Dozens of people related to the Mennonite Historical Society gathered on Saturday for a ceremony commemorating the group’s closure after 100 years.

MHS, a different organization from Goshen College’s still-open Mennonite Historical Library, announced this year that it would be permanently shutting down. The Mennonite Quarterly Review, MHS’s scholarly journal, will also cease printing.

During the celebration, the MHS transition team announced the new journal set to replace “Mennonite Quarterly Review” and the Canadian publication “Conrad Grebel Review.” The journal will be called “Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies Review,” a name that was met with a lukewarm reaction due to the lack of creativity.

The day started with remarks from retired GC professor John D. Roth, who gave a brief overview of the history of MHS.

For about an hour, there was a discussion panel on MHS, led by Carrie Phillips, the library director at Bluffton University in Ohio. Melinda Berry, former MHS president and professor of peace theology at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary; Gerald Mast, former MHS president and professor of communication at Bluffton University; Leonard Gross, former president of the Mennonite Church USA Historical Committee; and J. Denny Weaver, founding editor of the C. Henry Smith series and professor emeritus of religion at Bluffton College, all answered questions about the society.

“The MHS is hard for me to imagine my life without,” Mast said, as he lamented the organization’s demise. 

The panel talked about the grief they felt, as well as providing even more information about the history of MHS.

After the panel, lunch was served in the Fellowship Hall, and tables were given structured sharing activities. In a survey sent out before the celebration, no respondents responded favorably to the idea of a structured sharing activity.

The lunch was followed by an announcement about the new “Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies Review” from the MHS transition team.

In an answer to a question from an older audience member, the team acknowledged that the website will likely have cookies.

“I love the title, I love the model,” Roth said of the new journal in a time of sharing. “MQR lives on in this new form.”