In previous episodes with Paul Lamicela, the audience asked many questions about the book of Revelation. Here Paul engages with some of these questions and defines some of the discussion around the rapture, the tribulation, and the millennium. Resources referenced in this episode: The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary Discontinuity t…

Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city's expansive and sprawling peripheral communities. Based on sensory ethnographic fieldwork and attuned to religious desire and manipulation, this book shows how Evangelical belief has changed the way peop…

Yuriy Kravets tells the story of his interactions with Anabaptists in different parts of the world and discusses portions of global Anabaptist history. Why did Anabaptists scatter to begin with? What happened to those who fled persecution to the East, instead of traveling west to America? What can we learn from the global Anabaptist community today…

In this important body of theology, key writings from the Chinese house church movement have been compiled, translated, and made accessible to English speakers. The documents in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement (IVP Academic, 2022) give readers an inside look at how the unregistered churches o…

Ruth Anna Kuhns shares from her personal experience as an educator who experienced teacher burnout. She shares tools for promoting sustainable teaching and avoiding unnecessary teacher turnover. Thriving teachers have greater opportunities to create engaging educational experiences for children. Our First Episode with Ruth Anna This is the 274th ep…

While books on a New Testament theology of mission abound, most of them focus on tried-and-true Scripture passages from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles while ignoring the contribution of the General Epistles. Reading James Missiologically: The Missionary Motive, Message, and Methods of James (William Carey, 2025) addresses this gap in miss…

Tania Taylor enlisted in the United States Army along with her husband, Dean Taylor. They were stationed in West Germany during the Cold War, and during that time they came to believe in nonresistance and enemy love. She and her husband filed for conscientious objector status from the Army. After leaving the Army they joined a new church group with…

Jonathan Teubner, Charity After Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West (Oxford UP, 2025) Through a unique blend of the personal and historiographical, Charity after Augustine is an exploration of why the Augustinian tradition’s attempts to build solidarity or social cohesion in the societies of the Latin Wes…

Anabaptists have been known for their refusal to use the power of the state to accomplish Christian goals. Dan Ziegler warns that Anabaptists on both the left and the right are losing this commitment. He calls us back to a biblical understanding of the two kingdoms for the sake of the church and her ministry.…

The term “faith” in our English Bibles could often better be translated as allegiance—or so argues Matthew Bates. The term “allegiance” better captures both the authentic relational import of faith and its relationship to the royal gospel of Jesus, who is Christ the King. Taking seriously both the nature of the Gospel as a proclamation of kingship,…

Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once the objects of American missionary efforts, in recent years Copts have been in the spotlight for their Christianity. A spate of ISIS-related bombings and attacks have garnered worldwide atten…

Hew Gregory-Smith was an Anglican vicar and missionary from the United Kingdom. Hew began a long journey of reexamining his beliefs after he encountered challenges to what he believed and taught. Eventually, this led him to the teachings of the Anabaptists, and he moved his family to Ireland to join a Mennonite church there. In this episode Hew sha…

A listener asked: “Which early church creeds can Anabaptists affirm?” Jaran, Marlin, and Reagan discuss how the Anabaptists have engaged with the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed. What did the early Anabaptists believe about the Creeds? The Complete Writings of Menno Simons: Anabaptism in Outline: Song II from the Ausbund: Lecture on the Trinit…

Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just as the European imperial powers were encroaching on Southeast Asia. They brought with them modern science and technology, which was of interest to the Siamese elite, but at the same time they challeng…

Fred Saldana was a US Marine during the Vietnam War whose platoon saw intense combat during the Tet Offensive and other significant battles throughout the war. Wounded many times and awarded multiple Purple Hearts, Fred eventually left the Marine Corp full of bitterness, trauma, and anger. For years afterwards he searched for meaning, and ultimatel…

When we are young life is filled with ambitions, dreams, and possibilities, but life happens and we easily become cynical. Merle Burkholder gives practical steps and challenges us to become people who do the work God has given us to do. Read the essay and comment at https://anabaptistperspectives.org/essays/how-passionate-25-year-olds-become-fruitf…

The purpose of Evil: A North Korean Christian Refugee Perspective (American Society of Missiology, 2024) is to describe how the North Korean refugee understanding of evil can shape missionary practice in the Korean Peninsula. The central research question guiding this study is, How do North Korean Christian refugees describe evil based on their liv…

Do the debates about Christianity that stirred so much violence in the 1500’s still matter? Stephen Russell and Dean Taylor emphasize the importance of a believer’s church and the church refusing to adopt governmental power. “The same theology in similar circumstances will likely produce similar results” Love Is Like a Fire: Stephen Russell talks a…

Why did so many rulers throughout history risk converting to a new religion brought by outsiders? In his award-winning Unearthly Powers (2019), Dr. Alan Strathern set out a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between religion and political authority based on a distinction between two kinds of religion - immanentism and transcendent…

Jeff and Deana Swanson spent years searching the Scriptures to find what Christ was calling them to. They share their story of looking for a community that they could plug into, and how they came to the Anabaptist worldview. This is the 267th episode of Anabaptist Perspectives, a podcast, blog, and YouTube channel that examines various aspects of c…

The English Bible is a translation of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. How did we get the manuscripts that Bible translations use? Why do we see differences between different translations of the Bible, and should this concern us? Andrew Lamicela pulls from his experience as a teacher of biblical Greek to explore why biblical languages mat…

The Anabaptists, alongside the Lutheran and Reformed churches, were the third major current in the sixteenth century Reformation movements. From their beginnings, the Anabaptists were highly diverse and yet they shared some central beliefs and practices for which they were quickly persecuted – for example, defenselessness and nonresistance, the ref…

A cornerstone of the evangelization of early New Spain was the conversion of Nahua boys, especially the children of elites. They were to be emissaries between Nahua society and foreign missionaries, hastening the transmission of the gospel. Under the tutelage of Franciscan friars, the boys also learned to act with militant zeal. They sermonized and…

Susie Coyne grew up in Slovakia and was part of the Gothic underground. She later became involved in New Age Spiritualism and other dark practices, and had no interest in Christianity. In this episode, Susie tells her story of how she came to see that every knew will bow to Jesus, and ultimately how her and her husband left the New Age world behind…

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? Charles Moore joins us to discuss a radical picture of truthful, peaceable, subversive allegiance to Jesus. The conversation is framed around Stanley Hauerwas’s latest book which Moore helped him produce. Moore also reflects on the significance of Hauerwas’s work for his own Christian journey and for the…

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our u…

There are many forms of addiction. What causes it? How can we relate to those suffering from an addiction, and what are tools for dealing with addictions? Michael Hochstetler, a counseling that focuses on helping those trapped in addiction, gives insight into how we as individuals and churches can properly care and help those in addiction. Essays F…

The hosts of Anabaptist Perspectives respond to concerns that some of our guests are “woke” (or associated terms). This term can be used to identify awareness of social dynamics, to advocate for specific agendas regarding gender and sexuality, or as a catch-all term of critique. The currently popular “anti-woke” movement brings its own set of dange…

Do medical "sharing plans" give an example of bearing one another's burdens or do they make us self-sufficient and individualistic? Marlin Sommers argues they are an economic tool distinct from brotherly aid. He challenges us to share to address actual needs and to pool our resources to support ambitions Christian teaching. https://anabaptistperspe…

Edsel Burdge walks us through plainness, starting with the Quakers, addressing concerns of plainness at various points of conservative Mennonite history, and makes a case for why considerations of plainness should matter to Christians today. Burdge thinks of plainness as an approach to life that identifies a person with God’s people while resisting…

Together, the adherents of Christianity and Islam make up over half of the world's population, and their numbers are expected to keep growing. The influence of these two faiths—and their relations with each other—is seen in politics, economics, and social interactions. Religious identity and aspirations remain powerful and appealing to people aroun…

Trauma is complicated, with many different opinions and stigmas surrounding it. But what are basics all of us should know about trauma, to help us be more caring and gracious towards those that have experienced it? Michael Hochstetler is a counseling that speaks from his experience of helping those who have experienced trauma. Frank Reed Course: Th…

How did Mennonite thinking develop in the two centuries after they arrived in North America? Edsel Burdge reflects on their concerns and the social conditions to which they responded. Shippensburg Christian Fellowship History Series: “Building on the Gospel Foundation” by Edsel Burdge and Samuel Horst: This is the 259th episode of Anabaptist Perspe…