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A 5-minute DVD from Mennonite World Conference, Ours to Share, communicates that the gift of receiving is as important as the gift of giving. Written by Wally Kroeker, produced and directed by Glenn Fretz, the video highlights the interaction and support provided daily among the 1.6 million members of the worldwide Anabaptist-related community of faith. Narration in English, French, German, and Spanish is available on the $15 DVD, which can be purchased through MWC offices in North America, or downloaded from the website.

—MWC
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A newly compiled collection of John Howard Yoder’s lectures and writings on just war and pacifism describes, analyzes, and evaluates patterns of thought and practice in Western Christian history. Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution is edited by Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker.

—Brazos Press
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The communal, audible tradition of reading poetry was honoured at Canadian Mennonite University with a marathon 12-hour reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost Jan. 17. Associate professor of English Paul Dyck organized the event, which featured readers from his 17th-century literature class, as well as other students, staff, and community members, giving 10–15 minute-renditions.

—CMU
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Mennonite Central Committee has created a “counter recruitment” booklet in response to the Canadian military’s efforts to engage high school, college, and university students. Is it Time to Choose Your Own Adventure? leads readers to ask questions about their motivation, conscience, realities of military life, and suggests other ways to “make a difference.”

—MCC
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Christianity Today’s 2009 book awards ranked the late MB anthropologist and missionary to India Paul G. Hiebert’s Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change as the top Mission/Global Affairs book of the year. The “penetrating and masterful study” was published by Baker Academic in 2008.

—Christianity Today
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Socially conscious documentaries abounded in 2008, including the multiple award-winning documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about a group of Liberian women whose prayers, strikes, and sit-ins eventually resulted in peace, the exile of president Charles Taylor, and election of Africa’s first female head of state. Others include As We Forgive (reconciliation after the Rwandan genocide), Call + Response (a “rockumentary” to combat human trafficking), War Child (Sudanese civil war), and Dear Zachary (a call for bail reform in Canada).

—Christianity Today

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