Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 1
Chester said, “Memory is a conscious work of interpretation, marked as much by deletion as by selection,” and then argued that “how a community remembers its past is the single most important element in determining its future”; what specific “deletions” about Mennonite history do you think have shaped present-day blind spots, and what would it cost a church community to stop deleting them?
Another way to ask: What parts of Mennonite history do you think we’ve left out or ignored, and how has that created blind spots today? What would a church lose or have to face if it stopped leaving those parts out?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
Based on the speaker’s teaching, one major “deletion” is the long, embarrassing drift of some European Mennonites away from Christ’s authority and nonresistance into nationalism and Nazi cooperation. Stopping those deletions would cost comfort and reputation, because it forces a community to face painful failures instead of a sanitized story.
- He says the story was “kept hidden…for 50 years since World War II ended” and only recently “coming out,” implying deliberate omission.
- He frames memory as “marked as much by deletion as by selection,” and warns that deletion harms the future.
- He calls the topic “an awful story…a cautionary tale,” and says we must “get this terrible story out of the closet and look at it.”
- He links ignorance/rejection of the story to being “duped into shameful behavior.”
- Audience comment (affirmed by Chester) notes people avoid what is “uncomfortable” because they “like our comfort.”