Growing up, the first day of school was the most sacred day on my annual calendar. Whatever regrets, whatever mistakes had marked the previous year were suddenly rendered gloriously irrelevant...
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Imagine a violent tormented sociopath transforming into a person in their right mind. Imagine pigs running and drowning in the sea. Some stories are just too strange. Certain stories ask us to wrestle with...
[read more]Randy Kraybill (Letters & Comments, Jan. 18) has hit the nail on the head. There can be no dialogue if people do not uphold the authority of Scripture — all of it. Otherwise there is no basis for...
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I’ve had several conversations questioning the validity of the quote, “Now we are faced with an onslaught of potential annihilation,” in my March 16, 2015, column. People primarily focused on gun...
[read more]The group studied its holy texts, grew incensed with a corrupt and wayward government, armed itself and took control of an institution it was convinced rightfully belonged to them. They felt they were simply...
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NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — When professor of communication arts John McCabe-Juhnke put his former “pilot project” into Bethel College’s interterm curriculum, he knew his students would learn things that...
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Few scriptures have been so frequently quoted in recent years by North American Anabaptists as the prayer of Jesus “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). Especially in times of severe disagreement, we...
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What other than an Amish-Mennonite cookbook describes how to feed 180 hungry men at a barn-raising, with a feast that includes 50 pounds of white potatoes, 20 plump chickens, 300 yeast rolls and 120 shoo-fly...
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Almost a century ago, Mennonite missionaries T.K. Hershey and J.W. Shank undertook a dangerous 27-day sea journey during World War I with their families, facing the threat of submarines and floating mines from...
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Ever since childhood I’ve wondered why we know Daniel by his Hebrew name but his three friends by their Babylonian names. It’s tempting to divine some spiritual significance to the inconsistency, but...
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Two days after open heart surgery in January, I peed on my socks. You perhaps would do the same if a surgeon so recently had split open your chest, stopped your heart, and grafted in three bypass arteries...
[read more]Harold N. Miller (Letters & Comments, Jan. 18) says traditionalists are looking for a Bible study that can show “that Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 do not view all forms of same-sex relations as against...
[read more]In my Bible courses I learned that two Words guide us in our Christian walk: the Word of God written and the Word of God incarnate. When we are unable to agree on the interpretation of the Bible, the written...
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NEUWIED, Germany — The leader of MB Mission’s Oasis team had never seen anything like it before: a large crowd of Arabic speakers responding to the gospel in Germany. “I saw the Holy Spirit like an...
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FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Fort Collins Mennonite Fellowship’s sanctuary is just that for the community’s homeless. The city has 150,000 people yet only two homeless shelters. Its homeless population is twice...
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The next chapter for the German Mennonite Historical Society is chronicling steps to modernize the group’s research center while digging deeper into the past. In October, University of Regensburg history...
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The day before he died, my father, Robert M. Schrag, listened as I read his obituary. I pulled up a chair by the recliner in his living room, where once he had read to me and my siblings the tales of Robin...
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