The Anabaptist Vision

The Anabaptist Vision
Author: Harold S. Bender
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
Total Pages: 29
Release: 1960
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0836197224

The Anabaptist Vision, given as a presidential address before the American Society of Church History in 1943, has become a classic essay. In it, Harold S. Bender defines the spirit and purposes of the original Anabaptists. Three major points of emphasis are: the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual to the teachings and example of Christ, voluntary church membership based upon conversion and commitment to holy living, and Christian love and nonresistance applied to all human relationships.

Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites

Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites
Author: Donald B. Kraybill
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0801899117

Donald B. Kraybill has spent his career among Anabaptist groups, gaining an unparalleled understanding of these traditionally private people. Kraybill shares that deep knowledge in this succinct overview of the beliefs and cultural practices of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites in North America. Found throughout Canada, Central America, Mexico, and the United States, these religious communities include more than 200 different groups with 800,000 members in 17 countries. Through 340 short entries, Kraybill offers readers information on a wide range of topics related to religious views and social practices. With thoughtful consideration of how these diverse communities are related, this compact reference provides a brief and accurate synopsis of these groups in the twenty-first century. No other single volume provides such a broad overview of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites in North America. Organized for ease of searching—with a list of entries, a topic finder, an index of names, and ample cross-references—the volume also includes abundant resources for accessing additional information. Wide in scope, succinct in content, and with directional markers along the way, the Concise Encyclopedia of Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites is a must-have reference for anyone interested in Anabaptist groups.

T&T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism

T&T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism
Author: Brian C. Brewer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567689506

By utilizing the contributions of a variety of scholars – theologians, historians, and biblical scholars – this book makes the complex and sometimes disparate Anabaptist movement more easily accessible. It does this by outlining Anabaptism's early history during the Reformation of the sixteenth century, its varied and distinctive theological convictions, and its ongoing challenges to and influence on contemporary Christianity. T&T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism comprises four sections: 1) Origins, 2) Doctrine, 3) Influences on Anabaptism, and 4) Contemporary Anabaptism and Relationship to Others. The volume concludes with a chapter on how contemporary Anabaptists interact with the wider Church in all its variety. While some of the authorities within the volume will disagree even with one another regarding Anabaptist origins, emphases on doctrine, and influence in the contemporary world, such differences represent the diversity that constitutes the history of this movement.

Mennonite Farmers

Mennonite Farmers
Author: Royden Loewen
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1421442043

A comparative global history of Mennonites from the ground up. Winner of the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize by the Canadian Historical Association, Nominee of the Margaret McWilliams Award by the Manitoba Historical Society Mennonite farmers can be found in dozens of countries spanning five continents. In this comparative world-scale environmental history, Royden Loewen draws on a multi-year study of seven geographically distinctive Anabaptist communities around the world, focusing on Mennonite farmers in Bolivia, Canada, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Russia, the United States, and Zimbabwe. These farmers, who include Amish, Brethren in Christ, and Siberian Baptists, till the land in starkly distinctive climates. They absorb very disparate societal lessons while being shaped by particular faith outlooks, historical memory, and the natural environment. The book reveals the ways in which modern-day Mennonite farmers have adjusted to diverse temperatures, precipitation, soil types, and relative degrees of climate change. These farmers have faced broad global forces of modernization during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from commodity markets and intrusive governments to technologies marked increasingly by the mechanical, chemical, and genetic. Based on more than 150 interviews and close textual analysis of memoirs, newspapers, and sermons, the narrative follows, among others, Zandile Nyandeni of Matopo as she hoes the spring-fed soils of Matabeleland's semi-arid savannah; Vladimir Friesen of Apollonovka, Siberia, who no longer heeds the dictates of industrial time of the Soviet-era state farm; and Abram Enns of Riva Palacio, Bolivia, who tells how he, a horse-and-buggy traditionalist, hired bulldozers to clear-cut a farm in the eastern lowland forests to grow soybeans, initially leading to dust bowl conditions. As Mennonites, Loewen writes, these farmers were raised with knowledge of the historic Anabaptist teachings on community, simplicity, and peace that stood alongside ideas on place and sustainability. Nonetheless, conditioned by gender, class, ethnicity, race, and local values, they put their agricultural ideas into practice in remarkably diverse ways. Mennonite Farmers is a pioneering work that brings faith into conversation with the land in distinctive ways.

Transforming Faith Communities

Transforming Faith Communities
Author: Michael I. Bochenski
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2013-03-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621895971

Transforming Faith Communities argues for a model of being church that combines congregationalism with a constructive approach to church-state relationships. Congregationalism within a vision for a renewed Christendom is commended here as a viable option for Christian mission in the twenty-first-century world. In making this case, two movements are explored--those inspired by sixteenth-century Anabaptism and late twentieth-century Latin American liberation theology. Each movement is held up as a mirror to the other. A continuing vision for the transformation of church and society emerges from this book as a number of contemporary resonances begin to sound. These include an outline of some likely common features in the development of radical religious communities, an examination of some of the factors that create world-affirming Christian faith communities, and many examples of effective and constructive engagement with church and society across the centuries.

From Suffering to Solidarity

From Suffering to Solidarity
Author: Andrew P Klager
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2016-04-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0718844572

As experiences of suffering continue to influence the responses of identity groups in the midst of violent conflict, a way to harness their narratives, stories, memories, and myths in transformative and non-violent ways is needed. From Suffering to Solidarity explores the historical seeds of Mennonite peacebuilding approaches and their application in violent conflicts around the world. The authors in this book first draw out the experiences of Anabaptists and Mennonites from the sixteenth-century originsthrough to the present that have shaped their approaches to conflict transformation and inspired new generations of Mennonites to engage in relief, development, and peacebuilding to alleviate the suffering of others whose experiences today reflect those of their ancestors. Authors then explore the various peacebuilding approaches, methods, and initiatives that have emerged from this Mennonite narrative and its preservation and dissemination in subsequent generations. Finally, the book examines how this combined historical sensitivity and resulting peacebuilding theory and practice have been applied in violent conflicts around the world, noting both successes and challenges. Ultimately, From Suffering to Solidarity attempts to answer a question: How can arobust historical infrastructure be used to inspire empathetic solidarity with the Other and shape nonviolent ways of transforming conflict to thrust a stick in the spokes of the cycle of violence?

Mothering Mennonite

Mothering Mennonite
Author: Buller Rachel Epp
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2013-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1927335868

Mothering Mennonite marks the first scholarly attempt to incorporate religious groundings in interpretations of motherhood. The essays included here broaden our understanding of maternal identity as something not only constructed within the family and by society at large, but also influenced significantly by historical traditions and contemporary belief systems of religious communities. A multidisciplinary compilation of essays, this volume joins narrative and scholarly voices to address both the roles of mothering in Mennonite contexts and the ways in which Mennonite mothering intersects with and is shaped by the world at large. Contributors address cultural constructions of motherhood within ethnoreligious Mennonite communities, examining mother-daughter relationships and intergenerational influences, analyzing visual and literary representations of Mennonite mothers, challenging cultural constructions and expectations of motherhood, and tracing the effects of specific religious and cultural contexts on mothering in North and South America.’

Living in the World

Living in the World
Author: Ronald C. Jantz
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725273594

In the pages of this book, the reader will experience the religious adventure of Anabaptism and appreciate the core principles of nonconformity and nonresistance. This narrative history will impart an understanding of how a little-known group of Mennonites migrated through the countries of Western Europe, ultimately to bring a unique way of life to the Great Plains of America. Today, these people hope to live apart from the world as the Holdeman people or, more formally, the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite.