Chortitzer Mennonite Conference, a 1,500-member Canadian group, has begun searching for a new name. “Many times when people hear the name Chortitzer, the response is
Those issues were at the forefront of a gathering of Coming to the Table, a national organization focused on addressing the trauma that remains 150 years after the end of slavery.
“See the contrast between the two halves,” said one of the quilters. “Theirs looks a little more . . . ”
“I lived [in Austin] for a summer, and a bunch of things happened all at once,” Hostetter said.
Conversations across the Mennonite family, he said, “have loaded a lot of rhetorical freight on labels such as ‘conservative’ and ‘evangelical.’ ”
He hopes his history of a group with “conservative” in its name can contribute to current discussion and discernment.
