Tag Archives: Mennonite

Better angels of our nature

Religious Freedom: A Distinctive American Virtue

Anna Gerber Yoder, my 7th great-grandmother, lived about 75 miles from where the nation’s founders adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Anna lived on a 160-acre farm in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Age 70 when the Revolution began, she lived through the War as a widow. Some of Anna’s adult children moved to a remote region of western Pennsylvania rather than live amid Revolutionary battles and unrest.

When James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, he had people like Anna Gerber Yoder’s husband and sons in mind. In a first draft of the Second Amendment, Madison wrote that “no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.” Madison was well aware of dissenter groups in Virginia who chose not to bear arms for religious reasons. Congress voted against Madison’s bold defense of religious minorities.

Vinca flowers at Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va., June 14, 2026

The Mennonites, Brethren, Amish, Quakers, and other dissenters who would not take up weapons in War found a country that tolerated them while not embracing their convictions. But the Republic that sprang from Revolutionary War victory provided an almost unheard-of environment in which to live one’s religious convictions. Most dissenters have been very grateful.

When Anna Gerber Yoder’s descendants were conscripted to fight in every American War since the Revolutionary War, they sought ways to avoid taking up arms.  

Nearly 250 years after the country’s founding, on May 6, 2026, I attended an annual Shenandoah Valley Prayer Breakfast in Harrisonburg, Virginia. About 400 guests arrived early for breakfast, coffee, conversation, and prayer. We came from all walks of life, occupations, and denominations.

We prayed for business and nonprofits in our community and for our clergy. With several uniformed police in attendance, we prayed for them and first responders. We prayed for the least of these in our region, for our higher education institutions, for the government, and for students in our communities. Another led us in praying for healthcare and counseling professionals, for agricultural workers, and finally for our world.

When a speaker gave a faith testimony at the Prayer Breakfast, held at James Madison University, I looked at the university’s seal above the podium. The school reduced one of Madison’s statements to “Knowledge is Liberty.”

Elwood Yoder

I’d revise the JMU seal by adding a concept: “Knowledge, Liberty, and Grace.” In 1779, when Anna Gerber Yoder endured the Revolutionary War, wondering how it would end, and when James Madison was elected in Virginia to serve in the Continental Congress, John Newton wrote the lyrics to “Amazing Grace.” Newton’s memorable lyrics became the most popular gospel song in American history. Knowledge and liberty are great, but without an understanding of grace amid the fragility of human nature, knowledge and liberty hold little value. I’m very grateful for a U.S. environment that accepts dissenting groups and fosters religious freedom.

Better angels of our nature

Peace be with you

Pope Leo XIV delivered an encouraging message to Mennonites who gathered in Zurich, Switzerland, on May 29, 2025. Upon the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Anabaptist movement, Pope Leo began his letter with “Peace be with you,” quoting Christ’s words in John 20:19.

From the Aramaic language used among the fearful Jerusalem disciples to the written Greek language of the Apostle John, to the Latin of the medieval Catholic Bible, to the English I can understand, “Peace be with you” undergirds that which is good in civilization, it advances the betterments of human culture, and it enlivens the better angels of our nature.

Massanutten Mountain and the city of Harrisonburg, May 30, 2026 (Elwood Yoder photo)

A politician has stated that “We live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” I think the advisor misunderstands the way the world works. The laws of cooperation and positive human interactions have propelled technological advances since the beginning of time; the spirit of human ingenuity improves our lives; and the hopes of men and women for a better planet push us to explore, build, and create. Dictators and brutal armies have repeatedly failed with force. In reality, it is the undergirding pillars of peace and human interaction that have led to advances in our world, not the so-called iron laws of force and brute power.

Big Spring Mennonite Church, Luray, Va. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

This spring, I visited a small congregation on two successive Sunday mornings. These folks in Page County, Virginia, are actively serving their community. They assist children at the local school who are food-insecure with weekend backpacks of food, and they volunteer at a Luray humanitarian mission that provides family assistance to community members. When they lit their peace lamp during worship, it moved me deeply, and I can’t quite explain why except that I think my friends have discovered the joy in sharing the Master’s peace with others in their community.

NBC News recently surveyed Americans’ common beliefs and values. They found that as a people, Americans have far more in common than what divides us. In 2026, I’ve given tours at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, where I work, to folks from Virginia and 10 additional states. I find that wherever people come from, we are much alike; we share similar hopes and are like-minded on many values.

To accept peace as our guiding motif for living enables us to choose life over death and to stand for justice rather than warfare. The simple words “peace be with you,” spoken today, with purpose, hope, and action, can transform our world for good far more than weapons of warfare and destruction.

Better angels of our nature

Digging deep to help immigrants

Beginning in 1874, over 1,200 families from Ukraine sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and traveled by train to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Russian Tsar Alexander II had revoked some religious freedoms for thousands of Mennonites and required military service. So, the families, whose ancestors had migrated for religious freedom from the Netherlands to Prussia and then to Russia, picked up and moved again, this time to the U.S. and Canada.

 Because so many families moved at about the same time, farm prices were depressed when they sold, and the farmers arrived in New York with little money. In the better angels of their nature, hundreds of Mennonites in the United States gave money to help pay ship crossing fares and to help them buy land in the American Midwest.

“In a Strange Land–Asking the Way.” Mennonite group from Odesa, Russia (Ukraine), bound for Nebraska or Dakota. Harper’s Weekly, 1874 May 30, p. 452, Library of Congress

I was startled recently by how deep some families in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia dug to help pay ship crossing fares and enable farm families from Russia who spoke no English to buy land. In 1874, four small Mennonite congregations just north of Harrisonburg, Va., raised $195 to help pay ship passage fees and offered $245 in loans to help two families buy land in Kansas and Oklahoma. The immigrant family names were Unruh and Schmidt.

Earlier this year, I reviewed a folder of previously unanalyzed primary source material from Jacob Geil, a Mennonite deacon, who kept good records. The financial notes that Geil issued to Mennonites from Russia were for seven years. The correspondence includes letters that Geil wrote to Unruh and Schmidt seven years later, inquiring about repayment. I figured that about two dozen farm families in the Shenandoah Valley, in the four small congregations, collected over $12,000 in today’s money to help.

Money given and loans made to immigrants in the 1870s, combined with the economic incentives offered by the Santa Fe Railroad Company, helped them prosper and flourish. The settlers repaid the loans from Mennonites whom they did not know, making Kansas a breadbasket for the world.

House where Jacob Geil and family lived in the 1870s, Linville, Va. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

In October 2024, I took two grandsons, ages 5 and 8, to visit a heritage museum in Goessel, Kansas, one of the centers where Russian immigrants settled 150 years ago. We learned history, sat on old farm machinery, learned about wheat threshing stones, and had fun.

We paused to examine and talk about a swords-into-plowshares outdoor metal sculpture created to mark the centennial in 1974 of the first wave of Mennonite arrivals from Ukraine. These immigrant farm families believed in the way of peace and nonviolence. To the credit of President Ulysses S. Grant and Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, who welcomed immigrants, the Mennonites turned the ground with plowshares and grew acres of wheat. Many of their descendants rejected violence when Uncle Sam went to war.

Swords into Plowshares sculpture, Goessel, KS (Elwood Yoder photo)

My wife and I have six grandchildren who live in eastern Kansas. They are growing up where thousands of Russian immigrants settled and prospered. One lesson I want to help teach them is that the better angels of our nature should embolden those of us who have been here a while to, in turn, assist immigrants and help them get started in their new lives. And we may need to dig deep.

Better angels of our nature

Washhouse Politics

Decades of interactions in an old washhouse demonstrate how people with different goals and backgrounds can live together in concord and peace. In 1840, the Burkholders, a Mennonite family in Rockingham County, Va., built a washhouse. Since then, many have used the building, and today it is a fun learning station during K-1st-grade field trips at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Va.

From 1840 to 1865, ten percent of those in the Shenandoah Valley were enslaved, though the Burkholder family did not use them to work in their washhouse. If they had, their Mennonite church would have removed them from membership. In 1860, Rebecca Burkholder suffered the death of her husband, Martin, and lost two children to influenza. When the Civil War began in 1861, widow Burkholder had four small children in her care, and neighbors and family helped her farm the fields.

Burkholder-Myers house (left), 1854, and washhouse, 1840, Harrisonburg, Va.

The Burkholder family washed their clothes in their washhouse, using water heated in a large metal pot that hung over the fire. They used homemade lye soap, hung clean clothes outside on a line to dry, and poured the wash water on the garden plants. The washhouse also served as a butcher house, where cattle and hog meat were cured and smoked.

Rebecca Burkholder hid men at her home during the Civil War who, for religious reasons, would not fight for the Confederacy. No one knows where she hid the men, but the basement or attic in the washhouse is a likely guess.

In 2026, well over 100 K-1st-grade children will visit the washhouse each week in April and May. Many parents, teachers, and chaperones follow their children. They come from public, private, and homeschool groups. On April 23, 2026, in the washhouse, education students from a nearby university and two faculty observed the guides. I led a Connecticut tourist couple into the smoky wash house, where logs burned in the fireplace, and they were delighted to watch children actively learning.

Burkholder-Myers washhouse, Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

The washhouse guides demonstrated how 19th-century families washed their clothes. The kids used a washboard to clean socks, then went outside and learned to hang wet clothes on a clothesline.

During lunch, when the kids ate their packed lunches outside, the 40-50 adult volunteers ate a delicious lunch delivered by a local Mennonite church.

In the washhouse, Confederate scouts searched for Mennonite men who hid from conscription, and the Burkholders washed, ironed, folded their clean clothes, and prepared summer meals over the fireplace. In recent years, thousands of elementary students have learned about the tasks performed in a 19th-century washhouse. Amid these many people, cultures, and beliefs, the washhouse has been a great setting for diverse people to learn from one another. For me, “washhouse politics,” where people interact with good intentions and respect one another, is how I’d like to see our U.S. society work together and get along.

Washhouse at Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

Better angels of our nature

Happy Birthday, James Madison!

James Madison image courtesy of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

Happy 275th birthday, James Madison! At my job in Harrisonburg, Virginia, I’ve created a small historical exhibit to honor the fourth president, James Madison, from nearby Montpelier, Virginia.

A few days ago, when James Madison University, a major university I can see from the Heritage Center where I work, celebrated James’s 275th birthday, we did the same. We brought in bagel bites, muffins, candles, and a Jimmy Madison bobblehead. About fifteen volunteer carpenters had come to work for the day, and at lunch, around tables, they humored me by singing “Happy Birthday” to James Madison.

In the earlier Julian calendar, Madison was born on March 6. In the Gregorian calendar, adopted in the United States when James was one, his birthday moved to March 16. Take your pick — JMU and the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center each had a party in Harrisonburg, Va., on March 6 (Julian), but March 16, 2026 (Gregorian), is Madison’s 275th birthday.

So here’s a tribute to the political philosopher who brought religious freedom to the United States. I’m a Mennonite, and for these 250 years of the United States, my people have been privileged to worship in freedom, even with minority religious beliefs. Madison’s First Amendment says it all: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Celebrating James Madison’s birthday, March 6, 2026
M. Garber photo

Better angels of our nature

Rebuilding out of the ashes

The story of how Mennonites in Virginia rebuilt out of ashes after their barns, mills, and houses burned in 1864 somewhat parallels the difficulties faced by Anabaptist Mennonite believers in Venezuela in 2026.

First, the numbers are small. When Union General Philip Sheridan torched the capital resources of residents in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in October 1864, there may have been 500-600 Mennonites in Rockingham and Augusta Counties. On January 3, 2026, when the United States bombed Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira, there were fewer than 500 baptized Anabaptist Mennonites in the Latin American nation.1

Second, many refugees have fled Venezuela to neighboring Colombia, hosted there by Anabaptist Mennonites. In an instance of the better angels of our nature, the rugged Union General Philip Sheridan invited Mennonites and other families who had been left desolate from the burning campaign to leave Virginia on a military-escorted wagon train to northern states. No one knows precisely how many Mennonites departed the Valley, but many did. Others, however, remained and weathered the brutal winter of 1864-1865 by sharing scarce food, huddling in the houses that Sheridan’s men did not burn, and surviving in the most primitive conditions imaginable.2

Elwood Yoder

Third, there are parallels between how Mennonites in Virginia responded to the burning of the Valley in 1864-65 and how Anabaptist Mennonites in Venezuela responded to the 2026 bombings. While there was heightened anxiety in Rockingham County, and church life was disrupted, the continuities of nonviolence, peace, and community support remained steady. Today, Mennonites in Venezuela continue to trust in God, seek peace for their country, and do not want to leave unless they must.3

In my study of Mennonites during the American Civil War, the resilience of Catherine and Samuel Shank has inspired me. Even when Union soldiers burned their house and barn on October 6, 1864, they exhibited the better angels of their nature.

On that fiery day of burning, Catherine Rhodes Shank protected her five children, all under the age of ten. She watched her recently ordained minister husband race into the house to try to save a few things. He rescued a small table and the family Bible. To save him from burning, Union soldiers stopped him from reentering the inferno.4

During the winter after the burning, 1864-1865, the family first found refuge at Catherine’s brother’s home. Then the Shanks lived in their small spring house while they rebuilt. From a kiln they constructed and from clay they dug from their nearby orchard, they made bricks for their new home, which the family constructed. They also built a new barn. Catherine had one more child after the Civil War, born five years before she passed away in 1875, at the age of 43, from pneumonia.5

From the ashes of their farm rose a new house and a new barn. Catherine made all the family’s clothing without a sewing machine, and three of her sons were later ordained ministers in the Mennonite church. One of Catherine’s cousins, Henry E. Rhodes, was among a group of barn builders who worked hard in the years after the war, rebuilding barns from the ashes across the Shenandoah Valley, like flowers blooming in springtime.

Despite political turmoil, war, or economic uncertainties, we can exhibit the better angels of our nature, as Abraham Lincoln called for in his first inaugural address. Whether after Sheridan’s fires that destroyed barns, fences, mills, and houses, or amidst the uncertainties faced by Venezuelan Anabaptist Mennonites, we must choose how to respond. The better angels of our nature, including peace, nonviolence, trust in community, and faith in God’s providence, seem the better course to take.

  1. “Membership, Map and Statistics,” Mennonite World Conference, November 28, 2025, https://mwc-cmm.org/en/membership-map-and-statistics/. ↩︎
  2. Elwood Yoder, Shenandoah Mennonite Historian 22, no. 4 (Autumn 2014): 2–5. ↩︎
  3. Karla Braun, “A Pastoral Letter Regarding Anabaptists in Venezuela,” Mennonite World Conference, January 8, 2026, https://mwc-cmm.org/en/stories/pastoral-letter-venezuela/. ↩︎
  4. Elwood E. Yoder, Under the Oaks: A History of Trissels Mennonite Church, Broadway, Virginia, 1822-2022 (Broadway, Va.: Trissels Mennonite Church, 2022), 26-27; 49-56. ↩︎
  5. Steven M. Nolt and Elwood E. Yoder, People of Peace: A History of the Virginia Mennonite Conference (Morgantown, PA: Masthof Press, 2025), 57; 63-64. ↩︎

Anabaptism, Church, Mennonite, Virginia

A Call for Sustainable Living and a Rebirth of Anabaptism

Sam Funkhouser, a member of the Old German Baptist Brethren, New Conference, challenged approximately 80 attendees at a November 15, 2025, stewardship seminar to live in radical nonconformity to a culture deeply at odds with the gospel message of Jesus. Most of those who attended the stewardship forum at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church were Mennonites, but not all. One woman who wasn’t Mennonite attended and confirmed how relevant this was for all followers of Jesus.

Funkhouser presented with the conviction of a modern-day prophet. But with a twinkle in his eye and a smile, he said, “You invited me to come and speak.” Most at this meeting live like kings, he declared, and “Our standard of living is predicated on masses of people living in poverty around the world.” Funkhouser, with an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, used Scripture to warn against the dangers of wealth and read from a 1903 Brethren doctrinal book on nonconformity to tell the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Funkhouser concluded his call to sustainable living by reading Isaac Watts’ lyrics from an 1882 Old German Baptist Brethren hymnbook: “Come, let us search our ways and see, have they been just and right?”

Sam Funkhouser spoke at the seminar on Nov. 15, 2025, at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

Steve Pardini, Virginia Mennonite Conference Interim Chair, spoke from a scientific perspective about sustainable economics in the twenty-first century. Pardini, with a PhD in physical chemistry and an MDiv, encouraged seminar participants to consider the environmental advantages of driving electric vehicles rather than gas-powered cars. Then he explained why blue whales matter in today’s world. Europeans, with deadly harpoons and fast whaling ships, hunted blue whales to near extinction by 1900 for their blubber, a source of lamp oil, machine lubricant, and perfumes. But they are a vital part of the ocean ecosystem, eating krill and producing excrement that feeds plankton, which all sea life depends on. Plankton removes CO2 from the atmosphere and releases O2, benefitting the biosphere.

Pardini explained that while indigenous groups sustainably hunted whales for centuries, a warped sense of dominion over the planet nearly led to the blue whale’s extinction. Pardini has just released Climate Change and the Healing of Creation. This excellent 217-page book outlines a readable scientific and theological foundation for creation care, available for purchase on Amazon.

Over the lunch hour, table discussion groups enjoyed a “stone soup” stew made with chopped vegetables participants brought with them. And in the spirit of renewed concern over world neighbors in need, over $2000 was raised for the work of Mennonite Central Committee.

While the long-term impact of the seminar remains to be seen, attendees departed with a clear awareness that, for Anabaptism to survive, sustainable economic living and choices that align with the gospel call of Jesus are essential.

Amish, Church, Mennonite, Pennsylvania

Musings at a century

My father, Elmer S. Yoder, was born 100 years ago, on October 6, 1925. His Amish farming parents, in Somerset County, Pa., would not have had indoor electricity or plumbing. He was born at home, and they drove a horse and buggy to their worship services.

Elmer S. Yoder lived from 1925 to 2007. He was a writer, minister, bishop, churchman, father, grandfather, and friend to many. Read an entry about Elmer that I wrote at gameo.org.

Esther J. and Elmer S. Yoder, Hartville, Ohio, 1996.

I’m reminded of the phrase from Isaiah 61:3, “beauty from ashes.” This seems to be a metaphorical promise of God to bring transformation, joy, and beauty out of sorrow, pain, and devastation. Outside my office window on this centennial day of Elmer’s birth are a dozen small yellow crocuses in full sunlight bloom. They seem to celebrate the beauty of a life well-lived.

Crocuses in full bloom, October 6, 2025, Harrisonburg, Va.

https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Yoder,_Elmer_S._(1925-2007)

Church, Mennonite, Virginia

The history book has arrived!

On August 1, 2025, I drove to Morgantown, Pa., to pick up copies of a new history book. I’m a co-author, along with Steve Nolt, of People of Peace: A History of the Virginia Mennonite Conference.

I’ve been selling and distributing copies of the 526-page hardback book to those who contributed and to churches that supported us throughout the past four years of work.

Our book release took place at the annual Virginia Mennonite Conference Assembly, August 21-23, 2025. I continue to sell books from my home. Many have expressed appreciation for the book.

Ken Weaver (left) and Elwood Yoder sold books at the Virginia Mennonite Conference event held at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va., August 23, 2025. (Joy Yoder photo)

I’m grateful for the professional work of co-author Steve Nolt, who is the director of the Young Center at Elizabethtown College, Pa. Many people helped by reading chapters, editing, and simply encouraging me. A special shout-out goes to the Zion Mennonite Church, Broadway, Virginia, for supporting the book project.

Purchase a copy by contacting Elwood Yoder (elyoder@gmail.com) or at Amazon.com or at Masthof.com.

Church

Pope Leo XIV, a Bridge Builder

The selection of Pope Leo XIV as the new head of the Catholic Church is encouraging because of his call for “missionary outreach,” building bridges of understanding, and his identification with “ordinary people.” As the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics globally, Leo can call for peace and justice, seek harmony between leaders, and invite people to faith in God.

Leo XIV understands the encroachment of current world values on those who seek to be faithful. In the context of power, wealth, and technology, Leo accurately said that some see the Christian faith as “absurd.”1 But without faith, Leo stated, comes a loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, violations of human dignity, and many other human wounds. These are profound thoughts from a global leader of the Christian faith.

When the Vatican announced his selection, the world slowed to consider matters of faith and religion. For a time, the news cycles wrote and spoke about faith, equity, and human dignity. These give us hope in our world today.

Recently, Anabaptist leaders from sixteen countries across the Americas met in Cusco, Peru, to mark the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.2 Indigenous congregations from Peru and Ecuador participated. Pope Leo XIV has long been a missionary in Peru, and we applaud the new pontiff’s missionary spirit and work. May God bless his holy work as he seeks to build bridges between people and groups in the twenty-first century.

  1. Frances Mao, bbc.com/news, “Pope Leo XIV calls Church ‘a beacon to illuminate dark nights’ in first mass,” May 9, 2025. ↩︎
  2. “Trails of blood, sweat and tears,” mwc-cmm.org, March 27, 2025. ↩︎