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This booklet has been written to foster the development of a program of mutual aid among Mennonites. It assumes that the Mennonites in their various groups constitute Christian brotherhoods based upon a personal experience of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and a loving fellowship in His body, the Church. On this foundation it advocates that the members of the Christian community, locally and as a whole, bear one another's economic burdens and so not only fulfill the law of Christ but strengthen the Brotherhood for its greater tasks of witnessing and building for Christ in the world of today. It is a conscious effort to challenge the secular trend of the times which threatens to denature the Christian community and make its members increasingly dependent upon the state and the commercial world with consequent transfer of loyalty from the church to other agencies.
The Anabaptist Vision, given as a presidential address before the American Society of Church History in 1943, has become a classic essay. In it, Harold S. Bender defines the spirit and purposes of the original Anabaptists. Three major points of emphasis are: the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual to the teachings and example of Christ, voluntary church membership based upon conversion and commitment to holy living, and Christian love and nonresistance applied to all human relationships.
How have Americans sought peaceful, rather than destructive, solutions to domestic and world conflict? This two-volume set documents peace and antiwar movements in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Although national leaders often claim to be fighting to achieve peace, the real peace seekers struggle against enormous resistance to their message and have often faced persecution for their efforts. Despite a well-established pattern of being involved in wars, the United States also has a long tradition of citizens who made extensive efforts to build and maintain peaceful societies and prevent the destructive human and material costs of war. Unarmed activists have most consi...
Today, many evangelicals in the Russian-speaking world emphasize sanctification as a distinctive mark of their Christian faith. This is a unique characteristic, particularly in the European context. Their historic tapestry has been woven from a number of threads that originated in the second half of the nineteenth century. Missionary efforts of the German Baptists, a revival sparked by a British evangelist, and a pietistic awakening among the Mennonites in the South converged to form a tapestry that displays Protestant, Baptist, and Anabaptist heritage. Ivan Kargel uniquely participated in the formation and ministry of each of these threads. His life spans from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union. Kargel refused to adhere to a systematic view of theology. Instead, he urged believers to go to Scripture and draw from the riches of a life united with Christ. Kargel's influence today is keenly felt across the Russian-speaking evangelical world as they seek to identify the roots of their spiritual identity. This book examines the influences on Ivan Kargel and offers insights into how his life and work are expressed in the tapestry of Russian evangelical spirituality.
In The Radical Reformation and the Making of Modern Europe, Mario Biagioni presents an account of the lives and thoughts of some radical reformers of the sixteenth century (Bernardino Ochino, Francesco Pucci, Fausto Sozzini, and Christian Francken), showing that the Radical Reformation was not merely a subplot of heretical history within the larger narrative of the Magisterial Reformation. Religious radicalism was primarily an extraordinary laboratory of ideas, which played a pivotal role in the rise of modern Europe: it influenced the intellectual process leading to the cultural revolution of the Enlightenment. Secularism, toleration, and rationalism ― three basic principles of Western civilization ― are part of its cultural heritage.
Scholars and pastors (Paige Patterson, Rick Warren, etc.) offer essays on sixteenth-century Anabaptists (Balthasar Hubmaier, Leonhard Schiemer, Hans Denck, etc.) proposing to recover the Anabaptist vision among Baptists as a means of restoring New Testament Christianity.
"Rivals the major systematic theologies of this century."--Baptist History and Heritage Journal, July 1996"One of the characteristics of Garrett's system that needs especially to be noted is its balanced, judicious, and nearly invariably objective presentation of materials. While holding true to the teachings of his own Baptist faith, Garrett so carefully and judiciously presents alternatives . . . that teachers and students from other confessional and denominational positions will find his work instructive."--Consensus, 1997"If one is searching for an extensive exposition of the biblical foundations and historical developments of the various loci of systematic theology, there is no more com...