The next event on the calendar is the a screening of Through the Desert Goes Our Journey and a presentation from the book, Pilgrims on the Silk Road at Georgetown University on April 15. It happens at 6:00pm at the…
BOOK REVIEW Pilgrims on the Silk Road: a Muslim-Christian Encounter in Khiva. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. By Robert Martens From Roots and Branches, 17:1, February, 2011. Where is this last gathering place of the true church? The answer:…
It has been quite a year for Agile Arts and the Ratliff family. We feel very blessed to have the opportunity to tell some previously untold stories, and learn a few new ones as well. Pilgrims on the Silk Road…
A common question for people who have read the book or have seen the documentary is “What happened to the Mennonites who were deported from Khiva in 1935?” I devote a section of Pilgrims on the Silk Road to the…
Google just released a new tool called Ngram that compiles keywords from their vast library of scanned books. It charts these keywords from the 16th century to 2008. This makes Ngram a wonderful tool for seeing the rise and fall…
I recently came across an article from the Uzbek Academy of the Arts magazine about the first Uzbek photographer and his Mennonite mentor. There are some great photos in the article, and it discusses a bit about Divanov’s relationship with…
I leave in a few hours to head back across the Pond. Here are a few thoughts on a productive trip to AP’s HQ and the University of Westminster conference. On Friday, I went straight from the red-eye flight into…
The Mennonites of Khiva: A Modernizing Community For more information about the conference where this presentation was given, click here. Transcript: This talk is about the Mennonites of Ak Metchet and their role a s a modernizing community The three…
The Mennonite Trek to Khiva: Apocalyptic Debacle or Christian-Muslim Paradigm For more information about the colloquium where this presentation was given, click here. Transcript: I am speaking this morning about the Mennonite migration to Khiva in the late 19th century.…
Heinrich Abrams was murdered the night Turkoman bandits had come to steal his wife. For months the bandits had stolen livestock and broken into the homes of Mennonites living along the Amu Darya river. Each time, the Mennonites refused to retaliate…
