Mennonite Church USA says defund the police

[KrisKramer]

Mennonite USA has released a 9 week "Bible study" ??? Or "course" that is about defunding the police

They say "Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) has released a new, multimedia, online curriculum to help congregations and individuals understand and address issues of systemic police brutality."

What are your thoughts and theology on this when it come to policing and personal and community safety in a Biblical context.

[Bootstrap]

Mennonite USA has released a 9 week "Bible study" ??? Or "course" that is about defunding the police

They say "Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) has released a new, multimedia, online curriculum to help congregations and individuals understand and address issues of systemic police brutality."

What are your thoughts and theology on this when it come to policing and personal and community safety in a Biblical context.

In general, I wish MC-USA would stay out of politics.

I can't say anything about this study without seeing it, though. John the Baptist spoke out against police brutality.

[KrisKramer]

Mennonite USA has released a 9 week "Bible study" ??? Or "course" that is about defunding the police

They say "Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) has released a new, multimedia, online curriculum to help congregations and individuals understand and address issues of systemic police brutality."

What are your thoughts and theology on this when it come to policing and personal and community safety in a Biblical context.

In general, I wish MC-USA would stay out of politics.

I can't say anything about this study without seeing it, though. John the Baptist spoke out against police brutality.

Growing up I was taught "we don't get involved in politics " and now seeing a church that says they are anabaptist talking politics is so strange. But then it seems more and more anabaptist churches are pushing politics while when I was a child we were discouraged from even voting or anything of the sort and now videos are shown of anabaptists at Jan 6th capital march

[Soloist]

Defund the police is no different then saying military peace keeping missions and defund the war machine.

We believe the government has the right to wield the sword. God will judge them for how they do so.

[RZehr]

Growing up I was taught "we don't get involved in politics " and now seeing a church that says they are anabaptist talking politics is so strange. But then it seems more and more anabaptist churches are pushing politics while when I was a child we were discouraged from even voting or anything of the sort and now videos are shown of anabaptists at Jan 6th capital march

I think it’s partly a function of some of these churches losing their separation from the world and themselves becoming part of the worlds systems. As part of the worlds system (voting, holding office, campaigning, etc.) they are working “from the inside” to force change on society.
Which I always find fascinating, because these churches strongly eschew any “forcing” of church standards or living requirements among their own members because it should all be spirit driven. Yet they are more than willing to employ these things by force upon unregenerate society. While saying a church that is formed of voluntary, and spirit led membership, should not have requirements or agreements.
It is a weird.

For other churches, they simply have easy access to political information and are, along with society, simply being swayed by propaganda.

[Ken]

Do you have an actual link?

In the first paragraph you say it is about "defunding the police" and in the second paragraph say it is a curriculum about "helping congregations understand and address issues of systemic police brutality"

Those are not the same thing.

EDIT: It was easy enough to find. What you left out was the question mark: https://www.mennoniteusa.org/abolition- ... lum-intro/

Defund the Police? An Abolition Curriculum

Introduction and purpose
The call for the abolishment of police, policing and the police state is not a new call. For centuries, Black and Indigenous people have called for the end of violence enacted on their bodies and communities by police. They have been calling for other possibilities that move us from the appearance of safety to truly safe and whole communities. In the wake of continued high profile police shootings across the United States, many people in the church pushed for an Anabaptist-oriented response and resources that helped us to move as a church into solidarity with the pain and brutality being felt and witnessed on Black, brown and Indigenous people. This curriculum is our response and invitation that we allow the Spirit to awaken our imagination to build a world where we can all be safe(r) and flourish without threats of violence.

MC USA received requests across the denomination to provide an Anabaptist grounded resource for clergy and congregations to engage in learning about the call for police abolition. When we confess “Jesus is lord” we are leaving behind systems that operate by coercion, violence and punishment. Mennonites have long recognized that following Jesus occurs in our bodies and with our lives. We remove ourselves from military service because we refuse to harm or kill people at the direction of the state. We affirm that all people are made in the image of God. We believe that it is incumbent upon the church to discuss and discern policing as another form of state-sanctioned violence.

This curriculum is an initial guide for congregations who are desiring to begin or continue their reflection on what it means to engage the forces of state, their commitments to non-violence and how to act to end policing and police brutality.

. . . . .

Overview
The facilitator can give an introduction of the eight-week curriculum to participants. Each unit will include an intro activity, an embodied ritual and a lesson connecting policing to the Scriptures. The curriculum will address the following topics:

Week 1: Individual and Community Safety
Week 2: The Purpose of Policing in the United States
Week 3: The History of Policing and Police
Week 4: Transformative Justice
Week 5: The Landscape of Policing – Incarceration and Bail
Week 6: The Landscape of Policing – Policing Our Children, SROs, School-to-Prison Pipeline
Week 7: The Landscape of Policing – Police and the Streets
Week 8: The Landscape of Policing – City Hall, Political Change and Revolution
Week 9: Review and Closing – 8 to Abolition and Next Steps

I don't really have an opinion on this yet. But I think it is a legitimate course of inquiry for a so-called 'Peace Church" that preaches non-resistance. Especially given the militarization of our police forces over the past several decades. And apparently something that congregations are asking for.

[temporal1]

The “for sure” way to defund police is ending crime.
Put them out of work by lack of necessity.



The majority employ this technique well. How to convince others?



(i was reading about early Quakers again.)

[Bootstrap]

Overview
The facilitator can give an introduction of the eight-week curriculum to participants. Each unit will include an intro activity, an embodied ritual and a lesson connecting policing to the Scriptures. The curriculum will address the following topics:

Week 1: Individual and Community Safety
Week 2: The Purpose of Policing in the United States
Week 3: The History of Policing and Police
Week 4: Transformative Justice
Week 5: The Landscape of Policing – Incarceration and Bail
Week 6: The Landscape of Policing – Policing Our Children, SROs, School-to-Prison Pipeline
Week 7: The Landscape of Policing – Police and the Streets
Week 8: The Landscape of Policing – City Hall, Political Change and Revolution
Week 9: Review and Closing – 8 to Abolition and Next Steps

I don't really have an opinion on this yet. But I think it is a legitimate course of inquiry for a so-called 'Peace Church" that preaches non-resistance. Especially given the militarization of our police forces over the past several decades. And apparently something that congregations are asking for.

I skipped to the end, Week 9, which contains this:

In this final lesson, we invite you to learn about specific steps you can take to change and challenge policing in your community. You’ll learn about 8 to Abolition, an organization that works to reduce police violence and influence. You’ll also be introduced to resources that can help you and your study group participate in the abolition movement by connecting to other organizations already doing this work, or beginning a new collective in your area. The resource page provides connections to other Mennonite congregations engaging in abolition work.

From there, I looked up 8toabolition:

At its root, policing and prisons are systems designed to uphold oppression. One thousand people are killed by police every year, and Black people are murdered at three times the rate of white people. Up to fifty percent of people murdered by the police have disabilities. Up to 40% of police officers have perpetrated intimate partner violence, and sexual violence is the second most common form of police brutality, primarily targeting Black women and especially those who are sex workers and drug users. Many of these incidents of police violence are undocumented by studies and only uplifted through grassroots movements. Prisons, police, and prosecutors work closely together to sustain white supremacist, capitalist, ableist, and cisheteropatriarchal systems of extraction and death.

Black people who are women, trans, gender non-conforming, sex working, and queer are often criminalized for actions they take to survive gendered violence, as we have seen in the cases of Tracy McCarter, Alisha Walker, GiGi Thomas, Marissa Alexander, Bresha Meadows, Cyntoia Brown, and many others. We reject the notion of a “perfect survivor”; we do not believe anyone deserves to be caged, nor do we prescribe to the state’s notions of “innocence” and culpability. We recognize that the system of policing is intertwined with the prison and military industrial complex, both here and abroad. In abolishing policing, we seek to abolish imperialist forms of police, such as militaries responsible for generations of violence against Black and brown people worldwide.

We believe in a world where there are zero police murders because there are zero police

That seems pretty extreme to me.

[Ken]

Overview
The facilitator can give an introduction of the eight-week curriculum to participants. Each unit will include an intro activity, an embodied ritual and a lesson connecting policing to the Scriptures. The curriculum will address the following topics:

Week 1: Individual and Community Safety
Week 2: The Purpose of Policing in the United States
Week 3: The History of Policing and Police
Week 4: Transformative Justice
Week 5: The Landscape of Policing – Incarceration and Bail
Week 6: The Landscape of Policing – Policing Our Children, SROs, School-to-Prison Pipeline
Week 7: The Landscape of Policing – Police and the Streets
Week 8: The Landscape of Policing – City Hall, Political Change and Revolution
Week 9: Review and Closing – 8 to Abolition and Next Steps

I don't really have an opinion on this yet. But I think it is a legitimate course of inquiry for a so-called 'Peace Church" that preaches non-resistance. Especially given the militarization of our police forces over the past several decades. And apparently something that congregations are asking for.

I skipped to the end, Week 9, which contains this:

In this final lesson, we invite you to learn about specific steps you can take to change and challenge policing in your community. You’ll learn about 8 to Abolition, an organization that works to reduce police violence and influence. You’ll also be introduced to resources that can help you and your study group participate in the abolition movement by connecting to other organizations already doing this work, or beginning a new collective in your area. The resource page provides connections to other Mennonite congregations engaging in abolition work.

From there, I looked up 8toabolition:

At its root, policing and prisons are systems designed to uphold oppression. One thousand people are killed by police every year, and Black people are murdered at three times the rate of white people. Up to fifty percent of people murdered by the police have disabilities. Up to 40% of police officers have perpetrated intimate partner violence, and sexual violence is the second most common form of police brutality, primarily targeting Black women and especially those who are sex workers and drug users. Many of these incidents of police violence are undocumented by studies and only uplifted through grassroots movements. Prisons, police, and prosecutors work closely together to sustain white supremacist, capitalist, ableist, and cisheteropatriarchal systems of extraction and death.

Black people who are women, trans, gender non-conforming, sex working, and queer are often criminalized for actions they take to survive gendered violence, as we have seen in the cases of Tracy McCarter, Alisha Walker, GiGi Thomas, Marissa Alexander, Bresha Meadows, Cyntoia Brown, and many others. We reject the notion of a “perfect survivor”; we do not believe anyone deserves to be caged, nor do we prescribe to the state’s notions of “innocence” and culpability. We recognize that the system of policing is intertwined with the prison and military industrial complex, both here and abroad. In abolishing policing, we seek to abolish imperialist forms of police, such as militaries responsible for generations of violence against Black and brown people worldwide.

We believe in a world where there are zero police murders because there are zero police

That seems pretty extreme to me.

Yeah. Like I said, I think the line of inquiry is perfectly legitimate. But based on the link you followed it seems like they are driving the discussion to a pretty extreme conclusion. Which I would personally disagree with. I can't imagine a functional world without some sort of police. You might call them something different. Like Public Safety Officers rather than cops. But it still amounts to the same thing. There needs to be some sort of public safety and law enforcement in most communities.

[Josh]

This is a push to make police no longer locally accountable and eventually replace them with a federal police force which would be easier to politically control, much like how things work in Canada.

Most the left agitating for this are playing the role of Lenin’s “useful idiots” - playing right into the hands of their oppressors.

There could be real alternatives to over-policing, but there isn’t any talk in these left wing dialogues about how to fix the problem of violent crime and property crime. You can’t have stable families and stable businesses when violent crime and burglaries, cars being stolen, home invasions etc. are the norm. Nobody seems to want to talk realistically about how much of a problem this is, and will become a much worse problem if the police are “defunded”.