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...
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A meditation on Luke 5:1-11. Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God… We grope for what is spiritual-but-not-religious....
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Mennonite groups are beginning the process of responding to Hurricane Florence’s devastation along the Atlantic coastline. The Category 4 hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 130 mph, but weakened and...
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“At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” With that casual aside, the biblical account of Abraham and Sarah arriving in Canaan states that the territory already was populated. “To your offspring I...
[read more]I can’t agree with Hillary Watson, who says it’s OK Sunday school is dying (Gathering the Stones, Sept. 10). We have a responsibility to clear our schedules of all that doesn’t contribute to growing...
[read more]A pastor who doesn’t fit in one place might flourish somewhere else. In two important cases recently, good pastors had to move on (without leaving their congregations). The reasons, and the changes that...
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Seldom a week goes by that I don’t hear about relationships being frayed because of political differences. “How can you claim to be a Christian and vote for Trump/Clinton?” Political affiliation and...
[read more]Thank you for “Our Hymns Shape Our Faith” (Blog, Sept. 10), which asks us to choose hymns wisely because they shape our faith more than sermons do. How do we choose our hymns? By the tune? The text? The...
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Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election surprised almost everyone. How did it happen? Evangelical Christians had a lot to do with it. In Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald...
[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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A classmate once told me the biblical story she found most irredeemable was that of Noah and his ark. When Joshua slaughters cities in God’s name, you can always blame Joshua. But who do you blame when God...
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I love the paradoxes of God: “God is love,” the Bible states, but it also says, “God is holy.” God is portrayed as both the vulnerable lamb and the wrathful lion. He is king and servant, Alpha and...
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It was big news in Canada when the Supreme Court denied an appeal by Trinity Western University to have a decision against its law school overturned because of the university’s stance against...
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For Mennonite pastors, conversations about boundaries can be difficult. Recent cases of boundary violations have rocked theological and institutional understandings of ourselves. In Pennsylvania, the public...
[read more]According to the Amish Heritage Foundation, the 1972 Supreme Court decision Wisconsin v. Yoder, which allowed the Amish to end schooling after eighth grade, brought enforced ignorance and a feeling of...
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What is your all-time favorite hymn or spiritual/religious piece of music? If you go to church and participate in regular worship services, you also likely enjoy the songs and hymns most churches count as a...
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DALLAS and HOUSTON — When her extended family lost their business in Guatemala because of gang extortion, Bony traveled across Mexico to the Rio Grande River with her 3-year-old daughter, Mily. To evade...
[read more]Members of Mennonite churches were among more than a hundred workers arrested in August in what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement calls one of its biggest operations in the last decade. Die...
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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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In her excellent 2013 study of the Amish romance, Thrill of the Chaste, Valerie Weaver-Zercher decisively argues that books about the Amish are predominantly written for an evangelical Christian audience. The...
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Nike’s new 30th anniversary ad campaign featuring former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick is causing a bit of a stir. Kaepernick is famous for his decision to kneel during the American...
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The first thing “not good” in creation (presumably excepting the snakes) was a human being alone. This should probably not be surprising, from a Christian perspective. After all, humans were made in the...
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A lot of talk has been happening in the Mennonite Twitter world (which is a pretty weird overlap of two very different realms) in the past few days about changes in a master’s program at Fresno Pacific...
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I ran across an article about a disturbing trend in plastic surgery in which people alter their faces to look like filtered selfies taken with apps like Facetune or Snapchat, which modify appearance by...
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Greg Wiens was a Mennonite Brethren pastor for 21 years, but since winning a $1 million award he has transitioned into full-time ministry of another kind — restoring clear vision in developing nations by...
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