Crossing The Divide

the long version

This book describes how Canadian, and then particularly Manitoba, Mennonite Brethren went through a painful process of exchanging German for English as their primary language of religious discourse and nurture. This language transition was complicated by the nature of Mennonite identity, grounded as it is in religion as well as ethnicity. The profound interconnection of religion, language, and identity invested the course of language transition with deeply felt passion and anxiety. In the end, the tension was resolved in an altered identity with the boundary markers of language and ethnicity becoming increasingly subordinate to more purely religious considerations of Mennonite Brethren identity. ~from the Introduction