Upcoming Events
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.
Thursday, September 19, 2024 • 7:00 pm • Bucher Meetinghouse
LECTURE
Discovering Fianna Bucher Meyer
Who was Fianna Bucher Meyer? She was an Elizabethtown College student (1907–1908) from a family of Brethren leaders, a young mother, and a victim of tuberculosis. She was also grandmother to Nancy L. Bieber (’67), who discovered her grandmother when she unearthed boxes of letters in the attic a century after Fianna’s death. Bieber will talk about this discovery and how her research uncovered more about Fianna’s life.
Nancy L. Bieber is a spiritual director, writer, and retired psychologist. She is the author of Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment: The Sacred Art of Finding Your Way (SkyLight Paths, 2010) and Fianna’s Story: A True Story of Love, Grief, and Faith (Masthof Press, 2020). Copies of Fianna's Story will be available for sale and signing after the lecture.
Saturday, September 21, 2024 • 9:00 am to 3:00 pm • Bucher Meetinghouse
SYMPOSIUM
What Does It Mean to Be Church? Anabaptist and Pietist Perspectives
This event will provide a setting for members of various Brethren and Mennonite groups of Plain or mainline identity to discuss their concepts of church and the similarities or differences they notice among various groups. The symposium leaders—Tony Walsh, director of the Centre for the Study of Irish Protestantism at Maynooth University, Ireland, and the Young Center’s 2018 Kreider Fellow; Sam Funkhouser, director of the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Virginia; and Jeff Bach, director of the Young Center emeritus—will add comments about the contributions from the Anabaptist and Pietist movements in shaping past and present views on church.
Registration is not required for the symposium, and lunch will be provided. For more information about the symposium, contact Jeff Bach at bachja58@gmail.com. Church of the Brethren ministers who would like CEUs should contact the Susquehanna Valley Ministry Center (SVMC) at SVMC@SVMCcob.org or 717-361-1450.
Monday, October 21, 2024 • 7:00 pm • Leffler Chapel and Performance Center
CONCERT
Celebrating the Music of Ephrata with Ephrata Cloister Chorus
For this concert, Ephrata Cloister Chorus will perform four pieces composed at Ephrata and found in the Ephrata Cloister’s 1739 hymnal, Zionitischer Weyrauchs-Hügel. The program will also include music composed at the Lititz Moravian community; selections from the Shaker community of Mt. Lebanon, New York; music of William Billings; African American Spiritual hymnody; and several contemporary sacred anthems.
Preceding the concert, Archivist Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh will describe extensive conservation work completed in 2023 on two rare Ephrata music manuscript books housed in Elizabethtown College’s Hess Archives and Special Collections. Both books were created by hand at the Cloister in the mid-eighteenth century and contain beautiful examples of Pennsylvania German Fraktur.
Ephrata Cloister Chorus is an educational arm of the Ephrata Cloister Associates and the historic site. The group currently has 25 members and is under the direction of Rev. Mark V. Herr and accompanied by Juliet Mitton. This event is part of the School of Arts and Humanities’ Monday Series Concerts and is cosponsored by the Young Center.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024 • 7:00 pm • Bucher Meetinghouse
SNOWDEN LECTURE
Open to the Spirit: On Writing a New History of the Brethren in Christ Church in the Twentieth Century
For nearly 50 years, the standard history of the Brethren in Christ Church has been Carlton O. Wittlinger’s Quest for Piety and Obedience (published in 1978). Like much scholarship produced by Anabaptist historians in this generation, Wittlinger’s study emphasized institutional developments and theological change. Since the 1970s, the arrival of social and cultural analysis has transformed the historiographical scene, but to date no major study of the Brethren in Christ has incorporated these trends. In this talk, Devin Manzullo-Thomas will discuss his forthcoming book, Open to the Spirit, and the opportunities provided by centering women, racial and ethnic minorities, politics, economics, and related matters in telling a richer and more robust story of the Brethren in Christ community in the United States and Canada.
Devin Manzullo-Thomas is assistant professor of American religious history at Messiah University, where he also serves as director of the E. Morris and Leone Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies and as director of archives.
Videos of Past Events