BLUFFTON, Ohio — The three Rs have been viewed as foundations of education since the days of the one-room schoolhouse. But the president of Canada’s Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ont.,...
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HARRISONBURG, Va. — After spending the summer thousands of miles from her native Liberia and watching nervously as Ebola swept through her country, sophomore Winifred Gray-Johnson wanted to take action when...
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ALEPPO, Syria — This morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of a mortar exploding. I said to myself, “A new day is started.” This is normal in Aleppo. I went to the kitchen, hoping to get some tea...
[read more]HILLSBORO, Kan. — MB Foundation earnings set records in 2014, so the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches’ financial agency is sharing an unprecedented amount with the denomination. “We want...
[read more]The federal government will pay $570,000 in legal fees to attorneys who worked with a Mennonite-owned Pennsylvania cabinet company that challenged a birth control mandate last year at the Supreme...
[read more]While conventional wisdom maintains that idle hands and minds are the devil’s tools, psychological research has found benefits to boredom. According to a 2013 study by psychologists at the University of...
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Some years ago, John Paul Lederach, international peacebuilder, received good advice from his young daughter before he went to a meeting to discuss his work in conciliation and peacebuilding: “Daddy, just...
[read more]I’m frustrated by the language used in the announcement of a splinter group. Leaders of this movement call for spiritual renewal and mission. This implies that those who do not resonate with them do not long...
[read more]D.R. Yoder’s parable, “If Faced With This Choice, What Would You Do?” (Letters, Jan. 5), seems to be based on the assumption that those who tolerate churches that welcome LGBT people would not extend the...
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CAPINGA, Mozambique — Rebecca Standen wears a headlamp to light the way and checks a pot of chima bubbling over the fire outside her tiny house. The porridge-like mixture will be supper as she ends another...
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Whatever [parents] are doing is for the child’s sake, and the child’s alone. Parents no longer raise children for the family’s sake or that of the broader world. — Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No...
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Lessons of peace were highlighted through short films and workshops at two parallel events co-hosted by the Korea Peacebuilding Institute. KOPI, which is supported by Mennonite Mission Network, partnered with...
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As I took down my string of Christmas cards and letters, I smiled as one friend noted the danger of a Christmas letter becoming “a list of stellar achievements accomplished by perfect people.” Ours had no...
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As 2014 ended, “I can’t breathe” was the mantra for many who demonstrated across the United States in the wake of the death of Eric Garner. It feels like our nation, and our world, can’t breathe. The...
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HESSTON, Kan. — Rural congregations are highly attuned to the seasons. While fields lie fallow and winter wheat slumbers, representatives from Midwestern Mennonite Church USA conferences gathered in Kansas...
[read more]I appreciated “Persecution of Christians Reached Historic Levels in 2014” (World & Faith, Jan. 19). This concern should take high priority in our hearts and prayers and church media. Many of these...
[read more]All of us want any movement toward same-sex marriage to be shaped by the Spirit and the Word and not only by what we see and hear in the culture around us. Yet this is hard. We instinctively move toward...
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Every so often we meet someone who tells the truth so plainly and persistently that our worldview rocks, then adjusts. Thomas King is like that. In his recent book, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account...
[read more]WASHINGTON — Mennonite Church USA leaders have joined with a group of Christian leaders looking ahead to what the next president might do to address hunger and poverty. The group of 100 Christian leaders,...
[read more]Perhaps the first Anabaptist to call for peace with Muslims was Michael Sattler in 1527. Europeans at that time feared the Muslim Turks. But Sattler would have no part of shedding blood for church or state. On...
[read more]Neighbors have bought, burned and buried the house of a couple facing federal charges after kidnapping a pair of New York Amish girls. The (Syracuse) Post-Standard reports Jamie and Kimberly Matthews of...
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Matthew 25 is a familiar passage to most Christians. Such familiarity can lead, I fear, to a kind of spiritual laziness. When we think a text is simple, when we think we know what it means, it’s easy to move...
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FRESNO, Calif. — The Goliath they face is huge: gang violence, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse and more. But, like David, United Faith Christian Fellowship is boldly stepping up to the challenge. The...
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HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Nguyen Hong Quang, leader of the unregistered Vietnam Evangelical Mennonite Church, was severely beaten on his way to evening worship Jan. 18. A few minutes after leaving his home...
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When Wesley Furlong first learned about Anabaptists, the discoveries broke his stereotypes. “There was such a crazy boldness when I had assumed a sheer passivity, a refusal to retreat and compromise where I...
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