Steve Nolt to give C. Henry Smith peace lecture March 20

Henry Smith Peace Lecture: Steve Nolt: “Debating Conscientious Objection: Place, Race, and Pacifism among Virginia Mennonites in the 1990s”
Date and Time: Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Administration Building, Room 28
Cost: Free and open to the public

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Dr. Steven M. Nolt, senior scholar at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies and a professor of history at Elizabethtown College, and former Goshen College history professor, will present the C. Henry Smith Peace Lecture, titled “Debating Conscientious Objection: Place, Race, and Pacifism among Virginia Mennonites in the 1990s,” on Tuesday, March 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Administration Building, Room 28

By the late twentieth century Virginia’s Tidewater area had become home to a concentration of military bases and contractors. Collectively, these entities represented an unparalleled slice of the regional job market and employed some members of the area’s Mennonite churches, including growing African-American-led congregations. In 1990 Virginia Mennonites began an intense and revealing discussion of the meaning of conscientious objection in a context shaped by implications of race and place, peace and privilege, conviction and forbearance. The lecture will explore that debate and its legacy.

Nolt received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Notre Dame and holds a graduate theology degree from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Nolt is the author or coauthor of fifteen books on Amish, Mennonite, and Pennsylvania German history and contemporary life. He also serves as the series editor for Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.