A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

220 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH presently, the process of language change is still far from over, especially in the adult department of the Sunday school. With the change in language Mennonite Brethren also began to participate more actively in evangelical Sunday school conventions on a county or state level. In the forties and fifties questions of the Sunday school curriculum and of suitable lesson materials were constantly on the agenda of the Sunday School Committee, and often came up for discussion on the conference floor. Leading brethren in the conference felt that denominational distinctives did not receive adequate consideration. At the General Conference held in Winkler (Manitoba) in 1951 the delegates accepted the following recommendation prepared by the Resolutions Committee: The Conference urges the Sunday school teachers and expositors of our Sunday school lessons to continue the nonresistance principle in the interpre- tation of the lessons when the war idea occurs in the Old Testament lessons, and have at least two lessons per year with special emphasis on nonresistance. 1 1 This apprehension about the lack of New Testament teaching on Christian discipleship and nonresistance comes as no surprise, considering the lack of denominational Sunday school materials in Mennonite Brethren churches at that time. A survey in the 1950's disclosed that M.B. Sunday schools purchased their lesson material (except that for adults which was supplied by the M. B. Publishing House) from no fewer than fifteen different publishing houses. According to I. W. Redekopp, a member of the General Conference Sunday School Committee for many years, some of these would have seemed questionable to the fathers and founders of the M. B. Church. When the Sunday school was made an area conference matter in 1954, the question of curriculum continued to be a major concern in both Canada and the United States. In 1958 the Board for Sunday Schools and Related Activities of the United States M. B. Conference initiated a joint meeting with the Canadian Sunday School Committee to explore the advantages of the unified curriculum of the General Conference Mennonites and (Old) Mennonites. The Canadian Committee recommended these materials to its churches for the following reasons: a. The material places a more adequate emphasis upon certain truths ot Anabaptist theology (discipleship). b. This is material which we can rightly call our own since it bears our imprint and the approval of our editors. c. This material bears the stamp of theological thoroughness and educa- tional competence. 13 The following year the conference accepted a recommendation to accept these "Mennonite Brethren" Sunday school materials for the primary, junior and intermediate departments "as they become available." This TEACHING THEM TO OBSERVE 221 recommendation was reiterated at the conference held in Shafter (Cal