MWR : Articles : On My Desk by Juhnke

Last updated November 11.

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Articles : On My Desk by Juhnke

Martyr we remember most

On my desk is Dirk Willems: His Noble Deed Lives On by David Luthy, published by Pathway Publishers, Aylmer Ont., and LaGrange, Ind., 2011, 82 pages, $8.

Dirk Willems is a book of images and stories about the most famous Anabaptist martyr of the 16th century. On May 16, 1569, Willems was burned at the stake as a heretic outside Asperen, Holland. His story is memorable because of his self-sacrificial return from his escape to rescue his drowning pursuer.

Questions frame a memoir

On my desk is Water from Another Time: Today’s Questions, Yesterday’s Wisdom by Berry Friesen, published by Masthof Press, Morgantown, Pa., 2010, 209 pages, $15.

Third book of global history

On my desk is Mission and Migration by Jaime Prieto Valladares, published by Good Books and Pandora Press, 2010, 324 pages, $11.95. It is a general history of Anabaptist- Mennonites in Latin America, the third volume in the Global Mennonite History series.

Iran visit breaks stereotypes

On my desk is An American in Persia: A Pilgrimage to Iran by Richard A. Kauffman, published by Cascadia, 2010, 128 pages, $12.95.

Peace and Pentecostalism

On my desk are two books by Paul Alexander, a young scholar from the Assemblies of God, both published in 2009. Written first was Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God, published by Cascadia Publishing House, Telford, Pa. It chronicles and laments the transition of the Assemblies of God from pacifism to militarism. The second is Signs and Wonders: Why Pentecostalism Is the World’s Fastest Growing Faith, published by Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. It explains the explosive worldwide growth of the Pentecostal movement.

Communal, yet lonely

On my desk is a creative autobiographical reflection, Nightwatch: An Inquiry into Solitude, Alone on the Prairie With the Hutterites, published by Good Books, Intercourse, Pa., 2009, 202 pages, $9.95.

Conflict grows from revival

On my desk is a historical novel about church conflict and schism growing out of charismatic revivalism in the Lancaster Conference of eastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s: He Flew Too High by Ken Yoder Reed, published by WinePress Publishing, 2009, 350 pages, $21.99.

A history of peace

On my desk is Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas by David Cortright, published by Cambridge University Press, 2008, 376 pages, $29.99 paper, $90 hardback.