Over the past several decades, one remarkable initiative in Mennonite higher education has been in the new academic field of peace and conflict studies. Mennonite schools across North America — from Fresno...
[read more]
In the beginning the world was a blank canvas. Then God flipped on the studio lights, stepped up to the easel and threw God’s self headlong into creation. For days, even ages, God worked without rest, lost...
[read more]
Authentic movements to Jesus happen all over the globe. From North America, though, sometimes it seems they’re all “out there” in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Yet the heart of God is for North...
[read more]
A book called Prayer, by Ole Hallesby — a Norwegian Christian who wrote in the early 1900s — changed my understanding of that basic-to-our-humanity, up-reaching thing we call prayer. I will share in my own...
[read more]
Hardly anyone could have imagined the dramatic shift in relationships that has happened in the past year in the United States. Our communities have become edgy, waiting for the next tragedy to happen. The...
[read more]
These texts from Paul provide an excellent coda to our conversations about ethics, justice and the Christian life. Although Romans is rightly considered Paul’s most important theological writing, he most of...
[read more]
About eight years ago, Christiana Peterson, her husband and daughter moved from urban Washington, D.C., to an intentional Christian community in rural north-central Illinois. Their motives were many:...
[read more]
When the cafe worker offered me plastic cutlery with my to-go salad, I declined, thinking of the bamboo fork, spoon and knife in my backpack. Ditto for the straw with my iced tea; the travel set came with a...
[read more]
One deep grateful breath, One small step forward Has the power to change everything. — from Through and Beyond by Bonnie Thurston I live in a city of 1.6 million people, in a time of contention, in what...
[read more]
In 2016, shortly after being elected president of Mennonite World Review Inc., I reached out to Barth Hauge and Tobi Thiessen, board chairs of The Mennonite and Canadian Mennonite. I wanted to see if they were...
[read more]
From a boat on the Sea of Galilee, a fisherman demonstrates the ancient art of casting a circular net. Weights along the outer edge sink rapidly, pulling the web around any living thing below. Waters next to...
[read more]
“If you’re going to be serious about peace, then you need to be serious about peacebuilding,” the congressional staffer said. He sat across the imposing Senate conference table the day after the summit...
[read more]
Another book on racism? Haven’t we moved beyond that topic yet? Isn’t it time for all of us to get over it? It is precisely these responses to racism that prompted Skot Welch, Rick Wilson and Andi...
[read more]
By the early 1870s, the young General Conference Mennonite Church was earnestly desiring to begin its own mission program. Since its creation in 1860, it had financially supported the Dutch Mennonites’...
[read more]
Even before President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, the media buzzed about what might happen to Roe v. Wade. Many legal experts and activists anticipate the 1973 decision that...
[read more]
For the final sessions of the quarter we turn from Jesus’ teaching to the Apostle Paul’s. Yet the basic picture of Christian faith and life remains mostly the same. In the first part of his letter to the...
[read more]
As national flames flare over babies torn from immigrant parents, how public figures are treated in restaurants, naming a new Supreme Court justice, tariffs, taxes, environmental regulations and more, a...
[read more]
In the ancient world you could learn a great deal about people at mealtime. What people ate and who they ate with were quite revealing. Luke 14 certainly tells us a lot about Jesus — and about those who set...
[read more]
The Korean Christian churches are an intriguing phenomenon of the past 100 years. Protestant Christianity arrived in Korea only after 1880, but the Korean church has flourished since then in ways that have...
[read more]
My dad smells of hay and manure, the soil and the outdoors, spiritually speaking. His relationship with God is a sturdy thing, like coveralls that have hung always in the basement between chorings and are...
[read more]
The Statue of Liberty greeted immigrant arrivals in the United States beginning in 1886. Many of our white ancestors saw this quote emblazoned on Ms. Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled...
[read more]
According to popular lore, the sojourning Mennonites in Europe found refuge in Russia, where they flourished until 1917, when the Russian Revolution unleashed horrific persecution of these peaceful, faithful...
[read more]
No more bathing suits at the Miss America Pageant. Is the culture of female objectification finally fading? Snags in male domination are old news. Long ago, a woman from a different culture said “no” to...
[read more]
A key moment in Luke comes at the end of chapter 9 when Jesus “set his face toward Jerusalem” (9:51). In the following chapters, we read stories of Jesus and his followers heading toward the big...
[read more]
Nancy Kauffmann of Goshen, Ind., has long been a pioneer as a woman in congregational and denominational leadership. So it’s not surprising that a painting by Chilean artist Daniel Cariola in a chapel next...
[read more]