Thursday, April 26 at 7 p.m. in Hoover 110, the large room was completely filled with students, faculty and members of the community all anticipating the start of the lecture titled, “World War I and Lancaster Peace Churches.”
High Library Director Sarah Penniman got the event started by introducing the guest speaker, professor of history Dr. Steve Nolt.
In the presentation, Nolt described the dynamics in the ways that Lancaster’s peace church people experienced wartime pressures.
The lecture explained their convictions to their neighbors and to the government and the struggle to know how to help those suffering from the war’s effects.
While World War I was being waged in Europe, members of Mennonite and Brethren churches on the home front faced military conscription, government surveillance and intense pressure to buy war bonds.
In 1917, conscription law was ambiguous with regard to conscientious objection, although peace church members ultimately found a political ally in Lancaster County Congressman W. W. Griest.
Nolt went through the concepts of his presentation by talking about the war, the churches focused in the Lancaster County and the legacies that were left for people due to the course of events.
Three important legacies Nolt noted at the end of the lecture were the proper preparations for the next possible war, stressing the idea of teaching more of the church’s philosophy of peace-making to build more awareness and how it brought Mennonite Relief Commission aid in war sufferers.
Nolt is a senior scholar at the Young Center at Elizabethtown College.
“This is a part of the College’s heritage as it was chartered by members of the Church of the Brethren,” Nolt said. “I wanted the audience to see the complexity of the struggles and things that people in that time had to deal with.”
Junior Abby Drumheller, a student in REL 103: Religion and Nonviolence with associate professor of religious studies Dr. Michael Long, gave her thoughts on the lecture.
“It was very informational. I loved learning about a group of people who directly influenced this campus, but whose history is seldom spoken about,” she said.
This talk had many cosponsors, including the High Library, the Young Center and the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking.
Along with Penniman, archivist Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh and instruction and outreach librarian Joshua Cohen worked very closely with the Young Center to set up this lecture.
The talk was held in relation to promoting the “Voices of Conscience: Peace Witness in the Great War,” a national touring exhibition from Bethel College’s Kauffman Museum.
The exhibit includes men and women, religious believers and secular humanitarians, political protesters and sectarian separatists.
“Voices of Conscience” lifts up the predictive insights and the personal courage of WWI peace protesters and indicates parallels to the cultures of war and violence going on in the world today.
“It explores the experiences of conscientious objectors during World War I,” Penniman said.
After the presentation, Nolt took questions to further the discussion, and the audience became very eager to go over to the library to check out the exhibit.
Now on display, the exhibit runs until June 20.
