John Kenneth Stoner

I see my autobiography as the story of how I became who I now am. I am not who I was 20 years ago, nor God willing, who I will be 20 years from now. I am, in other words, a person in formation, and expect always to be that. To me change is not a problem, but the central generative force of life. Life is change and growth! I agree with the person who said, "If you hold the same views today you held 30 years ago, you just wasted 30 years of your life!" I often think that everyone, from the most conservative to the most liberal, will change their thinking more in the first minute of the next life than they did in the 80 years of this life. This does not tell me a whole lot except that change is the essence of life, and new thoughts are not enemies but friends. That's who I am.

Change of thinking is, of course, the fundamental presumption underlying the whole enterprise of education--and what do people invest more money and time in than education? Maybe this makes some people nervous about me because for me it includes theological education and change--that is, how I think about God and faith. It's funny--people who would die before they would get stuck in old thinking about their business or their recreation lock themselves into old thinking about God and culture without batting a blind eye.

I am a person who believes that humanity itself, like the individual self, learns as it matures. Thus I believe that humanity is not about to go back to affirming male supremacy, slavery, the divine right of kings or the flat earth theory as the way things will be because they are the way things were. I believe that war will one day be seen as the worst of male supremacy, slavery, the divine right of kings, condemnation of homosexuality, and the flat earth theory all wrapped into one. Whether the current batch of humanity will destroy itself by war and environmental stupidity on the way to learning that I don't know (an open question which is in our hands), but I do know on which side of the war question I want my puny efforts to be recorded. Let's abolish war before it abolishes us. None of this is a commentary on human nature as such, (predominantly good or evil?) but an observation that what humans individually and collectively do with their nature is malleable and educable.

I was born at home on Germany Road, R.D. #2 East Berlin PA on April 28, 1942. My mother and father loved me and gave me a good start in life and childhood. And I was loved by 1 sister and 7 brothers. We had conflict but we worked at dealing with it, on the whole, in better rather than worse ways.

Growing up on the farm, we learned to see life as a communal project. We all worked to make the farm and family function. We played too--baseball on Sunday afternoons with neighborhood kids, swimming in the farm pond in the summer, skating in the winter, fishing sometimes in Mud Run a mile away, had a pony, Rocky, for a while until he killed himself by eating bad grain. And I had a dog, Brownie, from Uncle Paul's in Ohio (the pony came from there too). Brownie had a pup, Duke, who lived maybe two years until his fearless spirit got himself mauled by a neighbor's dog and he died.

I disliked getting up at 5:30 a.m. to milk from the time I started school or soon thereafter, but I knew some people suffered worse, and it built character. Milk cows are always there, twice a day, waiting to be milked. Hogs and chickens had to be fed. I learned something about animals. From them I learned not only how they act, think, and function, but something too about humans, who are biological and spiritual like animals, in a little different mix.

Daddy was a serious man, and fairly severe, but at the same time had a sense of humor and was not inflexible. He was inventive and smart as a farmer, good with planning, numbers and hardworking. Mother worked hard, loved her children, was patient, forgiving, and engaged in ideas. Faith and piety were important, central to both daddy and mother. They did well with the church experience/setting and the input/information which they had, avoiding the looniest excesses of holiness, legalism, and eschatological ideas available in the Brethren in Christ Church, generally favoring education over mindless enthusiasm. I've always suspected that if they had read the books, met the people and had the experiences I've had they wouldn't be far at all from where I am theologically. To be sure, choice as well as chance determines what we read and do, but on balance, I think they did well with the hand they were dealt.

Education, formal and otherwise, has been important in my life. Elementary school was in three one-room school buildings. First and second grade were in the Hampton school building, and Mrs. Moul was my teacher. Second and third were at Round Hill, taught by Mrs. Neidig. And fifth and sixth were at Victory School House (yes, it was called Germany School before WWII), with Mrs. Dissinger the teacher. I went through twelve grades with a few of the same classmates, of whom I remember Jean Wolf the best, as a friend and competitor for best grades. Jean was a good student, a kind and generous person.

I entered Messiah College as a freshman in 1960, graduated 4 years later, and then took the 5th year Bachelor of Theology degree there. College was an exciting time for me, and I changed majors from English to biology, and finally to Bible.

During my junior year of college Janet Hoover and I started dating. We grew up together in the Grantham Brethren in Christ Church. Janet and I visited each other's homes as children and were baptized at the same time. We were married the year I graduated from college, August 15, 1964. We have shared 41 interesting and loving years together, and look forward to many more.

I finished seminary in two more years at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Goshen/Elkhart Indiana, in 1967. The faith of the Anabaptists, the Radical Wing of the 16th century reformation, became real to me, as I came to understand why their repudiation of state and ecclesiastical power in favor of Jesus' way of loving enemies and praying for the transformation of all people led to their persecution by state and church alike. Authorities which rely on homicidal (killing humans) power to maintain their control feel threatened by people and churches who will not participate in their arrogation of the power of death. In those days they killed people who posed a threat; today, in more democratic countries at least, they just try to discredit and marginalize them.

Our first child Kay was born in 1965 and Cathy was born in 1967, in Goshen. Bobby was born in 1970 in Harrisburg. In 1975 we adopted 2 daughters, Carrie, 11, and Billie Jo, 9. Janet did the lion's share of the work of raising the young children, but I helped, and I surely enjoyed them immensely! A great sadness came to our lives in 2006 when Carrie died of cancer on March 19, just days before her 40th birthday. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer in November, 2003, and underwent chemotherapy treatment for a year. A fairly good year followed, but then the cancer returned with a vengeance and took her life.

In 1967 I took the pastorate of the Bellevue Park (later Harrisburg) Brethren in Christ Church, my first job out of seminary. I was there during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war years, and with my gospel-based convictions on race and war found myself in some tension with the congregation over the years. Many good things happened, but in the end I resigned after 8 years, a year before the completion of my third term, because my more radical vision of small groups and social action did not fit the view of most people in the church. I was offered work with the Mennonite Central Committee, in peace education, and we moved to Lancaster County in 1975.

I worked as Executive Secretary of the MCC US Peace Section for 12 years, dealing with the draft, women's concerns, peace education, war tax resistance, the MCC Washington Office. In 1988 I left MCC to change the pace, worked as a carpenter, then was invited back for interim work for a year or two in the international peace office of MCC. For five or six years I had a part time adjunct teaching position with Messiah College, teaching a course in faith and society. In that course the main text book which I assigned for student reading was Walter Wink's Engaging the Powers, which I believe is one of the most important books available for Christians today. It brings the world view of the Bible into interaction with our own times and issues in a creative and profound way.

During the 1990s I was the part-time (¼ time, I believe) staff person for New Call to Peacemaking, a project of the historic peace churches started in 1975 to keep alive and renew the understanding of biblical peacemaking among Mennonites, Brethren, and Friends. In 1990 I accepted an invitation to represent MCC on a grassroots peacemaking delegation to Iraq sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. About 20 of us visited Baghdad that October, after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, and before the U.S. attack on Iraq in early 1991. That was an intense, close up experience of contact with Iraq under Saddam, described by others in our delegation a regime more repressive than the Soviet Union of the 80s and 90s.

I'm a person who enjoys nature and the outdoors, and our family vacations over the years have always been high points for me. Our 3-week trip to California in the Volkswagen van about 1980 with the five children was quite memorable! We've enjoyed many of Pa.'s state parks, especially Cook Forest in Clarion County, with its stand of virgin white pine, and camping at many places.

My work since 2000 has been "Every Church A Peace Church", a project which I developed with the great help of Rick and Susan Stamm, neighbors here in Lancaster County. Our motto is "The church could turn the world toward peace if every church lived and taught as Jesus lived and taught." Yes, we know that the church is far from turning the world toward peace, because it is indeed far from living and teaching as Jesus lived and taught. His central message, Love your enemies, and his new commandment to love as he loved us, never make it on the list of people who think that commandments are important. So the church claims to honor Jesus, but does it by ignoring what was most important to him.

Yet I am filled with hope for humanity, because I believe that the God who taught us to forgive 70 times 7 (which could be a way of saying without limit) does as well in forgiveness as we are expected to do. Meaning that God does not draw an arbitrary end line and say "Enough, go to hell" but rather continues to extend invitations to accept forgiveness and love until finally we say yes. Who could say "no" forever to overtures of love?