![]() ![]() It encourages and supports missionaries sent to India, while at the same time refusing to convert the First Nation peoples of Canada who live in direct proximity to them. In the story, he portrays a community which struggles which chooses to retain its ethnic and religious integrity rather by closing in on itself against outsiders. ![]() ![]() Wiebe, a Mennonite himself, takes no measures to protect his faith’s reputation. The novel takes a starkly realistic look at the struggles of Russian Mennonites who emigrated to Canada due to famine and the onset of WWI. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Rudy Wiebe’s seminal work Peace Shall Destroy Many, one of the earliest works of Mennonite Literature published in North America. Admittedly, I struggled to find the relevance of a work of fiction in a history class, which traditionally would favor non-fiction materially. I had little awareness of this kind of writing, aside from the myriad of bonneted Harlequin paperbacks in our church library, until a professor selected Peace Shall Destroy Many as a text for his Mennonite Church History course. I would venture to say that the average reader in North America would either scratch their heads at this genre or recall authors like Beverly Lewis and Wanda Brunstetter and the abundant industry of Amish/Mennonite romance novels. Mennonite Literature, not a term often spoken of or written about in literary circles, nor is it a section that one might find at the neighborhood Barnes and Noble. Report from the Sixth Mennonite Writers’ Conference ![]()
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