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News archive
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| Online encyclopedia reaches milestone |
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GOSHEN, Ind.A Mennonite historical initiative achieved a historic goal on March 12 and anticipates reaching another one by the end of the year.
On March 12, Richard Thiessen of Abbotsford, B.C., assistant managing editor of the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online posted the 10,000th article on GAMEO’s Web site, www.gameo.org. The article was on Katharina “Tina” Lepp Ewert, longtime matron of the Mennonite Brethren Madchenheim, or girls’ home, in Vancouver. The entry joined others on topics ranging from A-B-C books, a collection of German-language religious readings, to Zwolse Vereniging, a Dutch Mennonite conference.
GAMEO was born nearly 10 years ago as the Canadian Mennonite Encyclopedia Online when the Mennonite Historical Society began posting a database of Canadian congregations as well as Canadian-related articles from the five-volume Mennonite Encyclopedia. Shortly afterward, Mennonite Encyclopedia publisher Herald Press granted permission to add non-Canadian articles, and in 2006 the project expanded to include U.S. representatives and volunteers.
Today GAMEO is supported by the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada, Mennonite Church USA Historical Committee, Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission, Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite World Conference. The Mennonite Church USA Historical Committee is a ministry of Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership.
Having reached the 10,000-article mark, attention is now focused on getting the rest of the print version of Mennonite Encyclopedia online. About one fourth of the encyclopedia’s 4,666 printed pages are left, GAMEO managing editor Sam Steiner estimates, and they could be done by the end of 2008. But that doesn’t mean the work will end. New articles, such as the one on Ewert, are being compiled while other new and existing articles are being updated and posted.
“As long as there are active Mennonites in the world, there will always be something to add,” said Steiner.
Steiner, Thiessen and the rest of the GAMEO editors and writers are all volunteers. Steiner’s day job is librarian and archivist at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, while Thiessen is library director at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford. They have overseen the preparation and addition of an average of 15 articles a day to the Web site, which daily draws about 1,400 visitors.
Steiner said GAMEO’s goal is to become a truly international resource with articles in other languages and from other countries. Currently being explored are French-language entries.
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| Paul Schreck (left), representing the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and John D. Roth (right), representing Mennonite Church USA, at a Feb. 21 meeting in Elkhart, Ind. Photo by Mary E. Klassen |
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| Mennonites and Lutherans seek to facilitate conversations in local settings |
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By Everett J. Thomas
ELKHART, Ind.Leaders from Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and Mennonite Church USA held a day-long conversation Feb. 21 in Elkhart, Ind. The meetingsdesigned to help both groups with “right remembering” of the Protestant Reformationincluded a capacity lunch-time crowd during a forum at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The event also made it clear that both groups have some challenges ahead if this ecumenical impulse is to reach more broadly into congregational life.
In the fall of 2006, ELCA passed an extensive declaration on the condemnation of Anabaptists. In it, Lutheran leaders said, “We express our deep and abiding sorrow and regret for the persecution and suffering visited upon Anabaptists during the religious disputes of the past.”
In response, Mennonite Church USA executive director Jim Schrag wrote a letter in April 2007 expressing appreciation for the declaration. Schrag said, “We are especially moved by the expression of ‘deep and abiding sorrow and regret’ for past persecutions of Anabaptists.” He called for a blessing on “future collaboration between our two churches.”
The “future collaboration” at the Feb. 21 meeting included a report from John D. Roth about the challenges ahead for Mennonites in this dialogue. Roth, a Goshen (Ind.) College history professor, and Paul Schreck, executive assistant to the ELCA Secretary, were featured at the event, entitled “Unbinding Each Other: New Possibilities in Mennonite-Lutheran Relations.”
Roth listed four challenges as the Lutheran repudiations are communicated to Mennonite Church USA congregations, pastors and members:
- The impulse toward vindication that would reinforce our smugness and arrogance: “We were the true Christians being persecuted, and now 500 years later we are being vindicated.”
- Moving on: “This now finally allows us to leave the past behind and get on with the business of being good, generic American Protestants.”
- Mennonites have appropriated a martyr pathology: “When someone says, ‘I’m sorry,’ can we give it up?”
- Ecumenism and narcissism: “It’s relatively easy to start conversations with people who are quite different. The much, much harder thing is to initiate conversations with those groups who are just a little bit different. … For Mennonites, it’s Beachy Amish and Old Order Amish and Conservative Conference. Freud called this ‘the narcissism of minor differences.’ ”
Schreck noted that two differences remain unresolved, however, in the ongoing Lutheran-Mennonite dialogue: the relationship between the church and the state, and baptism.
“A breakthrough point for us,” said Schreck, “was the discovery that in the Mennonite ministers manual, Lutheran baptism is not automatically invalid. This is very important to Lutherans.”
Roth, who also represents Mennonite World Conference on the Lutheran World Federation and MWC international study commission, listed several challenges for Mennonite Church USA in the future.
“The ELCA has a greater clarity about doctrine as formulated and who is responsible to speak on behalf of the church in an official way,” said Roth. “For Mennonite Church USA with its congregational polity, it’s been more difficult to know on whose behalf we are speakingeven at a global level.”
This issue is particularly difficult around the unresolved issue of baptism.
“Lutherans would deeply appreciate a statement,” Roth said, “that baptism practiced in Lutheran contexts … would be fully recognized in all Mennonite Church USA congregations. For reasons of polity, we don’t have the authority to tell a congregation to do this” even if we thought it was the right thing.
Informal conversations between Mennonites and ELCA leaders began in 1986. The first formal meeting which began a three-year dialogue was held at Goshen (Ind.) College in February 2002. André Gingerich Stoner, director of interchurch relations for Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership, said that no further formal dialogue is planned at this point, but “the next step in our relationship is to facilitate serious encounter and conversation between Mennonites and Lutherans in two or three local settings.”
Stoner also said another possibility is for representatives to be invited to each other’s national assemblies.
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| The article on Katharina Lepp Ewert, the 10,000th to be posted on the GAMEO Web site |
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