Bethel College - Graymaroon Yearbook (North Newton, KS)

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CONTENTS History and Administration Classes and Curriculum Extra-Curricular Activities The Five-Year Program Laboratory ot Lite

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DEDICATIGN I To Chrxst to Chrlstlan truth and 1deal1sm has enabled them to leave for the youth of Amerlca th1s legacy Bethel College And to those pioneers whose unselfish devotion and loyal adherence

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WHO ARE THE MENNONITES? ln W ' wa , Nmfxx if S.. 1...-F., lv l Agiwf fl --q ' UIUQIIBIIHIKQKQ ll!lllil NWI! I F 5 if- l ff fffi .rf , ' ,,,,. nv-'Y' I ,M-BAA.:-'S ! E Q, 'fjgzwwinniwdf N i s frlf lllllllllill , tri ' ' Q M , jd fi will , f lllllllittcii ', ' ' ... - L . : Q' yx?uuni.45'4 , 9 2-WB x I 'UH ll , --rl' I- I fn. ' x . - 'Ili fl , M -' M 'ir 5 ... -..-.a.. li- ' , - l ff' . '- I If 1 ' A sketch of Menno Simons from whom the Mennonite-s took their name. As printers were forbidden to publish his writings. he set up his The first German settlement in America was Germantown, and the first German settlers were Mennonites. .... On October 6, 1683, the ship Concord arrived in Philadelphia bringing thirteen Mennonite families.-Sweet, The Story of Reli- gions in America. Who are the Mennonites? Whence came they? Why did they come? What have they done and where did they obtain the inspiration that impelled them to build institutions such as Bethel? The history of the Mennonites is long and honorable. I1 starts clear back in the first days of the great Reformation. When Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were carving their mighty Protestant sects out of the heart of Europe, a little group of leaders, with beliefs more liberal even than those great religious heads entertained, were meeting in private homes at own press and printed them himself. Date 1552. Zurich, Switzerland, to pray and study the Word of God. The tenets upon which these so-called Anabaptists stood were few and simple and may be summed up as follows: The church was a voluntary group of believers, banded together to worship. Adult baptism on confession of faith alone was accepted as an initiatory symbol into the church. The Bible was the only guide to faith and practice. The New Testament was preferred to the Old as an authority. All temporal matters were shunned. Yet obedience to the rulers and cheerful payments of taxes to support the government were taught. The Christian could not take up the sword. Surely no simpler, purer faith was ever expounded. Yet because it dissented from some of the forms practiced by the existing churches, its members became the objectives of a furious persecution. Leader after leader was arrested, tortured and martyred. The rank and file were harried from one country to another, and all in the fair name of religion. Upon this troubled stage walked a humble man from Holland in the year 1531. He was Menno Simons, who had been reared in the Catholic priesthood, and had renounced the life of ease and security, when a study of the writings of Luther and other Protestant leaders, together with his own study of the Bible, convinced him he must espouse the new faith. From the first he was a power. He wrote brilliantly and voluminously, explaining the teachings Who Are the Mennonitesf' The Settlement in Kansas. The Contribution to Kansas. and Bethel College-Its History are taken from a pamphlet by A. J. Graber. Back of lieth:-I Colle-go, The Mennonite Story. f 7