Mennonites are a group of Anabaptist Christian church communities tracing their roots to the Radical Reformation. The name is derived from one of the early prominent leaders of the Anabaptist movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561). Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radical Reformation, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders, with the early teachings of the Mennonites founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held with great conviction, despite persecution by various Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant states. Formal Mennonite beliefs were codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, which affirmed "the baptism of believers only, the washing of the feet as a symbol of servanthood, church discipline, the shunning of the excommunicated, the non-swearing of oaths, marriage within the same church", strict pacifistic physical nonresistance, anti-Catholicism and in general, more emphasis on "true Christianity" involving "being Christian and obeying Christ" as they interpret it from the Holy Bible.
The North Central Conference (NCC), also known as North Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, was a college athletic conference which operated in the north central United States. It participated in the NCAA's Division II.
Scouting in Nebraska has a long history, from the 1910s to the present day, serving thousands of youth in programs that suit the environment in which they live.
Russian Germans in North America are descended from the many ethnic Germans from Russia who emigrated to North America.
The Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Member institutions are located in Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The conference was founded in 1969 as the Nebraska Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (NIAC), later becoming the Nebraska–Iowa Athletic Conference (1992) before being renamed the Great Plains Athletic Conference (2000).
The Mennonite Church USA is an Anabaptist Christian denomination in the United States. Although the organization is a recent 2002 merger of the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church, the body has roots in the Radical Reformation of the 16th century.
The US Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (USMB) is an association of Mennonite Brethren Churches in the United States.
The West North Central states form one of the nine geographic subdivisions within the United States that are officially recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Mennonite Church (MC), also known as the Old Mennonite Church, was formerly the oldest and largest body of Mennonites in North America. It was a loosely-affiliated collection of Mennonite conferences based in the United States and Canada, mainly of Swiss and South German origin. The group dated to the settlement of Germantown in 1683 and included 112,311 members in North America in 1997. Many of the conferences that were considered part of the Old Mennonite Church participated in the Mennonite General Conference from 1898-1971 and the Mennonite General Assembly from 1971-2002. The Mennonite General Assembly voted to merge with the General Conference Mennonite Church at a joint session in Wichita, Kansas, in 1995. In 2002, the two groups merged and then divided along national lines into Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada.
Yearly Meeting is a term used by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, to refer to an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in most of the world; in England, local congregations are now called Area Meetings, in Australia Monthly Meetings are called Regional Meetings. "Monthly" and "Yearly" refer to how often the body meets to make decisions. Monthly Meetings may be local congregations that hold regular Meetings for Worship, or may comprise a number of Worship Groups. Depending on the Yearly Meeting organization, there may also be Quarterly Meetings, Half-Yearly Meetings, or Regional Meetings, where a number of local Monthly Meetings come together within a Yearly Meeting.
The Dissected Till Plains are physiographic sections of the Central Lowlands province, which in turn is part of the Interior Plains physiographic division of the United States, located in southern and western Iowa, northeastern Kansas, the southwestern corner of Minnesota, northern Missouri, eastern Nebraska, and southeastern South Dakota.
The Loess Hills are a formation of wind-deposited loess soil in the westernmost parts of Iowa and Missouri, and the easternmost parts of Nebraska and Kansas, along the Missouri River.
Amish Mennonites came into existence through reform movements among North American Amish mainly between 1862 and 1878. These Amish moved away from the old Amish traditions and drew near to the Mennonites, becoming Mennonites of Amish origin. Over the decades, most Amish Mennonites groups removed the word "Amish" from the name of their congregations or merged with Mennonite groups.
The General Conference Mennonite Church (GCMC) was a mainline association of Mennonite congregations based in North America from 1860 to 2002. The conference was formed in 1860 when congregations in Iowa invited North American Mennonites to join together in order to pursue common goals such as higher education and mission work. The conference was especially attractive to recent Mennonite and Amish immigrants to North America and expanded considerably when thousands of Russian Mennonites arrived in North America starting in the 1870s. Conference offices were located in Winnipeg, Manitoba and North Newton, Kansas. The conference supported a seminary and several colleges. In the 1990s the conference had 64,431 members in 410 congregations in Canada, the United States and South America. After decades of cooperation with the Mennonite Church, the two groups reorganized into Mennonite Church Canada in 2000 and Mennonite Church USA in 2002.
The Amish, formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches, a separate Anabaptist denomination. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, Christian pacifism, and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor replace face-to-face conversations whenever possible, and a view to maintain self-sufficiency. The Amish value rural life, manual labor, humility and Gelassenheit.
Over the years, as Amish churches have divided many times over doctrinal disputes, subgroups have developed. The "Old Order Amish", a conservative faction that withdrew in the 1860s from fellowship with the wider body of Amish, are those that have most emphasized traditional practices and beliefs. There are many different subgroups of Amish with most belonging, in ascending order of conservatism, to the Beachy Amish, New Order, Old Order, or Swartzentruber Amish groups.
The North Star Athletic Association (NSAA) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) that began play in the 2013–14 school year. The conference currently has seven full member institutions in Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
The Graneros Shale is a geologic formation in the United States identified in the Great Plains as well as New Mexico that dates to the Cenomanian Age of the Cretaceous Period. It is defined as the finely sandy argillaceous or clayey near-shore/marginal-marine shale that lies above the older, non-marine Dakota sand and mud, but below the younger, chalky open-marine shale of the Greenhorn. This definition was made in Colorado by G. K. Gilbert and has been adopted in other states that use Gilbert's division of the Benton's shales into Carlile, Greenhorn, and Graneros. These states include Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and New Mexico as well as corners of Minnesota and Iowa. North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana have somewhat different usages — in particular, north and west of the Black Hills, the same rock and fossil layer is named Belle Fourche Shale.
The Tri-State Conference was an intercollegiate athletic conference associated with National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) the that existed from 1960 to 1981 and one of two conferences to share this name. The league had members in the Midwestern states of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota.
The 2000 NAIA football season was the component of the 2000 college football season organized by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) in the United States. The season's playoffs, known as the NAIA Football National Championship, culminated with the championship game on December 16, at Jim Carroll Stadium in Savannah, Tennessee. The Georgetown Tigers defeated the Northwestern Oklahoma State Rangers, 20–0, in the title game to win the program's second NAIA championship.
