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Spring 2007
vol. 62 no. 1

In this issue

For 2007, the Mennonite Life editors have decided to publish two larger issues rather than our usual quarterly publication. Thus, this spring 2007 issue constitutes what would have usually been our March and June issues.

For this issue we invited three scholars to comment on a new book by Raylene Hinz-Penner, with special attention to the topic of genre. The book, Searching for Sacred Ground: The Journey of Chief Lawrence Hart, Mennonite, was co-published by Cascadia Publishing House and Herald Press. It appeared as number seven in the C. Henry Smith Series, edited by J. Denny Weaver. For a number of years, Hinz-Penner served as arts editor for Mennonite Life. While doing research and writing for this book, she was a key planner and organizer of the conference "Cheyenne, Arapaho, Mennonite: Journey From Darlington," hosted by Lawrence and Betty Hart in Clinton, Oklahoma. Papers from that conference appeared in the June and September 2006 issues of Mennonite Life.

In the foreword to Searching for Sacred Ground, Native American scholar Donald Fixico praises the book as "a biography that . . . reveals the powerful presence of traditionalism in a historical figure who still works in the present." But the book, while surely a tribute to the life and ministries of Lawrence Hart, is both more and less than a conventional biography. Reviewers Susan Huxman, Phyllis Bixler, and Jeanine Hathaway, writing in this issue of Mennonite Life, all agree that Hinz-Penner crosses conventional genre boundaries. This is a book that deserves attention for its distinctive literary qualities as well as for its narrative of the life of a remarkable Cheyenne Mennonite leader.

Searching for Sacred Ground and the Telling of "Intertwined Stories"

by Phyllis Bixler

Response to Searching for Sacred Ground

by Susan Schultz Huxman

Blurs and Boundaries

by Jeanine Hathaway


How can Mennonites nurture healthy memories of the Anabaptist martyrs? In our December 2006 issue, Stephanie Krehbiel and Melvin Goering pointed to the dysfunctions of martyr memories. In this issue, three well-known Mennonite scholars (Robert Kreider, Joseph Liechty, and Gerald Mast) and two younger writers, recent graduates from Bluffton University and Bethel College (Hannah Kehr and Jesse Nathan), respond to Krehbiel and Goering. The respondents all affirm the value of the martyr tradition for modern life. The dialogue will continue.

The Intelligibility of Martyrdom: Stories, Parallels, and Meanings

by Robert Kreider

Staying Mennonite: Why Martyrs Still Matter

by Joseph Liechty

How the Martyrs Mirror Helped Save Me: A Response to Krehbiel and Goering

by Gerald J. Mast

This Hardy Archetype

by Jesse Zerger Nathan

A Third Way: Vulnerable, Sacrificial and Active Witness in the Martyrs Mirror

by Hannah Kehr


Most artists seem to prefer having their art works speak for them, rather than attempting to put the ineffable into words. Nevertheless, many artists have fascinating personal narratives. Our interview with Mennonite art pioneer Paul Friesen is a long overdue telling of such a narrative.

"The Shattered Pot": An Interview with Art Professor Paul Friesen

by Mennonite Life editors John D. Thiesen and Ami Regier


Anthony Siegrist, in an essay on the theology of John Howard Yoder, argues that an "apocalyptic style" is central to Yoder's thought. Siegrist presented this essay at a conference in Toronto in September 2006.

Bringing Down the Eschaton: The Apocalyptic Structure of John Howard Yoder's Theology

by Anthony G. Siegrist


Mennonites have often told their history in a way that could be called "Menno-centric," telling Mennonite stories in a way that is disconnected from the world around them. John Staples here recounts one of the well-known Russian Mennonite stories of the nineteenth century as "a history of many peoples living together in Tsarist Russia."

Putting 'Russia' Back into Russian Mennonite History : The Crimean War, Emancipation, and the Molochna Mennonite Landlessness Crisis

by John R. Staples


Recent literary developments in the world of Mennonite letters include exciting communal progress in the editorial discoveries of further alleged writings from the elusive Abraham Nofziger, first brought to us by Dallas Wiebe (December 2002, June 2004, and September 2004). One pleasurable idea raised by this project is the possibility that the process of living in a Mennonite structure of names and ideas itself creates a “fictional” universe—that, in other words, each religious-ethnic culture creates a linguistically-textured universe of community-constructed meanings in which to live.

Commentary on Select Sayings of Abraham Nofziger by a Good-Sized Toad Discovered near the Adams Bridge over the Nearly Dry Little Riley Creek, Bluffton, Ohio, August 2006

edited by Jeff Gundy

Who Can Count the Stars?

edited by Berneil Mueller, née Rupp


We close this compendium issue with poetry invoking the embeddedness of theology in music and arts in the life of the church.

Avowal, and Riffs on the Hymnal Index for Friendship: Poems

by David Wright


Since 1947, Mennonite Life has presented an annual bibliography (a few biannual during the 1970s) of recent Mennonite publications and acquisitions by Mennonite libraries. All of the previous 57 bibliographies have been placed on line in searchable format. Below is the 58th bibliography.

Mennonite Bibliography, 2006

compiled by Barbara A. Thiesen