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| Jacob Keim Dawty, 1753 |
Peace Reconciliation of Mennonites, Lutherans As Forgery
When Lutheran ecumenists tired of their bloody past they apologized to the Mennonite. Historian John L. Ruth drafted the response (Lutherans and Mennonites move toward right relationships).
To appease these tensions Ruth found Jacob Reiff the Elder's grave and dug it up, then reburied him as a symbol of unity. Jacob Reiff, was not cited by name, but anonymously in this, who was neither Lutheran nor Mennonite. The Elder finally did some good. Since he was Reformed this unity between the two religions is a little frayed. False particulars characterize the new peace accord.
They like to call it subconscious when a deep structure betrays the surface. Ruth hides Jacob anonymously from sight, does not actually give his name in the article, all the better to make him a Lutheran under the authority of Muhlenberg, but suppressing his name lest anyone catch him in the act. This cannot be said to be well meaning because it suggests that Mennonites reconciling with their executioners is a version of Stockholm Syndrome where hostages develop a psychological alliance with their captors. Moving the boundary stones this way not only denies the past but also what people believe about themselves. Why can't we all just get along?
Do
Lutherans Really "Condemn the Anabaptists"?, They did, and for that reason their apologists argued they should be sympathized with.
"The breaches of Christian unity that occurred in the sixteenth century...
the breach Lutherans have suffered with--and to some extent inflicted upon--the
Anabaptists and their heirs was in fact already a reality before the
Reformers lived through the breakdown of conversations with the Roman Catholic
Church in the middle of the sixteenth century." They were misled by the Catholics!
That breakdown of conversations was a series of water tortures. To some extent means they absolve themselves. The breach of unity was when they put whole families in prison. When this water torture was used hundreds of times by the Americans on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed they must have thought him an Anabaptist. Indeed there is a common experience of Mennonites and Muslims.
The Lutheran World Federation along with the Vatican's PCPCU said in October 1999, "with one mind we declare that, according to our insight into the life and teaching of the Mennonite congregations in the AMG, the condemnations of the CA no longer apply." Never forget, the Canadian government apologized to its native peoples for the thousands of children ravaged in its orphanages. Mennonite "renunciation of force"at the time rejected these secular churches and their use of government enforcement. If Mennonites along with making peace with the Adversary make peace with the world such a pact completes their own dissolution after 500 years, just about what the 16th century wanted.
Even at the reconciliation party Larry Miller secretary general of the Mennonite World Conference said, "We still remember being a prosecuted minority," a huge understatement given that the Mennonist Bloody Book says that
without persecution their faith would wane, “if you then find, that the time of freedom has given liberty and room to your lusts, persecute yourself, crucify and put yourself to death, and offer up soul and body to God.” (Bloody Book 361, "Persecute Yourself"). Mennonites taught their young to read the Bloody Book of Martyrs "to remind them of the faith and steadfastness of their fathers (Strassburger Genealogy 408f).
Jacob Reiff the Elder (1698-1782) is given a belated part in this play. Dr. Harry Reiff thinks him a Mennonite in the end and Harvard's John Ruth thinks him a Lutheran for his purpose here. But Reiff was explicitly Reformed with much documentation. The First Reformed Church of Skippack (Philadelphia) was founded in and met in his home. As a pawn in this reconciliation of modern Lutheran and Mennonite, he is not even named. When counterfeit civilization choosing its memes of unity they are anonymous, allowing one false proposition to be immediately replaced by another, equally false, which contradicting it, is glossed over by the selection then randomized by abstraction and anonymity. This makes it easier to fool Red Riding Hood, after all, in these times the lion also got itself substituted with the wolf.
There is no contrition in these Lutheran apologies. The equivocating language makes the apology suspicious itself. That they "suffered" a breach instead of a ravage is as bad as that only "to some extent" were their water tortures inflicted on people they drowned in a bag. Over and over again there had been a "breakdown of conversations" with the Catholics. This is beyond precious. But to invoke in this false healing and reconciliation the name of one who heaped contempt on them all, and did not keep it only to himself, to cite him anonymously is just the duplicity to fit the apology case. So Jacob Reiff, neither Lutheran nor Mennonite, but Reformed, is chosen by Mennonite John Ruth to bridge Lutherans and Mennonites in this reconciliation, but his exact identity is held back. The pride of the Harvard Mennonite PhD is the ultimate authority of current Mennonity, except if we examine his sources. If it wasn't held back the spurious relation would be obvious. Ruth's closing is mostly fictional.
Jacob Reiff the Elder (1698-1782) is given a belated part in this play. Dr. Harry Reiff thinks him a Mennonite in the end and Harvard's John Ruth thinks him a Lutheran for his purpose here. But Reiff was explicitly Reformed with much documentation. The First Reformed Church of Skippack (Philadelphia) was founded in and met in his home. As a pawn in this reconciliation of modern Lutheran and Mennonite, he is not even named. When counterfeit civilization choosing its memes of unity they are anonymous, allowing one false proposition to be immediately replaced by another, equally false, which contradicting it, is glossed over by the selection then randomized by abstraction and anonymity. This makes it easier to fool Red Riding Hood, after all, in these times the lion also got itself substituted with the wolf.
There is no contrition in these Lutheran apologies. The equivocating language makes the apology suspicious itself. That they "suffered" a breach instead of a ravage is as bad as that only "to some extent" were their water tortures inflicted on people they drowned in a bag. Over and over again there had been a "breakdown of conversations" with the Catholics. This is beyond precious. But to invoke in this false healing and reconciliation the name of one who heaped contempt on them all, and did not keep it only to himself, to cite him anonymously is just the duplicity to fit the apology case. So Jacob Reiff, neither Lutheran nor Mennonite, but Reformed, is chosen by Mennonite John Ruth to bridge Lutherans and Mennonites in this reconciliation, but his exact identity is held back. The pride of the Harvard Mennonite PhD is the ultimate authority of current Mennonity, except if we examine his sources. If it wasn't held back the spurious relation would be obvious. Ruth's closing is mostly fictional.
"In closing, let me recall from those unusual years an inspiring incident linking our two fellowships. Even after Muhlenberg had a beautiful new church built at Trappe, he allowed one of his members, who had been living among the Mennonites of Skippack, [you should say the reverse, Jacob Reiff's father's land, Hans George, was the early boundary reference for original deed of Michael Ziegler's land “beginning at a corner of Hans George Reiff’s land” (Strassburger, 419) who came to Germantown in 1709 (Alderfer, Several Documents, 28). So who lived among who?] to bury his aged mother’s body in the graveyard of the Mennonite congregation. Of course the service [see Two Documentary Sources for the Funeral of Anna Reiff, 1753] would be conducted by the Lutheran pastor, who was surely the best preacher of the gospel in the region. The day being very hot, Muhlenberg proposed to preach under a large tree. He was surprised [? fictional drama.] that the Mennonite leaders present urged him instead to come into what he called their “roomy” meetinghouse for the service. [This is all make believe on Ruth's part.] Hesitantly but respectfully accepting this invitation, Muhlenberg found himself nevertheless cautioned at the meetinghouse door by an elderly Mennonite minister, who hoped that the Lutheran pastor would include in his service “no strange ceremonies.” How typically and cautiously Mennonite! Yet, after the service came another surprise, when the same old man thanked Muhlenberg with tears for “sounding the Gospel” in their meetinghouse. This morning, in a gesture unimaginable for my Mennonite ancestors, you, our Lutheran friends, are once again holding a service in one of our roomiest houses of worship."Every bit of this is bogus!
Jacob Reiff
Ruth does not credit Reiff probably because of his own animus for Reiffs, who were never manageable in their extremes of religion, at all for Mennonites are all about control and order, proper dress and much dispute. Jacob Reiff, who took two voyages back to Holland and Germany around the 1727-30, and who spoke English and represented the colonial gov't even as a young man was also both a founder and destroyer of the first Reformed Church, which reasons need not delay us here. This resulted in his being sued in a case with extant documents that lasted more than a decade where he was called a kirkendief, a church robber, and was continually castigated by the principal Reformed minister Boehme, along with his entire family. His family enters the picture because they are all likewise highly defined individuals, what the religious call "lawless," but the tongue tells the tale on its own self. Conrad Reiff has received his due, Peter Reiff less so, their sister also stirred the pot, but the only regular communicant was their brother elder George Reiff who died prematurely and childless.
Jacob lived long enough and well enough to be an obvious friend of Muhlenberg who he must have known from Muhlenberg's arrival in 1742. Jacob was well known by then and welcomed another man of principle to the community. The Reiffs had been farmers and blacksmiths well established from 1717. The father Jacob the Elder, Hans George Reiff, might make a pretext for calling Jacob a Mennonite, for the family lived next to their cousin Hans Reiff, a Mennonite. These neighbors on the boundary of his property in Salford relied on each other to the point that Hans George was asked to sign as witness to the Mennonite trust. His wife, the widow whose burial is in question, gave an early donation in the Skippack Alms Book and was buried in the Mennonite graveyard, but she was herself thought to have been the daughter of a Reformed church minion in Holland. When Muhlenberg spoke at her funeral at the behest of her son Jacob it was the greatest gathering the area had seen, so much so that Gottlieb Mittelberger used it as an example of a funeral in his Journey to Pennsylvania, though, also fashionably anonymous. Muhlenberg's affirmation of Jacob's character in his Journals was a political statement as well as sincere, for Jacob Reiff was a man of distinction and character who appealed to Muhlenberg who was one himself. There is never however one reference that Jacob was his parishioner.
Ruth does not credit Reiff probably because of his own animus for Reiffs, who were never manageable in their extremes of religion, at all for Mennonites are all about control and order, proper dress and much dispute. Jacob Reiff, who took two voyages back to Holland and Germany around the 1727-30, and who spoke English and represented the colonial gov't even as a young man was also both a founder and destroyer of the first Reformed Church, which reasons need not delay us here. This resulted in his being sued in a case with extant documents that lasted more than a decade where he was called a kirkendief, a church robber, and was continually castigated by the principal Reformed minister Boehme, along with his entire family. His family enters the picture because they are all likewise highly defined individuals, what the religious call "lawless," but the tongue tells the tale on its own self. Conrad Reiff has received his due, Peter Reiff less so, their sister also stirred the pot, but the only regular communicant was their brother elder George Reiff who died prematurely and childless.
Jacob lived long enough and well enough to be an obvious friend of Muhlenberg who he must have known from Muhlenberg's arrival in 1742. Jacob was well known by then and welcomed another man of principle to the community. The Reiffs had been farmers and blacksmiths well established from 1717. The father Jacob the Elder, Hans George Reiff, might make a pretext for calling Jacob a Mennonite, for the family lived next to their cousin Hans Reiff, a Mennonite. These neighbors on the boundary of his property in Salford relied on each other to the point that Hans George was asked to sign as witness to the Mennonite trust. His wife, the widow whose burial is in question, gave an early donation in the Skippack Alms Book and was buried in the Mennonite graveyard, but she was herself thought to have been the daughter of a Reformed church minion in Holland. When Muhlenberg spoke at her funeral at the behest of her son Jacob it was the greatest gathering the area had seen, so much so that Gottlieb Mittelberger used it as an example of a funeral in his Journey to Pennsylvania, though, also fashionably anonymous. Muhlenberg's affirmation of Jacob's character in his Journals was a political statement as well as sincere, for Jacob Reiff was a man of distinction and character who appealed to Muhlenberg who was one himself. There is never however one reference that Jacob was his parishioner.
-So what's the problem? The sweeping under the rug of all
difference and variety to make unity and reconciliation where there is none is an insult to truth.
What's the ultimate result? The preparation of the loss of gender, the loss of
history, language, everything that makes us interesting for the substitute of life
extension, super powers, acceptance by the collective.
We are rich in the language of apology, which is to suggest that if it is a false language, more and more true since the fallen angels wanted Enoch to apology to the Father for them. These conveyances came up empty in Charlie Rose's apology of himself naked before his female assistants. He thought he was too beautiful to resist, another delusion of the beast, like George Bush patting little tushes from his wheel chair as if he thought he was the Pope of Uncleanness. It reminds of the one who thought his beauty and authority were irresistible. The false apologize in the hope that they can stay in power and claim they are better for it. The whole apology scam began decades ago when renegade daughters wanted their fathers and mothers to apologize for giving them birth, for blessing their childhoods with light. Dustin Hoffman's excuse for his rottenness was it was "the things we do between takes." Kevin Spacey said, "I'm sorry, so so sorry," like a line out of Portrait of the Artist, "apologize, apologize or the eagle will come and pull out your eyes." Bad as apology is, is no apology is worse. No admission of wrong, no acknowledgment of the victim? The need for apology shows how labored the product of our conditioning and the work of Hegel. You can literally apologize for anything, mining corps for yellow cake pollution of the badlands, any state oppressing native peoples everywhere. They apologize to defuse, avoid the consequence of their actions. They apologize with the hope they can do it again. They think Charlie Manson should get another chance. Reincarnation is the biggest apology-fraud of all, that if we torture you you will change your ways or at least pay back every drop of blood you spilled, every word you spoke. And the thoughts, what about the thoughts? Nobody knows what to do with them. All this comes just in time for the judgment. The higher they reach they more they have to channel their lusts. So there the Lutherans politics are anaerobic. You'd think leaders, politicians, movie stars, pastors, teachers would know that.
The inherent contradiction in the Lutheran/Mennonite Peace Fraud Reconciliation is part of the greater Fall of Evangelicalism, a social political act that deems"apology" sufficient for murder, complicit entirely with also Vatican politics of religion and state. Falsely bridging Lutherans and Mennonites of 18th century Skippack with someone who was neither Lutheran nor Mennonite, the continuing fabrication of documents and relationships regarding Jacob Reiff and that patrilineage in general continue the coverup.
That is the foreground in this latest foray of the Elder Jacob hoisted to the rapprochement of Lutherans and Mennonite as a symbol of reconciliation of Lutheran and Mennonite at the 450th anniversary of their discord. All in doubt, John L. Ruth's 'linking our two fellowships." Of course, reconciliation is as major a Mennonite belief as one could wish, so in this plethora of apology for Lutheran participation in that past bloodthirsty time, Mr. Ruth was invited to represent the Mennonites before the Lutherans and to receive, as it were, The Apology. In this context he delivered up our grandfather Jacob Reiff the Elder much as Mittelberger delivered up Jacob's brother Conrad Reiff, The Journey to Pennsylvania (1756) and Outlaw Outtakes on Conrad Reiff, Oley and the Reiff Brothers of Schuippach, but however by name, because the Reiffs are a outre among the religions. Jacob's anonymity was used to graft of Ruth's own apology of the account of events in Skippack following Muhlenberg's arrival. This fictionalization is entertaining. Compare the statement that Anna Reiff wrote in English from Dotterer, via...Mary Jane Hershey.
For Jacob the Elder to play a part in this contention of 500 years is beyond all expectation even if his citation is anonymous in the resolution. Embroiled as he was in controversy in his own Reformed denomination it adds flavor to his life and its meaning. He draw animosity from religious authorities much as did his brother Conrad with the new born cult in Oley in 1730. Their father was a notable man of peace held in respect by many in 1725, which probably enablesd the extensive contacts his sons had with other cults and religions. Harry Reiff thinks Jacob a Mennonite. John Ruth thinks him a Lutheran for his own purposes. He was explicitly Reformed. But we have to face up to counterfeit civilization and its aims to legitimatize any figure being taken for any purpose to form a derivative of any reason. One false proposition is immediately replaced by another equally false, and contradicting it, glossed over by the selected details and then randomized to abstraction and anonymity, sold like any mortgage fund, hence even though Jacob the Elder becomes a pawn in the reconciliation of Luther and Mennonite, he is not named as such, the unkindest cut of all, to leave him there without clothes or even a stone to identify him. So here we come with our barrow again to dig up the appurtenances.
This impacts the integrity of John Ruth, pride of the
Mennonite and Harvard PhD who represents the English language among
Mennonites. Ruth's historical works are encyclopedic of much Mennonity. His books are well known and indispensable. His life within the community
where he was born and grew up to serve is without question. When Lutheran ecumenism tired of its bloody
past to the point of rejecting it John Ruth's statement and his implication of Jacob Reiff as a
symbol of unity and amity between Lutheran and Mennonity stands
for the greater communities, but he symbol is false.
Ruth may not credit Reiff because of his own animus against these intractable 18th
century folk. He does identify one later malefactor in Lancaster of 1842, but the lengthy consideration is entirely omitted in the index, but a little poking around reveals an Abraham Reiff, minister in Groffdale about 1780 (1161). Ruth uses these Reiffs to urge his case of Mennonite discipline, congregation vs. Bishop, requirements of fellowship. Under the heading Child Abuse at Groffdale he cites a "wealthy Earl Township couple by the name of Reiff" (512), "the affluent Reiffs" to rhetorically further sympathy, a guilt by Protestant ethic. "The Reiffs were mistreating" their servant girl.
He offers this following a parenthesis in context of another orphan boy's mother made pregnant by U. S. Senator James Buchanan, who died after "slitting her throat in a cornfield" (512). Guilt by parenthesis? These Reiffs' spiritual status was subjected to written investigation by Jacob Stauffer that remains in the Geschicht-Buchlein translated as A Chronicle or History Booklet about the So-called Mennonite Church (Ruth 1279). Does one take the counsel of the congregation or shall we take it on ourselves and do as the Word says?" (The Earth is the Lord's, 514) Were Ruth that interested in Mennonite discipline he could have cited the first letters of Bishop Andrew Mack in the Jacob Mensch Collection, where the letters of
Can you just take somebody and make him a parishioner of the Lutherans and bury him in the Mennonite cemetery as a Mennonite to make him a symbol of reconstructed amity between Lutheran and Mennonite justifying their refellowshipping each other, even if it is all based on a lie?-- Yes. The whole intent is the removal of boundary stones is don't say victim, oppressor, resolve
contradiction into unity, bring order out of chaos, “Ordo Ab Chao” is a Masonic motto.
Reiffs were never manageable. Jacob Reiff took two voyages back to Holland and Germany around 1727-30, spoke English and represented the colonial government even as a young man. He was also a founder and destroyer of the first Reformed Church, which reasons need not delay us here. This resulted in his being defamed and sued in a case that lasted more than a decade 1732-1749, where he was called a kierkenthief, church robber, Complaint 1732 and Answer, and was continually castigated by the principal Reformed minister Boehme, along with his entire family.
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Reiffs were never manageable. Jacob Reiff took two voyages back to Holland and Germany around 1727-30, spoke English and represented the colonial government even as a young man. He was also a founder and destroyer of the first Reformed Church, which reasons need not delay us here. This resulted in his being defamed and sued in a case that lasted more than a decade 1732-1749, where he was called a kierkenthief, church robber, Complaint 1732 and Answer, and was continually castigated by the principal Reformed minister Boehme, along with his entire family.
His family seems to enter the picture because they were all individuals
and radicals, Conrad Reiff has received his notice. Peter Reiff less so but
perhaps all of them were radicals. The only regular was Hans, a brother, but he died prematurely and
childless. Jacob lived long enough and well enough to be an obvious friend of
Muhlenberg who he must have known after Muhlenberg's arrival in 1742, but the Reiffs had
been farmers and blacksmiths established in 1717. The father, Hans George, draws a
Mennonite cover about the family for living next to his cousin Hans Reiff
a Mennonite and Michael Ziegler, a Mennonite minister. These neighbors on the boundary of his
property in Salford relied on each other to the point that Hans George was
asked to sign as witnesses of the Mennonite Trust of 1725, "Hans George Reiff, a
member of the German Reformed Church, who wrote a neat signature, and Antonius
Heilman, a Lutheran living at the Trappe."
Hans' wife Anna gave early donations to the Alms Book and was buried in the Mennonite graveyard in 1753. She was speculatively (Harry Reiff) the daughter of a Reformed church minion in Holland. When Muhlenberg spoke at her funeral, the greatest gathering the area had seen, so much so that Gottlieb Mittelberger used it as an example in his Journey to Pennsylvania, though, with the fashionable anonymonity, Muhlenberg's affirmation of Jacob's character was a political statement as well as sincere, for Jacob Reiff was a man of distinction and character who appealed to Muhlenberg who was one himself. There is never however one reference that Jacob was his parishioner.
So what's the problem? Sweeping under the rug
difference and variety to make unity and reconciliation where there is none.
What's the result? The preparation shortly thereafter of the loss of gender, the loss of
history, language, everything that makes us interesting exchanged for connectivity,
life extension, super powers, acceptance by the collective.
The brand of the Bernese Bear on the back of Henry Funck's grandfather of 1671 is not absorbed into the skin. The scar remains.
The oppressor who turned the bear into its slave and branded the dissident with its logo, one enslaved upon another, were the same burgers who beat the tortures of the Bloody Book into the blood that ran with their horrors into the bear pit of Bern, one historical case of the discord between the Lutheran and Mennonite. It was open warfare against the Mennonite. These days the Bärengraben was a surveillance graben nicely predicting zoos of new age underground and camps served by boxcars that governments will perhaps some day apologize for (unless they find an electronic cage with walls).
When, after four centuries Lutherans reconcile with Mennonites 500 years after bloody persecution and the oppressor and chief accuser want to be forgiven, forgiveness in the synchronous timing serves the greater purpose of dissolving all boundaries. Canada asked forgiveness from its natives (2008), South Africa did of its. The Amish asked the Conestoga people and to Israel for the holocaust. We have entered the era of the History of Apologies. Spain, Netherlands, the Pope join in. When they're not apologizing they're still accusing. The Pope would put you jail perhaps for doubting global warming, but not for killing the Pacific with Fukushima, for building a wall to preserve the integrity of a nation, but not for the one around Vatican City hiding pedophiles.
Apologize! Apologize!
Apologies are a technique of the left so prevalent not a day goes without Caucasoids must apologize for being white, men for being of a particular gender, the Indians had 5! Parents must apologize to their children, presidents to everyone who is offended by law. Apologizers for past murders reveal some scheme in the present, some misdirection to divert attention from even worse, like the doctrine of Wm. Burrough's Nova, that each 'Anthropocene' epoch engineers one crisis after another TO SUBVERT ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE FACT, always seeking to create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and to always aggravate the existing ones (53).
Imagine if Angela Merkel apologizes for the destruction of Germany when replacement immigrants outnumber German men 20-45 by 2026. Imagine the apologies of government science after half the English have cancer, as predicted, and 1 of 3 children is autistic, caused by the fluoride added to water, aluminum added to air, radiation added to sea. Imagine the apologies of the CDC, the WHO, the Presidents who serve the corporations? Supposing the receivers of these apologies are incredulous, if they survive, what can't be set right? Apologize for 6000 years of tyranny? Answer, everything. Nothing. Satan apologizes for deviousness to deceive the more. If you feel the tension, the accuser repenting and the victim disbelieving, that is because in the age of patch up, it is as if the many generations before those rabid words and heinous acts never happened, a psychic verbal propranalol defamiliarizes reality. The whole intent of the removal of boundary stones, don't say man, don't say B.C., don't say victim, oppressor, resolve contradiction into unity, bring order out of chaos.
"It is the doctrinal content of the Confession that is binding for Lutherans today, and that historical judgments contained in the Confession are relative and fallible, the essay suggests the possibility that the condemnations of Anabaptists in the Augsburg Confession do not apply to Mennonites participating in these dialogues. " DAVID G. TRUEMPER:
--Undoing the breaches of Christian unity that occurred in the sixteenth century will reveal the whole hidey mess, keep it covered. We who were at the center of the western church's sixteenth-century fractures bear central responsibility for seeking healing and reconciliation courage and evangelical commitment demonstrated by the Mennonite dialogue. In 1980 "Mennonites in Germany had been invited to join a 450th anniversary remembrance of the great Lutheran Augsburg Confession of faith...Mennonites replied that our spiritual forebears, the Anabaptists, had been scathingly denounced Confession.Why would we be asked to participate in celebrating our own condemnation?"
Lutherans are generally afflicted with a
loss of their zeal, seek to reconcile with conversations as we have
been in carrying on the now forty-six year old conversations with the
Roman Catholic Church.
A loss of all certitude, mark of the beast requires all submission. How
comfortable can you feel that that the reigning Pontiff in the Vatican labeled "Antichrist is not inerrant or a binding symbol as the Confession says? so they reduced their heinous acts to symbols like "authority of the Lutheran symbolical writings" - "What did it mean to say that then?" all nonsense, it's what they did, that never ceases to exist." There are in fact relatively few condemnations of
Anabaptists in the Augsburg Confession. Such condemnations appear
explicitly in articles V, IX, XII, XVI, XVII; and implicitly in articles
X and XXIV. Only seven! reading of the condemnations. Luther: In 1528 he wrote, "I think it is not right, and I am
genuinely sorry that such people are so gruesomely murdered, burned, and
cruelly assassinated. In his May 6, 2011 Address at the Lutheran Synod at Franconia Mennonite Church Mr. Ruth reviews the Mennonites killed for their faith, "some days there were two, four or ten executions" (4).
"The Augsburg Confession whose effect we may recall this morning. The man who
wrote it, in defense of the Lutheran Princes before the Emperor, called
the Anabaptists “a fiendish” and “horrible devilish sect,” teaching
“only revolt, theft and murder, besides immorality and adultery.” They
were to be wiped out, and executed according to Leviticus 24, which
commanded Israel to stone blasphemers to death."
The Lutheran-Mennonite
International Study Commission said that
Lutherans
had invited the Mennonites to celebrate their own condemnation, arguing
with them especially about adult and infant baptism, which was the crux
of centuries long ago, as if they were feeling defensive: " it seemed strange that the Mennonites wanted to
maintain the name “Anabaptist,” especially since, in their view, it is not
“re-baptizing” (“ana” means “again” in Greek) but baptizing in the first place"
"It appears
that Lutherans were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of at
least one hundred Anabaptists. (Although figures are hard to establish with
absolute certainty, it seems that around 2,500 Anabaptists were executed for
religious “crimes.”) And this injustice was preserved in Mennonite
memory—especially in a big book called Martyrs
Mirror, which details the stories of Anabaptists who suffered and died for
their faith, though it rarely specifies whether the persecutor was Lutheran,
Reformed, Catholic, or something else—while most Lutherans forgot all about it.
"In
the end, a sizable number of Anabaptists was put to death in Lutheran
territories and with the endorsement of Lutheran theologians."
Is the past like a broken chair to be repaired and reused? Not at all. First because the skills to fix the chair only exist in the hands of specialists which do an ordinary broken chair and its owner no good, but second because nobody wants the old chair anyway when they can get a new one from IKEA. So we have a new past which has nothing in it because we didn't want the old one anyway and if we did it would only be owned by specialists.
The apologies are a sham. The apologies are a sham.Where is the oppressor to gain expiation? Happily a mechanism already in place, made by the same oppressor only needs to go visit the owl of Bohemian Grove owl to assuage their
marred past and its guilt, not seek forgiveness. Sanding the top of the old desk up to remove the confessor
"error" generations later to assuage their guilt, seeking to
apologize they continue to defame those they in their ancestors killed.
It's unforgivable and they have to live with it throughout all time.
There is no forgiveness of political acts, subversion, gulags, desaparecidos,
tortures, murders. There is self sacrifice for a life time. Torture is a political act inflicted on nations for
their own benefit. Unless you stand up and repudiate these acts, as
Trump did the invasion of Iraq, you are implicated in the guilt and
apology. The best lack all conviction however they apologize. Joyce's Stephen Dedalus is prophetic, apologize, apologize.
You're made to apologize because it makes you one of the weak, the
will-less mind-dulled manacles. You 're then made to forgive on the
other side of the forced conclusion of Hegel.
There are literally 360 points of view of a thing in two dimensions, more in 3D and in 4, the revelation of time. Ask the civilizations and conquerors of Jerusalem whose similarities and differences are tempted with the notion that one of them is right, so history devolves into a collective state, called the truth, the fact with differences removed. These points of view are true only for the speaker of the moment. Each documentation of fact, all 360 degrees of reality and every sheet of ininterpretation in the ream of 500 in a pack for argument's sake and for scale might be reduced to quadrants. Merely identifying four quadrants is a great achievement in interpreting reality, including as it does opposites and complements. We are tempted to substitute an onion and its many skins for this paper, but in order to be true to the mind of the historical character, we must assume he is like ourselves, vexed and suited with packaging which does not reveal the real thoughts even to himself, or if he does it is in the night thought not remembered in the day, even while the fact circles in the heavens of his own mind. That the mind is a heaven self contained and populated with thoughts as if they were angels is surely the working assumption of every intellect. So the dawn or the night is given, but not the hidden reaches below. We know this as we know ourselves. Amazed, dismayed at the mixture in any character, we are all (un)comfortable in these contradictions of ourselves and our subjects as we design them, but it is amusing, if not good, to read the opposites and tangents.
Cited
John L. Ruth. The Earth Is the Lord's: A narrative History of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference. 2001.
Truemper, David G. The Role and Authority of the Lutheran Confessional Writings: Do Lutherans Really "Condemn the Anabaptists"?
"esteemed first of all Jacob Reiff was not a Lutheran or a Mennonite. Second the relation he had with Muhlenberg was as a neighbor and of mutual respect among leaders of the community, as his father had with Hans Reiff
Can you just take somebody and make him a parishioner of the Lutherans and bury him in the Mennonite cemetery as a Mennonite justifying their refellowshipping each other, even if it is all based on a lie?
