2016 Eby Lecture

"The Bottle, the Dagger, and The Ring: Church Discipline and Dutch Mennonite Identity in the Seventeenth Century."

This lecture will look at 150 years of church discipline by the Mennonites in Amsterdam for what it can tell us about Mennonites' changing place in the society of the Dutch Republic during the young country's "Golden Age." As the Dutch Mennonites disciplined their members, they created a public reputation as obedient subjects that they then used on behalf of repressed Anabaptists in other parts of Europe.