Healing the Mennonite class divide
The recent coverage of three issues raises the delicate question of how we mainstream Mennonites relate to our more traditional Anabaptist cousins, especially when their troubles surface.
The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia
For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other explanation. No way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night. No way of explaining how another went to sleep…
Bolivian Mennonite rape trial ends in convictions
Eight members of the Manitoba and Riva Palacios Mennonite colonies accused of raping more than a hundred women and girls were found guilty on Aug. 25 after a two-month trial. A ninth, Jacob Neudorf Enns, escaped from the Palmasola Prison in Santa Cruz some time ago and remains a fugitive. Seven of the accused were…
Good things happening among Bolivia’s Old Colony Mennonites
Despite tragic reports of sexual assault, alcoholism and drug use among Old Colony Mennonite communities in Bolivia this past year, there are many good things happening there, which offer hope for a better future. That’s the opinion of Helen Funk, a Winnipeg-based Low German radio host for Family Life Network who spent two weeks on…
