Description

Class Summary

The character of Living Branches is the fruit of a quarter millennium of Mennonite community in the Delaware Valley. This course will explore why and how this community assembled from half a dozen European sources spread over present-day Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, and Northampton counties. Learn about the creation of a range of institutions beyond home and church life from which Living Branches began and the Dock community was gathered in the 1980s. Attention will be given to the values and parochial limits of the local Mennonite tradition.

About the Instructor

John Landis Ruth, Ph.D. was ordained a minister in the Franconia Mennonite Conference at the age of 20. He graduated from Eastern Baptist College and Harvard University. After 14 years of teaching English at Eastern University, he accepted an invitation from the Franconia Mennonite Conference to take up historical work. Among his books are Conrad Grebel, Son of Zurich; ‘Twas Seeding Time’: A Mennonite View of the American Revolution; The History of the Indian Valley and its Bank; Maintaining the Right Fellowship; A Quiet and Peaceable Life; The Earth is the Lord’s: A Narrative History of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference; Forgiveness: A Legacy of the West Nickel Mines Amish School; Branch: A Memoir With Pictures; and This Very Ground, This Crooked Affair: A Mennonite Homestead on Lenape Land.