Main board: Lieben und Loben - Love and Praise

Treated with shame and disgrace, heretized and condemned by the powerful and literally driven into a corner - what still holds a community together? What helped the Anabaptist community to survive? What nourishes and sustains them - then and now?

^{Especially in difficult times, singing together played an important role in the will to persevere.}

^{Mennonite women's choir in the former Soviet Union, 1966.}

^{(Photo: Mari Friesen photo collection).}

An important element was and is the common worship with prayer, reading of the Bible, sermon and song. Many old prayer and hymn books were also used on lonely farms, and Bible study and searching together for the meaning of the "Scriptures" are still common and important today.

What nourishes and sustains the community and the individuals is the love of God for all people and for all creation. This awareness of being loved is the basis for all of one' s LOVING. Thus, hospitality, neighborly help, love of enemies and the preservation of creation should also be an expression and a consequence of God's love.

PRAISE - for centuries that has meant singing in the Anabaptist world! In joyful and in difficult hours, music accompanied people on their journey through life. Numerous "Anabaptist songs," many of them written in prison, testify to the suffering and confidence of the persecuted.

Instruments were often not available. Thus, a culture of unaccompanied singing developed. Although modern styles of music are also heard in church services today, the common four-part singing still has a high value in many places and is part of their spiritual "home" for many people.