Events

War monuments, cenotaphs and honour rolls remind us daily of the most dramatic and familiar stories of war.  This exhibit tells war stories of a different kind, and lays out an alternative memorial landscape—the landscape of nonresistance.

These stories are gleaned from letters, diaries, newspapers, photographs, government documents and family histories found in the Mennonite Archives of Ontario. Together, they paint a picture of the Great War from a “peace church” perspective.

In this exhibit, artist Catherine Dallaire re-examines the original Indigenous values in animal and plant life that are often vilified by contemporary Western settler culture. Building understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews is an important step towards peace and conciliation in the Canadian context. Creating space for Indigenous wisdom to guide culture and policy is an integral part of building peace and justice.

Exhibit Launch

The 2019 Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist-Mennonite Studies will host Dr. Irma Fast Dueck from Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg. Fast Dueck is a practical theologian whose lecture will explore the topic of young people in the Mennonite church today.

Join us for a public lecture on reclaiming baptism in an Anabaptist church.

Baptism is one of the most primordial of Christian practices and until recently, has been a defining act, marking the believer as Christian and initiating them into the Christian community. For the early Anabaptists, critical of the sacramentalism of the medieval church, this primitive act of pouring water on heads was hardly a benign act, as that act of pouring eventually resulted, for many of them, in their own martyrdom. Indeed, for the early Anabaptists, the practice of baptism was a political act. The past couple of decades have presented serious challenges for those practicing baptism in the Anabaptist tradition—do Christians even need to be baptised?  Does baptism require church membership? This lecture will explore the contemporary practice of baptism in the Anabaptist tradition in light of these challenges. Baptism is not simply an event in time but it carries within it the contours of the Christian life. Baptism fuels the Anabaptist imagination for peace and justice. 

Reception to follow.