{"id":284,"date":"2017-11-13T11:28:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-13T16:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/?p=284"},"modified":"2017-12-12T13:56:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T18:56:23","slug":"284","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/2017\/11\/13\/284\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reflection on the 2017 MCC UN Conference by Harrison Horst"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of <\/span><\/i>Peace Fellowship<\/span><\/i><\/a>, EMU\u2019s <\/span><\/i>Peacebuilding & Development<\/span><\/i><\/a> student organization, recently attended the <\/span><\/i>Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)<\/span><\/i><\/a> United Nations<\/span><\/i><\/a> annual student seminar on \u201cMigration, Faith, and Action\u201d in New York City. This week we feature three reflections from that trip on the PXD Blog (read the <\/span><\/i>first<\/span><\/i><\/a> and <\/span><\/i>second<\/span><\/i><\/a> posts). This final post is by senior Sociology student Harrison Horst. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

On Thursday afternoon, I walked into the General Assembly hall of the United Nations with the words of our morning speaker, pastor Jason Storbakken, echoing through my head. \u201cIt\u2019s all a part of the system,\u201d he insisted. \u201cWe\u2019re caught up in this neoliberal, colonial empire that I think we\u2019re called to resist.\u201d I stood on the hall balcony, looking out on a room in which the most influential leaders in the world have met, discussed, argued, and made reverberating decisions. I also looked out on a room full of privilege, power imbalance, and historical harms \u2013 in short, a room inescapably bound to oppression and to Storbakken\u2019s empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Doug Hostetter, Director of the MCC UN office, explained, the United Nations isn\u2019t quite as egalitarian as a casual observer may expect. While the nations represented in the UN General Assembly do technically each has one, equal vote \u2013 regardless of size or comparative economic scope \u2013 the General Assembly defers to the 15-member Security Council when it comes to issues of international peace and security. The Security Council includes ten rotating members and five permanent members, who all have decisive veto power: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States. A single veto from any of the permanent members of the Security Council can kill any motion or resolution, even one approved by the other 14 Council members. Why isn\u2019t Palestine included as a participating member state by the UN? Because one of the five permanent Council members \u2013 the U.S. \u2013 vetoes any resolution proposing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor should the messaging used by the UN escape without critique. During my guided tour of the UN building, I learned that the UN prizes and is represented by high levels of diversity, that \u201cdevelopment\u201d (what a loaded word!) is the unquestionable path forward, and that people with blue helmets mean safety, even if they\u2019re carrying an automatic weapon. Thanks in part to MCC, I know that the story isn\u2019t always that simple. For example, in 2010, cholera was introduced to Haiti by UN peacekeepers from Nepal, a story that MCC (and many others) worked hard to circulate.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can we, as radical peace-loving Anabaptists, resist and respond to empire? This is the question the MCC UN office staff must ask themselves every single day, and it begs a host of other complicated questions. How can MCC, a religious non-profit development organization, be effective when placed in the context of the United Nations, in many ways the heart of global oppression? What does Christian love look like when faced with the irreconcilable realities of 193 nation-states, each with their own interests and needs?<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, the answers lie with Storbakken\u2019s reference to empire and, by extension, Shane Claiborne\u2019s extensive writings on the same topic. In <\/span>Jesus for President<\/span><\/i>, Claiborne writes, \u201cOver the last several years, the Christian relation to the state has become more dubious \u2026 rather than placing our hope in a transnational church that embodies God\u2019s kingdom, we assume America is God\u2019s hope for the world, even when it doesn\u2019t look like Christ.\u201d Even if they aren\u2019t intending to adhere to Claiborne\u2019s call, the stories I hear from the MCC UN crew \u2013 from engaging meaningfully with North Korean citizens to partnering with other religious groups to re-humanize immigration policies \u2013 are some of the best examples we have of response to empire in action.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Harrison Horst studies Sociology at Eastern Mennonite University and is a member of Peace Fellowship, EMU\u2019s Peacebuilding & Development (PXD) student organization.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of Peace Fellowship, EMU\u2019s Peacebuilding & Development student organization, recently attended the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) United Nations annual student seminar on \u201cMigration, Faith, and Action\u201d in New York City. This week we feature three reflections from that trip on the PXD Blog (read the first and second posts). This final post is by … Continue reading A Reflection on the 2017 MCC UN Conference by Harrison Horst<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,42,43,34,41,46,15,44,29,45,40],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2017-mcc-un-conference","tag-development","tag-empire","tag-immigration","tag-jason-storbakken","tag-jesus-for-president","tag-mennonite-central-committee","tag-oppression","tag-peace-fellowship","tag-shane-claiborne","tag-sociology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/75\/2017\/11\/IMG_3522.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s95hha-284","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/pxd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}