Cheers for the folks at Third Way Café! They host a website that provides information and answers questions about all things Mennonite—responding to queries posed by the customers who chat at this cyber coffee shop.
Jodi Nisly Hertzler, who crafts answers for the flood of questions, keeps a fascinating log of the queries and how she responds. Neither she nor any other Mennonite has a Ph.D. in questionology, but she has a great gift of explaining what Mennonites think about almost anything—flags, sacraments, abortion, and even how to get to heaven. Some of Hertzler’s answers are little tweets while others flow in succinct paragraphs, but regardless of length, they quickly capture Mennonite views on many things.

Some of the questions probe complicated theological doctrines about how creation happened, what really occurs at death, and whether Mennonites think they will go to purgatory. Others focus on Mennonite customs such as holidays and the holy kiss. Yes, the HOLY KISS. Still others strike at the very essence of things—are Mennonites permitted to marry? The YES to marriage was, I’m sure, not only the tweest tweet, but surely the easiest of all the queries.

It’s no wonder that the questions visitors bring to the Third Way Café cover a vast cultural terrain because Mennonites indeed are a complicated, multi-textured people. A few drive horse and buggy, others ride in BMWs, and many just buy ordinary Camrys. Some of the more conservative folks in the Mennonite fold forbid television or using the Internet, but the vast majority of Mennonites tap modern technology with few blinks of reservation. Some own software companies and many are at home with iPods and texting. 

Although most Mennonites speak English, the mother tongue of some of them living in North American is Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, or Pennsylvania German. Some attend Ivy League colleges while others end their formal schooling at the door of a one room school with eight grades. No wonder onlookers are baffled about and bedazzeled by these folks who derive their name from Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest who joined the Anabaptist movement in Holland in 1536.

This interesting book does three things. It gives us a glimpse of the kind of questions about Mennonites that flash on the monitor of modern minds. It also shows the perceptions that circulate in the larger culture, what onlookers think about the Mennonite world. Perhaps most importantly, it provides a brief handbook regarding what Mennonites think and believe about a host of topics.
Mennonite readers will surely learn some new things about their own community. And their non-Mennonite neighbors around the world will find here an easy and fascinating read about all things Mennonite. So grab a cup of your favorite brew and join me raising our cups and cheers to Jodi Nisly Hertzler’s fine efforts to pull all of these things together so succinctly and so well!
—Donald B. Kraybill, author of The Upside-Down Kingdom and Senior Fellow, The Young Center, Elizabethtown College