Public Lectures
Canadian Mennonite University presents a number of annual lecture events, including:
- J.J. Thiessen Lecture Series | October 21–22, 2025
- John & Margaret Friesen Lectures | January 22, 2026
- Scientist in Residence Lecture Series
- CSOP Lecture Series
Other past lectures
- Rev'd Dr. David Widdicombe – And His Hands Prepared the Dry Land
- Rev'd Dr. David Widdicombe Lecture – To Sow the Wind
- Winter Lecture Series
- Proclaiming the Claims of Christ Lecture Series
The J.J. Thiessen Lecture Series
Founded in 1978 by Canadian Mennonite Bible College, the J.J. Thiessen Lectures are named in honour of a founder and long-time chairperson of the CMBC Board. The lectures seek to bring to the Canadian Mennonite University community something of his breadth of vision for the church.
October 21–22, 2025
A Sacred Way of Life: Theology as a Guide to Spirituality
with Dr. Kevin Hector
These lectures explore spirituality under the rubric of sacredness: what would it look like to notice more of the sacredness around us and respond appropriately to it? They try to shed a bit of light on this question by considering three broad forms of sacredness—transcendent value, transcendent beauty, and transcendent power—and suggesting that religion can play a crucial role in helping us hold these together. The first lecture makes a general case for this approach. The second and third lectures then give an example of what this looks like. In particular, they argue that Christianity's higher-order beliefs teach us to see all things in light of God and, just so, to see the sacredness in all things; they likewise argue that Christian virtue attunes us to this sacredness. Lectures two and three, accordingly, sketch an odd sort of systematic theology—spanning revelation and faith, creation and love, consummation and hope—that can serve as a guide to spirituality.
About Dr. Hector
Kevin Hector is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor of Theology and of the Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago. He is the author of three books: Theology without Metaphysics (2011), The Theological Project of Modernism (2015), and Christianity as a Way of Life (2023). He is currently working on a book entitled A Sacred Way of Life: Theology as a Guide to Spirituality.
All lectures are free; all are welcome.
- Recordings of each lecture will be available here. -
Tuesday, October 21 | Sacredness
11:00 AM, CMU Chapel
Tuesday, October 21 | God
7:00 PM, CMU Chapel
Wednesday, October 22 | All Things
11:00 AM, CMU Chapel
Previous J.J. Thiessen Lectures
Past annual J.J. Thiessen Lectures published by CMU Press.
2024: Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology and Professor of the History of Christianity at Regent College, Vancouver, BC
Topic: "True Religion" in a Modern World: The Spiritual Theology of the Early Evangelicals"
2023: Dr. Willie James Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, Yale Divinity School
Topic: Gathering the pieces that remain: Weaving life together from the fragments of faith, race, and land
VIDEO
2022: Dr. Robin W. Jensen, Patrick O'Brien Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
Topic: Picturing the Bible: How Artists Tell the Story
VIDEOS
2021: Dr. Edith M. Humphrey, William F. Orr Professor Emerita of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA
Topic: Mediation and the Immediate God
VIDEOS
2019: Dr. Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL
Topic: Christology Revisited: Why Jesus Matters
VIDEOS
2018: Dr. John Witvliet, Director & Professor of Worship, Theology, and Congregational and Ministry Studies at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, MI
Topic: Violence, Injustice, Trauma, and the Ordinary Practices of Christian Worship in a Social Media Age
VIDEOS
2017: Dr. C. Arnold Snyder, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Waterloo
Topic: Faith and Toleration: A Reformation Debate Revisited
VIDEOS
2016: Dr. J. Richard Middleton, Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis, Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, NY
Topic: The Silence of Abraham, The Passion of Job: Explorations in the Theology of Lament
VIDEOS
2015: Dr. Darren Dochuk, Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame
Topic: Crude Awakenings: The Faith, Politics, and Crises of Oil in America's Century?
VIDEOS
2014: Dr. John Swinton, Professor and Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Topic: Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefulness and Gentle Discipleship
VIDEOS
2013: Dr. P. Travis Kroeker, Professor of Religious Studies, McMaster University
Topic: Mennonites and Mammon: Economies of Desire in a Post-Christian World
AUDIO Book
2012: Dr. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Helen H. P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary
Topic: From Powerlessness to Praise in Paul's Letter to the Romans
2011: Dr. Peter Widdicombe, McMaster University
Topic: Scripture and the Christian Imagination: Text, Doctrine, and Artistic Representation in the Early Church and Beyond
2010: Dr. Belden Lane, Saint Louis University
Topic: From Desert Christians to Mountain Refugees: Fierce Landscapes and Counter-Cultural Spirituality
AUDIO BOOK
2009: Dr. Peter Ochs, Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, University of Virginia
Topic: The Free Church and Israel's Covenant
2008: Dr. Mark Noll, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame
Topic: A Yankee Looks North: Toward an Appreciation and Assessment of the History of Christianity in Canada.
2007: Dr. Ellen Davis, Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, Duke Divinity School
Topic: Live Long on the Land: Food and Farming from a Biblical Perspective.
2006: Dr. Joel J. Shuman, King's College, Wilkes-Barre, PA
Topic: To Live is to Worship: Bioethics and the Body of Christ
BOOK
2005: Dr. Paul J. Griffiths, Schmitt Professor of Catholic Studies at University of Illinois at Chicago
Topic: The Vice of Curiosity: Towards a Theology of Intellectual Appetite
BOOK
2004: Dr. Peter C. Erb, Professor of Religion & Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario
Topic: Late Medieval Spirituality and the Sources for Peace and Reconciliation: Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich
2003: Dr. Paul G. Hiebert, Distinguished Professor of Mission and Anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Topic: Doing Missional Theology
2002: Dr. Seán Freyne, Professor of Theology in the School of Religions and Theology at Trinity College, Dublin
Topic: Jesus, Jews, and Galilee
2001: Dr. Letty M. Russell, Yale University Divinity School
Topic: Practising God's Hospitality in a World of Difference
2000: Dr. William P. Brown, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary
Topic: God and the Imagination: A Primer to Reading the Psalms in an Age of Pluralism
BOOK
1999: Dr. T.D. Regehr, Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan
Topic: Peace, Order & Good Government: Mennonites & Politics in Canada
BOOK
1998: Dr. Eugene H. Peterson, Professor of Spiritual Theology, Regent College
Topic: Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places
1997: Dr. Richard B. Hayes, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School
Topic: New Testament Ethics: The Story Retold
BOOK
1993: Dr. Phyllis A. Bird, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
Topic: Feminism and the Bible
1990: Dr. Werner O. Packull, Mennonite Archives of Ontario, Conrad Grebel University College
Topic: Rereading Anabaptist Beginnings
John and Margaret Friesen Lectures
The John and Margaret Friesen Lectures in Anabaptist/Mennonite Studies are co-sponsored by Canadian Mennonite University, the Mennonite Heritage Centre, and the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies. The inaugural lectures in November 2002 were delivered by Dr. Abraham Friesen (Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara), the generous donor who initiated the lecture series.
The Shifting National Identities of Mennonites in Polish/German Lands
with Dr. Mark Jantzen, Professor of History, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas
January 22, 2026
- 11:00 AM | CMU Chapel (600 Shaftesbury Blvd.)
- 7:00 PM | CMU Chapel
- Both lectures will be livestreamed and available for on-demand viewing later
Dr. Mark Jantzen ia a native of Nebraska and a Bethel College graduate who has lived and worked extensively in Europe. From 1988-91, he studied theology at Humboldt University in East Berlin as part of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) East Europe Study/Service Program, and from 1993-96, he worked at resource development for Bread of Life in Belgrade, Serbia, and as regional coordinator for MCC.
He is author of Mennonite German Soldiers: Nation, Religion and Family in the Prussian East, 1772-1880 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010) and The Wrong Side of the Wall: An American in East Berlin during the Peaceful Revolution (1993).
He was a contributing editor for Volume 5 of Mennonitisches Lexikon (2020). With John D. Thiesen, he is co-editor of two translations, The Military Service Exemption of the Mennonites of Provincial Prussia by Wilhelm Mannhardt (Bethel College, 2013) and The Danzig Mennonite Church: Its Origin and History from 1569-1919 by H.G. Mannhardt (Pandora Press, 2007), and two volumes of collected research, European Mennonites and the Challenge of Modernity over Five Centuries: Contributors, Detractors, and Adapters (Bethel College, 2016) and European Mennonites and the Holocaust (University of Toronto Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2020). He is also co-director of the Mennonite Polish Studies Association.
Lecture 1 | Changing Old Martyrs for New in 19th-Century Prussia
11:00 AM | CMU Chapel (600 Shaftesbury Blvd.)
In the 1780s, under the stress of switching from life under Polish rule to new Prussian rulers during the Partitions of Poland, Mennonites in the Vistula Delta published a slim volume of martyrs’ stories in anticipation of new hardships and to renew their spiritual commitments to oath avoidance, non-resistance, and adult baptism. By the second half of the 1800s, however, many stopped referring to these old stories and found instead new sources of inspiration in the stories of more modern national heroes and martyrs, giving rise to conflicting martyr narratives in the same Mennonite community.
Lecture 2 | So Maybe We Are All Polish?
7:00 PM | CMU Chapel (600 Shaftesbury Blvd.)
The Mennonites of the Vistula Delta were subjects of the Polish king for over two centuries, serving until 1793 as one small patch on the multi-lingual, multi-faith, multi-ethnic tapestry that was the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The majority who ended up first under the Prussian kings and then the German Emperors and did not emigrate adopted a German national identity while remaining on lands Polish nationalists still considered Polish. Identifying and identified as Germans, all but a handful fled or were expelled at the end of World War II, leaving behind an architectural and cultural legacy. With the demise of Communism and the passage of time, local Poles, many whose grandparents arrived as refugees from the east taking over former Mennonite houses and churches, are now celebrating the presence of Mennonite culture in Poland in order once again to highlight Polish religious diversity.
Previous John and Margaret Friesen Lectures
2025: Anabaptist Peace Witness – Historical Significance and Today's Mission
Lecturer: Dr. Astrid von Schlachta, Head of the Mennonite Research Center and lecturer at the University of Regensburg
2024: Revisiting the Mennonite Experience in Ukraine
Lecturer: Dr. Nataliya Venger, Professor of History and Chair of the World History Department at Dnipropetrovsk National University, Ukraine
2023: The Neglected Role of Dutch Mennonite Innovators in the Scientific Revolution and Early Enlightenment
Lecturer: Dr. Gary K. Waite, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of History, University of New Brunswick
2022: Reading Mennonite Writing Now
Lecturer: Dr. Robert Zacharias, Associate Professor of English, York University
2020: What if Mennonites Had Never Left the Netherlands? – CANCELLED
Lecturer: Dr. Piet Visser, Professor Emeritus of Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
2019: A Twentieth Century Reformation: Anabaptism in Guatemala
Lecturer: Dr. Patricia Harms, Associate Professor of History, Brandon University
2017: Faith and Toleration: A Reformation Debate Revisited
Lecturer: C. Arnold Snyder, Professor Emeritus, History, at Conrad Grebel University College
2015: Come Watch This Spider: Animals, Mennonites, and the Modern World
Lecturer: Royden Loewen, Chair in Mennonite Studies and Professor of History at the University of Winnipeg
2009: Mennonite Women in Canadian History: Birth, Food, and War
Lecturer: Marlene Epp of Conrad Grebel University College.
2008: Church and ethnicity: The Mennonite Experience in Paraguay
Lecturer: Alfred Neufeld, Dean of the School of Theology of the Protestant University of Paraguay.
2007: Mennonite Identity in the 21st Century
Lecturer: John D. Roth
2006: Sacred Spaces, Sacred Places: Mennonite Architecture in Russia and Canada
Presenters: Rudy Friesen, Harold Funk, Roland Sawatsky
2005: Recovering A Heritage: The Mennonite Experience in Poland and Prussia
Lecturer: Peter Klassen, Professor Emeritus of History, California State University, Fresno
2004: Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Church in Africa
Lecturer: Barbara Nkala, Director of the International Bible Society of Zimbabwe and Malawi
2002: Russian Mennonites and World War One
Lecturer: Dr. Abraham Friesen, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California
CSOP Lecture Series
CANCELLED
Unfortunately, this event has been canceled due to external factors beyond our control. We apologize for the inconvenience.
"Going Local with International Crises: The Storytelling Dilemma"
with Monika Maria Kalcsics, a journalist with more than 20 years of experience in public service media, print, TV, and film as a reporter, producer, and commissioning editor of award-winning documentaries and reports
How do international non-governmental organizations tell their stories when the pressure from news outlets is increasingly to create a hyper local connection?
- 30-minute presentation with Monika Maria Kalcsics
- 10-minute response from Susan Tymofichuk – Managing Editor, CTV News Winnipeg
- 30-minute Q&A with audience
About Monika Maria Kalcsics
Currently employed by the science, education, and society department at Austria 1, the national information radio channel of ORF (Austrian Public Broadcasting Corporation), Kalcsics is also the head of the multimedia initiative "Fixing the Future – Casting New Ideas." She is also a founding member of the production company name>it positive media, covering underrepresented areas in the media. Across this time, she also made emergency aid missions, establishing communication lines.
Kalcsics' combined career as a journalist and emergency aid worker has allowed her to understand the challenges we face when confronted with a humanitarian disaster and the need to report it. She was granted a fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University to research the relationship between aid organizations and the media in a "competitive compassion market".
Wednesday, June 14, 2023 "Dignifying Story Angles: The Ethics of Representation Dilemma," a professional development event with Monika Maria Kalcsics.
Unfortunately, This event has been canceled due to external factors beyond our control.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Previous CSOP Lectures
2022: Choosing Love in the Wake of Wounding
Lecturer: Dr. Johonna McCants-Turner
Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo
2020: The Myth of Religious Violence
Lecturer: Dr. William Cavanaugh, Professor of Catholic Studies, DePaul University
2019: Imagination, Courage, and Resilience
Lecturer: Dr. Emily Welty, professor and director of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University, NY
2018: A Transformative Spirituality for Peacebuilding
Lecturer: Dr. Fernando Enns, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Vrije Universiteit (Free University), Amsterdam
2018: The TRC, Calls to Action and the Mountain Before Us: Stories of Hope and Challenge
Lecturer: The Honorable Senator Murray Sinclair
2016: Living with Uncertainty: The Road to Peace
Lecturer: John Ralston Saul, award winning essayist and novelist
Past Public Lectures
Rev'd Dr. David Widdicombe – And His Hands Prepared the Dry Land: political theology of climate change
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In the face of historical emergencies, societies are always being invited to reconsider priorities and possibilities. Climate change is here—whether catastrophic or not, climate change is here.
This lecture will:
- Explore some of the theological tools for thinking about the climate crisis and consider how all the outdated values of the past might be our last chance to still have a future.
- Embark in a conversation about the climate emergency and how churches ought to respond
- Attempt to retrieve Christian perspectives from the past for use in resisting the dominant scientific/technological assumptions of our time
- Challenge the sense that nature has no soul—that if nature is merely a thing, then everything on it and in it is available for human consumption.
- Claim that in the midst of the climate crisis our call as Christians is to honour the God who rules over earth and heaven. Local and national communities should find ways to conserve their own fossil fuels in the depths of the earth...and so re-create the historic and customary connections between nature and culture, land and life, love for neighbour and nature which are central" to the messianic love of the Jewish and Christian communities.
- By faith we must ask what God has to do with the climate and how we should think about and understand the climate in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ.
- In hope, we must ask, what we can hope for, work for, and expect to have to deal with in the future, whatever it may turn out to be.
- Through love we must ask how we shall live together, survive together, as a church and as a wider set of communities whatever the future may bring. We should know now and commit to whatever is for the good of this place and neighbourhood in acts of friendship, solidarity, and love because we will need each other.
Rev'd Dr. Widdicombe is the Rector of Saint Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg.
When
Wednesday, November 13 | 7:00 PM
Where
Marpeck Commons | 2299 Grant Ave.
Rev'd Dr. David Widdicombe – To Sow the Wind: An Argument Against the War on Terror and Other Bad Ideas
Just War theory has received a lot of attention in recent times but the results have been mixed. It is no longer a tradition of thought designed to place strict restraints upon the use of force in the necessary use of force in restraint of evil. Under the pressure of humanitarian interventionism, theories that democracies do not fight wars against each other, American (and Western) exceptionalism, supposed states of emergency, and other ideological adventures upon the turbulent seas of the international order, the tradition has lost its profound Augustinian political skepticism and moral realism. This lecture will ask whether the restraint of force wasn't always a better (foundational) idea than the pursuit of justice in the just war tradition, a tradition that once thought war tragically endemic and sometimes justified, but never simply unambiguously just.
Rev'd Dr. Widdicombe is the Rector of Saint Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg.
Winter Lecture Series
The CMU Winter Lectures was an annual public lecture series that highlighted the arts, science, humanities, and interdisciplinary studies at CMU and to foster dialogue between these disciplines and the Christian faith. The series ran from to 2006 to 2011.
Audio/video recordings of these lectures are available through CommonWord Bookstore and Resource Centre.
2011: Resonance, Receptivity, and Radical Reformation
Lecturer: Dr. Romand Coles, McAllister Chair in Community, Culture, & Environment at Northern Arizona University. Resonance, Receptivity and Radical Reformation
2010: Paradoxes of Reconciliation
Lecturer: Vern Redekop, Associate Professor of Conflict Studies at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. Topic: Paradoxes of Reconciliation
2009: Placing Our Faith in a Placeless World?
Lecturer: Dr. Norman Wirzba, Research Professor of Theology, Ecology and Rural Life, Duke Divinity School. Topic: Placing Our Faith in a Placeless World?
2008: Art, Beauty, and Christian Theology
Lecturer: Erica Grimm Vance, Assistant Professor and Visual Arts Coordinator, Trinity Western University. Topic: Art, Beauty and Christian Theology.
2007: Cosmology, Evolution, and Resurrection Hope
Lecturer: Dr. Robert Russell, Professor of Theology and Science, Graduate Theological Union, and Director for the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Topic: Cosmology, Evolution and Resurrection Hope.
2006: Psychology and Theology
Lecturer: Alvin Dueck, Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor of the Integration of Psychology and Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary
Proclaiming the Claims of Christ Lecture Series
This lecture series has been offered at CMU since 2007. The series addresses the various dimensions of Christian apologetics (theory, evangelism, Gospel and society, singularity of Christ in a multi-cultural context, etc.).
Previous Lectures
2012: The Unique Gift of Christ
Lecturer: Dr. Benne Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion Emeritus and Director of the Center for Religion and Society at Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia.
2011: Cancelled
2010: Proclaiming the Unique Claims of Christ; Negotiating the Christian-Muslim Interface
Lecturer: Emmanuel Ali El-Shariff
2009: Being a Christian in the public media, radio broadcaster, and media commentator
Lecturer: Michael Coren
2008: Proclaiming Christ in a Post-Christian World
Lecturer: John Stackhouse, Regent College.
2007: Joe Boot, evangelist, apologist, author and the executive director of Ravi Zacharias Ministries in Canada.