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"Books geographically focused on the midwestern and eastern states dominate the study of Mennonites in America. The intriguing history of Mennonites in the American West remains untold. In From Digging Gold to Saving Souls, Brian Froese introduces readers for the first time to the California Mennonite experience. Although a few Mennonites did dig for gold in the 1850s, the real story of Mennonites in California begins in the 1890s with westward migrations for fertile soil and healthy sunshine. By the mid-twentieth century, the Mennonite story in California had developed into an interesting tale of religious conservatives--traditional agrarians--finding their way in an increasingly urban and religiously pluralistic California. Some California Mennonites negotiated new identities by endorsing conservative evangelicalism; some found them in reclamations of sixteenth-century Anabaptists. Still other Mennonites found meaningful religious experience by engaging in social action and justice even when these actions appeared in "secular" forms. These emerging identities--Evangelical, Anabaptist, and secular--covered a broad spectrum, yet represented a selective retaining and discarding of Mennonite religious practices and expressions. From Digging Gold to Saving Souls touches on such topics as migration, pluralism, race, gender, pacifism, institutional construction, education, and labor conflict, all of which defined the experience of Mennonites of California. Brian Froese shows how this experience was a rich, complex, and deliberate move into modern society. In From Digging Gold to Saving Souls, he introduces readers to a dynamic people who did not simply become modern, but who chose to modernize on their own terms"--
The first historical analysis of the changing relationship between religion and ethnicity among Latino Mennonites. Winner, 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award, Center for Mexican American Studies and South Texas College. Felipe Hinojosa's parents first encountered Mennonite families as migrant workers in the tomato fields of northwestern Ohio. What started as mutual admiration quickly evolved into a relationship that strengthened over the years and eventually led to his parents founding a Mennonite Church in South Texas. Throughout his upbringing as a Mexican American evangélico, Hinojosa was faced with questions not only about his own religion but also about broader issues of Latino evangelicalism, identity, and civil rights politics. Latino Mennonites offers the first historical analysis of the changing relationship between religion and ethnicity among Latino Mennonites. Drawing heavily on primary sources in Spanish, such as newspapers and oral history interviews, Hinojosa traces the rise of the Latino presence within the Mennonite Church from the origins of Mennonite missions in Latino communities in Chicago, South Texas, Puerto Rico, and New York City, to the conflicted relationship between the Mennonite Church and the California farmworker movements, and finally to the rise of Latino evangelical politics. He also analyzes how the politics of the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and black freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movements captured the imagination of Mennonite leaders who belonged to a church known more for rural and peaceful agrarian life than for social protest. Whether in terms of religious faith and identity, race, immigrant rights, or sexuality, the politics of belonging has historically presented both challenges and possibilities for Latino evangelicals in the religious landscapes of twentieth-century America. In Latino Mennonites, Hinojosa has interwoven church history with social history to explore dimensions of identity in Latino Mennonite communities and to create a new way of thinking about the history of American evangelicalism.
In the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron comes Janze's hilarious and moving memoir about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.
Mennonites and their forebears are usually thought to be a people with little interest or involvement in politics. "Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood" reveals that since their early history, Mennonites have, in fact, been active participants in worldly politics. From western to eastern Europe and through different migrations to North America, James Urry's meticulous research traces Mennonite links with kingdoms, empires, republics, and democratic nations in the context of peace, war, and revolution. He stresses a degree of Mennonite involvement in politics not previously discussed in literature, including Mennonite participation in constitutional reform and party politics, and shows the polarization of their political views from conservatism to liberalism and even revolutionary activities. Using a wide variety of sources, Mennonite, Politics, and Peoplehood combines an inter-disciplinary approach to reveal that Mennonites, far from being the "Quiet in the Land," have deep roots in politics.
John Werner was a storyteller. A Mennonite immigrant in southern Manitoba, he captivated his audiences with tales of adventure and perseverance. With every telling he constructed and reconstructed the memories of his life. John Werner was a survivor. Born in the Soviet Union just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he was named Hans and grew up in a German-speaking Mennonite community in Siberia. As a young man in Stalinist Russia, he became Ivan and fought as a Red Army soldier in the Second World War. Captured by Germans, he was resettled in occupied Poland where he became Johann, was naturalized and drafted into Hitler’s German army where he served until captured and placed in an American POW camp. He was eventually released and then immigrated to Canada where he became John. The Constructed Mennonite is a unique account of a life shaped by Stalinism, Nazism, migration, famine, and war. It investigates the tenuous spaces where individual experiences inform and become public history; it studies the ways in which memory shapes identity, and reveals how context and audience shape autobiographical narratives.
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.
With their distinctive head coverings, plain dress, and quiet, unassuming demeanor, the Mennonites are a distinctive presence within the often flamboyant and proud people of Texas. If you have seen them at a gas station, in a grocery store, or even at the Dallas–Fort Worth airport, you have probably taken note and wondered how they came to be there. In this photographic tour of two Texas Mennonite communities, separated by almost 450 miles, Laura L. Camden and Susan Gaetz Duarte introduce you to the Beachy Amish Mennonites of Lott, a small community of approximately 160 people in Central Texas, and the very different Mennonites of Seminole, a West Texas farming community of more than five thousand residents and five separate congregations, several of which still speak the Mennonite Low German. Spending more than a year getting to know the families, participating in day-to-day activities, and photographing the unique culture of the communities, Camden and Gaetz Duarte developed deep insight into not just the religious beliefs but the family relationships, role expectations, and daily routines of these people. Through their camera lenses, they offer others a touchingly intimate view of a unique lifestyle seldom experienced by outsiders. In a foreword, former governor Ann Richards identifies the book as part of both the long photographic tradition in Texas and the tradition of cultural and religious diversity in the state. Mark L. Louden’s introduction provides the historical backgrounds of Mennonites in Europe, their core beliefs, and their development into branches in North America. Dennis Carlyle Darling offers insightful comments on the photography that allows an intimate, respectful view of the people, their lifestyle, and their culture.
More than 75 traditional Amish recipes, practical gardening tips, and firsthand accounts of traditional Amish events like corn-husking bees and barn raisings. The Amish Cook is based on a newspaper column of the same name that started when aspiring editor Kevin Williams convinced Elizabeth Coblentz, an Old Order Amish wife and mother, to write a weekly cooking column. Each week Elizabeth shared a family recipe and discussed daily life on her Indiana farm, spent with her husband, Ben, and their eight children and 32 grandchildren. A truly unique collaboration between a simple Amish grandmother and a modern-day newspaperman, The Amish Cook is a poignant and authentic look at a disappearing way of life.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk, a book about Christianity, spirituality, and rediscovered faith. Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. Words like "judgment," "faith," "dogma," "salvation," "sinner"—even "Christ"—formed what she called her "scary vocabulary," words that had become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, storytelling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life—and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world.