Widening the Circle - 3 - Mennonites and the Civil Rights Movement

The initial chapters of the book (Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship) are very encouraging and interesting. They tell stories of communities in the 50s and 60s involved with the Civil Rights movement in the US. 

  I personally think that the Mennonites had a very good discernment of time in History and took the action to be involved in the Civil Rights movement. We have to note how the Mennonite Central Committee commissioned Vincent Harding  and Rosemarie Freeney Harding  to begin communities directly involved with the Civil Rights movement (Reba Place Fellowship and Atlanta's Mennonite House). They were very much involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosemarie says: “We had such a strong commitment to the movement” (page 41)

  I also found it interesting and encouraging to read how Vincent Harding was exploring his own 'trip into blackness' bringing the questions of Christian identity to the forefront. 

  Rachel Elizabeth Harding, her daughter, is "a historian and writer [...] author of numerous published essays and a book on Afro-Brazilian religion, A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness." Very interesting. 

(See here also part 2 of this series of posts)