Early Anabaptism in Global Perspective
July 22-24, 2025
This conference marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Anabaptism, giving special attention to the global context in which Anabaptism emerged and spread. Presentations will also consider the global reception of Anabaptist history today, particularly in light of the diffusion of Anabaptist traditions around the world. Early Anabaptist history has figured prominently as a resource for global churchly identity through scholarship, teaching, and preaching.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Nicholas Terpstra
Nicholas Terpstra is professor of history at the University of Toronto, where he has worked on questions of religion and social change in the early modern period. In books, articles, and essay collections, Terpstra has explored themes in civic religion and the care of marginalized peoples, the experience of religious refugees in the early modern period, and the Global Reformation. His most recent publication is Senses of Space in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2024). In 2024, he was appointed provost of Trinity College in the University of Toronto.
Title: Horizons of Expectation: Space, Sense, and Religious Reform in a Globalizing Age
PLENARY SPEAKERS
Kat Hill
Kat Hill is an author and researcher based in the Highlands of Scotland. Her work focuses on questions of landscape, people, and heritage in various contexts from non-conformist religious communities, including Mennonites in Europe, America, and the Global South. She is the author of the prize-winning book Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525-1585 (Oxford University Press, 2015). Her second book, Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter, was released by William Collins in 2024 and has been shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
Title: Lost and Living Pasts: Early Modern Histories and Global Mennonite Belonging
Danang Kristiawan
Born and raised in Indonesia, Danang Kristiawan is a pastor in the Gereja Injili di Tanah Jawa (GITJ), the oldest Mennonite church conference outside Europe and North America, and teaches Anabaptist history and theology at the Mennonite seminary in Pati. His primary academic interests include interreligious dialogue, religious history, pastoral pedagogy, and Anabaptist theology. Kristiawan is passionate about bringing Anabaptist-Mennonite theological and historical teaching to Indonesia in ways that translate more accurately into this cultural context.
Title: Constructing a Multi-Textual Anabaptist Theology from an Indonesian Perspective
Elizabeth Miller
Elizabeth Miller is the director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism and assistant professor of history at Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana. Before arriving at Goshen College, she worked with Anabaptist churches in Colombia and Ecuador for nine years with Mennonite Central Committee. Miller is the author of Desde el principio anabautistas: La historia de las iglesias menonitas y hermanos menonitas en Colombia, 1946-1975 and, with Lisa Weaver, of Let the Children Come to Me: Nurturing Anabaptist Faith Within Families. She lives in Goshen with her husband and two children.
Title: The Future(s) of Anabaptist History: Global Perspectives and Methods
Registration will open in early 2025.