Harvey Yoder has been a resident of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia since 1946 when his family moved from Kansas by train. Harvey is an ordained Mennonite minister and now have a seminary degree and a master’s degree in counseling and since 1988 have been a marriage and family counselor and pastor of a local house church. Harvey has spoken here at HUU on a number of occasions.

On Sunday, January 23rd, he presented a sermon Justice Gone Awry. The first part is presented below:

A judge I spoke with recently told me that without the use of plea bargaining, where a deal is reached in which a defendant receives  a lesser sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, the courts would be hopelessly backed up with more cases than they could handle.

When a defendant is actually guilty, I can see such an arrangement saving time and court costs and perhaps living up to its name as a “bargain.”  But when a defendant is not guilty, should he or she, while under oath to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,”  feel coerced into giving up their right to due process that might exonerate them, simply because of the risk of receiving a dreadfully long prison sentence?

You can read Justice Gone Awry on Harvey’s blog.

Presented by Merle Wenger
Sunday January 2, 2011

Chalice Lighting:  “We Dreamers”

We dreamers–
architects of the soul
take a lifetime,
to meditate,
sketch,
create,
like Corbusier or I M Pei;
then choose
the bricks and stones,
to build a self
that suits us well
and makes others
cock their heads
and notice. [Read more…]

November 7, 2010

One of the services that everyone seems to enjoy is one we present a couple of times a year. We ask for two volunteer participants who are willing to share their own spiritual journey with the Fellowship. This morning Rich Sider and Laura Dent each shared their own spiritual journey.

Rich Sider

When Judith asked me to participate in this service, my first thought was, I haven’t had much of a spiritual journey.  A theological journey, yes, but a spiritual journey?  I wish I could say I’ve traveled further.

I’ll come back to my spiritual journey, or lack thereof, in a moment, but let me tell you a little about my theological journey first.

I was born in Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, to Brethren in Christ missionary parents.  The BIC denomination is not the same as the Church of the Brethren.  It is one of the Anabaptist related groups, though, with a Wesleyan holiness flavor.  In short, my parents were devout evangelical pacifist fundamentalists in the separatist mold of conservative Mennonites.  The world was basically evil and in need of salvation and the only important thing in life was to be “right with the Lord.”

Although I never accepted the separatist aspects of my parents faith, I tried to make the evangelical framework work up through college.  As some of you who share a similar background may have also experienced, it involved numerous attempts over the years to confess my sins and renew my faith in and commitment to the tenets of evangelical Christian faith.  The problem for me was that it never worked.  I could never experience the joy and freedom from my evil ways that a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” was supposed to produce.

After college and marriage, Martha and I went off to southern Africa with the Mennonite Central Committee, the international service organization of the Mennonite Church.  Even though we weren’t into the missionary thing, the concept of responsibility to be of service had taken hold, and has affected my whole working career, all of which I have spent working for non-profits.

So, we entered the second phase of our theological journey – the liberal Mennonite pacifist phase.  I think I can use the pronoun “we” safely because Martha and I have been fortunate in that regard – our theological pilgrimages have coincided pretty well.  In this theological environment, service to others was the key to meaning and peace.  Unfortunately, while I believe deeply in the importance of service to others, I didn’t find the meaning and peace I was seeking in that path either.

During the 18 years I worked for MCC, including 4 in Guatemala in the early 1980s during the height of the civil war there, Martha and I came to reject the Christian faith claim to be the only truth.   We came to see we were certainly no better or more connected to the transcendent than the many who by happenstance had been born into a different religious framework and culture.  To think they were somehow condemned because of this just became too inconceivable to consider anymore.  And although many in the liberal Mennonite community share this view but have remained within it, we became increasingly uncomfortable with what is essentially a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to theology.  People who believe differently than Christian orthodoxy just don’t talk about what they believe.  We also became increasingly uncomfortable with the words spoken and sung in worship – words emphasizing dualism between the saved and unsaved, good and evil, material and spiritual, and anthropomorphizing the mystery many call God.  [Read more…]

Once in a while a UU says they have trouble with the first UU Principle: “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” I heard that more than once this past Sunday.
A scene from the 1980s film “Ironweed” which somehow got burned into my memory seems to illustrate that principle. A homeless, very drunken woman has frozen to death on the sidewalk in front of a shelter where she had been turned away. Other homeless people find her. Standing in the bitter cold, they bestow a sort of impromptu memorial on this almost-stranger:
“Who was she?” “I dunno.” “A whore.” “She wasn’t always a whore. What was she before that?” “A child, I guess.” “A little kid.”
That moment, for me, makes sense of the first principle: every person was born innocent.
That doesn’t mean it’s instinctive, though. I can’t in my heart feel the essential dignity and worth of people who get rich and famous by spreading hate and paranoia, or of the careless driver who almost hits me, or even someone sending me a hateful email or blog post, or anyone who is unkind to one of the people I’m closest to.
Believing a principle is easy. Living it, internalizing it — no.