An incessant demand
“Where are you, Mennonites?” A colleague and I are in a Winnipeg café discussing the current land struggles of many Indigenous peoples. I listen intently as she speaks of the Unist’ot’en, Muskrat Falls and the Tiny House Warriors. I nod my head in understanding and offer affirming murmurs. But then, halfway through tea, she looks…
Willems statue commissioned for Manitoba museum
A peace exhibit committee has commissioned Manitoba sculptor Peter Sawatzky to build a bronze statue of martyred Anabaptist Dirk Willems. Based on an engraving of Willems, by Jan Luyken in Martyrs Mirror, the monument is intended to recognize the Anabaptist ideals of peacemaking. The life-size statue, to be completed in 2018, will be the focal…
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…
The message and the messengers of salvation
It is truly remarkable that through hell and high water, the good news of Jesus has arrived to me, today, in 2018, in Canada. This is a miracle of God. Through persecution, the gospel has persisted. Despite the frequent destructive misuse of the message for coercion and power, the good news has carried on. Not…
The blood of modern-day martyrs
It was the Christian apologist Tertullian in AD 197 who first wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” As he watched Christians killed in the bloody entertainment of colosseums and in summary legal procedures, he saw the church grow. Sixteenth-century Anabaptists echoed that quote as the cost of following Jesus…
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…
