Mennonite Studies: Current Topics

These selected readings focus primarily on the Ontario and Canadian context. They are presented here with thanks to the authors and the following publishers for providing open source content: Anabaptist Historians, The Conrad Grebel Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Journal of Mennonite Studies, Journal of Mennonite Writing, Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario, Mennonite Quarterly Review, Rebel Sky Media and Sam Steiner.

• Diana Braithwaite. “Memories of Black and Mennonite Connections.” Ontario Mennonite History, October, 2013.
• Roger Epp.  “There was no one here when we came”: Overcoming the Settler Problem. 2011 Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist-Mennonite Studies. The Conrad Grebel Review, Spring 2012.
• Timothy Epp. "Anabaptist-Black Interaction in Upper Canada: An Initial Reconnaissance." Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2013.
• Timothy Epp. "Black-Mennonite Histories: Roots and Routes." Ontario Mennonite History, October, 2013.
• Timothy Epp. "Moral Tales, Essays, and Letters from Georgia: Representations of Blackness in Three Anabaptist Newspapers." Conrad Grebel Review, Fall 2019.
• E. Reginald Good. “Lost Inheritance: Alienation of Six Nation’s Lands in Upper Canada, 1784-1805.” Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2001.
• Journal of Mennonite Studies. Special Issue on History of Aboriginal-Mennonite Relations. 2001.
• Emma Laroque. "Me and Mennonites: The Way We Were 'The Other.'" Journal of Mennonite Writing, November 2012.
• Brad Leitch, director. Reserve 107: Reconciliation on the Prairies. Produced by Rebel Sky Media with Mennonite Central Committee Saskatchewan and St. John’s Lutheran Church (Laird, Sask.), 2016.
• Erica Littlewolf, and Pam Peter-Pries, compilers. Overcoming the Doctrine of Discovery. Intersections: MCC Theory & Practice Quarterly, Winter 2018. Includes several Canada-focused articles.
• Lucille Marr. “Breaking Down Barriers: MCC Ontario and Ontario Native Communities, 1967-1999." Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2001.
• Geoff Martin. “Slave Days in the Queen’s Bush.” Hamilton Arts & Letters, 2020.
• Henry Neufeld. “’Never a Teacher’: Henry Neufeld and His ‘Indian Day School’ Experience.” Mennonite Historian. June 2018).
• Reina C. Neufeldt. "Settler Colonial Conscripts: Mennonite Reserves and the Enfolding of Implicated Subjects." Postcolonial Studies, 2021.
• T. D. Regehr, “Canadian Mennonites and the Japanese Berry Farmers in British Columbia after the Evacuation of 1942.” Journal of Mennonite Studies, 1992.
• Tobin Miller Shearer, “White Mennonite Peacemakers: Of Oxymorons, Grace, and Nearly Thirty Years of Talking About Whiteness,” Conrad Grebel Review, Fall 2017.
• Anthony Siegrist. “‘Part of the Authority Structure’: An Organizational History of Mennonite Indian Residential Schools in Ontario.” Mennonite Quarterly Review, January 2019.
• Sam Steiner. In Search of Promised Lands A Religious History of Mennonites in Ontario. Kitchener, Ont.: Herald Press, 2015. Steiner includes sections on Mennonite relations with Indigenous peoples in the early years of Mennonite settlement in Waterloo Region, Mennonites and Indian Residential Schools in Ontario, and Mennonite relationships to Blacks in Ontario.
• Joseph R. Wiebe. “On the Mennonite-Métis Borderland: Environment, Colonialism, and Settlement in Manitoba.” Journal of Mennonite Studies. 2017.
• Hyejung Jesse Yum. “Unsettling the Radical Witness of Peace: A Decolonizing Investigation of Mennonite Migration from Russia to Manitoba in the 1870s.” October 2020.

See also the Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies Mennonite Heritage Week 2021 Reading List

For a broader, mainly United States perspective:

• Ben Goossen. “An Anabaptist Anti-Racist Reading List.” Anabaptist Historians (blog), June 18, 2020.

• “New messaging service will connect Mennonites with government COVID-19 info,” CBC News, September 10, 2020
• “Low German community in southwestern Ontario experiences persecution,” Canadian Mennonite, August 26, 2020
• “Low Germans experience public discrimination during COVID-19 surge,” CBC News, August 13, 2020
• “Mennonite life carries on during pandemic - with social distancing adaptations,” The Record, April 24, 2020
• “'We, too, are part of this world': How Hutterites, Old Order Mennonites are responding to COVID-19,” CBC News, April 1, 2020
• “Old Order Mennonites, church groups find ways to adapt to COVID-19,” The Record, March 27, 2020