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From the wheat fields and bargain stores of rural Manitoba, Ben and Helen Eidse were the first missionaries sent overseas by their conference. On the African savannah they partnered with the Chokwe-Lunda who taught them language, culture and proverbs, which Ben used to explain salvation. Helen delivered the leprosy cure, mothered orphans, cared for the excluded, sick and poor. Their partners helped establish 80 churches, translate the Bible and run 24 clinics. They deepened their faith in spiritual battle against sorcery and corruption. The Eidses sought to empower the powerless and raise a family despite revolution, disease and disability. Back in Canada, Helen took in the homeless and Ben became president of Steinbach Bible College. As first chancellor, he continues a counseling, healing prayer ministry....
In the 1870s, approximately 18,000 Mennonites migrated from the southern steppes of Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine) to the North American grasslands. They brought with them an array of cultural and institutional features that indicated they were a "transplanted" people. What is less frequently noted, however, is that they created in their everyday lives a world that ensured their cultural longevity and social cohesiveness in a new land. Their adaptation to the New World required new concepts of social boundary and community, new strategies of land ownership and legacy, new associations, and new ways of interacting with markets. In Hidden Worlds, historian Royden Loewen illuminates some...
Ben F. Eidse is Shakambangu, a messenger who announces the truth, so-named by the Lunda-Chokwe who appreciate his commitment to learning their heart language, proverbs and culture. He often began his messages with a Chokwe proverb about the kambangu bird who doesn’t speak empty words like the prairie chicken, but announces the first sliver of the moon. He was also called “Tata,” a wise elder and “blacksmith who equipped us, not with guns, but with the Word of God,” which he translated, with two Chokwe pastors/storytellers. Eidse is among the rare western students of Lunda-Chokwe language and culture, which spreads over nine countries of central and southern Africa. His unique and o...
From the 1930s to the 1980s, the North American countryside faced a profound cultural transformation in which a once-unified rural society became fragmented and dispersed. Families wishing to remain on the farm were required to accept new levels of automation, while others, unwilling or unable to make the change, migrated to nearby towns or regional cities. The cultural reformulation that resulted saw the emergence of a genuine rural diaspora. The growing cultural and physical separation was especially true for close-knit, ethno-religious communities, Mennonites, in particular. Forced into regional cities, the kaleidoscopic urban culture further fragmented the Mennonites into disparate socia...
A Dangerous Mind is a celebration of the ideas and influence of Delbert L. Wiens. It contains tributes to him, essays inspired by him, and some of his unpublished works. This effort has been brought together by his students, colleagues, and friends at the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his "New Wineskins for Old Wine," which hoped to guide the Mennonite Brethren as they faced the challenges of modernity--it has proven useful for other denominations facing similar transitions. This year also marks the sixtieth anniversary of Delbert's foundation of the Mennonite mission in Vietnam. In addition to celebrating his ideas and influence through our writing, we have also endeavored to capture the spirit of his work through art illustrating each section of this volume.
As this collection of scholarly case studies reveals, religion once played a major public role in all aspects of Canadian society, including politics, education, and culture.
At a time when religious conflicts and persecution plagued early modern Europe, Poland and Prussia were havens for Mennonites and other religious minorities. Noted Anabaptist scholar Peter J. Klassen examines this extraordinary example of religious tolerance. Through extensive archival research in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands, Klassen unearths rich material that has rarely, if ever, been studied previously. He demonstrates how the interaction of religious, political, and economic factors created a situation in Poland and Prussia that permitted a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia focuses on the large Mennonite community in these countries. Klassen reveals how the Anabaptist groups were treated and explores whether the uncommon religious freedom they enjoyed gave rise to a flourishing of their faith or a falling away from its central tenets. Early modern Poland and Prussia are virtually ignored in most studies of the Reformation. Klassen brings them to light and life by focusing on an unusual oasis of tolerance in the midst of a Europe convulsed by the wars of religion.
Historian Royden Loewen has brought together selections from diaries kept by 21 Mennonites in Canada between 1863 and 1929, some translated from German for the first time. By skillfully comparing and contrasting a wide cross-section of lives, Loewen shows how these diaries often turn the hidden contours of household and community "inside out." The writers featured were ordinary rural people: young women and grandmothers, rural preachers and landless householders. They include a teenaged boy who immigrated from Russia to Manitoba in 1875 as well as a successful merchant, a traveling evangelist, and a devout, conservative church elder. An elderly grandfather recounted the daily circuit of his ...
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