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Spring 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 1 · pp. 112–136 

Recommended Reading

On Anabaptism

Douglas B. Miller

Art, Music, Theatre, and Writing

Dyck, Jonathan. Shelterbelts. Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia: Conundrum, 2022. Graphic novel of fractures within a tight-knit Mennonite community.

Friesen, Lauren. Theatre, Peace, Justice: Collected Essays Toward a Mennonite Dramaturgy. Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2024. A compilation of essays on theatre written by Lauren Friesen, playwright, director, and recently retired professor. They address the link between drama and a religious existentialist condition, the role of drama within the Mennonite community, and theatre as an agent for justice.

Klassen, Carla. These Songs We Sing: Reflections on the Hymns We Have Loved. Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2022. Reflections on hymns that those in the Anabaptist community have loved for the last centuries.

———. Living Our Hymns: These Songs We Sing. Volume 2. Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2024. A sequel to the previous book, this volume presents additional reflections of the favorite hymns of Anabaptists.

Redekop, Magdelene. Making Believe: Questions About Mennonites and Art. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 2020. Using case studies, Redekop argues that there is no such thing as “Mennonite art” while also making the case for a Mennonite sensibility of constant questioning and commitment to community.

Tiessen, Hildi Froese. On Mennonite/s Writing: Selected Essays. Winnipeg, MB: CMU Press, 2023. Collected literary essays by the author beginning in 1973. Discusses a variety of literary careers and issues.

Toews, Miriam. Women Talking. New York: Penguin Random House, 2019. A group of colony women decide to take action in response to their sexual violations by men in the community. Became an Oscar-winning film (United Artists, 2022). Toews’s work continues to shape literary, theological, and abuse conversations among Mennonites. p. 123

Wiens, E. J. To Antoine. St. Catharines, ON: Gelassenheit, 2021. Novel of a Ukranian-born man who escapes from his homeland to Paraguay for some years, then resettles in Canada. Teases out the human reality and nuance helpful for engaging the past.

Zacharias, Robert. Reading Mennonite Writing: A Study in Minor Transnationalism. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2022. Positions Mennonite literature in North America as “a mode of circulation and reading” rather than an expression of a distinct community. 

Bible, Biblical Theology

Anabaptist Community Bible. Harrisonburg, VA: MennoMedia, 2025. The just-released ACB celebrates 500 years of Anabaptist faith and offers a community-based approach to Scripture through the Common English Bible translation. The effort is especially manifested by 7,200 marginal notes with linguistic and cultural helps, historical insights, and reflections from 600 Bible study groups. It combines accessibility features such as book introductions, topical essays, and charts for deeper exploration as well as newly commissioned artwork, making it a valuable resource for Christians seeking a study Bible designed to engage them in following Jesus.

Bucher, Debra J., and Estella Boggs Horning. Hebrews. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2024. Highlights Jesus as the new covenant and the better sacrifice. The 37th volume in this Anabaptist Bible commentary series.

Epp-Tiessen, Daniel. Joel, Obadiah, Micah. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2022. Explores the diverse but related message of these three prophets to speak words of grace and healing for our time. The 35th volume in this Anabaptist Bible commentary series.

Geddert, Timothy J. The Beginning of the Story: Understanding the Old Testament in the Story of Scripture. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023.  Walking through the arc and major themes of the Old Testament narrative, Geddert guides curious readers to read these texts as Jesus did and as the New Testament teaches us to do.

Grimsrud, Ted. To Follow the Lamb: A Peaceable Reading of the Book of Revelation. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022. A paragraph-by-paragraph commentary that attempts to show that the book of Revelation from start to finish is a book of peace.

Harink, Douglas. Resurrecting Justice: Reading Romans for the Life of the World. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020. One of the best recent analyses of the book of Romans from a Canadian theologian who emphasizes the book’s peace and justice message. p. 124

Hawk, L. Daniel. The Violence of the Biblical God: Canonical Narrative and Christian Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019. Offers a narrative framework for understanding God’s participation in violence within Scripture and within our world, tracing God’s involvement in the workings of human beings through Scripture, examining the reasons and the implications for us along the way.

Jost, Lynn. 1 & 2 Kings. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2021. Explores these books written to form a community of justice and compassion. The 34th volume in this Anabaptist Bible commentary series.

Myers, Ched. Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2025. A long-awaited sequel to the Mennonite scholar-activist’s classic study of Mark’s gospel, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis, 2008), that examines the social implications of Jesus’ message in the gospel of Luke. Illuminating.

Paynter, Helen. Blessed Are the Peacemakers: A Biblical Theology of Human Violence. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023. An exploration of and proposal for a biblical theology of human violence in the Bible. Argues that violence is absorbed and defeated by God on the cross.

Schertz, Mary. Luke. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023. A thorough and clearly written treatment of the third gospel that brings out Luke’s peace theology. Scholarly but also accessible and practical. The 36th volume in this Anabaptist Bible commentary series.

Seibert, Eric A. Redeeming Violent Verses: A Guide for Using Troublesome Texts in Church and Ministry. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2023. The latest in a series of important and helpful studies by Seibert providing the invaluable service of helping morally sensitive Christians make sense of the Bible’s disturbing content in ways that retain an affirmation of both the Bible’s truthfulness and its ultimate affirmation of the way of peace. Seibert offers practical ways for using violent biblical texts responsibly in the church and elsewhere, notably violent portrayals of God.

Thiessen, Matthew. Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020. Mennonite biblical scholar Thiessen shifts our understanding of the Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus’ relation to Judaism, ritual, law, and purity. This and related work call for a deep rethinking of Anabaptist Christology and discipleship ethics.

Church and Mission

Augustine, Sarah. The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2021. A new Anabaptist p. 125 indigenous theological vision for discipleship that repudiates participation in settler colonialism.

Baker, Mark D. Centered-Set Church: Discipleship and Community without Judgmentalism. IVP Academic, 2021. Baker shows how Scripture presents an alternative to either obsessing over boundaries or simply erasing them. As they live in community, centered churches (with Jesus as heart of the center) are able to affirm their beliefs and live out their values without such bitter fruit as gracelessness, shame, and self-righteousness on the one hand or aimless “whateverism” on the other.

Eicher, John P. R. Exiled Among Nations: German and Mennonite Mythologies in a Transnational Age. New York: Cambridge University Press with the German Historical Institute, 2020. Eicher provides excellent material to think with on the topics of nationalism, national indifference, and how groups construct and modify their own collective narratives and mythologies. A careful investigation of the varieties of nationalism competing for Mennonite attention in Germany and North and South America. It joins other recent works shedding light on Mennonite relations with National Socialism.

Good, Meghan Larissa. Divine Gravity: Sparking a Movement to Recover a Better Christian Story. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023. Good invites readers into a movement that is finding ways to tell a better Christian story. A contemporary appeal for Jesus-centered Christianity.

Griswold, Eliza. Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024. A fascinating, sobering, and even discouraging deep dive into the life of a Philadelphia-area Anabaptist congregation that in inspiring ways embodied the way of Jesus until various factors led to its implosion.

Hart, Drew G. I. Who Will Be a Witness: Igniting Activism for God’s Justice, Love, and Deliverance. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2020. Provides incisive insights into Scripture and history, along with illuminating personal stories, to help us identify how the witness of the church has become mangled by Christendom, white supremacy, and religious nationalism. Hart provides a wide range of options for congregations seeking to give witness to Jesus’ ethic of love for and solidarity with the vulnerable.

Kraybill, J. Nelson. Stuck Together: The Hope of Christian Witness in a Polarized World. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023. Tackles the question how Christian witness brings the peace of Christ in a world fragmented and fractionalized by conflicts of different kinds. Insists that witness goes beyond mere conflict mediation, bringing healing and hope.

Mekonin, Henok T., ed. “Mission and Peace in Ethiopia.” Special issue of Anabaptist Witness 11 (April 2024), p. 126 https://www.anabaptistwitness.org/volumes/volume-11/issue-1/. Includes theological and historical articles written by scholars connected to the Meserete Kristos Church, the largest Anabaptist denomination in the world.

Murray, Stuart. The New Anabaptists: Practices for Emerging Communities. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2024. Presents the significance of distinctive Anabaptist practices in the United Kingdom—a post-Christendom context with little historical Anabaptist presence—in the areas of discipleship, ecclesiology, and missiology. Murray explores how twelve common practices might shape emerging Christian communities and inspire those seeking fresh expressions as cultural changes accelerate. 

———. Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World. 2d ed. London: SCM/Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019. Explores the challenges and opportunities of the demise of the Christendom era in conversation with the Anabaptist tradition.

Redekop, Calvin, and Terry Beitzel. Service: The Path to Justice. Friesen, 2019. An important, though little-noticed, analysis of the peace church service tradition that makes the case that service is a central component to the work for peace and justice.

Rienstra, Debra. Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2022. Though the writer is Reformed, not Anabaptist, this book makes a fascinating case for common ground between these two traditions by drawing on the phenomenon in nature of refugia (small pockets of diverse life that survive natural disasters, such as forest fires, and serve as bases for renewal) as a metaphor for social change work.

Vogt, Virgil, and Laura Schmidt Roberts, eds. Concern for Anabaptist Renewal: A Radical Reformation Reader, 1971. Concern: A Pamphlet Series for Questions of Christian Renewal. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2022. Essays published in 1971 with confidence that the original radical Anabaptist tradition could motivate contemporary renewal.

Weaver, J. Denny, Gerald J. Mast, and Trevor Bechtel, eds. Anabaptist Political Theology After Marpeck. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2022. Addressing sixteenth-century Anabaptist leader Pilgram Marpeck’s thought and life, this volume’s eleven authors, most of them Mennonite theologians, explore Marpeck’s significance for his own time and for today. The collection models engaging history and using theology to understand contemporary public concerns. p. 127

History

Driedger, Michael, Francesco Quatrini, Nina Schroeder, and Gary K. Waite, eds. “Spiritualism in Early Modern Europe.” Special issue of Church History and Religious Culture 101 nos. 2–3 (2021). A cutting-edge introduction to new research on spiritualism, with clear implications for standard conceptions of “Anabaptism” and “Radical Reformation.”

Dueck, Abe J. Mennonite Brethren Bible College: A History of Competing Visions. Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 2021. An open and honest account of this school’s history, 1944–1992.

Dueck, Dora, ed. On Holy Ground: Stories by and about Women in Ministry Leadership in the Mennonite Brethren Church. Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 2022. A collection of narratives from fifteen female church leaders in Mennonite Brethren churches in North America. Each testimony reflects awareness of a divine calling while also being affirmed and invited by faith communities and individuals to step into ministry leadership.

Enns, Elaine, and Chad Meyer. Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021. Addresses the oldest and deepest injustices on the North American continent, arguing we can heal those wounds through the inward and outward journey of decolonization.

Epp Weaver, Alain. Service and Ministry: A Missiological History of Mennonite Central Committee. North Newton, KS: Bethel College, 2021. A joyful history of Mennonite Central Committee over its century of existence, highlighting both successes and humble learning as well as continuity and developments in its mission.

Friesen, Leonard G. Mennonites in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: Through Much Tribulation. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. This volume is the first to trace the long arc of the Mennonite story in Russian lands from the 1780s to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resulting exodus to Germany. Friesen explores how they dealt with religious, social, and political challenges and reinvented themselves in response to modernity and an atheistic Soviet regime.

Hofer, Jesse, and Kenny Wollmann, eds. For God’s Truth: A Hutterite History Reader. MacGregor, MB: Hutterian Brethren Book Centre / Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2024. This nearly 500-page source book offers a comprehensive collection of old and more recent Hutterite writings that will interest new as well as seasoned students of Hutterite history. Its virtues notably include numerous photographs and illustrations.

Jantzen, Mark, and John D. Thiesen, eds. European Mennonites and the Holocaust. Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, 2020. A frank assessment by an international p. 128 collection of scholars of Mennonite experience in Europe from the 1930s and 40s as it relates to the Holocaust, with stories of perpetrators, rescuers, and many witnesses.

Jantzi, Jeanne Zimmerly. Faith in Full Color: A Tapestry of Anabaptist Stories. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2025. A collection of Anabaptist stories from all around the world presenting how God is at work in and leading them.

Loewen, Royden. Mennonite Farmers: A Global History of Place and Sustainability. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Loewen’s book, years in the making, examines how Mennonite faith and agricultural practices intertwine across seven global communities, highlighting themes like cultural diversity, sustainability, and colonial displacement. Balancing broad historical analysis with personal narratives, the book challenges stereotypes and emphasizes the role of local realities in shaping farming and faith traditions.

Nation, Mark Thiessen. Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022. A challenging, carefully argued, and persuasive effort by a Mennonite theologian to present Bonhoeffer as a consistent peace theologian.

Nobbs-Thiessen, Ben. Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia’s Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. A study of Mennonites, Okinawans, and indigenous Bolivians over seventy years, raising questions of the role of Mennonite Central Committee and other religious NGOs and the impact of settlers on fragile ecosystems.

Osborne, Troy. Radicals and Reformers: A Survey of Global Anabaptist History. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2024. Traces the journey of Anabaptists and Mennonites from their sixteenth-century origins to becoming a global movement of over 2.1 million members, linking Anabaptist themes of radical faithfulness and reconciliation with God and between humans across five centuries and five continents. As a survey written for college-level students, it is a worthy successor to C. J. Dyck’s Introduction to Mennonite History (3d ed., Herald, 1993).

Patterson, Sean. Makhno and Memory: Anarchist and Mennonite Narratives of Ukraine’s Civil War, 1917–1921. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 2020. A study of Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine, viewed by local Mennonites as murderous and deplorable and by others as heroic in the midst of civil war.

Roth, John D. A Cloud of Witnesses: Celebrating Indonesian Mennonites. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2021. Traces the 170-year history of Mennonites in Indonesia alongside the larger cultural and religious history of the country. By placing the legacy of European colonization from the sixteenth century to p. 129 national independence in 1945 beside the history of the Dutch Mennonite mission to Indonesia in the nineteenth century, Roth creates a rich narrative tapestry.

Ruth, John L. This Very Ground, This Crooked Affair: A Mennonite Homestead on Lenape Land. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2021. A veteran historian offers a history of the author’s land, its historic intersections with its original owners, the Lenape, and how it was taken from them. Connects the story of Mennonites who had themselves fled suffering and landlessness with the fates of Native Americans across the continent.

Memoirs

Hinz-Penner, Raylene. East of Liberal: Notes on the Land. Telford, PA: DreamSeeker, 2022. Through elements of memoir, history, and philosophy of land use, a lover of her Mennonite farm childhood looks critically at farming’s impact on the land, comparing settler values of land ownership to those of first peoples who see themselves as owned by the sacred homeland.

Redekop, John H. Mennonite in Motion: The Life and Times of John H. Redekop Ph.D. Abbotsford, BC: Fraser River, 2022. Autobiographical reflections by this Canadian Mennonite Brethren thinker and writer.

Samatar, Sofia. The White Mosque: A Memoir. New York: Catapult, 2022. Based on a group trip that Samatar took, led by John Sharp, exploring the legacy of the Mennonite migration to Central Asia in the 1880s. The book offers a fascinating exploration of Mennonite and Muslim identity and of people fully at home in more than one culture and maybe nowhere at all.

Weaver, J. Denny. New Moves: A Theological Odyssey. Telford, PA: DreamSeeker, 2023. Reveals Weaver’s wandering path from Mennonite Sunday school boy to the author of a trend-setting work of atonement theology that attracted both praise and hostility. Weaver traces the influences that shaped his prolific and acclaimed work that makes a case for peace theology. Fascinating reflections from a prominent Mennonite theologian.

Wiens, Delbert L. A Meditation on Going Home. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2024. The Mennonite Brethren author reviews his life, his critique of Western Christian culture upon returning from Vietnam, the accusation that he had a “dangerous mind,” and his recovery of the wisdom of his elders.

Reference

Brewer, Brian C., ed. T & T Clark Handbook of Anabaptism. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. A fairly comprehensive introduction to Anabaptism in four sections: Origins, Doctrine, Influences, and Anabaptism Today. Uses the contributions p. 130 of a wide range of scholars—theology, history, and Bible—to make the complex and sometimes disparate Anabaptist movement more easily accessible.

Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, et al., eds. Mennonitisches Lexikon. Volume 5. Bolanden-Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 2020. An updated overview of Mennonite scholarship organized in three sections around individuals, culture and theology, and communities and organizations, with scores of contributors. Focuses on German-speaking Mennonites, their history, and their diaspora. Also available online at https://www.mennlex.de/doku.php?id=start.

Theology

Albrecht, Elizabeth Soto, and Darryl Stevens, eds. Liberating the Politics of Jesus: Renewing Peace Theology through the Wisdom of Women. London: T & T Clark, 2020.  This collection of theological essays, centering on the voice of victims, seeks to come to grips with Anabaptist theological heritage and to press forward, particularly advancing feminist perspectives.

Dipple, Geoffrey, and Kat Hill, eds., New Directions in the Radical Reformation: “Thinking Outside the Cages.” Leiden: Brill, 2023. This book collects eight intriguing and provocative essays originally presented at the 2018 Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference on topics that range from the heterodoxy of Hans Denck and Ludwig Hätzer to Melchior Hoffman’s amplification of the visions of Leonhard and Ursula Jost to Thomas Müntzer’s revolutionary exegesis of Luke 1 to the long-term social and political effects of the Anabaptist redistribution of property at Münster to the toleration of Anabaptist communities in the Palatinate following the Thirty Years War. The introduction highlights the variety of methodologies and boundary-breaking future directions within, making a compelling case that the study of the Radical Reformation indeed has a future not constrained by past categories and assumptions. 

Friesen, Lauren, and Dennis R. Koehn, eds. Anabaptist ReMix: Varieties of Cultural Engagement in North America. New York: Peter Lang, 2022. These essays explore how Anabaptist and Mennonite traditions have altered their engagement with North American culture in response to such challenges as climate change, social fragmentation, and various global crises. Through theology, the arts, and diverse voices—including women and marginalized communities—they examine conflict, justice, and the reshaping of institutional cultures toward equality and healing.

Heinzekehr, Justin. The Absent Christ: An Anabaptist Theology of the Empty Tomb. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2019. Explores the significance of the empty tomb and p. 131 Jesus’ physical absence for Anabaptist ecclesiology and theology in conversation with postmodern philosophy and power analysis. Asks how Christ’s physical absence defines and challenges life in community.

Jeon, Insung. Dirk Philips: A Sixteenth-Century Dutch Anabaptist: His Doctrine of the Visible Church and Its Influence on His Theological System. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2022. Argues that the heart of DP’s theology is his view of the visible church, showing the connection among his Christology, ecclesiology, soteriology, and anthropology.

Kroeker, P. Travis. Messianic Political Theology and Diaspora Ethics: Essays in Exile. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017. Shows how the Mennonite theological heritage(s) finds expression in our current world.

Roberts, Laura Schmidt, Paul Martens, and Myron A. Penner, eds. Recovering from the Anabaptist Vision: New Essays in Anabaptist Identity and Theological Method. London: T & T Clark, 2020. This collection of nine essays reckons with the theological impact of the sexual abuse perpetrated by John Howard Yoder and the constrictions of Harold S. Bender’s original Anabaptist vision. New ways of framing Anabaptist identities are suggested, concluding with a recommendation of a “theological method of restlessness” and a community-oriented approach to resist domination and self-serving practices.

Weaver, J. Denny. God Without Violence: A Theology of the God Revealed in Jesus. 2d ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020. Based on the author’s previous theological work and offered as a practical guide for daily Christian life in the light of the nonviolent character of God.

Weaver, J. Denny, and Gerald J. Mast. Nonviolent Word: Anabaptism, the Bible, and the Grain of the Universe. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020. A Christocentric approach to the Bible with part I focused on sixteenth-century Anabaptism (notably Pilgram Marpeck) and part II devoted to contemporary relevance. By connecting Reformation-era insights on Scripture with modern applications, they highlight the relevance of nonviolent action, ecumenical dialogue, and antiracist Christian witness.

Violence, Peace, and Justice

Altaras, Cameron, and Carol Penner, eds. Resistance: Confronting Violence, Power, and Abuse with Peace Churches. Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonites Studies, 2022. Resistance explores how Mennonite communities can integrate resistance to abuse and systemic violence into their peace theology, challenging patriarchal norms and traditional interpretations of nonresistance. Through personal narratives, theological essays, and practical guidance, it highlights victim-centered approaches, addressing issues like gender-based violence, colonialism, and racism while reimagining Anabaptist peacemaking. p. 132

Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2019. A helpful framing of Christian commitments to pacifism and just war, arguing that they must be understood and embraced within a larger framework and commitment to peacebuilding.

Cramer, David C., and Myles Werntz. A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence: Key Thinkers, Activists, and Movements for the Gospel of Peace. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022. A concise introduction to the tradition of nonviolence, exploring its diverse approaches through eight streams of Christian nonviolence or antiviolence in both “faithful” and “effective” modes. The book presents Christian nonviolence as a dynamic Spirit-led movement of moral discernment.

Enns, Fernando, Nina Schroeder-van ‘t Schip, and Andrés Pacheco-Lozano, eds. A Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace: Global Mennonite Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Nonviolence. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2023. With over 40 international contributors from the Second Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference, this volume provides important insights into current theologies and practices of Mennonites around the world related to peacebuilding in the name of Christ. Issues include migration, gender justice, racial equity, and sexual violence, promoting a self-critical approach to Mennonite integrity in pursuit of justice and peace.

Florer-Bixler, Melissa. How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2021.  Mennonite pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler looks closely at what the Bible says about enemies—who they are, what they do, and how Jesus and his followers responded to them without adding to evil. The result is a theology that allows us to name our enemies as a form of truth-telling about ourselves, our communities, and the histories in which our lives are embedded.

Friesen, Layton Boyd. Secular Nonviolence and the Theo-Drama of Peace: Anabaptist Ethics and the Catholic Christology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. T & T Clark Studies in Anabaptist Theology and Ethics. London: T & T Clark, 2022. In this published version of his doctoral dissertation, Friesen investigates the tension in Mennonite pacifism between its spiritual roots in union with Christ and its societal role in promoting civility and order. It critiques how modern Mennonite peace theology tends to align with secular ethics and proposes that Balthasar’s Christology has the potential to keep that peace theology closely linked to Christ.

Graves, Shawn, and Marlena Graves, eds. The Gospel of Peace in a Violent World: Christian Nonviolence for Communal Flourishing. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2022. A wide-ranging and often inspiring collection of essays p. 133 from a somewhat diverse group of writers applying Jesus’ peaceable message to our modern world.

Kennel, Maxwell. Ontologies of Violence: Deconstruction, Pacifism, and Displacement. Leiden: Brill, 2023. A sophisticated, state-of-the-art discussion of core philosophical issues around pacifism and peace theology.

Kirkpatrick, David. A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Shows mutually transformative connections between well-known late-twentieth-century North American Anabaptist theologians and leading Latin American evangelical theologians.

Nickel, Jesse P. A Revolutionary Jesus: Violence and Peacemaking in the Kingdom of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2024. Nickel argues that Jesus’ self-sacrificing rejection of violence was at the core of his identity, task, and kingdom inauguration.

Porterfield, Jason. Fight like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2022. A close reading of the events of the last week of Jesus’ life that culminated in his crucifixion. Porterfield powerfully presents the profoundly peaceable and transformative message of Jesus’ life and teaching as seen in his final days.

Sider, Ronald J. If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019. A synopsis of arguments and issues related to Christian consideration of violence and pacifism. Although the treatment of topics in the book is succinct, the apparatus and bibliography point to a treasure trove of resources for readers interested in further research. The late Mennonite theologian’s capstone to a long and influential career as an advocate for pacifism and social justice.

Zehr, Howard. Restorative Justice: Insights and Stories from My Journey. Lancaster, PA: Walnut Street, 2023. A kind of coda to a long and distinguished career as an extraordinarily influential pioneer in the field of restorative justice. Good insights into the Anabaptist-related influences on Zehr’s thought and practice.

Series

Pandora Press has relaunched its Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies series; eight volumes are now available with several more in-press and in-progress.

  1. Gary Waite, Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531-1660. Pandora, 2023.
  2. Edmund Pries, Anabaptist Oath Refusal: Basel, Bern, and Strasbourg, 1525-1538. Pandora, 2023. p. 134
  3. Cornelius J. Dyck, Hans de Ries: A Study in Second Generation Dutch Anabaptism. Edited by Maxwell Kennel and Mary S. Sprunger. Pandora, 2023. In his 1962 dissertation, Cornelius J. Dyck focused on Hans de Ries, a key figure in second-generation Dutch Anabaptism, highlighting his contributions to Mennonite doctrine, practice, and ecclesiology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Dyck’s work, now finally available in print, emphasizes de Ries’s commitment to discipleship, nonviolence, and ecumenical cooperation, offering valuable insights for contemporary theological reflection.
  4. Linda A. Huebert Hecht, Women in Early Austrian Anabaptism: Their Days, Their Stories. 2d ed. Pandora, 2023.
  5. J. Lawrence Burkholder, Mennonite Ethics: From Isolation to Engagement. 2d ed. Edited by Lauren Friesen. Pandora, 2023. The first edition of Burkholder’s Mennonite Ethics (2018) examined the shift in Mennonite tradition from personal discipleship to an ethic of social responsibility, emphasizing the church’s role in addressing power and social inequalities through nonviolent action. This second edition further nuances Mennonite political theology, urging engagement with the complexities of power while acknowledging its risks and contested distinctions between church and world.
  6. The Anabaptist Lodestar: Interpretations of Anabaptism on the Eve of a 500-Year Celebration. Ed. and trans. by Leonard Gross. Pandora, 2024.
  7. James M. Stayer, Anabaptism, Radicalism, and the Reformation: Collected Essays. Ed. by Geoffrey Dipple, Sharon Judd, and Michael Driedger. Pandora, 2024. Stayer, a pivotal figure in the revisionist study of Anabaptism and the Radical Reformation, challenged earlier theological approaches with a nuanced, evidence-based perspective incorporating social history. This book collects his seminal works, lesser-known publications, and unpublished essays, covering topics from Anabaptism to Reformation historiography and methodology.
  8. “Elisabeth’s Manly Courage”: Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women in the Low Countries. Ed. and trans. Hermina Joldersma and Louis Grijp. Reprint of the 2001 original with a new preface by Christina Moss. Pandora, 2024.
  9. Astrid von Schlachta, Anabaptists: From the Reformation to the 21st Century. Trans. by Victor Thiessen. Ed. by Maxwell Kennel. Pandora, forthcoming.
  10. Thomas Kaufmann, The Anabaptists: From the Radical Reformation to the Baptists. Trans. by Christina Moss. Pandora, forthcoming. p. 135
  11. Gottfried Seebaß, Müntzer’s Heir: The Work, Life, and Theology of Hans Hut. Trans. by Amalie Enns, with James Stayer and Victor Thiessen. Pandora, forthcoming.

The Classics of the Radical Reformation series is currently being reprinted and extended by Plough Publishing.

  1. The Legacy of Michael Sattler (edited by John H. Yoder, with a new preface by C. Arnold Snyder)
  2. The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck (edited by William Klassen and Walter Klaassen, with a new preface by John D. Rempel)
  3. Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources (edited by Walter Klaassen, with a new preface by John D. Roth)
  4. The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents (edited by Leland Harder, with a new preface by Andrea Strübind)
  5. Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism (edited by H. Wayne Pipkin and John H. Yoder, with a new preface by Brian Brewer)
  6. The Writings of Dirk Philips, 1504–1568 (edited by Cornelius J. Dyck, William E. Keeney, and Alvin J. Beachy, with a new preface by Piet Visser)
  7. The Anabaptist Writings of David Joris (edited by Gary K. Waite, with a new preface by the editor)
  8. The Essential Carlstadt (edited by E. J. Furcha, with a new preface by Amy Nelson Burnett)
  9. Peter Riedemann’s Hutterite Confession of Faith (edited by John J. Friesen, with a new preface by the editor)
  10. Sources of South German/Austrian Anabaptism (edited by C. Arnold Snyder)
  11. Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition 1527–1660 (edited by Karl Koop)
  12. Jörg Maler’s Kunstbuch: Writings of the Pilgram Marpeck Circle (edited by John D. Rempel)
  13. Later Writings of the Swiss Anabaptists 1529–1592 (edited by C. Arnold Snyder)
  14. Jakob Hutter: His Life and Letters (edited and translated by Emmy Barth Maendel and Jonathan Seiling). 2024. Collects the writings of the Hutterite founder alongside a detailed biographical introduction. p. 136

The Jesus Way: Small Books of Radical Faith (Herald Press)

  1. Dennis R. Edwards, What Is the Bible and How Do We Understand It? (2019)
  2. Michele Hershberger, Why Did Jesus Die and What Difference Does It Make? (2019)
  3. Steve Dancause, What Is the Trinity and Why Does It Matter? (2020)
  4. Valerie G. Rempel, Why Do We Suffer and Where Is God When We Do? (2020)
  5. Judith and Colin McCartney, What Does Justice Look Like and Why Does God Care about It? (2020)
  6. Hyung Jin Kim Sun, Who Are Our Enemies and How Do We Love Them? (2020)
  7. Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Who Was Jesus and What Does It Mean to Follow Him? (2021)
  8. César García, What Is God’s Kingdom and What Does Citizenship Look Like? (2021)
  9. Juan F. Martinez and Jamie Pitts, What Is God’s Mission in the World and How Do We Join It? (2021)
  10. David Fitch, What Is the Church and Why Does It Exist? (2021)

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