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When Lester Fretz passed away in December 2020, I lost a friend and faithful supporter. For many years, I could count on Lester emailing me after a new edition of Shalom! (the other publication I edit for Brethren in Christ U.S.) or this journal came out. He usually thanked me,...read more
How does a denomination deal with conflict or disagreement, especially when the disagreement is over core theological beliefs and established institutional policies? That might be the primary question at the heart of this edition of Brethren in Christ History and Life. Rather than explore various aspects of the “history” of...read more
Three very different topics are considered in this edition of the journal: the history of the peace position of the Brethren in Christ Church, as documented in official statements of faith; missions; and singleness and the church. The lead article by Randall Basinger, retired professor of philosophy and provost at...read more
Quite coincidentally, three of the four articles in this edition feature women and their growth, service, and influence in the Brethren in Christ Church. Readers of a certain age will feel the nostalgia in the lead feature—a collection of stories of a Brethren in Christ childhood set mostly in Franklin...read more
At least twice when either our newsletter, “History Matters,” or an article in the journal referenced the change in name from River Brethren to Brethren in Christ, attributing it to the need to register during the Civil War, I received a note from Jonathan Stayer. He reminded me of the...read more
The Learning Community (aka Sunday school class) I attend at the Grantham Church has been engaging with a series called “For the Love of God and Country: Exploring a Brethren in Christ Response to Christian Nationalism.” The teacher has been using a variety of experts on the topic of Christian...read more
URBANE PEACHEY, Making Wars Cease: A Survey of MCC Peace Section 1940-1990. Morgantown, PA: Mastof Press, 2022. Pp. 310. $20.00 US. When I received a review copy of this book, I was immediately intrigued. In Making Wars Cease, Urbane Peachey traces the history of Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) Peace Section...read more
The lead article in this edition is a good follow-up to the two-part series on the Brethren in Christ and the Civil Rights Movement by David Weaver-Zercher (in the December 2021 and April 2022 journals) and the article on Brethren in Christ pastoral identity by Lisa Weaver Swartz in the...read more
This edition of the journal is notable in that all four major articles are by women—two of them scholars who are contributing much to the body of Brethren in Christ research, one a visiting speaker whose recent popular book featured a Brethren in Christ farm family, and the other an...read more
For eight months during 2021-2022, I participated in a Be the Bridge discussion group (addressing racial justice and reconciliation) and learned much more than I already knew about the history of African Americans and how white people treated them in discriminatory and often racist ways. Reading David Weaver-Zercher’s two-part series...read more
In 1999, I was one of 52 invited people from the US and Canada who gathered at Roxbury Camp with the goal of determining a set of core values for the Brethren in Christ Church. While I can’t remember a lot of the details from that Consultation on Core Values,...read more
In the early 1940s during World War II, Brethren in Christ missionaries were mostly unable to travel to or from the mission field due to the danger of attacks on the high seas. Despite the danger, David and Mable Hall and their two children, Barbara and John, set sail aboard...read more