BOOK REVIEWS From Kleefeld with Love. Edited and translated by John Harder. Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora Press. 2003. Pp.198. $22 Can. In the 1980s I became concerned about the fate of the letters written by Mennonites in the Soviet Union to relatives and friends in Canada. I was often shown shoeboxes…
Review Essay: Shawn Francis Peters, The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003) LEE ROY BERRY, JR.* The Yoder Case recounts how the United States Supreme Court resolved the conflict between Wisconsin educational officials and Amish parents over that state’s compulsory education…
Benes Optt, “On Baptism and the Lord’s Supper”: An Utraquist Reformer’s Opinion of Pilgram Marpeck’s Vermahnung MARTIN ROTHKEGEL* The Utraquist priest Benes Optt (d. 1559) was a prominent advocate of reform within the Utraquist Church in Moravia. Theologically, he formed part of a regional Sacramentarian-Spiritualist movement that blended radical traditions…
John Howard Yoder’s “Alternative Perspective” on Christian-Jewish Relations ALAIN EPP WEAVER* Abstract: The late John Howard Yoder’s posthumously published essays on Jewish-Christian relations display the breadth and depth of his scholarship. In them Yoder integrated biblical, historical and theological scholarship into multiple, provocative theses about how Christians should conceive…
The Kitchenhood of all Believers: A Journey into the Discourse of Mennonite Cookbooks MATTHEW BAILEY-DICK* Abstract: This paper brings together insights from cultural anthropology, religious studies and Mennonite studies in an effort to uncover the ways in which Mennonite cookbooks can be understood as a recognizable discourse (or cluster…
Review Essay: Fernando Enns on Mennonite Ecumenism HELMUT HARDER* Fernando Enns, Friedenskirche in der kumene: Mennonitische Wurzeln einer Ethik der Gewaltfreiheit. [English translation: The Peace Church in Ecumenical Context: Mennonite Roots of an Ethic of Nonviolence.] Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2003. Pp. 364. Since the early 1950s, the historic…
BOOK REVIEWS Perry Bush. Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1998. Pp. 362. $48. This is a mature work, even if it began as the author’s Ph.D. dissertation. Indeed it is a major addition to twentieth-century pacifist history; and in twentieth-century Mennonite…
From Cross to Cross-Stitch: The Ascendancy of the Quilt DANIEL BORN* Abstract: Perceptions of the quilt within the Mennonite community have changed over time. Arguably, the quilt has not only shaped what can be called the Mennonite imagination-that field of symbolic structures that helps to define the Mennonite community-but it…
"Molochna 2004: Mennonites and Their Neighbours (1804-2004)": An International Conference, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, June 2-5, 2004 PETER LETKEMANN* The year 2004 marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Molochna Mennonite settlement in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine). To mark this historic anniversary, scholars…
Ritual as My Third Language: An Autobiographical Account JOHN REMPEL* Abstract: This article addresses the enduring ambivalence in believers churches concerning sacraments. Since their beginning, they have feared that outward forms substitute for inward experience. At the same time they possess a rich ritual life. After describing the nature of…
