Category: Annual Conference

Online registration now open!

Bridgefolk Summer Retreat
25-28 July 2024 | Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN

Spiritual Practices for Peacemaking: Nurturing Resistance and Resilience
Featuring guest facilitator Sarah Augustine,
Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery

Click here for online registration
Click here to download form for mail-in registration.

We will come together as Catholics and Mennonites committed to peacemaking at a time of multiple challenges: climate disaster, protracted war in Ukraine and devastating destruction and death in Gaza, political and religious polarization during an election year in the US, White Christian Nationalism, and the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and racial justice in the US and Canada.

Sarah Augustine
Sarah Augustine

Using the framework of resistance and resilience from Potawatomi author Kaitlin Curtice, the presenter at the September 2023 AMBS Rooted & Grounded/Bridgefolk Conference in Indiana, we will reflect on scripture and take part in a variety of spiritual practices from each of our traditions and beyond. Sarah Augustine will offer teaching and invitations for resisting settler colonialism and will lead us in ceremony that draws from and honors the wisdom of her Pueblo (Tewa) people. We will share stories and learn from the experiences of one another to strengthen our peace witness. We welcome the participation of families with children.

Preliminary schedule:

Click here for online registration
Click here to download form for mail-in registration.

Bridgefolk 2023 conference in collaboration with Mennonite seminary

The 2023 Bridgefolk Conference will be a collaboration with the Rooted & Grounded Series of Conferences on Land and Christian Discipleship at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. “Pathways through Climate Doom: Resistance and Resilience” will be held September 28-30. Persons wishing to submit proposals for paper presentations should do so by the April 30 deadline.

For more details on the conference, please visit https://www.ambs.edu/rooted-and-grounded. For a PDF of the call for papers and workshop proposals, click here.

More details on Bridgefolk events at the conference will follow.

Bridgefolk to celebrate 20th year with 2022 conference “Standing at the Crossroads”

Bridgefolk has announced a theme for its 2022 conference, to be held at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota July 21-24, that will both look back at the movement’s 20 years of dialogue between Mennonites and Catholics, while committing to further work together. “Standing at the Crossroads: Mennonites and Catholics in Dialogue” will continue the ongoing exploration of what it means for Mennonites and Catholics who seek a Just Peace to address issues of racial justice, which it began at its 2018 Conference.

The current crossroads in this work find Mennonites and Catholics engaging with indigenous communities, acknowledging the legacy of injustice and harm done by the historic removal of indigenous communities from traditional homelands by European settlers and the forced attendance of indigenous children at residential schools. That task is all the more urgent and timely in light of Pope Francis’s recent apology to indigenous peoples in Canada for the abuse of church-run boarding schools, debates over whether apologies are enough, and discernment concerning next steps for Christian churches.

Further details and links to register are now available at
https://www.bridgefolk.net/conferences/bridgefolk-2022.

Postponed: 2020 Bridgefolk summer conference

Dear Friends of Bridgefolk:

Because of safety concerns and the sheer uncertainty of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, both here in Minnesota and across the nation, the Bridgefolk board made the decision to POSTPONE the 2020 Bridgefolk summer conference (July 23-26) at Saint Benedict’s Monastery and the College of Saint Benedict.

We are proposing postponing the conference to July of 2021, close to the usual dates for the Bridgefolk conference.

In the meantime, please be safe and proceed through friendship!

Marilyn Stahl    Abbot John Klassen
Co-chairs of Bridgefolk

“Catholic-Mennonite Gathering Planned for Winnipeg”

Article online by Will Braun, Canadian Mennonite 23:13 (24 June 2019), 16-17. PDF of the complete issue is also available. Will is a senior writer for the magazine.

The 18th annual Bridgefolk conference will be held at Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, 25-28 July 2019. The theme is “Toward a Just Peace: Indigenous-Settler Reconciliation Through Friendship.”