I wish I had written this. Like the young lady who wrote this article, I wish to portray to people that Mennonites are “quite dreadfully ordinary.” I am a more or less normal Canadian guy who became a Mennonite 40 years ago because I believed the Mennonite faith to be the most authentic expression of genuine Christianity. I was not raised in a Mennonite church and have never been enamoured of the “Mennonite culture”. Though by now I have grandchildren who are pretty much part of that culture.
This post comes out of a commitment I made to myself shortly after I started this blog. But to understand why, I need to tell you the beginning.
I had sought to publish some short articles through Mennonite publications, but the lists of prerequisites of what is and is not okay to put in said articles was discouraging. In addition, in telling true stories about ourselves, we run the risk of threatening someone else’s privacy. Blogging looked attractive in that no one had to know me or the people I was writing about to appreciate my writing. I wondered if people who didn’t know me could actually find me interesting to read.
I also wondered if someone of my sub-culture (Conservative Mennonite) had anything to offer the world at large. There’s all kinds of hype about the Amish and Mennonites, and I wanted people to read what I wrote for…
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Flatlander Faith 