News

Heather is coming to visit tomorrow.

Jacob is rolling over.
Simeon just got two molars.
Johanna learned to write "JO"
Angela is applying to work PT in food security.
Holly got sprayed by a skunk
Doug was commissioned today with at Toronto Menn. Church for work with the homeless in Toronto.
Here is the liturgy:
People: As God’s Spirit calls and the church commissions,
the servants of Jesus Christ are scattered in places of need
throughout the world.
In company with your faithful people in every age,
we have called out those with gifts for your service, O God.
Fill Doug with the love of Jesus Christ
and the power of the Holy Spirit
as he carries out the ministry of Toronto area Mennonite churches

Doug:

Grant me wisdom, patience and hope when I falter.
Give me joy in serving your church
and keep me faithful to this calling to minister to the people of Toronto’s streets.
May they be for us an icon, opening to the riches of your presence.

People: We accept your service as an extension of this congregation
and pledge our support of your ministry.
We join with you in seeking first the peaceable reign of God.
Consider your assignment as God at work in you,
ministering to human need.
May you be given a deep love for those among whom you will work,
And may Jesus Christ be known through you in word and deed.
Our prayers will continually support you.
Go now in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Hymn 545 Be Thou My Vision


Jodie gave here first lectue on the Scopes trial: Here's a taste
In the aftermath of the Scopes trial, the fundamentalists seemed for a long time to disappear. In reality they had moved under ground. Leaving the hollowed halls of Princeton Seminary, the biology department at Harvard, and the First Presbyterian Church of NY, they begin to establish or strengthen their own institutions - places with out recognizable names, places like Buckley Gospel Tabernacle, and The Open Bible Church, booming churches such as Thomas Road Baptist and colleges such as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles - they began to establish Elementary schools, secondary schools, and colleges, seminaries and new denominations with new mission boards and new popular figures. In the mid 1970s in the wake of Vietnam, Roe v. Wade, the turbulent sixties, and Watergate, the fundamentalists reemerged in American Political Life. Jimmy Carter’s more benign Christianity can be seen in this light, but it was ultimately rejected and replaced by the strength of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s Moral Majority which was critical in ousting Carter in favour of Ronald Regan. By the mid 1980’s, fundamentalism had initiated one of the largest cultural revolutions that America has ever known. It took up lessons and language from the black civil rights movement and organized itself into a stunning and well oiled machine.
Today, originally fundamentalist organizations have broadened their tents politically and religiously and go more often under the banner of Evangelicalism. Once again, those opposed to evolution have entered into the fray in Ivy League institutions, national politics, and the media. Today, however, there is one crucial difference from Dayton, TN 1925. The spokesmen for evangelical opposition to evolution are no William Jennings Bryans. Rather than a popular democratic progressivist opposed to big business, eugenics, and militarism, the champions of Creationism today are fully aligned with the forces of economic Darwinian capitalism, might makes right militarism, and those who oppose unions, social welfare, and affirmative action. Meanwhile, the democratic left seems not to have learned the lessons of past eugenic programs and insists on the scientific merit of renewed attempts to clean up the human gene pool.