Our Fall issue begins with a continued offering of presentations and further scholarship emerging from the spring conference "Cheyenne, Arapaho, Mennonite: Journey from Darlington," sponsored by the Historical Committee of the Mennonite Church USA. We include an additional article on a special topic of Lutheran-Anabaptist understandings through time as well as our regular features.
The first two articles in this issue focus upon the lives of Cheyenne women through different methodological lenses. Part life writing, part oral history, "Corn Stalk," by Raylene Hinz-Penner, offers a glimpse of the individual and communal life of a Cheyenne woman. This chapter is from Searching for Sacred Ground: The Journey of Chief Lawrence Hart, Mennonite; while not presented at the Clinton conference, this research was part of Hinz-Penner's interest in becoming part of the organizing committee for the conference. This book will appear as part of the C. Henry Smith Series, volume 7: watch for its release on January 15, 2007, by Cascadia Publishing House.
"`The Selected Ones': Uncovering the Peaceful Women's History of the Southern Cheyenne," by Kimberly D. Schmidt, draws upon interviews and the documentary record to study a wide range of concerns and peace issues for Cheyenne women during the nineteenth century.
The next two articles both concern the issues and values related to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The first shows how a particular museum in 2006 is currently in the process of cooperation with this significant legislation; the second article presents a range of literature directly concerned with the issues causing the need for this legislation.
In recent years Mennonites and Lutherans have engaged in formal ecumenical dialogue, both in North America and at the World Conference level. Among the numerous concerns at stake have been the status of the condemnations of Anabaptists in the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530, and the question of whether Mennonite churches should baptize as adults those persons of Lutheran heritage who join Mennonite congregations. Whitney Furmanski’s essay explores the historical background of the Augsburg Confession. We should note that Furmanski’s critique is aimed at a moving target. The Lutheran message on the condemnations has been revised in the process of further church deliberations. In early October 2006, the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) adopted a revised message. Readers interested the text of the message in its current form may contact Paul Schreck at the ELCA office in Chicago.
As always, the editors thank our book reviewers. We are happy to present reviews in this issue by Thomas Finger and Jon Piper.