Although most of the stories of the Bearing Witness site come from decades, or even centuries, ago, we also highlight current, ongoing stories of costly discipleship through this blog and our Facebook page. In those spaces over the past few months, we’ve featured the stories of two young men—one a Mennonite from South Korea and Keep Reading…
John Schrag was a prosperous Mennonite farmer who lived Harvey County, Kansas. He was a member of the Hoffnungsfeld (Hopefield) Mennonite Church. In 1917 when the United States went to war against Germany, Schrag refused to buy bonds to help pay for the war. Many Mennonites reasoned that war bonds were like taxes. Payment could Keep Reading…
By John D. Roth It was one of the passages narrating the week of Jesus’ passion that first led Sang-Min Lee to consider the way of peace. Soon after he became a Christian, Lee was moved by Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies, especially his rebuke to Peter for defending him with a sword in Keep Reading…
Gjorgje Nikolic wrote well. He loved to write, and with a job for a paper like Belgrade’s Politika, just after World War I, he had great opportunities. With the opportunities came a deeply troubling experience. In the fall of 1926 the reporting manager of Politika sent him to observe a strange case before the Danube Keep Reading…
Of the many accounts of war resistance during the First World War, there are few more harrowing than the story of the four Hutterites who were imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth in 1918. The Hutterites are descendants of a large group of Austrian peasants who broke away from the Catholic church in the sixteenth century, living Keep Reading…