Description

Winnipeg, MB: Weekly. 1955–1961.

The Mennonite Observer, a 12-page, weekly companion to the Mennonitische Rundschau, published by The Christian Press at Winnipeg, Manitoba, began circulation in September 1955. As the language transition from German to English among Mennonites in Canada was intensifying, the English-language Mennonite Observer took the place of the Mennonite Brethren German-language Konferenz-Jugendblatt. Les Stobbe was the first editor of the Mennonite Observer, followed by Gerhard D. Huebert.

According to the masthead, the newspaper aimed "to have Christ at the helm, the salvation of man as its goal, and the essential unity of all true Mennonites as its guiding principle." It was a newspaper with reports from Mennonite high schools and colleges in North America and beyond, missionary updates, congregational news, obituaries, and Bible-based devotional writings. The newspaper was designed to relate to people from a broad range of Mennonite conferences, even though its owners/editors were from the Mennonite Brethren Church.

The publication ceased in December 1961 and the Mennonite Brethren Herald took its place with a new mandate, starting in January 1962. The MB Herald became the official communication organ of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, a publication which ran for 58 years; the final edition was printed in January 2020.

An index to all 351 issues of the Mennonite Observer was produced by David Perlmutter in 2011.  It is an alphabetical listing of article authors; each entry indicates the article’s title, and in which issue it is found. In 2019, Susan Huebert completed the scanning of each of the published issues of the Mennonite Observer.

Both the index and the individual issues of the Mennonite Observer are now accessible online. See below.