Last week was an exciting one for the Bearing Witness Stories Project, as we celebrated the release of a new book! Over the course of the past year, the Bearing Witness Stories Project and Plough Publishing have worked together to produce a collection of stories of costly discipleship that illustrate Christ-like nonviolence in a diverse Keep Reading…
Anna Jansz
Written by Gerald Mast. The below text was originally presented as a sermon at First Mennonite Church of Bluffton, Ohio and published on Mast’s personal blog in January of 2015. In order to find our way into the story of Anna Jansz, we must travel from Zurich, Switzerland in 1525 to the north German city of Keep Reading…
Is the Martyrs Mirror a book for children?
Carrie Mast, a Mennonite from Bluffton, Ohio, recently wrote a post for Bearing Witness about the process of adapting the story of martyr Jacques d’Auchy into a dramatic script with her husband, Gerald Mast, and their children. Her original post prompted a follow-up conversation with her and Gerald on teaching the Martyrs Mirror to children. We don’t Keep Reading…
How Jacques d’Auchy became a household name
In today’s guest post, Carrie Mast writes about developing a dramatic adaptation of the stories of Jacques d’Auchy from the Martyrs Mirror with her husband, Gerald, and their children. You can find their script, I Have Not Forsaken the Word of God: Jacques D’Auchy’s Confessional Struggle, at the conclusion of the post. Earlier this year, my husband, Keep Reading…
Refocusing martyr stories on women
Jacques D’Auchy was a highly-educated Dutch martyr, whose argumentation before his inquisitor constitutes an important confession for understanding the development of Mennonite theology and belief in the 1500s. Despite D’Auchy’s compelling testimony, however, the Jan Luyken engraving that accompanies D’Auchy’s story in the Martyrs Mirror is not focused on him, but on his wife and Keep Reading…