MCC Offers Another Way To Mark Remembrance Day

Peace Buttons offered by MCC

The Mennonite Central Committee is offering a peace packet to teachers and churches that offers another way to commemorate Remembrance Day. Steve Plenert is the Peace Program Coordinator for MCC Manitoba. He says it includes things like suggestions for an assembly, basic information about the First World War and information about alternatives to war.

"To look at Remembrance Day as a time of peace building, looking not only on the violent sacrifices that soldiers made but acknowledging the tremendous toll that that violence takes on nations, on civilians and indeed, on soldiers and exploring alternatives, based in Scripture, that people can opt for."

Plenert says history has proven that war has not been successful in ending war and he feels it's time that people give peace a chance.

"The ongoing attempts to, for instance, bomb radicals into submission have not worked. The situations in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in Lybia all point to how the military responses have not provided durable solutions."

He notes, people can't be naive in thinking a basket full of flowers would be an adequate response to the current challenge of the Islamic State. But he suggests these people in the Islamic State have become radicalized because they have been attacked so violently by foreign powers. And, Plenert says that cycle of violence, back and forth, seems unending. He believes it's time to try another way, noting a commitment to non-violence and peace has not been adequately tried.

He says the peace packet takes another look at World War I.

"It's 100 years since that war, sometimes called the Great War, sometimes called the War To End All Wars. Some have said, 'Oh, that war was inevitable' or that the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand precipitated all the events of the war. Well, people were preparing for war instead of preparing for peace. There were choices made at every step along the way that led towards that conflict. And, sure, some of those choices were hard to step back from but there are always, always other choices that could be made. War is not inevitable. We're not fatalistic in our understanding of how the world works. People can make their choices and we can choose to be people of peace."