Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada – John D. Roth, Mennonite World Conference Faith and Life Commission secretary, was appointed general editor of the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO – www.gameo.org). The GAMEO board voted unanimously 19 May 2017 to transfer oversight of the project to the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism (ISGA), which Roth directs, at Goshen College, Indiana, USA.

GAMEO is an online encyclopedia, begun to provide digital access to the five-volume Mennonite Encyclopedia. It contains the original 12,000 English entries, many of them updated with current information, plus an additional 4,000 new entries contributed by volunteer editors and regional committees from around the world. And the corpus continues to grow.

“As the scope of Anabaptist-Mennonite research [at Goshen College] has broadened to include the global church, it is fitting that we could bring the long tradition of ‘scholarship for the church’ to support now the global vision of GAMEO in the digital age,” says Roth.

GAMEO is committed to expanding future entries to include greater representation from the global church.

With the addition of GAMEO to its oversight, the ISGA will shift the focus of its Global Anabaptist Wiki (www.anabaptistwiki.org) to become an online archive for the global church and a repository of digital resources such as the Anabaptist Dictionary of the Bible, the Bibliotheca Digital Anabautista, and materials related Anabaptist-Mennonite ecumenical involvements.

The ISGA will continue to support the “Bearing Witness Stories Project” (www.martyrstories.org), featuring stories of Anabaptist-Mennonite Christians who have suffered for their faith.

Mennonite World Conference is one of GAMEO’s six institutional owners: Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Historical Society of Canada, Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission and the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism. A management board, composed of representatives from these organizations, oversees the operations. Mennonite World Conference provides accounting services to the project.

–A Mennonite World Conference release, with files from Goshen College.