EARLY ANABAPTISM IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Past, Present, and Future at 500 Years
July 22-24, 2025
Join us for a stimulating discussion of early Anabaptism and its ongoing relevance.
This conference marking the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Anabaptist movement will revisit early Anabaptism and give special attention to the global context in which it emerged and spread. Speakers will also consider how Anabaptist history has been received by churches and academics in more recent times and in varying contexts around the world.
With more than three dozen plenary sessions, papers, seminars, and roundtables by presenters from ten countries, the conference will examine such varied themes as migration, diplomacy, the arts, colonialism, peacemaking, and theological identity. Explorations of the connections between Anabaptism and Baptist, Hutterite, Liberation Theology, Quaker, Mennonite, and Radical Pietist traditions are also on the program. Roundtable sessions and seminars include a discussion of approaches to teaching early Anabaptism and a workshop on reading early Anabaptist sources in community. Optional pre- and post-conference field trips will visit area libraries and archives and the 1719 Museum.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Nicholas Terpstra
Nicholas Terpstra is professor of history at the University of Toronto, where he has worked on questions of religion and social change in the early modern period. In books, articles, and essay collections, Terpstra has explored themes in civic religion and the care of marginalized peoples, the experience of religious refugees in the early modern period, and the Global Reformation. His most recent publication is Senses of Space in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2024). In 2024, he was appointed provost of Trinity College in the University of Toronto.
Lecture title: Horizons of Expectation: Space, Sense, and Religious Reform in a Globalizing Age
PLENARY SPEAKERS
Kat Hill
Kat Hill is an author and researcher based in the Highlands of Scotland. Her work focuses on questions of landscape, people, and heritage in various contexts from non-conformist religious communities, including Mennonites in Europe, America, and the Global South. She is the author of the prize-winning book Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525-1585 (Oxford University Press, 2015). Her second book, Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter, was released by William Collins in 2024 and has been shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
Lecture title: Lost and Living Pasts: Early Modern Histories and Global Mennonite Belonging
Danang Kristiawan
Born and raised in Indonesia, Danang Kristiawan is a pastor in the Gereja Injili di Tanah Jawa (GITJ), the oldest Mennonite church conference outside Europe and North America, and teaches Anabaptist history and theology at the Mennonite seminary in Pati. His primary academic interests include interreligious dialogue, religious history, pastoral pedagogy, and Anabaptist theology. Kristiawan is passionate about bringing Anabaptist-Mennonite theological and historical teaching to Indonesia in ways that translate more accurately into this cultural context.
Lecture title: Constructing a Multi-Textual Anabaptist Theology from an Indonesian Perspective
Elizabeth Miller
Elizabeth Miller is the director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism and assistant professor of history at Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana. Before arriving at Goshen College, she worked with Anabaptist churches in Colombia and Ecuador for nine years with Mennonite Central Committee. Miller is the author of Desde el principio anabautistas: La historia de las iglesias menonitas y hermanos menonitas en Colombia, 1946-1975 and, with Lisa Weaver, of Let the Children Come to Me: Nurturing Anabaptist Faith Within Families. She lives in Goshen with her husband and two children.
Lecture title: The Future(s) of Anabaptist History: Global Perspectives and Methods
Schedule
The conference opens at 1:00 pm on Tuesday, July 22, and closes at noon on Thursday, July 24.
Optional tours: July 22 from 9 am until 12:30 pm; July 24 from 12:30 until 4:30 pm.
See the detailed schedule for information on presentations and speakers and the optional tours.
Registration
Full Conference Rates
Includes Tuesday dinner, Wednesday breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Thursday breakfast, and all refreshments and receptions.
Registration by June 16: $265
Registration after June 16: $290
Full-time student, registration by June 16: $160
Full-time student, registration after June 16: $175
Daily Rates (if attending for less than the full conference)
Includes meals and refreshments on the day(s) of attendance.
Tuesday, July 22: $95
Wednesday, July 23: $140
Thursday, July 24: $65
Full-time student: Tuesday, July 22: $57
Full-time student: Wednesday, July 23: $84
Full-time student: Thursday, July 24: $39
The registration deadline is July 7.
Lodging
Limited housing is available in a residence hall and an apartment building on the college campus. The conference has also negotiated special rates at several local hotels.
Collaborative Sponsor
