New global Anabaptist history series deepens understanding of God’s work in the world
In 1922, when Rebecca Sengu was about 14 years old, she defied her parents and enrolled herself in the Mennonite girls’ school at the Nyanga mission station in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She mustered the courage because she had heard about God, who loved girls as much as boys, and she was willing to challenge societal norms to follow such a God.
As a mother, she was given the name Kasasashiye (orphan-raiser) because she opened her home to vulnerable children, caring for them and helping them through school. She organized her household around rhythms of worship, work and prayer.
In church, she would debate with the male church leaders in meetings about the importance of women taking their God-given places in the church. Sometimes, she would preach.
Rebecca Sengu’s is one of the stories in a new Mennonite World Conference biography-based history series, Global Anabaptist Forebears, edited by Anicka Fast, secretary of MWC’s Faith & Life Commission, who is also serving with Mennonite Mission Network (MMN).
In pursuing the research for her doctoral dissertation on the beginnings of the Mennonite Church in DRC, Anicka Fast wanted to know who the African Anabaptist ancestors were.
How did they live out their faith? What kinds of questions did the early African Anabaptists have? What were their struggles?
But Anicka Fast was frustrated by the lack of Congolese voices in the histories and archives.
“I noticed that women were very absent from the official stories, both missionary women and Congolese women. I noticed that Congolese men were also very absent,” Anicka Fast said in a 2025 interview with Mennonite Mission Network.
Through her studies in world Christianity at Boston University, she learned that biographies were a good way to hear the voices of people who were marginalized in the histories written by European and North American missionaries. So she sought out primary source material in the archives and through interviews with Mennonites in DR Congo about the earliest days of the Mennonite church there.
In 2021, after completing her doctorate, Anicka Fast taught church history in Burkina Faso and encouraged her students to write histories of their local congregations and biographies of early church members – both women and men. Mennonites in DRC also invited her to teach and conduct history-writing workshops.
“I had a vision that these stories written by local historians could contribute to having a truer story about what it means to be a global Anabaptist church,” Anicka Fast said. “We need a new generation of textbooks [that introduce us to] our ancestors, realizing that many of our forebears in faith come from other continents than where we live.
“There are women in the church in Africa who have played a very powerful role as leaders of renewal and revival,” Anicka Fast said. “[Women] have been prophets and healers. They have [prayed and seen] miracles, cast out demons. They have been very involved in mediating the encounter between Christianity and the traditional religion and finding ways to express the gospel message in terms that are contextually relevant.”
“We need to recognize them as kin.”
Some of the biographies written by students and workshop participants appeared in the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, whose executive director, Michèle Sigg, was a close conversation partner with Anicka Fast in refining a workshop-based teaching method.
When Anicka Fast saw how excited some of the Burkinabè and Congolese historians were about seeing their work in print, her vision expanded to include a book series of global Anabaptist biographies with volumes on Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The first volume, focusing on Congolese Mennonites (men and women), grows out of a 2023 workshop co-taught by Anicka Fast and Michèle Sigg and will be published in 2026 by Regnum Books.
“[The African historians have] so much more understanding of the social-political context and much, much more understanding of the kinds of leadership that women were exercising. They also touch on some of the painful dynamics of inequality in the relationship between African church leaders and the North American missionaries whom they were working with,” Anicka Fast said.
To participate in telling a more globally accurate Anabaptist history, make a donation to MWC’s Global Mennonite History Project (go to mwc-cmm.org/donate; select Other, then “Global Mennonite History Project”). Donations are also possible in the US via a tax-deductible contribution to Anicka Fast’s ministry with MMN. Both MWC and MMN forward donations to the Global Anabaptist Histories Fund at Boston University (where Anicka Fast serves as visiting researcher).
Article by Lynda Hollinger-Janzen, writer with Mennonite Mission Network. First published on mmnworld.net