Encounter quality learning offered uniquely in a small, nationally recognized
university.
Learn through connections across the likes of Music with Peace Studies, Biology with
Theology, Psychology with Business—and much more Experience academic study within a vibrant community life.
Build relationships with professors who become both teachers and mentors.
Be nourished and challenged by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Connect your passions with diverse career paths and be inspired to serve and lead.
“Building the Movement that Feeds the World: What Indigenous Farmers Have Taught Me About our Well-Intentional Helping Hands,” featuring Dr. Susan Walsh, Executive Director of USC Canada.
Dr. Susan Walsh, author of Trojan-Horse Aid, goes beyond a critical review of misguided aid to offer reflections on the relationship between indigenous knowledge and resilience theory, the hopeful future of development assistance, and the contradictions in her own hybrid role as researcher and development-practitioner.
In light of growing global concern over the worsening food crisis and interconnected climate extremes, Trojan-Horse Aid offers an important critique of development practices that undermine peasant strategies as well as suggestions for more effective approaches
for the future.
Context
Increasingly, our faith communities, pastoral leaders and families are encountering the broad, cultural reality of cohabitation. Bringing deeply held theological convictions into conversation with practices outside of these persuasions can be challenging. Dialogue and conversation are vital.
Focus
What clarity might we gain on the Biblical, theological, sociological / cultural, and relational dynamics that underlie the reality of cohabitation? What makes this practice challenging to openly discuss within our church communities, as families and with young adults we know and love? How can we best resource and learn from one another?
Panel Members
Irma Fast Dueck– Associate Professor of Practical Theology at CMU
Dr. Martin Entz was CMU’s 2016 Scientist in Residence during the week of February 1. Professor of Cropping Systems and Natural Systems Agriculture at the University of Manitoba, Entz leads Canada’s oldest organic versus conventional farming systems experiment and participates in ecologically-integrated farming system research and development work in Central America, southern Africa, NW China, and has volunteered with MCC in North Korea.
Video recordings of Entz’s three speaking engagements—which highlight biblical themes of stewardship to suggest a shift in emphasis from smart resource management to wonder, humility, and inspiration—are found below.
February 1 | Student Forum Journey Into Natural Systems Agriculture
Sir Albert Howard, Rachel Carsons, Wes Jackson, and many others argue that agriculture should take a different path, one based more closely on Nature’s processes. Many research groups around the world have embraced the Natural Systems Agriculture research paradigm. Entz will share his story; his approach; what he has discovered; and how he and his research team are engaging farmers in the research process.
Because Nature’s principles can be applied at all scales—from 5000 acre grain farms to urban permaculture gardens—everyone has a chance to participate. This highlights another benefit—bringing people together in community.
February 2 | Chapel Land as Gift: A Game Changer
When it comes to the ecological crisis we face, good guideposts are hard to find. Viewing the earth, the land, as a gift from the creator offers such as guide. Seeing the Land as a gift changes the emphasis from “smart resource management” to greater “wonder, humility, and inspiration.” Seeing the Land as a gift changes the emphasis from “scarcity” to “abundance”—thereby offering hope to an increasingly worried world.
February 3 | Public Lecture The Science of Sabbath: Meeting the Expectations of the Land
“In the seventh year, there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord.” As a scientist, Entz attempts to understand what Sabbath looks like in modern agriculture. What happens when we give up some control, when we allow the Land to be itself, when we allow it freedom from our inventiveness? Entz’s scientific work shows that sometimes less is indeed more. Serving the garden to release its own potential offers practical solutions that address both the food and the ecological crises.
Entz reflects on over 25 years of natural systems agricultural research and highlight biblical themes of stewardship to suggest a shift in emphasis from smart resource management to wonder, humility, and inspiration.
CMU President Cheryl Pauls (centre) with leaders of Manitoba’s universities, colleges, and Manitoba’s school boards photo: University of Manitoba
Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) is proud to announce its participation in the Indigenous Education Blueprint as part of Manitoba’s education sector.
CMU joined five other Manitoba universities, three colleges, and the Manitoba School Boards Association in a landmark signing of the Indigenous Education Blueprint on December 18.
Working together in unprecedented fashion, the participating institutions developed and are now committed to the plan, which acts upon the recommendations the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented this past summer.
The Blueprint commits the participating institutions to concrete practices in order to respect, celebrate, and support Indigenous peoples, knowledge, and success.
For more information about the event and the author, please see the related news release.
2015 J.J Thiessen Lecture Series Crude Awakenings: The Faith, Politics, and Crises of Oil in American’s Century
In late October 2015 Dr. Darren Dochuk, Associate Professor in the Department of History at University of Notre Dame, spoke as guest lecturer in the 2015 instalment of the longstanding J.J. Thiessen Lecture Series.
Each of Dr. Dochuk’s three lectures focuses on a particularly momentous flashpoint in the life of North American oil and evangelicalism and pauses for reflection on what this moment meant long-term for matters of faith and society. In the process of tracking the chronology of God and black gold in the modern era, Dr. Dochuk also raises questions and curiosities pertaining to evangelicalism’s relationship to capitalism and globalization, energy and environment, notions of time and broad interests in politics.
Lecture One – Blood of the Earth: Evangelicalism’s First Encounters with Black Gold
This lecture explores the earliest rumblings of oil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and follow the journeys of some of petroleum’s first wildcatters—those who chased subsurface wealth from western Pennsylvania to Texas and Southern California, Southern Ontario to Russia and Indonesia. Drawing on the illustrative life stories of oil titans like Lyman Stewart and Lady Dundonald and diaries of oil drillers who left their farms in Ontario to travel to oil patches around the world, Dr. Dochuk explores the relationship of evangelical Protestantism to processes of resource extraction and economic progress, modern technologies, and mechanisms of a new capitalism. With special focus on Lyman Stewart, it Dr. Dochuck also considers the effects of these dynamics on the “fight for the fundamentals,” struggles between competing theologies and economic outlooks, and theologically informed corporate leaders, that ruptured Protestantism and petroleum in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Lecture Two – Carbon Democracies: World Wars and the Rise of Wildcat Christianity
This lecture charts the rise of the North American West’s independent oil companies and the philosophy of wildcat Christianity, which gained traction amid the crises of the Depression, World War II, and early Cold War. Its purview is wide, and offer a glimpse at the range of ambitions that shaped large oil companies (those with Rockefeller connections, for instance) as they expanded into the Middle East, South America, and other oil zones of the world. Henry Luce’s charge for American oilmen to take the lead in spreading Christian democracy was but one manifestation of this confidence. But the lecture focuses particularly on the coalescence of evangelical-minded citizens, church leaders, and politicians such as evangelist Billy Graham and Alberta Premier Ernest Manning, all of whom occupied the oil-rich areas of Alberta and the American Southwest, and grew close in their transnational understanding of region and environment, imperatives for evangelization and urgencies of time, and quest to advance their own sense of Christian democracy before their dispensation of abundance expired.
Lecture Three – Power Shifts: Fuel and Family Values in the Age of Evangelicalism
Moving through the heart of the 1960s and 1970s, with some conclusions in our current moment, this lecture tracks the final steps that oil patch evangelicals followed to gain political power. Tapping the behind-the-scenes activities of men like Ernest Manning, Billy Graham, and J. Howard Pew, whose work helped bring to fruition such momentous petroleum ventures as the Great Canadian Oil Sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, it reevaluates the “culture wars” of the period as a struggle between competing visions of fuel as well as family values. Much has been written, of course, about the conservative-liberal tensions that sparked these culture wars and led to the Republican Right’s capture of the White House in 1980. In this closing talk, Dr. Dochuk folds issues of energy and environmentalism into the mix, measures evangelicalism’s abiding connections to the oil sector and their impact on the religious movement’s political success, and revisits the Reagan Revolution as a process long in the making and still much in effect. The lecture concludes with a glimpse at more recent manifestations of evangelicalism’s relationship to crude oil, and the internal and external pressures of a new generation that have begun to undermine it in this new millennium, with America’s Century now past.
David Balzer, CMU Assistant Professor of Communications and Media, along with Treaty Commissioner Jamie Wilson co-host a panel exploring questions and possibilities, and inviting the community into conversation.
Context: CMU and the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba* are jointly sponsoring an important community conversation involving First Nations peoples and those living within the Tuxedo and Charleswood communities.
Focus: What might the possibility of an Urban Reserve at Kapyong Barracks mean for all of us? Can we name our questions and apprehensions and, in conversation, begin to shape a shared vision for this initiative in this area of our city? What might we imagine and do together to make this work for the benefit of all?
Panel Members:
Chief Dennis Meeches, Long Plain First Nation, located southwest of Portage la Prairie, and operating two urban reserves
Harry Finnigan, former head of planning at the City of Winnipeg; a leader in community/regional planning and revitalization
Andrew Holtman, Tuxedo Community Centre Board of Directors
*The Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba (TRCM) is a neutral body, created through a partnership between the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) and Canada with a mandate to strengthen, rebuild, and enhance the Treaty relationship and mutual respect between First Nations and Manitobans as envisaged by the Treaty Parties.
Context: From cell phones to polyester clothing; cell phones to wind turbines and automobiles… we are embedded in an oil dependent world. Now what? What meaningful choices do we really have? Come hear the personal stories and involvements of an oil industry consultant, an economist and an activist who share their insights and convictions.
Focus: How do we respond to the complex realities of oil dependency in our lives? What simple or complex steps and innovations should we attend to? What choices lie before governments, industry and before each of us as individuals? What kind of ethical framework can guide and assist us?
Panel Members:
Marlene Janzen – Is an engineer and owner of Eclipse Geomatics and Engineering LTD; focused on conceptual development studies, front end engineering and preliminary estimates for remote onshore and arctic offshore oil and gas opportunities.
James Magnus-Johnston – Is a CMU Instructor of Political Studies and Economics whose research interests lie in ecological resilience, principally through the application of “steady-state” economic policies and carbon reduction strategies.
Michael Tyas – Is the Co-Producer ofOne River, Many Relations, a 48-minute documentary highlighting both the benefits and the harms associated with the Oil Sands from the experience and insights of the Mikisew Cree First Nation and the Dene people of the Athabasca Chipewayn First Nation. A three-minute clip of the documentary will be shown this evening, with a complete screening being planned for a later date at CMU.
Peacemaking, language, and education are interests that have continually woven together in the life of Cheryl Woelk (CMU ‘03).
From 2002-08, she was a Mennonite Church Canada Witness Worker in Seoul, South Korea where she worked as education coordinator at the Korean Anabaptist Center and head teacher at Connexus, the English language school Woelk and her KAC colleagues founded. After earning a Master of Arts in Education, Woelk and her family moved to Saskatoon, SK.
She is currently involved in a variety of projects there, including Language for Peace, which brings together teachers and learners interested in the connection of language, peace, and education from a Mennonite perspective.
The Distinguished Alumni Awards celebrate alumni who, through their lives, embody CMU’s values and mission of service, leadership, and reconciliation in church and society. The awards are presented to alumni from CMU and its predecessor colleges: Canadian Mennonite Bible College (CMBC) and Mennonite Brethren Bible College (MBBC)/Concord College.
Last year, Arno and Lena Fast (MBBC ‘55) celebrated their 85th birthdays, their 60th wedding anniversary, and 45 years of ministry at Salem Community Bible Church in Winnipeg’s North End. At a time when many are enjoying retirement, the Fasts remain committed to their work at the church.
Salem was close to shutting its doors in 1969 when the Fasts began working there. Since then, the congregation has grown into a thriving, multicultural mix of 100 adults and children. Arno is currently mentoring his 32-year-old grandson into the ministry role at the church. “We don’t feel we’ve done anything exceptional,” Arno says. “We just followed the call of God.”
The Distinguished Alumni Awards celebrate alumni who, through their lives, embody CMU’s values and mission of service, leadership, and reconciliation in church and society. The awards are presented to alumni from CMU and its predecessor colleges: Canadian Mennonite Bible College (CMBC) and Mennonite Brethren Bible College (MBBC)/Concord College.
