My cousin Arthur’s book about clocks of the Russian Mennonites, and about Kroeger clocks in particular, is the result of a life-long labour. He is the last in a Krueger/Kroeger lineage over two centuries long who created and sold these artifacts, and then cleaned and repaired them in subsequent decades.
Toews (left) and Manzullo-Thomas (right)
Last year, the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) General Council approved a global communication strategy calling for changes in the reach, frequency, form and content of the organization’s communications.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as the young Joe, in Looper, a film that challenges the myth of redemptive violence.
Looper is an independent, critically acclaimed, futuristic, neo-noir, time-travel thriller. By itself, this is a unique set of characteristics guaranteed to attract viewers like me.
Playwright and actor Ted Swartz has scripted his most personal work yet, this time in autobiographical form.
New public service announcements produced by MennoMedia are being distributed to 13,000 radio stations across the U.S. A grant from Schowalter Foundation helped with funding.
What happens when an ethno-religious group feels their way of life is threatened? For over a century, before the October 1917 revolution in Russia, Mennonites in Ukraine had considerable independence in managing their own villages, churches, schools, and communities. As this way of life was threatened by a new Soviet regime, they sought a strategy for survival. And they prayed.
(l-r) Meaghan McCracken, Rebecca Campbell, Carol Ann Weaver, Ben Bolt-Martin and Willem Moolenbeek perform Winter Prayers and Blessings from Weaver’s Three Seasons for Lydia Herrle, on Oct. 31 at Conrad Grebel University College.
Elementary school student Lydia Herrle was thrown 25 metres after being hit by a truck as she stepped off her school bus in front of her family’s Country Farm Market on Erb’s Road near Waterloo in May. It took months before she came home from hospital and she has years of rehabilitation ahead of her. She and her family attend Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church.
Job (Mark McKechnie) refuses to be convinced by Sonny (Dan Bieman), the fundamentalist Christian, while the “High and Mighty” house band play in the background in Ross Muir’s Job’s Blues.
Ross Muir, managing editor of Canadian Mennonite, penned the lyrics to his blues’ opera, Job’s Blues, during one of the happiest times of his life, in 1988. The idea had been in his mind for a dozen years, ever since he had heard a twelve part sermon series on the Biblical book of Job while at the University of Victoria, B.C.
This personal narrative of one of the darkest hours for Russian Mennonites, suffering unspeakably under the repression of a ruthless regime, is one of the most compelling I have read.
If the grim historical associations with words like “purity” and “cleansing” are any indication, then Sider is right to suggest that the church has had trouble reconciling the messiness of life with its concept of holiness. To See History Doxologically is a direct engagement with the tendency to sever holiness from the difficulty of life.
Coming to a theatre new you.
Recently released to wide critical acclaim across the U.S. and Canada, Hellbound? is the brainchild of filmmaker Kevin Miller, a graduate of Columbia Bible College and resident of Abbotsford, BC, from where he began his career as a film writer in 2003.
One businessman had a hard time getting his head around the idea of the Mennonite Girls Can Cook authors giving all their royalties to charity. Charlotte Penner and her husband, Tony, live in Winnipeg, Man., and she loves to cook.
A scene from Petrichor includes (from left): Andrew Penner (Dick), David Tompa (Peter), Monica Dottor (Susan), Shannon Taylor (Mary).
Erin Brandenburg with her husband Andrew Penner and their son Jack.
The theatre was dim. A projection screen showed an animated scene of a farm yard by night. The wind rippled through the trees and grass. Clouds blew across the moon. Crickets chirped in the background as the low voices of the patrons sounded like the voices of farm dwellers on the porch in the cooling evening after a hot day on the fields.
This painting by Ray Dirks tells the story of Agatha Harms Reimer who escaped from the Soviet Union with three sons after World War 2. It is part of the “Along the Road to Freedom” collection which opens at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery on Sunday, Oct. 14. Agatha, the grandmother of Dirks’ wife, lived to be 103.
Ray Dirks, curator and artist, has embarked on a project to paint as many as twenty canvasses to tell the stories of Mennonite women who brought their families out of the Soviet Union amid the confusion and turmoil of the waning months of World War 2. The first selection will be ready for an opening on Oct. 14, at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery where Dirks is the curator.
Alan and Eleanor Kreider, recently “retired,” have had a full life of ministry, mostly in the United Kingdom, but with influences throughout the world. Working in post-Christendom and postmodern Europe has given them foresight into what has been developing in North America. Some would see this as God preparing North American Christians with the prophetic and pastoral voice of the Kreiders.
As the son of Russian Mennonites who arrived in Canada in 1924 and 1926, I have a positive bias towards this book which takes the 26 letters of the alphabet and picks one event, recipe or idea from the Russian/Prussian/Dutch experience and relates part of the story.
Elsie Rempel was available to sign her new book at MC Canada Assembly in Vancouver.
Elsie Rempel, Mennonite Church Canada Formation Consultant, launched her new book, Please Pass the Faith, at Mennonite Church Canada Assembly 2012 in Vancouver. The book explores “spiritual grandparenting” as an intentional way to share faith with the next generation in a world full of distractions and busy schedules.
Is the New Testament inherently violent? What does Jesus’ brutal death on the cross mean to persons holding a more passive view of non-resistance? How does one seriously read the text and make sense of Jesus’ teaching of non-violence and his behaviour with the money-changers in the Temple, for instance?
Catwoman: 'There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne."
She has the best of lines; she has the worst of lines. I am referring to the dialogue of Catwoman in this summer’s mega-blockbuster film, The Dark Knight Rises, based very loosely on Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities(which concerns the French Revolution).
The late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder authored 25 books, inspiring many others to write their own books and research papers about him and his ideas.
It was January 1989 when J. R. Burkholder taught liberation theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind. Interterm at AMBS is one course, usually studied over 13 weeks, compressed into less than three, including all the lectures, readings and assignments.
When an army of nasty aliens in giant reptilian ships threatens to take over the Earth and enslave all of its inhabitants, one superhero is not enough to stand in the way. For a threat of this magnitude, a group of six very diverse superheroes is called for, a group calling itself The Avengers, the title of what is already one of the biggest blockbuster films of all time.
A new book by Jerry Buckland a professor at Menno Simons College, a Canadian Mennonite University institution in downtown Winnipeg, reveals how Canada’s banking system excludes the poor.
Taking a bow after Theatre of the Beat’s Gadfly: Sam Steiner Dodges the Draft are John Wideman, left, who starred as Sam Steiner; Sam Steiner himself; his wife Sue Clemmer Steiner; and Kim Walker, who played Sue Clemmer.
Those who had the opportunity to see Gadfly: Sam Steiner Dodges the Draft will recall that this drama—based on the 1960s lives of Sam Steiner and Sue Clemmer—ends with the cast singing the Doxology. “Sam” joined in part way through the hymn. Some observers thought this an abrupt ending, and wondered how a draft dodger, alienated from his church of birth, returned to faith.
Kim Walker (as Sue Clemmer), left, John Wideman (as Sam Steiner), and other Goshen College students played by Rebecca Steiner and Ben Wert work on the college’s student paper in Theatre of the Beat’s Gadfly: Sam Steiner Dodges the Draft.
gad·fly - [gad-flahy]
1. any of various flies, as a stable fly or warble fly, that bite or annoy domestic animals.
