Swiss forgive, don’t forget
It took about 490 years for government officials in Bern, Switzerland, to ask for forgiveness for persecution of Anabaptists in the region. It took less than two to get a response from Swiss Mennonites. Delegates from every congregation in the Swiss Mennonite Conference (SMC) gathered to offer forgiveness to the government of the canton of…
Mennonite and Reformed representatives seek a common witness
“Reformed and Anabaptist are branches from the same tree,” said Hanspeter Jecker, a Mennonite theologian from Switzerland. “Anabaptist convictions that once were controversial—such as the voluntary nature of church membership and rejection of capital punishment—are now accepted by many Christian groups. Centuries of opposition have turned to reconciliation.” Five centuries after Swiss reformer Ulrich…
Symposium explores how to preserve Anabaptist history
More than 30 people from 12 countries gathered at Goshen College on June 17-19 to talk about gathering and preserving the sources that are crucial to the history of the global Anabaptist-Mennonite church. The group, composed of historians, pastors, archivists and others, shared a keen interest in keeping the history of the global church alive…
Called to bleed and die for the sake of the nation
As a minister of the Mennonite church in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), Hermann Gottlieb Mannhardt knew how to challenge and encourage his congregants in matters of faith and moral conduct. He also knew how to energize a crowd in matters related to politics and patriotism. During the First World War, as Germany’s armed forces were…
World Fellowship Sunday: A communion of 500 years
Every year on the Sunday closest to January 21, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) invites its 107 member churches to join in a celebration of World Fellowship Sunday. (See the 2019 worship resources here.) The worship themes vary from year to year, but the rationale for the timing of the event has remained constant: on January…
Bluffton archivist tells story of Ephrata ‘Martyrs Mirror’
At Bluffton (Ohio) University’s Musselman Library, archivist Carrie Phillips stores seven copies of the 1748 edition of the Ephrata Martyrs Mirror in boxes specially designed to keep them preserved. But this year, Phillips had multiple opportunities to take the books off the shelf and showcase both their religious and historical significance during presentations on and…
A faith to die for
Martyrs Mirror is newer than the Bible and longer than some copies of it. Like the Bible, though, the book has a powerful message for today, said James Lowry, a Mennonite historian from Hagerstown, Md. “Persecution, dungeons, shackles, chains are not something in our experience,” Lowry told an audience at the June 8-10, 2010, “Martyrs…
