Past Events
June 6-8, 2013
CONFERENCE
Amish America: Plain Technology in a Cyber World
This international conference will highlight the challenges and impact of recent technology (the Internet, social media, and telecommunications, for example) on manufacturing, family life, consumption, medicine, and leisure for Amish and other Plain communities in North America. In addition, conference presentations and seminars will cover many other aspects of Amish life including health care, mental health, social services, agriculture, business, history, quilts, and Amish-themed fiction.
Plenary addresses:
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“What the Amish Can Teach (and Learn From) Nerds and Geeks” by Kevin Kelly, cofounder of Wired and widely read writer on the nature and impact of technology
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“A Tale of Two Kitchens: Gender and Technology in Amish Communities” by Karen Johnson-Weiner, professor of anthropology at SUNY Potsdam
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“Thrill of the Chaste: The Secret Life of an Amish Romance Novel” by Valerie Weaver-Zercher, writer and editor
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“Amish Participation in Medical Research: A Partnership of Trust and Mutual Benefit” by Alan Shuldiner, founder and director of the Amish Research Clinic
View schedule, speaker, and registration information.
Thursday, April 11, 2013 • 7:30 pm
Sanctuary--Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren
LECTURE
The Whisker War: Why the Beard Cutters Were Charged with Federal Hate Crimes
Donald B. Kraybill will describe the Bergholz “Amish” clan and the events that led to the beard cutting attacks in Ohio in fall 2011. He will explain how renegade bishop Sam Mullet scuttled traditional Amish beliefs and practices, instigated novel rituals, and became highly critical of other Amish leaders. He will also show why Mullet and 15 of his followers were charged with federal hate crimes and on what basis the jury found them guilty.
Kraybill served as an expert witness at the three-week trial in federal court in Cleveland last fall. He is senior fellow at the Young Center and the author or editor of numerous journal articles and books, including The Amish, which will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in spring 2013.
Thursday, April 11, 2013 • 6:00 pm (reception at 5:30)
Susquehanna Room of Myer Hall
ANNUAL YOUNG CENTER BANQUET
The annual Young Center dinner gives faculty, staff, students, church leaders, and other friends of the Young Center the opportunity to socialize and learn about the Center’s activities and programs.
Cost for the banquet is $18, and reservations are required by March 28.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Born-Again Brethren in Christ: Religious Identity in an Age of Evangelicalism
Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, the Brethren in Christ Church transformed from a small, separatist religious society into a growing mainstream evangelical denomination. Central to this transformation was the church’s increasing investment in the larger American neo-evangelical movement. In this lecture Devin Manzullo-Thomas will examine the ways Brethren in Christ members ratified or resisted the claims of the neo-evangelical movement in an effort to construct a new identity for their denomination.
Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas is assistant editor of Brethren in Christ History and Life and adjunct professor of interdisciplinary studies at Messiah College. He holds a master’s degree in history from Temple University.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
KREIDER LECTURE
Speaking Peace: The Rhetoric of Lawrence Hart, Southern Cheyenne Peace Chief and Mennonite Minister
As an ordained Mennonite minister and a traditional Cheyenne peace chief, Lawrence Hart (1933- ) has a gift for “enlarging the tribe”—reconciling and commemorating the often tragic history of U.S. government and Native American relations. For over 40 years, he has been widely sought as a speaker, mediator, and advocate for national Indian affairs. In her lecture, Marie Dick will discuss Hart’s life and work as well as the rhetorical strategies he uses as tools to address the rhetorical dilemma of pacifism.
Marie Dick is an associate professor of mass communications at St. Cloud State University, focusing on health communication, risk/crisis communication, public communication, and media effects. Her academic preparation includes degrees in political science, rhetoric, and communication studies.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 • 7:00 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Palestinian Refugee Return and Durable Peace Building
No solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is possible without a viable solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees. Alain Epp Weaver will offer a constructive analysis of peace-building actions supported by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and carried out by Zochrot, an Israeli organization dedicated to “remembering the Nakba [Arabic for ‘catastrophe’]” and to promoting constructive conversations within Israeli Jewish society about Palestinian refugee return as a critical component to durable peace building.
Alain Epp Weaver is director of the planning, learning, and disaster response department at MCC. He previously worked for 11 years in the Middle East, including as director of MCC’s programs in Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Epp Weaver holds a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Chicago, and is the author or editor of eight books including States of Exile: Visions of Diaspora, Witness, and Return and Under Vine and Fig Tree: Biblical Theologies of Land and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
This lecture is cosponsored by the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking and the Peace and Conflict Studies program.
Thursday, November 15, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Peace in the Face of Religious Violence
Samuel Dali will examine the tensions between Christians and Muslims in northeastern Nigeria, which resulted from violent attacks on Christians by some radical Muslim extremists. For decades, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria lived peacefully as neighbors, a condition that has been interrupted in recent years by extremists on both sides seeking to radicalize their religious responses. Dali will describe some of the efforts for peace by the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (Ekklesiar Y’anuwa a Nigeria, or EYN), including a program of microloans to help Muslims whose homes or businesses were destroyed when other Christians retaliated violently against attacks by Muslim extremists. He will also highlight work by EYN to form peace clubs cultivating Christian peacemaking.
Dali is president of Ekklesiar Y'anuwa a Nigeria. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Birmingham in England and is an ordained minister.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Gibble Auditorium, Esbenshade Hall
3:45 PM • DURNBAUGH LECTURE
Caring for the Patient in the Time of Genomics: Small Science at the Clinic for Special Children
The Clinic for Special Children is a small medical practice by design—it has not adopted the modern medical system as its scientific or business model. It uses modern technology, but with a different focus: to do “small science,” basic research on a small scale, with the case study as the fundamental unit of work and a priority on spending time with the patient. Dr. D. Holmes Morton will discuss the benefits of this way of practicing medicine.
7:30 PM • DURNBAUGH LECTURE
Plain People and Modern Medicine: The Clinic for Special Children as a Model for Health Care in North America's Plain Communities
Dr. D. Holmes Morton will discuss how the work of the Clinic for Special Children has affected medical outcomes and provided economic value for the Amish and Mennonite communities it serves and for Plain communities in general. He will also describe initiatives to start similar clinics in other communities with large Amish and Mennonite populations.
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Dr. D. Holmes Morton cofounded the Clinic for Special Children, a nonprofit medical center for children with inherited metabolic disorders, and serves as its medical director.
After graduating from Trinity College, Morton studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and completed a residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston. In 1986 he moved to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to study biochemical genetics under Richard Kelley, and in 1988, he moved to Dr. Kelley’s new laboratory at Kennedy Krieger Institute at Johns Hopkins to develop methods for diagnosis and treatment of the Amish variant of glutaric aciduria type 1. His work there led him to establish the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, in 1989.
Morton is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders. In 1993, he was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and in 2006 a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. The Clinic for Special Children is recognized internationally for innovative studies in the discovery and treatment of inherited disorders such as GA1, maple syrup urine disease, Crigler-Najjar syndrome, and other disorders that occur in Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities.
For more Information about Holmes Morton’s work, see these references:
Kevin A. Strauss, Erik G. Puffenberger, and D. Holmes Morton. “One Community’s Effort to Control Genetic Disease.” American Journal of Public Health 102, no. 7 (July 2012): 1300-1306.
Kevin A. Strauss, et al. “The Science and Economics of Prevention.” Strasburg, PA: Clinic for Special Children, 2011.
Trisha Gura. “Genomics, Plain and Simple: A Pennsylvania Clinic Working with Amish and Mennonite Communities Could Be a Model for Personalized Medicine.” Nature 483 (March 1, 2012): 20-22.
Kevin A. Strauss, and Erik G. Puffenberger. “Genetics, Medicine, and the Plain People.” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 10 (2009): 513-536.
D. Holmes Morton, Caroline S. Morton, Kevin A. Strauss, Donna L. Robinson, Erik G. Puffenberger, Christine Hendrickson, and Richard I. Kelley. “Pediatric Medicine and the Genetic Disorders of the Amish and Mennonite People of Pennsylvania.” American Journal of Medical Genetics Part C: Seminars in Medical Genetics 121C, no. 1 (August 15, 2003): 5-17.
D. Holmes Morton. “Through My Window—Remarks at the 125th Year Celebration of Children’s Hospital of Boston.” Pediatrics 94, no. 6 (1994): 785-791.
D. Holmes Morton. “Difficult Learning.” Paper presented at the May 20, 2000 Elizabethtown College Commencement, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
D. Holmes Morton. “The Glutaric Acidurias of the Amish: A Sense of Progress 1988-2011.” Unpublished essay.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
BROWN BOOK AWARD LECTURE
Transformations in 20th-Century Mennonite Peacemaking: J.R. Burkholder as Activist and Agent of Change
Keith Graber Miller, recipient of the 2012 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Prophetic Peacemaking: Selected Writings of J. R. Burkholder, will discuss J.R. Burkholder's influence as an ethicist, church leader, and social change agent, placing him within the context of twentieth-century shifts in Mennonite peacemaking. A former professor at Goshen College and Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Burkholder helped Mennonites move with integrity beyond the sometimes-passive quietism of an earlier era toward a cautious-yet-faithful engagement with the world. "He did so," says Graber Miller, "without dismissing the value of the core peace convictions of his Anabaptist-Mennonite faith, without selling the Mennonite soul to Reinhold Niebuhrian-style compromise and political realism, and without uncritically accepting all of the rhetoric of the Christian and secular left." Burkholder will attend the lecture and offer comments following Graber Miller's presentation.
Graber Miller is professor of Bible, religion, and philosophy at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. Ordained in Mennonite Church USA, he is the author or editor of five books and the contributor of chapters in more than a dozen books. He received his Ph.D. from Emory University.
The Dale Brown Book Award is given annually to the book chosen by a panel of independent judges for making outstanding contributions to the field of Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. It is named in honor of Church of the Brethren theologian and long-time peace worker Dale W. Brown.
Thursday, October 18, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
SNOWDEN LECTURE
Reformation Poland: Conversion in the Civic Conversation
Virginia Zickafoose, the Snowden Fellow for Fall 2012, will discuss the role of Radical Reformation views, religious pluralism, and alternative political models in sixteenth-century Poland.
Zickafoose researches, writes, and translates source material on early modern Poland-Lithuania. She earned a Ph.D. in early modern European and American history from Georgetown University in 2006.
Thursday, September 20, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
In the Line of Duty: Brethren and Their Early English Hymns
Samuel Funkhouser will explore the early English-language hymnbooks of the Brethren, beginning with the first of these books, The Christian’s Duty, in 1791. He will give special attention to the sources used in the compilation of The Christian’s Duty, and the questions they raise about Brethren worship, doctrine, and inter-denominational relations at the turn of the nineteenth century. He will also give an overview of the ways in which the hymns contained in Duty were retained, modified, or discarded in subsequent Brethren hymnbooks, up to and including those published by the Old German Baptist Church and the Brethren Church shortly after the divisions of the early 1880s.
Funkhouser recently received an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he wrote a thesis on early English-language Brethren hymnody. He is a licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren.
June 6–8, 2012
CONFERENCE
Pietist and Anabaptist Intersections in Pennsylvania:
The Life and Influence of Alexander Mack, Jr.
This study conference commemorates the 300th birthday of Alexander Mack, Jr., an important Brethren leader. Mack was a weaver, minister, and writer of poetry, doctrinal and devotional works. From his childhood in Germany and the Netherlands to his short time in the Ephrata community to his mature years as a minister in the Germantown congregation of Brethren, Mack’s life represents many intersections of Pietism and Anabaptism as well various religious and cultural experiences.
Thursday, April 26, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
SNOWDEN LECTURE
The Amish and the Haredim: Ultra-Religious Communities and the Modern State
These two highly religious and visible communities in the U.S. and Israel have fought numerous legal and extra-legal battles with the state in the name of basic principles like religious freedom. Benyamin Neuberger will discuss the groups, comparing their basic attitudes towards the state, its political system, government, laws and judiciary.
Benyamin Neuberger is professor of political science and African studies at the Open University of Israel. He has published widely on nationalism and ethnicity. Neuberger was named the Snowden Fellow for 2010, but was unable to fulfill his appointment until this spring.
Friday, April 20, 2012 • 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Young Center
DURNBAUGH SEMINAR
Aspects of Hutterite Life: Communal Christianity and 21st-Century Challenges
Rod Janzen will continue his discussion of the Hutterites by focusing in greater detail on important characteristics of contemporary Hutterite life as well as major conflicts, including the influential attraction of evangelical Protestantism and recent divisions.
Thursday, April 19, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Susquehanna Room of Myer Hall
DURNBAUGH LECTURE
The Hutterites in 2012
Rod Janzen will give an introduction to the life of this growing population of 50,000 communal Anabaptists. The presentation will include a brief history of the Hutterites, a discussion of their essential beliefs, and a review of their present challenges.
Rod Janzen is Distinguished Scholar and professor of history at Fresno Pacific University, where he has taught for the past 22 years. Since 1999 Janzen has served as editor of Communal Societies, the academic journal of the Communal Studies Association. He is the author of a number of books that deal with communal, Anabaptist, and/or utopian societies, including The Hutterites in North America, published in 2010 by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Thursday, April 19, 2012 • 6:00 pm
Susquehanna Room of Myer Hall
ANNUAL YOUNG CENTER BANQUET
The annual Young Center dinner gives faculty, staff, students, church leaders, and other friends of the Young Center the opportunity to socialize and learn about the Center’s activities and programs.
A reception for Durnbaugh Lecturer Rod Janzen will be held at 5:30, preceding the dinner.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
PROGRAM
Starvation Volunteer: A Conversation with an Elizabethtown Alum
Robert Willoughby ’47 will discuss his experience as a conscientious objector during WWII and his participation in U.S. government research on human starvation. (This program is co-sponsored by the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking, the Open Book Initiative, and the Office of the Dean of Faculty.
Thursday, February 23, 2012 • 7:00 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Communal Peace during World War I
Ryan Long will discuss the challenges facing Hutterite colonies during World War I. The Hutterites used the events of the war to strengthen their identity and reconnect to their history, actions that secured their future as a separate communal society in North America.
Ryan Long is a 2011 graduate of Elizabethtown College with a major in religious studies.
Thursday, February 2, 2012 • 7:00 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
The Unchristian Slave Trade: Brethren and Slavery
The Brethren were strong opponents of slave holding. Some Brethren even paid for slaves in order to free them. However, a few rare individuals held slaves. Jeff Bach will examine these tensions among Brethren, especially in the period just prior to the Civil War.
Jeff Bach is director of the Young Center and associate professor of religious studies at Elizabethtown College. He is the author of Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata and co-author of Genius of the Transcendent: Mystical Writings of Jakob Boehme.
Thursday, November 17, 2011 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
SNOWDEN LECTURE
Thrill of the Chaste: Tracing the Ancestry of the Amish Romance Novel
The birthdate of the Amish romance novels is frequently given as 1997, when Beverly Lewis’s blockbuster novel The Shunning was published. But the first Amish romance novel had appeared almost a century earlier, and Amish-themed novels continued to appear in ensuing years, refracting many of the social, religious, and literary movements of the twentieth century. Valerie Weaver-Zercher, the Young Center’s Snowden Fellow for Fall 2011, will discuss the connections between recent Amish-themed novels and much older novels of the same genre.
Weaver-Zercher is a writer and editor whose work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, Orion, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, and Sojourners, and other venues.
Thursday, October 27, 2011 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE (rescheduled from September 8)
Civil War-Era Anabaptists and the Modern Nation-State
Steve Longenecker, professor of history at Bridgewater College (Va.), will discuss the growth of national government during the Civil War and the consequences of this for Anabaptists. Newly empowered by a popular cause, conscription, civil religion, and sheer size, the worldly kingdom became much more threatening to traditional Anabaptism nonconformity.
Longenecker is a specialist in American religious history and the author of Shenandoah Religion: Outsiders and the Mainstream, 1716-1865 and The Brethren during the Age of World War: The Church of the Brethren Encounter with Modernization, 1914-1950. His current research project is the religious history of antebellum and Civil War-era Gettysburg, Pa.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the Holmes County, Ohio, Amish Settlement
The authors of the 2011 Dale Brown Book Award winner, An Amish Paradox, will discuss their reasons for and methods and experiences in studying the Holmes County Settlement in Ohio. They will focus on the dialectic and dilemmas that characterize Amish attempts to adapt and yet stay true to their cultural and religious heritage in the areas of family, education, economics, and health care. They will also comment briefly on the Amish community as a model for and its future in American society.
David L. McConnell is professor of anthropology at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. His research interests include social and cultural change, the indigenization of modernity, and the anthropology of education. Charles E. Hurst is emeritus professor of sociology at The College of Wooster, where he taught for 38 years.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 • 7:30 pm
Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Anabaptism and the Netherlands: A Model of Toleration
Jeff Bach, director of the Young Center, will explore how Anabaptists in the Netherlands moved from feared religious sect to respectable citizens to advocates for tolerance for Anabaptists in other parts of Europe.
In addition to serving as Young Center director, Bach teaches courses on the history of Anabaptist and Pietist groups and communal societies. He is the author of Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata and co-author with Michael Birkel of Genius of the Transcendent: Mystical Writings of Jakob Boehme.
Thursday, September 22, 2011 • 7:30 pm
Leffler Chapel
PROGRAM
The Enduring Power of Forgiveness
Steve Nolt and Terri Roberts will address “What I’ve Learned about Forgiveness” and Kenneth Sensenig will discuss “The Worldwide Witness of Nickel Mines” during this event that follows the conference on forgiveness.
Thursday, September 22, 2011 • 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
CONFERENCE
The Power of Forgiveness: Lessons from Nickel Mines
Using the fifth anniversary of the tragedy at Nickel Mines as a backdrop, this one-day conference will explore the moral dilemmas arising from violence and the potential power of forgiveness for personal healing and restoration of relationships.
The conference will benefit counselors, therapists, pastors, leaders, and others interested in the process and potential of forgiveness.
The keynote address will be given by L. Gregory Jones, vice president and vice provost for global strategy and programs at Duke University and senior strategist and professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. Widely recognized as a scholar and church leader on forgiveness and reconciliation, Jones is the co-author of Forgiving As We’ve Been Forgiven: Community Practices for Making Peace (with Celestin Musekura) and the author of Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis.
View schedule, speaker, and registration information.
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