About Mennonite Weekly Review

Mennonite Weekly Review

The Mennonite Weekly Review was an inter-Mennonite newspaper published weekly in Newton, Kansas, beginning in September 1923. It was issued by the Herald Publishing Company as an English-language companion to the company's German paper, Der Herold, at a moment when English was rapidly replacing German among younger Mennonites in the central West. After a first decade of mostly local circulation, it grew into a self-described Mennonite family paper published in the interest of Mennonites everywhere, with readers in most branches of Mennonites throughout North America. On April 2, 2012, it changed its name to Mennonite World Review and became a biweekly. In September 2020 it merged with The Mennonite, the magazine of Mennonite Church USA, to create Anabaptist World, based in the Review's former Newton office — completing a ninety-seven-year run under its successive names.

Origins at the Herald Publishing Company

The newspaper grew out of a deliberate publishing strategy. The Herald Publishing Company was organized in Newton in 1920, and, as its president H. P. Krehbiel explained when the new paper was introduced, the company's principal purpose had been to create an institution through which literature in the German language would continue to be prepared, published and circulated for Mennonite people. But the company also recognized that in the central West the English language was rapidly coming into prominence among the rising generation. About a year before the launch, it decided to establish an English Mennonite periodical suited particularly to the needs of the Middle West. The Mennonite Weekly Review was the result: an English paper from a German-language house, created so that a linguistic transition would not break the reading habits — or the fellowship — of Kansas Mennonite families.

The First Issues in 1923

The paper first appeared in an introductory issue dated August 9, 1923, published as a supplement of Der Herold, the Herald Publishing Company's German newspaper. Regular and independent publication began on September 18, 1923, as a four-page, six-column paper. It gradually expanded to six and then eight pages, with space devoted to family, church and community events, articles on current issues, school reports and a summary of news from around the world. That early formula is worth noting, because it defined the paper for decades: the Review was never only a church bulletin and never only a secular weekly, but a family paper in which a baptism, a school report and a wire summary of world affairs belonged in the same issue, read at the same kitchen tables.

From Local Paper to a Paper for Mennonites Everywhere

For roughly its first ten years, the Review circulated mostly locally, in and around the Mennonite settlements of south-central Kansas. Newton itself, in Harvey County, sat amid one of the densest Mennonite populations in America, near Bethel College in North Newton and the communities of Hillsboro, Goessel and Halstead. In time, however, the paper assumed a wider character, presenting itself as a Mennonite family paper published in the interest of Mennonites everywhere. Its readership extended into most branches of Mennonites throughout North America — a notable achievement for an independent paper, since the Mennonite world was divided among numerous conferences and traditions that each had their own official organs. The Review's inter-Mennonite stance, answerable to no single denomination, became its defining identity and the reason it could later plausibly claim to put the Mennonite world together.

Editors and Contributors

The paper's early editorial succession is recorded in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, whose entry on the paper was written by one of its own editors. A. J. Krehbiel edited the Review from 1923 to 1925, followed by H. P. Krehbiel, the publishing company's president, from 1926 to 1935. Menno Schrag then became editor in 1935 and held the post for decades; he had already served the paper as assistant editor in 1927–28 and again from 1931 to 1935, underlining how much of the Review's character was formed inside one small Newton office. Other assistant and associate editors in the early period included Abe Epp in 1925–26, Ferdinand Wiens from 1928 to 1930, and J. Richard Blosser as associate editor from 1946. Over the years the paper carried special columnists and contributors including Peter Brown, J. Winfield Fretz, Melvin Gingerich, Cornelius Krahn, John P. Suderman, Andrew R. Shelly and Ida M. Yoder — names that recur across twentieth-century Mennonite scholarship and church life, and whose presence gave the weekly a reach well beyond its Kansas base. In its later decades the paper was edited by Paul Schrag, whose editorials were quoted in national coverage of Mennonite affairs.

Format Changes and the Tabloid Era

Like most American weeklies, the Review changed physically as printing economics changed. From the original four-page, six-column sheet it grew to six and eight pages, and in 1951 it adopted a twelve-page tabloid format. Library holdings trace its steady weekly rhythm across the century: the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, for example, holds long runs of the paper, notes that the years 1984 and 1985 were both published as volume 62 and that there is no volume 69 — the small irregularities of a real, continuously produced newspaper — and records the title running from 1923 forward in Newton. The paper's obituary columns became a resource in their own right: the Mennonite Library and Archives at Bethel College maintains an index category for Mennonite Weekly Review obituaries, which genealogists use to trace Kansas Mennonite families.

The Paper's Voice in Mennonite Public Life

Although independent, the Review was never neutral about the survival of its community. Its pages followed the questions that pressed on Kansas Mennonites: military conscription and alternative service on the eve of the Second World War — when its editor Menno Schrag and the Herald company's German editor chose and framed election news with a discernible Republican lean, in a community deeply concerned about the draft — and, a generation later, the Vietnam War, when the paper's editorials worried over student peace protests at Bethel College and asked what effect the college's witness would have on the wider church. In the twenty-first century, editor Paul Schrag's editorials proposed structural answers to denominational decline, suggesting at one point that a denomination in a time of declining loyalty and growing conflict might give way to a looser alliance bound by basic tenets of faith rather than by fights over sexuality — an argument quoted by Religion News Service in its coverage of Mennonite Church USA. That willingness to address the whole church, critically and constructively, is what distinguished a family paper from a house organ.

Renamed Mennonite World Review in 2012

On April 2, 2012, the periodical's name changed to Mennonite World Review, and its frequency changed from weekly to biweekly. The new name stated plainly what the paper had long claimed to do: its website carried the tagline about putting the Mennonite world together, and its coverage ranged across conferences and countries rather than within a single denomination. The Newton office remained its home, as Newton had been since 1923. The change also acknowledged reality — few denominational papers could sustain a weekly print schedule in the digital era — while preserving the Review's independence, its subscriber base and its ninety-year continuity of volume numbering, which library records follow straight through the rename.

Merger Into Anabaptist World in 2020

The final transformation came in 2020. An earlier exploration of a merger had been dropped when The Mennonite's board withdrew from the process after failing to reach agreement with the Mennonite Church USA board, but the logic of combining an independent newspaper with a denominational magazine eventually prevailed. On September 1, 2020, the two publishers merged to create a new nonprofit, Anabaptist World Inc., based in the former Mennonite World Review office in Newton, Kansas. The new print magazine debuted with the mailing of its first issue on September 18, 2020, with about 8,200 paying subscribers. Former Mennonite World Review editor Paul Schrag continued as editor of Anabaptist World, and Danielle Klotz of Goshen, Indiana, served as executive director and chief executive of the new organization. The combined publication was charged with continuing both missions: serving the members of Mennonite Church USA, as The Mennonite had done, and independently covering all Mennonite groups and the global Anabaptist movement, as the Review had done since 1923. Mennonite Church USA subsequently amended its bylaws to remove The Mennonite as a church entity, recognizing the new organization as an independent media ministry.

Legacy

The Mennonite Weekly Review's ninety-seven years under its three names trace the arc of Mennonite life in America: a German-language community founding an English paper for its children in 1923; a local Kansas weekly becoming the family paper of a continent-wide people; an independent newsroom surviving the collapse of denominational publishing by merging on terms that preserved its independence and its Newton home. Its back file — indexed for obituaries, held by Mennonite libraries in Kansas and Manitoba, and continued digitally by Anabaptist World — remains one of the standard sources for the social history of North American Mennonites, precisely because it recorded family, church and community events alongside world news for nearly a century.

At a Glance

The Mennonite Weekly Review was first issued on August 9, 1923, as a supplement of Der Herold in Newton, Kansas, and began regular independent publication on September 18, 1923, under the Herald Publishing Company. Edited successively by A. J. Krehbiel, H. P. Krehbiel and, from 1935, Menno Schrag, it adopted a tabloid format in 1951, was renamed Mennonite World Review on April 2, 2012, and merged with The Mennonite in September 2020 to create Anabaptist World.