Dr. Maxwell Kennel

Senior Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies

Director of Pandora Press and Editor of the Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies Series.

Co-Investigator on the CREATE Project and Affiliate at the Arcand Centre for Health Equity at NOSM University.

Author of Postsecular History (Palgrave, 2022) and Ontologies of Violence (Brill, 2023), and editor of Astrid von Schlachta’s Anabaptists. Trans. Vic Thiessen (Pandora, 2024), and Robert Friedmann’s Design for Living (Wipf & Stock, 2017).

Two New Interviews (May 2025): “Domination and Dignity: A Conversation with Vincent Lloyd on the Black Radical Tradition” in Theory, Culture & Society, and a conversation with Caleb Zakarin on Astrid von Schlachta’s book, Anabaptists for the New Books Network.

Interview with Caleb Zakarin on Astrid von Schlachta’s Anabaptists for the New Books Network: https://newbooksnetwork.com/anabaptists

The Anabaptists, alongside the Lutheran and Reformed churches, were the third major current in the sixteenth century Reformation movements. From their beginnings, the Anabaptists were highly diverse and yet they shared some central beliefs and practices for which they were quickly persecuted – for example, defenselessness and nonresistance, the refusal to swear oaths, and the separation of church and state. Ideal for both teachers and students, this book provides a comprehensive and scholarly account of the history and development of the Anabaptists, alongside the Mennonite, Hutterite, and Amish traditions that emerged from their movement.

Anabaptists: From the Reformation to the 21st Century (Pandora Press, 2024) shows the cultural diversity of the Anabaptists over five centuries as they moved between persecution and toleration, isolation and social integration, and traditionalization and renewal. Amidst these tensions, the Anabaptist story is told here anew based on the current state of the field on the eve of its 500-year anniversary. Written by an established scholar of Anabaptist history, and expertly translated into English by Victor Thiessen, this comprehensive study appears in the Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies series, edited by Maxwell Kennel, and published by Pandora Press.

Maxwell Kennel is Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies (CIFRS), Director of Pandora Press, and Pastor at the Hamilton Mennonite Church.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

“Domination and Dignity: A Conversation with Vincent Lloyd on the Black Radical Tradition” in Theory, Culture & Society: https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/RPBGYINAH7FZUABAN2DD/full

Abstract: Vincent Lloyd is a scholar of religion, politics, and race, whose work has focused variously on charisma, Black secularism and theology, natural law, grace, Christian ethics, and the work of Gillian Rose. Editor for many years of the journal Political Theology, Lloyd has shaped and influenced several discrete and overlapping conversations on religion and politics in the Global North. Lloyd’s most recent book, Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination, carries his work further from political theology and Black Studies into activist spaces and the public realm. This interview was conducted with Maxwell Kennel in late 2023 and early 2024, and it focuses on the major contours of Lloyd’s thought in the context of Black dignity, covering topics from the complex intersections of religion and politics in the Black radical tradition to the politics of violence.