis

Many Mennonites have been heartened by the choice of a new pope.  Leaders of both Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Church USA immediately sent words of blessing to Pope Francis I and promised to support him in prayer.

At the invitation of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, two Mennonites attended the March 19 and 20 inaugural services in Rome, where they greeted the new pope personally.  What impressed them were the same qualities of humility and simplicity that many Mennonites have noticed.  They wrote, in a news report, that “Pope Francis seems to be a very friendly and humble person.  It was our impression that he will take steps to let the papal office appear in a different way.” They mentioned the significance of small signs, such as the fact that he chose not to stand on a podium during the audience with ecumenical guests, but instead occupied a chair that was the same kind as the one given to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The letter sent by Mennonite Church USA leaders affirmed his choice of a name that “reminds us of Francis of Assisi, a follower of Jesus who loved peace, cared for the poor, and cherished creation.”  They concluded, “Most of all, we appreciate his profound commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Though Mennonites know that a single leader, no matter how powerful, cannot renew the church by himself, they are deeply hopeful that Pope Francis I will continue to nurture the friendship that is growing between Mennonites and Roman Catholics.  Beyond that, they look forward to seeing how the new pope will work toward the unity of all Christians and extend a hand of friendship to all people of faith.

Marlene Kropf is Co-Chair of Bridgefolk.