Juana García, a pioneer leader of the Brethren in Christ Church in Cuba, passed away on January 20, 2017 at age 93. In the 1950s García worked alongside Howard and Pearl Wolgemuth, who served as Brethren in Christ missionaries in Cuba beginning in 1953. In 1960, when Wolgemuths were advised to leave Cuba following the Cuban Revolution, García and Keep Reading…
All Mennonite World Conference member churches who participated in the recent Global Anabaptist Profile (GAP) survey were asked the following two questions: “If the government required military service, what would you do?” and “Do you agree or disagree that it’s okay for Christians to fight in a war?” For the Convención de las Iglesias Evangélicas Menonitas de Nicaragua (CIEMN), Keep Reading…
“Though we are already Mennonites in name, we are learning how to be real peacemakers and what it means to reconcile.”
“I could not work with those who would destroy the church, who were responsible for the sufferings of so many Christians.”
“The Bibles were needed so badly that we used everything that we could!”
The following excerpt is taken from Jim Bertsche, “That’s all you can do to me,” in The Jesus Tribe: Grace stories from Congo’s Mennonites, 1912-2012 ed. Rod Hollinger-Janzen, Nancy Myers and Jim Bertsche (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2012): 71-72. Co-published with the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism. The first warning Pastor Keep Reading…
Stanimir Katanic’s story is written by Marcia Lewandowski, who interviewed Katanic in 2014 about his experiences as a Nazarene conscientious objector in Yugoslavia. I met Stanimir Katanic as an 83-year-old man living in Ohio. In our interview, Stanimir requested to speak about the years of his imprisonment as a young man in Serbian, rather than English. Keep Reading…
In 1953 Colombian president Gustavo Rojas Pinilla passed the Treaty of Missions, an agreement that designated the most unpopulated regions of the country—geographically large but representing a small percentage of the population—as Mission Territories under the direction and control of the Catholic Church. In these years the Mennonite Brethren Board of Foreign Missions (of North Keep Reading…
Elder Jacob Aron Rempel was probably one of the most important personalities among the Mennonites of Russia in the 20th century, both in terms of his theological education as well as in his extraordinary personality and public activities. In 1929 he was arrested by the USSR’s secret police force (GPU) for his religious affiliations. He spent Keep Reading…
For many years during difficult financial times, aboriginal families in Taiwan would sell their young daughters to the prostitution industry controlled by the underground mafia. Child advocate groups estimated there were 60,000 child prostitutes at the time. Katherine Wu (Wu Fang-fang), a Mennonite pastor in Hualien, Taiwan, became aware of this situation and determined to Keep Reading…