California Mennonites

California Mennonites PDF Author: Brian Froese
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421415135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
How did California Mennonites confront the challenges and promises of modernity? Books about Mennonites have centered primarily on the East Coast and the Midwest, where the majority of Mennonite communities in the United States are located. But these narratives neglect the unique history of the multitude of Mennonites living on the West Coast. In California Mennonites, Brian Froese relies on archival church records to examine the Mennonite experience in the Golden State, from the nineteenth-century migrants who came in search of sunshine and fertile soil to the traditionally agrarian community that struggled with issues of urbanization, race, gender, education, and labor in the twentieth century to the evangelically oriented, partially assimilated Mennonites of today. Froese places Mennonite experiences against a backdrop of major historical events, including World War II and Vietnam, and social issues, from labor disputes to the evolution of mental health care. California Mennonites include people who embrace a range of ideologies: many are historically rooted in the sixteenth-century Reformation ideals of the early Anabaptists (pacifism, congregationalism, discipleship); some embrace twentieth-century American evangelicalism (missions, Billy Graham); and others are committed to a type of social justice that involves forging practical ties to secular government programs while maintaining a quiet connection to religion. Through their experiences of religious diversity, changing demographics, and war, California Mennonites have wrestled with complicated questions of what it means to be American, Mennonite, and modern. This book—the first of its kind—will appeal to historians and religious studies scholars alike.

California Mennonites

California Mennonites PDF Author: Brian Froese
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421415135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book

Book Description
How did California Mennonites confront the challenges and promises of modernity? Books about Mennonites have centered primarily on the East Coast and the Midwest, where the majority of Mennonite communities in the United States are located. But these narratives neglect the unique history of the multitude of Mennonites living on the West Coast. In California Mennonites, Brian Froese relies on archival church records to examine the Mennonite experience in the Golden State, from the nineteenth-century migrants who came in search of sunshine and fertile soil to the traditionally agrarian community that struggled with issues of urbanization, race, gender, education, and labor in the twentieth century to the evangelically oriented, partially assimilated Mennonites of today. Froese places Mennonite experiences against a backdrop of major historical events, including World War II and Vietnam, and social issues, from labor disputes to the evolution of mental health care. California Mennonites include people who embrace a range of ideologies: many are historically rooted in the sixteenth-century Reformation ideals of the early Anabaptists (pacifism, congregationalism, discipleship); some embrace twentieth-century American evangelicalism (missions, Billy Graham); and others are committed to a type of social justice that involves forging practical ties to secular government programs while maintaining a quiet connection to religion. Through their experiences of religious diversity, changing demographics, and war, California Mennonites have wrestled with complicated questions of what it means to be American, Mennonite, and modern. This book—the first of its kind—will appeal to historians and religious studies scholars alike.

Latino Mennonites

Latino Mennonites PDF Author: Felipe Hinojosa
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421412845
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
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.

The Plain People

The Plain People PDF Author: Linda B. Arthur
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood

Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood PDF Author: James Urry
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887554113
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
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. Urry looks at the Mennonite reaction to politics and political events from the Reformation onwards and focusses particularly on those people who settled in Russia and their descendants who came to Manitoba. Using a wide variety of sources, Mennonites, 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.

Not Talking Union

Not Talking Union PDF Author: Janis Thiessen
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773598952
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
How does one write a labour history of a people who have not been involved in the labour movement in significant numbers and, historically, have opposed union membership? While North American Mennonites have traditionally been associated with rural life, in light of the adjustments demanded by post-1945 urbanization and industrialization, they in fact became very involved in the workforce at a time of important labour foment. Drawing on over a hundred interviews, Janis Thiessen explores Mennonite responses to labour movements such as Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, as well as Mennonite involvement in conscientious objection to unions. This innovative study of the Mennonites - a people at once united by an ethnic and religious identity, yet also shaped by differences in geography, immigration histories, denomination, and class position - provides insights into how and why they have resisted involvement in organized labour. Not Talking Union adds a unique perspective to the history of labour, exploring how people negotiate tensions between their commitments to faith and conscience and the demands of their employment. Not Talking Union breaks new methodological ground in its close analysis of the oral narratives of North American Mennonites. Reflecting on both oral and archival sources, Thiessen shows why Mennonite labour history matters, and reveals the role of power and inequality in that history.

Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia

Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia PDF Author: Peter J. Klassen
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801891132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
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.

They Sought a Country

They Sought a Country PDF Author: Harry Leonard Sawatzky
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520017047
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress PDF Author: Rhoda Janzen
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 080508925X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.

The Constructed Mennonite

The Constructed Mennonite PDF Author: Hans Werner
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887554385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
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.

Urban and Anabaptist

Urban and Anabaptist PDF Author: Jeff Wright
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781877736520
Category : Mennonites
Languages : en
Pages : 8

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Book Description