Switzerland is a land of beauty and Anabaptist history. Many North American Mennonite and Amish people visit to get in touch with their faith’s roots. Most Swiss hosts are too gracious and polite to offer...
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A new film dramatizing the life of Reformation leader Ulrich Zwingli is giving moviegoers a chance to see early Swiss Anabaptist leaders on the big screen — as long as they can get to Switzerland. The...
[read more]The 39 families who followed Claas Epp into the Central Asian wilderness to avoid military conscription and meet Christ’s return in the late 19th century have received undo derision from descendants of other...
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A decade after its opening was canceled, a historical exhibit about a band of Mennonites from Ukraine who migrated far eastward in the 1880s to avoid military service and meet Christ’s return will finally go...
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SHIPSHEWANA, Ind. — Persecution of Anabaptists in the 16th century by Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed churches created centuries of mutual mistrust and suspicion. In the last 30 years, however, these...
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We live in an era of human flight and displacement. The United Nations Refugee Agency says there are more than 68 million refugees throughout the world. A top political issue in North America and Europe is...
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Among the lists of those disappeared during the dark times of the 1930s and ’40s in what is now Ukraine, researchers have found roughly 400 pages of Mennonite names, with five or six names per page. That...
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Over the Nov. 15-17 weekend, I listened to no less than 30 academic presentations in a space of 2.5 days as Canada’s National Mennonite Historical Society hosted scholars and speakers for the annual...
[read more]Do evangelical Christians want to move the needle of government to the point where the cross and the flag are synonymous? The U.S. Constitution promises justice and democracy for all, which on paper looks like...
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More than seven decades after World War II ended, revelations about Mennonites and the war continue coming to light. Stéphane Zehr of Anduze, France, presented research about French Mennonite resistance to...
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Thanksgiving is almost upon us. How do you talk about it with your children? Many of us learned a story about Pilgrims and Indians sharing a happy meal of New World foods — turkey and cranberries and...
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“Many American Christians simply assume that the state has no business dictating church beliefs or practices, that a church should be a gathered body of believers rather than a net that that scoops up...
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Renewal 2027 is a 10-year series of events organized by Mennonite World Conference’s Faith and Life Commission to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement. This series...
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“As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night” (Gen. 8:22). On a Hutterite colony, typically one couple is in charge of the vegetable...
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One hundred years ago next month, on Nov. 11, 1918, an armistice brought World War I to an end, ceasing the four-year-old conflagration that resulted in 40 million casualties, unprecedented destruction and...
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Women in Odessa, Kherson, Zaporozhe, Dnipro and Kiev adorn themselves in the colors and fragrances of happy gardens that belie Ukraine’s brutal history. Men without shirts in the villages of what had been...
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While on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., J. Lawrence Burkholder participated in an integration effort on March 31, 1964, in Saint Augustine, Fla., which made headlines in newspapers...
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A decade ago in Switzerland, a process of reconciliation emerged among Anabaptists and contemporary representatives of the government that oppressed them during the Reformation. To make that reconciliation...
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Every Mennonite in the small town of Goessel, Kan., knows the date 1874. It is emblazoned on the “Turkey Red Wheat Palace,” erected on the centennial of Mennonites’ migration to the Great Plains from...
[read more]A new direction and a different interpretation are mother’s milk to the historian. At times this is helpful. At other times, not so much. Anabaptism, defined from its inception by its enemies, more recently...
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SHIPSHEWANA, Ind. — People who come to northern Indiana with curiosity about the Amish and Mennonites often find their way to an Amish-country attraction that teaches them about Anabaptism. About 260 people...
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“Out of the fullness of the heart, the language of each mortal springs. If you would truly know a man, just listen to the songs he sings.” — Amish hymn writer John Paul Raber, Songs from Within...
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The first time I submitted a piece of scholarship for consideration to an academic journal — at age 21 and having just earned B.A. in history — a rejection letter came in quick response. Why? Because I...
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At times of historical celebration, there is often debate as to the veracity of classical interpretations of a movement’s beginnings. Such a debate is with us again, as we begin to commemorate the...
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STEINBACH, Man. — Manitoba sculptor Peter Sawatzky has been commissioned to create a bronze statue of martyred Anabaptist Dirk Willems. Based on an engraving of Willems by Jan Luyken in Martyrs Mirror, the...
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