Explores the moral dilemmas faced by various religious sects and how these groups struggled to come to terms with the effects of wartime Americanization-- without sacrificing their religious beliefs and values.
In the postwar era, Mennonites were no longer "the quiet in the land"; they began to articulate publicly their concerns about such issues as the draft, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War.".
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 July 1968, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) opened an office in Washington, D.C., for monitoring the actions of the federal government's various branches. Given American Mennonites' long history of noninvolvement in political affairs, this shift toward engagement was dramatic indeed. In this in-depth study, Keith Graber Miller shows how the church's distinctive traditions of pacifism, humility, and service have informed and shaped the nature of its activities in Washington." "Graber Miller argues that Mennonites have both influenced the national policymaking debate and have themselves been influenced by their increasing exposure to it." "Wise As Serpents, Innocent as Doves not only explores the twentieth-century transformations among American Mennonites but illuminates the larger issues of religious lobbying in the nation's capital. Graber Miller suggests that the Mennonites have helped redefine what it means to be a lobbyist. Because the Mennonites' numbers are too few to make them a politically significant force, he argues, their only credibility in Washington lies in an astute and accurate analysis of how the world is and in the integrity of their witness to the truth as they see it."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The history of the migrations of many Amish families in this book precedes the information in Amish and Amish Mennonite Genealogies (#2). Many of the same families are featured, but their ancestors are included for several generations before their arrival in America. The author gathered the data from the U.S. census records; civil records in Switzerland, France, and Germany; and cemetery records in Europe and U.S. He also accessed published lists of Anabaptists, ship lists, lists of people exiled to other countries, etc. Some family names include Beachy, Beiler, Brenneman, Berkey, Detweiler, Erb, Esch, Eyer, Fisher, Gerber, Gnage, Guth, Hershberger, Hertzler, Holly, Hostetler, Kurtz, Lehman, Livengood, Mast, Miller, Nafziger, Rickenbach, Rupp, Schmucker, Sieber, Speicher, Stutzman, Troyer, Tschantz, and Zook. (352pp. illus. index. Masthof Press, 2002.)
Enveloped in mystery, Amish culture has remained a captivating topic within mainstream American culture. In this volume, David Weaver-Zercher explores how Americans throughout the 20th century reacted to and interpreted the Amish. Through an examination of a variety of visual and textual sources, Weaver-Zercher explores how diverse groups - ranging from Mennonites to Hollywood producers - represented and understood the Amish.
For decades, the field of Mennonite literature has been dominated by the question of Mennonite identity. After Identity interrogates this prolonged preoccupation and explores the potential to move beyond it to a truly post-identity Mennonite literature. The twelve essays collected here view Mennonite writing as transitioning beyond a tradition concerned primarily with defining itself and its cultural milieu. What this means for the future of Mennonite literature and its attendant criticism is the question at the heart of this volume. Contributors explore the histories and contexts—as well as the gaps—that have informed and diverted the perennial focus on identity in Mennonite literature, even as that identity is reread, reframed, and expanded. After Identity is a timely reappraisal of the Mennonite literature of Canada and the United States at the very moment when that literature seems ready to progress into a new era. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Ervin Beck, Di Brandt, Daniel Shank Cruz, Jeff Gundy, Ann Hostetler, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Royden Loewen, Jesse Nathan, Magdalene Redekop, Hildi Froese Tiessen, and Paul Tiessen.
The Mennonites, with their long tradition of peaceful protest and commitment to equality, were castigated by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. for not showing up on the streets to support the civil rights movement. Daily Demonstrators shows how the civil rights movement played out in Mennonite homes and churches from the 1940s through the 1960s. In the first book to bring together Mennonite religious history and civil rights movement history, Tobin Miller Shearer discusses how the civil rights movement challenged Mennonites to explore whether they, within their own church, were truly as committed to racial tolerance and equality as they might like to believe. Shearer shows the surprising role of children in overcoming the racial stereotypes of white adults. Reflecting the transformation taking place in the nation as a whole, Mennonites had to go through their own civil rights struggle before they came to accept interracial marriages and integrated congregations. Based on oral history interviews, photographs, letters, minutes, diaries, and journals of white and African-American Mennonites, this fascinating book further illuminates the role of race in modern American religion.
Examining how the Wengers have cautiously and incrementally adapted to the changes swirling around them, this book offers an invaluable case study of a traditional group caught in the throes of a postmodern world."--Jacket.