Upcoming Events
All events are open to the public, and all are free of charge.
For events in the Bucher Meetinghouse, use “450 Campus Road, Elizabethtown, PA” in your navigation app. Although not an actual physical address, it will place you close to the entrance of the Young Center parking lot. Then use the building’s main entrance—beside the Young Center sign—to access the meetinghouse.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026 • 7 pm • Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Peggy Turner's Legacy: African American Reformed Mennonites
Starting with Peggy Turner's conversion in the 1840s, the Reformed Mennonites were the first American Mennonite group to have African American members. They continue to have Black members up to the present. What is there about Reformed Mennonites that enabled them to incorporate African Americans into their community decades before any other Mennonite group? How did African American members’ stories of conversion and incorporation counter the prevailing racism that they faced in other spheres of life? Did that same racism impact their place within the Reformed Mennonite Church?
Edsel Burdge Jr. is the research associate at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. He is the editor of volume 3 of Documents of Brotherly Love: Dutch Mennonite Aid to Swiss Anabaptists, 1712-1784 (Ohio Amish Library, 2023) and coauthor with Samuel L. Horst of Building on the Gospel Foundation: The Mennonites of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Washington County, Maryland, 1730–1970 (Herald Press, 2004). He holds an MA in history from Villanova University.
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