Nothing happens by chance in the lives of people who belong to the Lord. Everything occurs according to the unfathomable but wise decree of our God. Such is the case with the stories in this book. Mennonitische Märtyrer was an attempt to collect information about the fate of Mennonite ministers during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. This compilation resulted in a two-volume set including biographical sketches, poems, and narrative accounts. Mennonite Martyrs now provides English-speaking people the opportunity to gain inspiration and make commitments because of the challenge that this "modern martyrology" brings. The stories of faithfulness, suffering, and death demand a response from the reader.

Here is a collection of accounts of more than 4011 Christians burned at the stake, of countless bodies torn on the rack, torn tongues, ears, hands, feet, gouged eyes, people buried alive, and of many who were willing to bear the cross of persecution and death for the sake of Christ.

Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- PART I: The Prehistory and Production of The Bloody Theater -- CHAPTER 1. Anabaptism: Origins, Spread, and Persecution -- CHAPTER 2. Memorializing Martyrdom before The Bloody Theater -- CHAPTER 3. Thieleman van Braght and the Publication of The Bloody Theater -- CHAPTER 4. The Bloody Theater: Martyr Stories and More -- PART II: Van Braght's Martyrology through the Years -- CHAPTER 5. The Bloody Theater Illustrated: The 1685 Martyrs Mirror -- CHAPTER 6. A North American Edition: The 1748-49 Ephrata Martyrs Mirror

Some four centuries ago, thousands of Christians died because they dared to refuse to join the state church in medieval Europe. Their reading of the Holy Bible and their consciences led them to believe that church membership should be a voluntary, adult decision. These believers died public, tortured deaths as martyrs. Many modern-day Christians claim these persons of courage as their spiritual ancestors. In the late 1600s, many of those scenes were etched on copper plates, some of which, still exist. Mirror of the Martyrs reproduces 30 of those etchings and tells the courageous stories of these people of faith.

This volume reproduces hitherto neglected writings by seven late sixteenth-century Dutch Mennonite martyrs, which were originally published between 1577 and 1609, making readily available important new primary sources for scholars of the Radical Reformation.

Martyrs create space and time through the actions they take, the fate they suffer, the stories they prompt, the cultural narratives against which they take place and the retelling of their tales in different places and contexts. The title "Desiring Martyrs" is meant in two senses. First, it refers to protagonists and antagonists of the martyrdom narratives who as literary characters seek martyrs and the way they inscribe certain kinds of cultural and social desire. Second, it describes the later celebration of martyrs via narrative, martyrdom acts, monuments, inscriptions, martyria, liturgical commemoration, pilgrimage, etc. Here there is a cultural desire to tell or remember a particular kind of story about the past that serves particular communal interests and goals. By applying the spatial turn to these ancient texts the volume seeks to advance a still nascent social geographical understanding of emergent Christian and Jewish martyrdom. It explores how martyr narratives engage pre-existing time-space configurations to result in new appropriations of earlier traditions.

Religion and empire were inseparable forces in the early modern Atlantic world. Religious passions and conflicts drove much of the expansionist energy of post-Reformation Europe, providing both a rationale and a practical mode of organizing the dispersal and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people from the Old World to the New World. Exhortations to conquer new peoples were the lingua franca of Western imperialism, and men like the mystically inclined Christopher Columbus were genuinely inspired to risk their lives and their fortunes to bring the gospel to the Americas. And in the thousands of religious refugees seeking asylum from the vicious wars of religion that tore the continent apart in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these visionary explorers found a ready pool of migrants—English Puritans and Quakers, French Huguenots, German Moravians, Scots-Irish Presbyterians—equally willing to risk life and limb for a chance to worship God in their own way. Focusing on the formative period of European exploration, settlement, and conquest in the Americas, from roughly 1500 to 1760, Empires of God brings together historians and literary scholars of the English, French, and Spanish Americas around a common set of questions: How did religious communities and beliefs create empires, and how did imperial structures transform New World religions? How did Europeans and Native Americans make sense of each other's spiritual systems, and what acts of linguistic and cultural transition did this entail? What was the role of violence in New World religious encounters? Together, the essays collected here demonstrate the power of religious ideas and narratives to create kingdoms both imagined and real.

The aim of this book is to present without reservation and in simple fashion the beliefs of the Mennonites and their uncompromising nonconformity. As such it sets forth for the first time the basis of the distinctive ethical code of the Mennonite community. It will appeal to all persons who are interested in the Christian faith, regardless of their own church affiliation. The Problem of Mennonite Ethics is divided into four parts. The first section states the problem, discusses Mennonite belief in relationship to modern theology, and sets forth the need and challenges of today. The second part expounds the biblical basis of Mennonite philosophy and theology, and compares Mennonite ethics to Humanism, Pietism, and Mysticism. Part three deals with the application of Mennonite ethics to others and the Mennonite view of the individual. Part four contains the conclusion, appendixes, and a bibliography.

Though the terms “queer” and “Mennonite” rarely come into theoretical or cultural contact, over the last several decades writers and scholars in the United States and Canada have built a body of queer Mennonite literature that shifts these identities into conversation. In this volume, Daniel Shank Cruz brings this growing genre into a critical focus, bridging the gaps between queer theory, literary criticism, and Mennonite literature. Cruz focuses his analysis on recent Mennonite-authored literary texts that espouse queer theoretical principles, including Christina Penner’s Widows of Hamilton House, Wes Funk’s Wes Side Story, and Sofia Samatar’s Tender. These works argue for the existence of a “queer Mennonite” identity on the basis of shared values: a commitment to social justice, a rejection of binaries, the importance of creative approaches to conflict resolution, and the practice of mutual aid, especially in resisting oppression. Through his analysis, Cruz encourages those engaging with both Mennonite and queer literary criticism to explore the opportunity for conversation and overlap between the two fields. By arguing for engagement between these two identities and highlighting the aspects of Mennonitism that are inherently “queer,” Cruz gives much-needed attention to an emerging subfield of Mennonite literature. This volume makes a new and important intervention into the fields of queer theory, literary studies, Mennonite studies, and religious studies.

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.