A historian whose latest book traces the origins and development of the Anabaptist and Mennonite movements from their beginnings in Europe through their spread across the globe will present at EMU’s annual Albert N. Keim Lecture Series this week.

Troy Osborne is dean and associate professor of history and theological studies at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, where he teaches courses on the Reformation and Mennonite history.

His lecture, titled “Beyond Radicals, Reformers & Martyrs: The Possibilities and Perils of a Usable Past,” will be held at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 8, in Suter Science Center 106. The lecture is free to attend and open to the public. It will be livestreamed on the EMU YouTube page.

A reception at 4:30 p.m. in the upper level of the Suter Science Center will precede the lecture.

Mark Metzler Sawin, professor of history at EMU and director of its history and political science program, grew up with Osborne in Hesston, Kansas, and remarked on his dry wit. “Troy is a funny guy, and that sense of humor will certainly come through in his lecture,” he said. “He is a much-loved lecturer at Conrad Grebel.”

Osborne is the author of Radicals & Reformers: A Survey of Global Anabaptist History (Herald Press, 2024), which serves as a “new authoritative introduction to Anabaptist history,” according to a description from the publisher, and reflects on the ways that Anabaptists have defined their identity in new settings and in response to new theological, intellectual, geographic, and political contexts. The text provides an overview of how Mennonites “from Zurich to Zimbabwe” have adapted to or resisted the world around them.

“We haven’t had this sort of major book on Mennonite or Anabaptist history in probably 30 years,” Sawin said. “This has become the new Anabaptist history text.”

“The Anabaptist community is very much a global community, and histories before were really just focused on European and American Mennonites,” Sawin added. “Troy’s book does a great job of addressing the global Anabaptist history, providing a much more accurate view of the worldwide scope of Anabaptism.”

Osborne has a PhD from the University of Minnesota and degrees from Goshen College and Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. His articles have appeared in Mennonite Quarterly Review, Archive for Reformation History, and Church History and Religious Culture. He and his wife Emma have two daughters. He is a member of Waterloo North Mennonite Church. 

In addition to the history lecture, Osborne will share his perspective on what can be learned from the Anabaptist story during Campus Worship at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 8, in Martin Chapel (Seminary Building). 

More on the Keim Lecture Series

The annual Keim Lecture Series is presented by the EMU history and political science program. It honors the memory of Professor Albert N. Keim, who taught as a history professor at EMU for 35 years and served as the academic dean from 1977 to 1984. The inaugural lecture in 2013 featured leading historian Peter N. Stearns of George Mason University. 

Learn more about past presenters below:

• 2025: Public historian and bestselling author Elizabeth Catte presented on “Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia.”
• 2024: Kristina Hook, State Department policy advisor for mass atrocity prevention, presented on “Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine: Atrocity Crimes, Accountability, and Pursuing a Just Peace.” 
• 2023: Clayton Koppes, professor emeritus of Oberlin College, presented on “Sex, Drugs and Human Rights: The Contested History of HIV/AIDS in the U.S.” 
• 2022: Professor Kimberly Schmidt presented on“Marketing Mennonites, Posing Cheyennes: Photography, Gender, and Indigenous Agency on the Mission Field (1880-1920).”
• 2021: Historian, author, and investigative reporter Rick Shenkman, founder of History News Network, spoke on “Why is Democracy so @#$&! Hard?” 
• 2020: Professor Ernesto Verdeja, of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, was the speaker. 
• 2019: Federal public defender, immigrant rights attorney, and playwright Kara Hartzler ’94 spoke on “Borders, Jails, and Long Drives in the Desert: 25 Years of Immigration Law in the Southwest.”
• 2017: Dongping Han, professor at Warren-Wilson College and a native of rural China, addressed “The Cultural Revolution: A Reinterpretation from Today’s China.”
• 2016: Artist/activist provided a lecture titled “Performing Statistics: Connecting incarcerated youth, artists, and leading policy experts to challenge Virginia’s juvenile justice system.”
• 2015: , political scientist in the University of Kansas’s School of Public Affairs and Administration, presented “The Police and Racial Discrimination in America.”
• 2014: , a pastor, activist and history professor who helped EMC professors initiate social change in Harrisonburg during the early 1960s, presented “Is America Possible?”

The professor is working alongside James Madison University faculty members Mollie Godfrey and Carole Nash, and with JMU Libraries.

A feature story about the partnership between the two universities and their work was published online this month in Madison Magazine, the official publication of JMU. for the story by Josette Keelor. 

According to Keelor’s story, the Ida Mae Francis Tourist House, at 252 N. Mason St., dates to the early 1900s and “has witnessed at least three distinct eras — as a successful woman-owned boarding house, a Green Book safe place for Black travelers and the lifelong home of siblings Henry and Lois Rouser.” It’s welcomed such guests as prominent inventor and scientist George Washington Carver and members of Duke Ellington’s and Count Basie’s bands.

In the 1950s and early ’60s, the house was listed in several editions of the Green Book, a guide featuring businesses across the nation that welcomed Black travelers during Jim Crow (). The house became known as a safe place to stay when coming to or passing through Harrisonburg, and is the city’s last remaining Green Book-listed property.

“Now, more than 60 years later, JMU and EMU faculty are sifting through rooms of documents, photos and decor that will add depth to the stories that helped define a community,” Keelor writes in her story.

“Sawin has been putting together the story of the house, while Nash, some of her students and Godfrey fill in the gaps through the larger context of the history of the neighborhood and city,” she adds.

Harrisonburg Mayor Deanna Reed, whose father William Reed recently inherited the house, remarked on the importance of the partnership.

“It has allowed us to preserve this history,” she said in the Madison story. “We couldn’t have done this without the support of both universities.”

More stories about the historic Ida M. Francis House

WHSV (Aug. 7, 2024) — ““
Daily News-Record (Aug. 1, 2024) — ““
WMRA (May 2024) — ““

Dr. John A. Lapp ’54, a history professor at Eastern Mennonite College during the Civil Rights Movement who helped lead the charge for local school desegregation, died on Dec. 5 at the age of 90. 

Remembered by many for his strongly held opinions and his booming belly laugh, Lapp died at the Waterford Crossing retirement community in Goshen, Indiana, where he had been living since 2011. A memorial service in celebration of his life will be held at a later date at College Mennonite Church in Goshen. An obituary with further details is available to read .

Lapp also held distinguished careers at Goshen College and at Mennonite Central Committee. He was the 2015 recipient of EMU’s Distinguished Service Award.

Born on March 15, 1933, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, Lapp was the first of nine siblings. He served as a mentor to his younger sisters and brothers, including Joseph, who would become the seventh president of EMC, and EMU, from 1987 to 2003.

“He was the one who was breaking the ground in education and he was a big reader,” said President Emeritus Joseph Lapp ’66. “He was the one who paid attention to politics, and so he stimulated a lot of discussion in our home.”

John Lapp earned a bachelor’s degree in history from EMC in 1954. He later received a master’s degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. 

Life at Eastern Mennonite College

After two years of alternative service as a conscientious objector to the military draft, he returned to EMC to teach as a history professor from 1956 to 1969. During his tenure as a professor, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement and, along with several friends and faculty members, participated in the landmark “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in 1963 where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

The professor also was instrumental in the formation of the local chapter of the Virginia Council on Human Relations. The “biracial organization sought to improve interracial relations through support of educational programs, school desegregation, fair employment practices and other related issues” (EMU News).

Following a campus visit from African-American Mennonite activists Vincent and Rosemarie Harding in 1963, John Lapp and fellow EMC history professor Samuel Horst, newly inspired, formed the committee largely responsible for the desegregation of Harrisonburg, Virginia, schools and hotels. Lapp and Harding were “major players in Harrisonburg’s ‘Concern Movement’ that pushed the city schools to desegregate,” according to EMU history professor Mark Metzler Sawin.

Joseph Lapp, who was 10 years younger than John, recalled his time as an EMC student in his brother’s History of Western Civilization class. “He would lecture almost nonstop for a whole hour,” he said. “He held everybody’s attention. And, if you talked to alumni of that time period, they’ll say that was probably their favorite course and that he was their favorite professor.”

Life after EMC

John Lapp left EMC in 1969 with his wife Mary Alice Weber ’55 and their three children to direct the Peace Section at Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Akron, Pennsylvania. He later served as executive secretary of MCC from 1985 to 1996. A wonderfully in-depth writeup on his life can be read on .

In between those two stints, he served Goshen College for 12 years. Lapp was academic dean of the Mennonite school from 1972 to 1981 and provost from 1979 to 1984. To read more about his impact at Goshen, read their story about him .

Following his retirement in 1996, he spent 16 years leading a Mennonite World Conference project known as the Global Mennonite History Project. He fundraised and supervised an international team that ultimately produced five separate published volumes on Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia and North America. In addition to that, he taught courses at Bishop’s College in India, Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and at EMU’s Lancaster campus. 

Joseph Lapp shared an anecdote about his brother he’s heard others tell around campus. One day when John was teaching a history class in the lower level of Lehman Auditorium, noise from the physical plant kept interrupting him.

“They were pounding and making noise and it was interfering with the lecture. So, he said, ‘OK, we’re all going to go to the administration building’ — and it had these open stairways going up to the second floor; this was the old building, not the current one. So, he had his class sit on those steps and he stood at the center and continued to lecture there for the rest of the period just to make his point about the interference that was occurring.”

Harding and his late wife, Rosemarie, were close friends and colleagues of Martin Luther King Jr., during an era when the Hardings were active members of a Mennonite church.

EMU history professor Mark Metzler Sawin did a “for the record” videotaped interview with Vincent Harding on Feb. 27, 2014, in which Harding elaborated on how he became linked to the Mennonite Church nearly 60 years ago and his views on the role of Mennonites in combating racism.