Newly Discovered Johannes Kelpius Source

The Kelpius Society is shedding light on a newly discovered manuscript attributed to Johannes Kelpius, a mystical visionary who created an early monastic community, sometimes called The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness, along the Wissahickon Stream near Philadelphia. A few years ago I spend a few hours traipsing around the Wissahickon basin and visited the root cellar which is said to have been a hermitage used by Kelpius. I've also found mention of members of the society in Moravian sources of the period. I've been fascinated with this mystical order ever since. Yet this legendary society, which was within the same orbit as the Moravian community at Bethlehem and the Brethren society at Ephrata, is shrouded in mystery due to a dearth of sources but is testament to the religious diversity and pietist experiments in colonial Pennsylvania. According to expert Kirby Don Richards,

For the first time in a century, a new work by Johannes Kelpius has been discovered. Mr. Richard Ackner, a direct descendent of Kelpius’s brother Georg, made this exciting discovery at the Manuscript Department of the Library of the City of Sighiṣoara, Romania, listed in the catalogue as Manuscript 505.

You can read more about this rare find here. 

New Reviews - Religion and Europe

Here are a couple reviews that might be of interest to those interested in Pietism and the religious context of Europe. Thanks to Kate Carté Engel, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, who recommended these over at H-Net: 

Reviewed for H-German by Kyle Jantzen Moses, John Anthony. The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Collision with Prusso-German History, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009.  xxi + 298 pp.  $90.00, ISBN 978-1-84545-531-6.

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=33611

Reviewed for HABSBURG by Andrew L. Thomas Louthan, Howard; Cohen, Gary B.; Szabo, Franz A. J., eds. Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500-1800.  New York: Berghahn Books, 2011.  xii+ 240 pp.                          

ISBN 978-0-85745-108-8. 

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=37620

As Long as its MLK’s vision of American Ideals

Morally sensitive efforts to wrestle with American history inevitably lead to being confronted with the fact that the United States, like every nation, has consistently perpetuated injustice. It tempers one’s enthusiasm for one’s country. The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. came up in class the other day and it reminded me what had struck me about a local MLK day celebration I had attended last month. I was reminded of the ironic fact that MLK embraced America. If there was ever an individual who had reason to be cynical about the ideals of liberty and justice for which the United States says it stands, it was him. Yet for King, these ideals still held meaning; these ideals transcended America’s moral failings. I realized that its not so much that American ideals of justice don’t exist, but rather I have been distracted by visions of justice that revolve around stubborn individualism and 2^nd amendment rights, the persistent reality of systemic inequality, angry culture wars, or dishonest appeals to history. In a context in which differing visions of America’s moral fiber seem to exist in competition with one another, King represented a more transcendent, genuinely authentic version of American justice. And seeing things in a fresh way has restored a measure of my own optimism about American ideals, as long as its MLK’s vision of those ideals.

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger and “All Truth is God’s Truth”

An excerpt from an ongoing writing project:

In countless Christian colleges and universities today, the phrase “All Truth is God’s Truth” has become a frequent part of conversations about the “integration” of faith and learning. The notion that truth is true no matter where one happens to discover it has been popularized by educators in the Reformed tradition and, at least in its modern context, is rooted in the work of Abraham Kuyper, an influential Dutch theologian and statesman in the 19^th century. In this model, the integration of faith and learning is a means of “reforming” the knowledge of the world—that is, reshaping the conclusions of one’s academic discipline so that it conforms to Christian principles. These Christian principles are often referred to as a “worldview,” or a foundational lens or framework through which we view the world and engage in the process of organizing knowledge and determining truth.

Yet the notion that truth is unified by its transcendent quality, no matter who advances it or how it is discovered, is not simply a Reformed idea. The unity of truth was an important idea for the late Medieval mystics -- rooted in a belief that everything that exists shares an essential unity that was rooted in God as the originator of all things. While scholastics (the champions of orthodoxy) recognized the heterodox tendencies in mysticism – that it blurred the qualitative distinction between God and the created order – the idea that all truth shared a common connection with the Divine provided a profound platform for human discovery. For such mystics, the path toward true knowledge could begin with thoughtful examination of God’s universe. This mystical emphasis on the unity of truth found expression among pietists such as Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. Oetinger is hardly a recognizable name and is not as well known as other pietist leaders. Yet he was an important part of a circle of Pietists centered around Württemberg, in the early decades of the 18^th century. Oetinger, whose eclectic interests included alchemy, pursued the knowledge of God in an integrated way that reflected his respect for the Bible as well as scientific discovery. Oetinger claimed that truth, whether found in “holy things” such as the Bible, or in “nature” which he studied through his alchemic experiments, was united in internal “harmony.” “In so skeptical a time,” Oetinger declared, “the truth of God in nature and Scripture is my basis.”[1] While evangelicals today may be wary of more mystically inclined pietists such as Oetinger, it is important to note that the idea of “All truth is God’s truth” was not foreign to the pietist tradition and can be found within this stream long before Kuyper articulated it so well.

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[1] Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, “A Confession of Thought” in Peter C. Erb, ed. Pietists: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1983) 277.

History’s “Mankind” Lacking Credible Take on Crusades

The History Channel took the path of least resistance tonight in its portrayal of the Crusades (“Mankind: The History of All of Us”). Theirs was a predictable perspective, which will no doubt reinforce popular perceptions of the crusades as religious fanaticism writ large. Never mind the complex interplay of politics, economic motivations, and the thirst for empire that augmented religious aspirations. Neither Muslims nor Christians, in fact, would have seen “religion” as an independent category in the way that we understand it. It’s a seductive oversimplification, though, and one that fits well with the pervasive “Clash of Civilizations” thesis (Ala Samuel Huntington)  that continues to frame common notions about the relationship between Christianity and Islam. 

It also reminds me that I still need to read Cavanaugh’s Myth of Religious Violence. 

Devin Manzullo-Thomas Reflects on Evangelicals and Brethren in Christ

Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to be involved in the 2012 Conference on Faith and History at Gordon College. I intended to blog about it, but ... well, it just didn't get done. But recently, Devin Manzullo-Thomas has provided some great reflections on his own involvement, including a panel that I also helped with. He writes about the tensions regarding evangelicals and Anabaptists – a topic with which I also wrestle. You can find his piece in the Mennonite World Review here. 

McKnight Offers Reflections on The Activist Impulse

I feel privileged that Scot McKnight would offer some gracious words about The Activist Impulse on his blog. Here's a snippet: 

... But the two branches that ought not to be politicized are those that have suffered ostracization and marginalization. Two groups come to mind, the evangelicals in the USA who were outed and ousted in the modernist-fundamentalist debates and the Anabaptists who not only were hunted and persecuted but alongside the fundamentalists in the USA developed a non-political, anti-political and de-political theology.

But the last thirty years reveal complicity and compromise by both sides. Evangelicals tilted so far Right they are now nearly equated with the Right; about 80% vote Right. I don’t know the votes by historic Anabaptist churches but they have become more or less Left ... 

The full post can be found here.

Processing Evangelical History at Winona Lake

I have been sidetracked lately ...  taking more of a leadership role in the archival materials housed at Grace College. Besides the college and seminary archives and the collections of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches, we have a wonderful collection of records and artifacts related to Winona Lake history, which was an important Chautauqua site before it became a major center for the evangelical movement in America (and the home of Billy Sunday). But there is plenty of cataloging to do, some necessary storage improvement and finding aids to create. Thankfully I have a few history students who are looking to help! The long term goal is to put together a joint archive with plenty of opportunities for researchers. 

More From Jay Case's Unpredictable Gospel

What follows is the second part of my interview with Jay Case about his new book, An Unpredictable Gospel. You can find the first part here.

Jared: If you were to compare and contrast how these Protestant denominations fit into your overall narrative, what would you say?

Jay: Hmm. I don’t know if I can give an adequate compare/contrast in less than 320 pages. But I’ll say this: there is a lot of diversity and complexity out there. Different individuals working for different evangelical traditions in different cultures around the world in different eras….it gets complicated. What they have in common is evangelicalism. Thus, I see some general patterns, stemming from those evangelical commitments, which play out in diverse ways. I use a common four-part historical definition of evangelicalism (the need for a personal commitment to Christ, biblical authority, the command to evangelize, and an emphasis on the atoning work of Christ) as the foundation to explain missionary actions. In their own way, each of these four characteristics creates paradoxical dynamics in the evangelical relationship to culture, power and influence. And so…well, readers will have to buy the book to figure out how that plays out.

Jared: Do you think any of your conclusions or arguments about missions would be surprising to many evangelicals? To secular-minded readers? If so, what would these surprises be?

Jay: Evangelicals who aren’t deeply acquainted with the missionary movement might be surprised to discover that missionaries have always been lousy at converting large numbers of people. There are important dynamics of power and culture at work here that explain why – and they won’t surprise evangelicals who are familiar with the missionary movement. Evangelicals might also be surprised to find out that world Christianity has had an impact on American evangelicalism. For instance, a movement of Christianity in Burma among the nomadic Karen people in the 1840s and 50s directly influenced northern evangelical support for African American colleges in the American South in the 1860s and 70s. I argue that, essentially, without evangelical movements of world Christianity in Asia, Hawaii and Africa in the early 19th century, we wouldn’t have colleges like Morehouse, Spelman, Fisk, or Howard. It’s a strange connection. However, I believe that movements of world Christianity have affected American evangelicalism and American culture, via the missionary movement, in ways that we just haven’t noticed because we haven’t ever thought to look for them.

Secular-minded readers might be surprised by my claims that missionaries tended to be less racist and less ethnocentric than any other group of Americans in the 19th century. That includes most intellectuals and academics from that century. Now, before evangelical readers get too triumphant about this, I should explain that it wasn’t because evangelical missionaries were naturally more ethical on these issues than other Americans. They carried plenty of racism and ethnocentrism with them to other cultures. But there were dynamics within the missionary engagement that challenged missionaries (consciously or unconsciously) to adjust their practices and thinking about people from other cultures. Unfortunately, few evangelicals thought deeply or systematically about these things, so they didn’t always effectively implement insights into later policies. So missionaries kept making similar mistakes over the years. We evangelicals have been much better at promoting active ministries than forming careful theology.

Jay Case on Evangelicals and World Christianity

Jay Case teaches at Malone University in Canton, Ohio and I am a fan of his new book, An Unpredictable Gospel: American Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812-1920 (Oxford, 2012). This is the first of two installments of my interview with him about the book.

By the way, Case blogs at "The Curcuit Rider."

Jared: How did you get interested in the history of Protestant missions and how does your book fit into current scholarship about this topic?


My wife and I taught at a school in Kenya for missionary kids, Rift Valley Academy, between 1986 and 1993.  It was a truly amazing and transformative time in my life in many ways.  Living in Kenya provoked about 47 different questions in my mind about Christianity, culture and missionaries.  So when I went on to graduate school in American religions history at Notre Dame I wanted to try to figure out answers to some of those questions in my dissertation.  I answered a few, but about 83 more questions were provoked in that process.  The long-term result of all that is my book.  I still have questions, though.The book fits pretty well into work done by missiologists (theologians and historians who study the theology and history of missions).  It draws upon work done by scholars like Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Brian Stanley and Dana Robert.  However, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of crossover influence between missiologists and American historians.  Most (but not all) of the work on missionaries done by American historians operates out of a Cultural Imperialist or post-colonial school of thought.  Some of what I do in this book is consistent with the general thrust of those schools, but some of what I do challenges them.  So we’ll have to see how the American historians react.  

Jared: In the book you write about Baptists, Methodists, the AME Church, and the Holiness movement. How did you come to focus on these groups?

Jay: I grew up Methodist and I married a Baptist. Research is often autobiographical in some way, isn’t it? But there is more to it. Most of the scholarship on 19th century missionaries focuses on the well-educated groups of the Protestant establishment, like Congregationalists and Presbyterians. Methodists and Baptist often just get thrown in as less eloquent versions of the same thing. However, in graduate school I came across the Baptist leader Francis Wayland who argued in 1854 that missionaries should be careful not to de-nationalize converts or try to turn mission stations into little European cities. I had to figure out how he got to the point where he could say this kind of thing seventy years before anthropologists were thinking this way about culture. Then I began looking at the Methodist missionary William Taylor who was arguing for a color-blind missionary policy in the 1870s. At that point, I began to think that there might have been democratized dynamics among the Methodist and Baptist traditions that produced different missionary dynamics than the more established Reformed traditions.

More to come ...

Final Installment of my Interview with David Swartz

Jared: What is the relationship between those we might call “neo-Anabaptists” and the evangelical left? Wouldn’t a truly Anabaptist ethic mean that one would need to resist identifying with either the Left or the Right?

David: Before answering the question, I should discuss briefly the dilemma I had in what to call the subjects of my research. There were several options. Were they progressives, moderates, leftists, or consistent-life practitioners? Well, they were all of the above—some quite conservative on certain issues and quite progressive on others. I actually thought about using the inelegant term “evangelical non-right.” That wouldn’t have sold many books, but it was probably the most accurate since my research subjects occupied just about every position on the spectrum, sometimes multiple positions on the spectrum simultaneously. Where do you place on the left-right continuum someone who is against abortion and capital punishment?

All that said, many neo-Anabaptists populate the evangelical left. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they had much loyalty at all to the broader American Left. Take, for instance, the Post-Americans (the group that would eventually be called Sojourners). Seeing their primary identity as global Christians and committed to the Church, they were suspicious of any temporal structure or political label. It probably would be most accurate to call them New Leftists, and as such, they critiqued liberals and conservatives alike. They thought the idea that liberalism’s essentialist creed of equality would gradually end segregation and achieve military victory in Southeast Asia was naïve and ridiculous. Only direct protest could end segregation. They saw big government as oppressive in its global imperialism. Similarly, they saw the conservative commitment to big business as economically oppressive.

Progressive social action outside of electoral structures, practiced by neo-Anabaptists and many others, stands as one of the principle legacies of the evangelical left. Its political relevance goes well beyond its marginal influence on the Democrats or Republicans. It has helped to launch engagement around a much broader array of issues—from African poverty to peacemaking to simple living—to which neither party pays much attention. In fact, third-way action outside electoral politics may be the future of evangelical social action, which may fit their idiosyncratic interests and views. Researchers at Baylor found that evangelicals who read the Bible every day are more likely to favor more humane treatment of criminals, to be more concerned about issues of poverty and conservation, and to more clearly oppose same-sex marriage and legalized abortion than evangelicals who do not. Evangelicals, anti-confessional and revivalist in sensibility, are more religiously and politically creative than the electoral structures that try to contain them.

Jared: Many CCCU schools, such as Grace College (where I teach), are what George Marsden has described as “post fundamentalist.” Is there any hope that we can eventually reflect the kind of diversity that exists in the broader evangelical landscape given our fundamentalist past?

David: The short answer is “Yes—eventually.” Some evangelicals, for reasons I discuss in the book, are now tied to conservative politics and the Republican Party through identity politics. That is, they vote Republican because their parents did and because the media says they should. But historically and globally, evangelicalism has shown the capacity for stunning diversity. And in the United States now, even within the Republican Party, more young evangelicals are talking about peace, poverty, and caring for God’s creation.
A lot depends on outside conditions. Prior to the 1970s the Republican Party was arguably less pro-family and pro-life than the Democratic Party. But activists pushed the Democrats decisively in a pro-choice direction. The structural conditions that brought down the evangelical left in the 1970s and 1980s might be changing. More and more Americans are becoming pro-life on the abortion issue. If that trend continues and anti-abortion views become more common across the political spectrum, the Democratic Party may be forced into reconsidering its pro-choice orthodoxy (though that seems a bit hard to imagine after this year’s convention!). And, in turn, some evangelicals who hold progressive stances on economics and diplomacy may feel released from Republican identification because of the abortion issue.
That said—and I’m speaking more as a theologian than a historian now—I’m not entirely certain that success, at least in the way that the religious right “enjoyed” it, is something that any Christian should want. Its success depended largely on money, coercion, and demonization of “the other” (which, to be sure, is a temptation for each side)—all elemental political realities that Jesus clearly warned against. I worry that those who identify very closely with one political party—whatever party it is—will be tempted to compromise their faithfulness and their ability to speak out prophetically on issues that matter to us as disciples of Christ.

Heading to Moravian Conference in Pennsylvania

I leave today to give a paper at the 2012 Bethlehem Conference on Moravian History and Music in Bethlehem, PA. Although I won’t make it in time, Peter Vogt, a fine historian and Moravian pastor in Europe will be delivering the Moses Lecture tonight on the campus of Moravian College. A live stream of the lecture can be found here.

On Saturday, I will be talking about how the memory of Moravians and other pietists has been used by nineteenth and twentieth century evangelicals to promote a particular identity. The paper is called “From Heretics to Saints: Moravians in the Evangelical Imagination.” The full program can be accessed here.

Jay Case, historian at Malone University in Ohio is blogging at The Circuit Rider - a blog he hopes will connect with a more popular crowd, or as he says, "the average person in the pew."

Jay has a recent book out with Oxford Press, called An Unpredictable Gospel: Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812-1920, in which he takes a fresh look at the history of Protestant missions. (I also mentioned it here in a previous post.)

I will be interviewing him about the book soon ... so stay tuned.

More from David Swartz on the Evangelical Left

Here's the second installment of an interview with David Swartz about his new book: Moral Minority: the Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism:

Jared: Considering that many American evangelicals would see themselves on the Right, why should they take this topic (the Evangelical Left) seriously?

David: First, there are more evangelicals on the left and center than most people realize. In most elections, between 25 and 35% of evangelicals vote Democratic (and many more are comfortable with progressive positions, but vote Republican primarily because of abortion). That’s a minority of evangelicals, but still a lot of people!

Second, there’s nothing inevitable about evangelicals taking conservative positions on a multitude of issues ranging from poverty, economics, capital punishment, and war. In fact, historically evangelicals often have been quite progressive in the United States. And globally evangelicals often scratch their heads at the American evangelical alliance with the Republican Party. The story of the evangelical left (and why it couldn’t keep pace with the religious right) helps make sense of why political conservatism is so closely tied to evangelicalism.

Third, the evangelical left helped broader evangelicalism to think structurally and socially. An excerpt from the last paragraph of the book articulates this point: “If a unified politics continued to elude evangelicals, political involvement itself did not. Evangelicals agreed by the end of the first decade of the new millennium—in far greater proportion than fifty years before—that the Gospel calls for holistic, not just personal, transformation. Followers of Jesus, evangelicals say almost in unison, must take up cultural, social, even political responsibilities. The evangelical left, representing one of the most serious postwar attempts to mobilize evangelicals for organized political action, hastened this broader plunge toward a sense of corporate obligation and activism, electoral and beyond. It carved out space for the rhetoric and activism of social justice—on both the left and on what became a much larger right. Even if evangelicals did not agree precisely on what the public good looks like, they no longer had to legitimize participation in debate over the public good itself.”

Jared: Why do those on the evangelical Right and the Evangelical Left find it so hard to get along? What can all evangelicals do, no matter their politics, to promote more irenic coexistence?

David: Speaking now self-consciously as a Christian, I suggest actually doing church together. The Mennonite church I attend in Lexington, Kentucky, contains the full spectrum of political involvement (and non-involvement). We occasionally talk politics, but our primary interactions revolve around worship, discipleship, eating food together, and serving the community together. Because we spend a lot of time together and because our focus is on churchly activities, it seems like passion for electoral politics inevitably diminishes. Face-to-face, embodied relationships (as opposed to Facebook debates) breed empathy. Jonathan Haidt, one of the most perceptive commentators on the contemporary culture wars, has offered a similar suggestion for Congress. He writes, “Other changes would work more gradually by making it easier for politicians to recover the sort of human relationships that have always lubricated the gears of government. For example, in 1995 Newt Gingrich changed the legislative calendar to encourage House members to keep their families in their home districts, rather than moving to Washington where they often fraternized with the enemy. Nowadays, all business is conducted midweek. Many members fly in on Tuesday morning and fly home Thursday evening, leaving few possibilities for meeting members of the other party off of the battlefield and out of sight of the press.”

Context also matters. When we understand the religious and cultural circumstances out of which our political enemies (and ourselves) emerge, we also learn empathy. Thinking narratively helps us to think less in terms of winning an argument and more in terms of finding common ground and cultivating spiritual virtues. Evangelicals would do well to follow the advice of St. Peter: “make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.”

Eric Carlsson reviews Edited Volume on Pietism

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, Eric Carlsson has written a thoughtful review of  Pietism in Germany and North America, 1680-1820 on the Humanities-Net site "H-German." This substantive volume was edited by Jonathan Strom, Hartmut Lehmann, James Van Horn Melton.

Find the review here.

My Interview with David R. Swartz on the "Moral Minority"

David Swartz, a friend of mine who teaches history at Asbury University has just published Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism with the University of Pennsylvania Press. You can find more information at his thought provoking blog.

Recently I asked David about the book, his goals for writing it, and what other evangelicals could learn from his research. This is the first of three installments from my interview with David.




Jared: How did this book materialize? How does it connect to you personally?
David: Professionally, it was important that I find both archival materials and a gap in the scholarship of American religious history. When I read a piece by Ron Sider online suggesting that some “enterprising graduate student” take a look at the Evangelicals for Social Action archives, I knew immediately that I had a project.

On a more personal level, this project was an attempt to figure out my own parents (all history is ultimately autobiography, right?). They had grown up in the 1970s. They ran a pretty egalitarian marriage. They sang “They Will Know We Are Christians by our Love” during worship services and would have been dismayed by an American flag in the church sanctuary. I ate food my mother (and father!) cooked out of More-with-Less, a cookbook with lots of vegetarian recipes. And I knew many like them, people who were not comfortable with the idea of American as a Christian nation, with a budget that prioritized the military over poverty, a punitive criminal justice system, and the like. And yet they shared their faith and lived out the kind of warm piety so common within evangelicalism. This was an idiosyncratic combination that I never read about in news reports and scholarly books. So I dedicated my research to learning about non-rightist evangelicals. How common were they? Why did they seem so marginalized?

Jared: What are a couple goals you would like this book to accomplish?
David: I wrote this book with several audiences in mind. For non-evangelical scholars and observers, I wanted to complicate perspectives on theologically conservative Christians. So many of my research subjects have had to qualify their evangelical identity by saying things like “I’m not that kind of evangelical!” There are millions and millions of evangelicals who won’t vote for Mitt Romney (because they’ll vote for Obama or not vote at all) or won’t otherwise resonate with politically conservative sensibilities. I want to promote awareness of evangelical cultural, racial, and political diversity.

For evangelical readers, I want to offer a sense of context. Just about everyone, folks on the right and the left, seem so certain that they’re correct, that there’s a direct line from the Bible to the ballot box. But everyone comes to faith and political commitments out of a particular history. Given different historical and cultural circumstances, we could have very different views about poverty, war, capital punishment, and gender roles. This ought to inculcate a profound sense of humility—and hopefully an instinct to conduct more civil discussions.

Now on Twitter

I was inspired to see #CFH2012 trending so well that I've taken the plunge into the Twitter universe. (With the expert help and encouragement of my students I must say)!

https://twitter.com/Burkster1700

Student Tweets from CFH at Gordon College

Several Grace students will be providing regular tweets and updates from the Conference on Faith and History's biennial meeting at Gordon College. Follow them here:

Nina Ferry's tweets here

Grace Beasley's tweets here

A More Nuanced Side of Metaxas?

Last night I wrote about my impressions on Eric Metaxas’ session with our faculty, a time that left me with the sense that Metaxas was pressing us to fight the culture wars in the name of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer. Today he spoke to our student body and I was left with a different impression. This was a more nuanced presentation in which he acknowledged the complexities and tensions involved in the Christian’s relationship with the state. I am no less concerned about his penchant to blend history and conservative activism, but I was encouraged to find what seemed to be a more reflective and even historically informed side of Metaxas that I wish had come out in a more profound way yesterday.

Introducing Metaxas

Grace College is hosting Eric Metaxas this week, who has had best-selling biographies of William Wilberforce (2007) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2010), and I had the privilege of introducing Metaxas and moderating discussion after he addressed our faculty. This was, of course, a great opportunity for the campus, but I must admit that I had reservations. I was aware that Metaxas is not a trained historian (nor does he claim to be) and that his biography of Bonhoeffer has received mixed reviews. The general consensus among Bonhoeffer specialists was that, however skillful the writing, Metaxas had “evangelicalized” Bonhoeffer, glossed over rather complex theological currents, and fashioned him into a figure that would give credibility to the activism of American evangelicals. (See, for example, an "evangelical critique" of the book by Richard Weikart (California State University, Stanislaus).) I am far from any kind of expert on Bonhoeffer, but all historians are familiar with this classic pitfall of biographical writing, that is, the temptation to (re)create a historical figure in one’s own image. While I will need to let the specialists (and future biographers) decide the overall merit of Metaxas’ treatment of Bonhoeffer, his talk today seemed to give creedence to his critics, at least in my mind.

Before going further, I should say that his biographies are great reads and there was much that was commendable about Metaxas’ presentation and his interaction with the faculty. He admonished us to engage in the public sphere with skill and temperance, and to avoid the kind of demonizing for which politics has become known. He spoke of love, prayer, and learning from those across the aisle. He also humbly acknowledged his surprise that his books had been so well received and that he has received such notoriety from his talk at the National Prayer Breakfast back in February.

Yet, it seemed to me, he is still a culture warrior who has been enamored by these heroic figures and can’t help but make use of them to rally his fellow evangelicals to fight against the left. For Metaxas, Wilberforce’s struggle against the slave trade or Bonheoffer’s efforts to subvert the Nazis are tantamount to the evangelical right’s efforts to overcome their liberal enemies. While I know this resonates with many of my peers, I cringe when I see how frequently history is used for various agendas, rather than understood on its own terms and in context. Are Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer inspiring? Absolutely. Is it a privilege to have Metaxas on campus? Absolutely. Do I think we often plunder the past for our own purposes? Absolutely.

Activist Impulse in Englewood Review of Books

Thanks to Alex Dye for a good word about The Activist Impulse over at Englewood Review of Books. Here is a taste:

"Within each section one will find a smattering of subjects, all interesting to be sure, which provide a cross section for some of the issues inherent in the intersecting of these two movements. For example, within the section concerning the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, two of the essays look at the life and works of Daniel Kauffman, a bishop in the Mennonite Church and how he interacted with evangelicalism and fundamentalism as they shaped the church in the early 20th century. The other two address fundamentalism in the Grace Brethren Church and in specific Mennonite Conferences in Pennsylvania. Do these essays build off of one another? No. Do they give the reader a solid sense of the issues at hand? Somewhat. But more than those rudimentary questions or even a survey of historical interactions with fundamentalism or modern liberalism, they provide real, human illustrations of how Christians reacted to and adjusted for the changing of times, which in some respects is even more valuable, as it serves as a historical mirror in which we can reflect upon the positions of our own churches today."

Resurrecting The Matrix

Sure, The Matrix is a film from last century; but I can’t help resurrecting it whenever I teach the course Religion in American History. One of my favorite classes, it is a smorgasbord of samplings from America’s religious history and it usually includes getting our feet wet in the Christian Science pool—for which The Matrix is a perfect teaching tool. Its themes of reality and pseudo-reality connect so well with Mary Bakker Eddy’s philosophical framework. (Thanks Professor Bozeman, for sparking my interest in “alternative” religious movements!)

Barlow Speaks on Faith and Politics

Each year the Department of History and Political Science at Grace College invites a chapel speaker to address some aspect of faith and politics as a way of marking Constitution Day. Last year, John Fea challenged our students with the question of whether or not America was founded as a Christian nation. This week, Bruce Barlow, a local Grace Brethren pastor, used the Hebrew prophets, particularly Jeremiah, to help us think about how Christians should seek justice in the rough and tumble world of American politics. Our campus is essentially evangelical but our heritage has strong ties to Anabaptism. The day before, our president, Ron Manahan spoke on a similar theme, offering a pretty standard evangelical take on giving to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and  to God that which is God’s. It sparked healthy debate among some students, however, given Graces College’s recent involvement in a lawsuit against the Federal Government's HSS mandate. Given the spectrum of views on this topic, Bruce did a nice job connecting to our student body yet challenging us toward a “soft” two-kingdom theology.

Pietism and the Integration of Faith and Learning

Here's another excerpt. This comes from a paper I'm writing on how Pietist virtues can benefit our academic communities. I'm calling it, "Between Kuyper and Comenius: Can Pietist Virtues be Scholarly Virtues?"

Implicit in many of the essays in Confessing History is a critique of one of the most dominant conversations that exists among many CCCU schools. This conversation revolves around the Kuyperian model, which has been simplified into a program for the “integration of faith and learning” along with a strong emphasis on competing World Views. Done well, this Reformed approach has great potential for sophisticated avenues of scholarship, and has undergirded the academic prowess of places such as Calvin College.

However, the worldview approach has been appropriated by those, at a more popular level, who would imbue it with a political agenda (e.g. James Dobson). Others use the worldview model as a means of promoting narrow versions of Christian faith under an umbrella of “biblical integration.” In this context, employing a Christian worldview becomes an exercise in triumphalism, rather than a truly integrated approach. I’m not suggesting that the language of integration or worldview should be abandoned simply because some of our colleagues or those in the Christian Right practice it poorly. Nor am I suggesting that a Pietist approach should replace the Reformed methodology altogether. But I am suggesting that pietist virtues can offer something of an antidote to the triumphalist tendency that is inherent in the Reformed model, at least as it is practiced by some we might call “soft” Reconstructionists...

"Whitcombism" and Fundamentalist History

I'm working on multiple projects right now that have been taking me away from blogging. So I've decided to post some (draft) excerpts from some of these projects. The excerpt below is coming from a chapter in a forthcoming book on Grace Theological Seminary, which, at this point I'm calling: "A Separatist Creed: Grace Seminary's sojourn in American Fundamentalism."

There is little question that much of the institution’s (Grace Seminary) burgeoning momentum was due to the growing reputation of John (“Jack”) C. Whitcomb, Jr., one of the seminary’s most legendary professors and an individual who, even more than Herman Hoyt, represented the fundamentalist mentality. Born in 1924, Whitcomb was raised in a family with military ties that went back to the Civil War. Whitcomb’s father fought in both World Wars and even served as an officer under George C. Patton. Whitcomb himself had hopes of following in the military tradition but his poor eyesight kept him out of West Point and he enrolled in Princeton University to study International Affairs instead. His chance to serve came in 1944, however, when he was drafted and sent to Europe, where his service included time in an artillery unit during the Battle of the Bulge.

Whitcomb’s conversion took place through the ministry of Princeton Evangelical Fellowship (PEF), a campus club organized around 1931 by Donald G. Fullerton, a Princeton alumna who had recently returned from missionary service in India and Afghanistan. Fullerton held Sunday afternoon Bible classes for over 50 years and frequently met with members individually for Bible study and prayer. Fullerton had a fundamentalist orientation and PEF remained aloof from other evangelical campus ministries. He routinely challenged the men in PEF to enter full-time Christian service and a strong dispensationalist, Fullerton channeled graduates toward dispensationalist seminaries such as Grace.

Feeling called to the ministry, Whitcomb enrolled at Grace Seminary on Fullerton’s recommendation and excelled in his studies under Alva J. McClain, Homer Kent Sr., and Hoyt. Graduating with a B.D. in 1951, Whitcomb began teaching Old Testament and Hebrew while pursuing further studies in the seminary. By 1957 he had earned both a Th.M. and a Th.D. In the years that followed, Whitcomb served the seminary in various capacities, both in his teaching ministry and duties as editor of the Grace Journal.

More than service to the seminary, however, Whitcomb’s legendary status in fundamentalist circles stemmed directly from his first book, The Genesis Flood, a revised version of his Grace Seminary dissertation co-authored with Henry Morris. The book argued for a universal deluge, rather than a localized flood as other evangelicals were theorizing, and sought to demonstrate that Noah’s flood was the best scientific as well as biblical accounting for the geological record. More significant than debates over the extent of the flood, however, was the fact that Whitcomb and Morris advocated an alternative interpretation of the observable geological record. The earth only appeared millions of years old because the Noahamic flood had so catastrophically altered the earth’s crust. In essence, the book was as much an apologetic for a young earth based on literal 24-hour days of creation as it was a book about the Noahamic flood...

(Image from: http://www.cardcow.com/257097/westminister-hotel-winona-lake-indiana/)

Pietism is alive and well at Grace College

So I'm teaching a class on American religious history and of course we spent considerable time with the Moravians and other pietists, including the Brethren, in early America. By way of illustration, I passed around the “Litany of the Wounds” from the appendix in Craig Atwood’s Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem. To my surprise, they wanted to try it out! So next class period we divided into a mens "choir" and a womens "choir" and commenced a hearty recitation of the litany with all its gory delights. Another of my students (Nina Ferry), who’s a floor leader or RA (can’t remember which) has been referring to the "growth groups" on her dorm as conventicles! Makes me wonder what's next - a revival of the choir system ... renunciations of the administration as evil “Babylon”... or maybe a singstunde or two?

Giving our Freshmen a glimpse of our Heritage

On Wednesday I spoke to our 400 Freshmen on the heritage of Grace College and Seminary. While most of them know nothing beyond the American evangelicalism they’ve been raised in, I sensed they could begin to connect our institution’s present identity with its pietist and Anabaptist roots. Evangelicalism has been most visible to be sure, but its easy to see how much of the present is still shape by the past. I used a clip from Who Do You Think You Are? – a 2010 NBC series that follows celebrities as professional historians help them trace their family heritage. It worked well – I think we can all relate to a desire to understand ourselves through exploring the historical contexts of our family backgrounds. For me, a desire to understand myself within a broader context was my first motivation to study history.

The Activist Impulse chapter summaries

Over the summer we've been offering short summaries of each of the chapters of The Activist Impulse. Below are links to each of the posts (note: these links are to David Cramer's blog; for the same posts here on The Hermeneutic Circle, click here):

George Marsden's Forward

Our Introduction

Chapter 1 by Steve Nolt

Chapter 2 by John Roth

Chapter 3 by John Fea

Chapters 4 - 7 by Ben Wetzel, Nate Yoder, Mark Norris, and Jared Burkholder, respectively

Chapters 8 - 10 by Matt Eaton and Joel Boehner, Filipe Hinojosa, and David Swartz, respectively

Chapter 11 by Geoff Bowden

Chapter 12 by Tim Erdel

Chapter 13 by Kirk MacGregor

Chapter 14 and Afterward by David Cramer and Sara Wenger Shenk, respectively

Also, be sure to check out the Press on The Activist Impulse

The Activist Impulse: Cramer on Scripture and War

The last chapter of The Activist Impulse is by (yours truly) David C. Cramer, who continues charting an evangelical Anabaptist path with a biblical reexamination of the question of war in his essay, "Evangelical Hermeneutics, Anabaptist Ethics: John Howard Yoder, the Solas, and the Question of War." While the majority of evangelicals have rejected the Anabaptist commitment to pacifism as unbiblical, Cramer believes that evangelicals should feel compelled by their commitment to Scripture to consider the pacifist position more carefully. His argument rests not on a discussion of just war theory or the merits of “redemptive violence” as is often the case. Rather, he asserts that this issue has more to do with traditional evangelical concerns regarding faith and Scripture than it does with violence per se. Appropriating John Howard Yoder’s evangelical Anabaptist reading of Scripture as well as a fresh consideration of sola fide (faith alone) and sola scriptura (Scripture alone), Cramer beckons evangelicals to reopen this important topic that has long been central to Anabaptist teaching.*

 Finally, the book ends with a generous Afterward by AMBS president, Sara Wenger Shenk, who describes Anabaptists and evangelicals as a mixed family sitting down to dinner. Yes, over dinner there are bound to be hearty discussions and sometimes even heated debates, but at the end of the day, those conversations only prove that we are a part of the same family.

The Activist Impulse also includes a very detailed subject index to help you get around. 

*This paragraph is slightly adapted from The Activist Impulse, 324.

The Activist Impulse: MacGregor on Nonviolent Atonement

While ethical and political issues have dominated the evangelical-Anabaptist exchange over the last thirty years, a number of recent theological developments also provide fertile ground for further evangelical-Anabaptist dialogue. Perhaps one of the most hotly debated theological issues currently is the doctrine of the atonement. Unlike some of the ethical and political issues discussed in other chapters of The Activist Impulse, there is no clear-cut evangelical or Anabaptist position on the atonement, and indeed, there is much cross-pollination between evangelical and Anabaptist thought on this issue. Many evangelicals and some Anabaptists remain convinced that satisfaction or penal substitution models constitute the only biblical or orthodox view, but this position is being challenged on multiple fronts. Some evangelicals, such as New Testament scholar Scot McKnight (A Community Called Atonement), argue for the use of a plurality of images and metaphors for the atonement. However, a growing number of scholars—evangelical and Anabaptist alike—are beginning to reject satisfaction or substitutionary models entirely. Anabaptist theologian J. Denny Weaver (The Nonviolent Atonement) has led this charge by arguing for a nonviolent, Christus Victor model of the atonement, which has sparked much debate among Anabaptists while at the same time resonating with the work of some prominent evangelical theologians, such as Gregory Boyd (God at War).

In the penultimate chapter of The Activist Impulse, "Beyond Anselm: A Biblical and Evangelical Case for Nonviolent Atonement," Kirk R. MacGregor cuts through this debate, offering a creative synthesis of Anselmian satisfaction theory and nonviolent Christus Victor and exemplar themes. He does so while surprisingly maintaining a commitment to the classic evangelical doctrine of biblical inerrancy by offering penetrating analyses of standard biblical texts pertaining to the atonement that challenge traditional readings. Indeed, MacGregor’s proffered solution challenges each end of the evangelical-Anabaptist spectrum, while drawing richly from them both. This chapter is notable for its combination of exegetical, philosophical, and theological sensitivity and astuteness. One may not agree with MacGregor's final model, but it is one that will need to be taken seriously by those involved in atonement debates.*

*The above paragraphs are slightly adapted from The Activist Impulse, 323-24.

The Activist Impulse: Erdel on Christian Public Witness

The first three parts of The Activist Impulse describe the historical intersections of evangelicalism and Anabaptism. In the fourth and final part of the book, each chapter describes a potential trajectory for an emerging evangelical Anabaptism. Since some of the most foundational conversations between evangelicals and Anabaptists have involved questions of ethics and politics within the public arena, Bethel College Philosophy Professor Timothy Paul Erdel, in his article, "'Go Tell that Fox!' Evangelical Anabaptist Reflections on Religion in the Public Square," begins this section where the third section left off: with a discussion of church-state issues in the context of America’s ongoing "culture wars." Some evangelicals have jumped at the possibility of exercising moral authority within American society, but Erdel argues that while Christians may have the legal right to try to “legislate morality,” it may be impossible to do so without becoming entangled in the state’s coercive power, which would be unacceptable for Anabaptists. Erdel thus explores the possibility of a non-coercive Christian witness in the public square, which might integrate evangelical social concerns with Anabaptist political sensibilities. Along the way, Erdel offers some interesting anecdotes and provocative case studies about the ways evangelicals and Anabaptists approach issues of public morality, such as abortion, gay marriage, and war.*

*This paragraph is slightly adapted from The Activist Impulse, 323.

Discussing Peace and Violence at the Moravian Archives

I had a wonderful time at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem (PA) last night. I had the opportunity to give a lecture on how eighteenth-century Moravians dealt with questions of violence, war, and participation in civil affairs. The archives, which has recently set up a partnership with the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth (PA), has a fantastic collection of treasures and manuscript sources related not just to the Moravians, but to many facets of life and faith in early America. Paul Peucker, Lanie Graf, and the rest of the staff are always helpful and I have been the beneficiary of their good work many times. My talk attempted to probe the tensions and complexities with respect to Moravians and violence and I argued that a normative position is difficult to come by. Moravians certainly promoted peace and often refused to participate in military service. But pacifism was not an official tenet of the church and a diversity of convictions could be found among them, even among the church’s leaders. You can listen to my lecture here, or wait for an upcoming issue of the Journal of Moravian History to read the full article in print.

The Activist Impulse: Bowden on Political Theology

In chapter 11 of The Activist Impulse, "The Evangelical-Anabaptist Spectrum: The Political Theologies of Francis Schaeffer, John Howard Yoder, and Jim Wallis," Savannah State University professor of Political Science, Geoffrey Bowden, examines the “political theologies” of two poles of the evangelical-Anabaptist spectrum, Francis Schaeffer and John Howard Yoder, before examining Jim Wallis’ attempt at a middle ground—in order to elucidate some of the key points in which tension between these two traditions has existed. Bowden contends that the major difference between Schaeffer's and Yoder's approaches lies in their respective use of the biblical narrative. Whereas Yoder's political theology is drawn from a rich reading of the biblical narrative, Schaeffer uses Scripture much more superficially to justify his positions. Bowden then traces Wallis's development over the years, arguing that Wallis began his career much closer to Yoder but slowly moved further and further in Schaeffer's direction, not in terms of their respective political positions but in terms of the weight given to the biblical narrative. Whereas the biblical narrative was primary in Wallis's earlier writings, more recently he uses select quotes from the biblical prophets and Jesus to support his positions in order to justify them to a wider, more ecumenical and pluralistic base. While Bowden ultimately endorses Yoder’s approach, he concludes by calling for renewed discussion between Christians on the right and the left about how to witness faithfully to God’s redemptive activity in the political sphere.*

*This paragraph is adapted from The Activist Impulse, 216.

Evangelicalism: an Ethos or a Movement?

In his Patheos blog, Roger Olson, a prominent "post-conservative" evangelical who often provides an Arminian alternative to the Reformed voices within evangelicalism, has recently mused about the differences between an evangelical “ethos” and the evangelical “movement.” Olson distinguishes between a historic ethos that is based around the “Bebbington quadrilateral” (Biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, activist) and the more recent evangelical movement that is often associated with the culture wars, the Christian Right, and “neo-fundamentalism.” This distinction also helps to make sense of the broad spectrum of folks who somehow fit within the evangelical label. For the most part I think this is helpful. It allows people such as Olson, as well as myself, to identify with a historic evangelical ethos even if they are uneasy with much of the evangelical movement as it exists today. (Olson also lists several new books on evangelicalism, including the Activist Impulse). You can find it here.

The Activist Impulse: Three More Historical Case Studies

As part of their shared activist impulse, evangelicals and Anabaptists have both maintained a commitment to a robust public witness. Such a public witness, broadly construed, includes a number of intersecting concerns: evangelism, missions, and a host of social and political issues. As the following chapters describe, these intersecting and overlapping concerns create both moments of tension and moments of creative synthesis between these two traditions.

One early experiment in maintaining an evangelical Anabaptist public witness was the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, which consolidated several Anabaptist groups, all of which had evangelical leanings, and would eventually become part of what is now the Missionary Church. In their chapter,  “Practicing Peace, Embracing Evangelism: Missional Tensions in the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church,” Matthew Eaton, doctoral student in theology and ecology at the University of Toronto, and Bethel College writing instructor, Joel Boehner,  explore the founding of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ and its attempt to integrate evangelicalism and Anabaptism. They focus specifically on the ethical question of war as represented in the Gospel Banner, the official serial of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ. Eaton and Boehner argue that the early history of this American denomination demonstrates that evangelicalism and Anabaptism can successfully coexist in a single institution and actually enhance the distinct identity of both traditions by mutually reinforcing the primary concerns of each: nonviolence for Anabaptism and missions for evangelicalism. At the same time, they document how such a creative synthesis can be a tenuous one, with the possibility of one side of the synthesis overwhelming the other.

Unfortunately, historical discussions of Anabaptism and evangelicalism in North America have tended to focus primarily—if not at times exclusively—on white males. The following two chapters, by Texas A&M historian, Felipe Hinojosa, and Asbury College historian, David Swartz, offer helpful correctives to that trend by discussing the relationship of Anabaptism and evangelicalism with special attention to Latinas/os and women, respectively. In his chapter, “'Pool Tables are the Devil’s Playground': Forging an Evangelico-Anabautista Identity in South Texas,” Hinojosa further examines Mennonite missions by focusing specifically on missionary activity among Mexican Americans in South Texas after World War II. Amid a hotbed of religious competition, Mennonites adopted many of the same outreach methods as evangelicals. But it was the work of the Mennonite Voluntary Service, Hinojosa argues, that ultimately proved more attractive and provided the means for forging the religious identity of these Mexican Americans as both evangélicos and anabautistas.

Just as missions at times has been a unifying concern between evangelicals and Anabaptists, so too has the realm of politics, especially between socially progressive Anabaptists and the so-called “evangelical left.” In his chapter, “Re-Baptizing Evangelicalism: American Anabaptists and the 1970s Evangelical Left,” David Swartz highlights major figures from the 1960s onward, placing the Anabaptist evangelical relationship in its political context. Swartz offers a compelling analysis of the evangelical left that challenges traditional interpretations of the Anabaptist-evangelical relationship. While Anabaptist historians at times portrayed Anabaptists as the victims of evangelicalism’s corrupting influences, Swartz demonstrates that among left-of-center evangelicals, Anabaptists have exerted a surprising degree of influence. He notably traces, for example, the influence of Anabaptist author and activist Doris Longacre on the simple living movement as well as the work of Lareta Halteman Finger and a number of other Anabaptist women and men to enable the rise of evangelical feminism in the late 1970s. Swartz also suggests strong continuity between 1970s thinkers and activists such as Ron Sider and John Howard Yoder and contemporary neo-Anabaptist evangelicals such as Gregory Boyd and Shane Claiborne. For more on the evangelical left, be sure to check out Swartz's blog and forthcoming book, The Moral Minority.*

*This post is slightly adapted from The Activist Impulse, pages 215-16.

The Activist Impulse: Four Historical Case Studies

American Protestants from many different religious traditions and denominations both contributed to and felt the effects of the controversy between conservative evangelicals and modernists in the early decades of the twentieth century. Anabaptists were no exception. While fundamentalists within small, outsider traditions, such as the Mennonites and Brethren, had much in common with other fundamentalists, patterns of development within these contexts were complicated by the fact that Anabaptists cherished certain distinctive features, such as nonviolence, strong discipleship, and community bonds, as well as simple lifestyles that made for unique manifestations of the fundamentalist phenomenon. The importance of these distinctive features can be seen by the persistent questions that emerged during these decades and that continue to facilitate historiographical debate, especially among Anabaptists. Could Anabaptists adopt the attitudes, concern for rigid orthodoxy, and the theological orientation of American fundamentalism while preserving core Anabaptist virtues and distinctives? Did aggressive efforts by traditionalist-minded Anabaptists to maintain the “right fellowship” constitute its own form of fundamentalism? These questions are complicated further by the fact that in the Anabaptist context, fundamentalism often constituted cultural innovation and even progressive tendencies, not necessary the ultra-conservatism to which it is often equated today.

The next four essays of The Activist Impulse seek to address some of these complex issues. It is safe to say that figures that make an appearance in this section—such as Daniel Kauffman, Alva J. McClain, John S. Hiestand, and William Anders—are anything but household names, even in Anabaptist circles. Yet these individuals are noteworthy because the tensions and paradoxes that characterized both their private and public lives are representative of the complex cultural negotiations that Anabaptists felt during these years and the way that American fundamentalism served both to challenge tradition among ethnic Protestants as well as provide new avenues for refashioning faith for a modern American context.

The first two essays below are devoted specifically to Mennonite bishop, Daniel Kauffman, a significant historical figure for the Anabaptist-evangelical relationship. Serving as editor of the Gospel Herald, the primary serial for the (Old) Mennonite Church, from 1908 to 1943, Kauffman was one of the most influential Mennonite leaders during the first half of the twentieth century. In this capacity Kauffman guided American Mennonites through the fundamentalist-modernist debates of the 1920s and 1930s. Because of his role in these decades, he since has become a figure that represents Anabaptist accommodation to American fundamentalism. In their respective essays, “Fundamentalists, Modernists, and a Mennonite 'Third Way': Reexamining the Career of Bishop Daniel Kauffman” and “'I Submit': Daniel Kauffman and the Legacy of a Yielded Life,” Notre Dame doctoral student in History, Benjamin Wetzel, and Eastern Mennonite University historian, Nathan E. Yoder, effectively counter this interpretation of Kauffman, asserting instead that his response to the broader currents of American religious culture is more nuanced than previously represented.

Since Kauffman’s era Anabaptists have made various attempts to integrate the evangelical and Anabaptist traditions in intentional and creative ways. One such example is the founding of Grace Theological Seminary, the denominational seminary for the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches. In his essay, “A Cord of Many Strands: Reexamining Grace Brethren Identity and the Fundamentalism of Alva J. McClain,” Grace College historian M. M. Norris argues that the origins of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches are more complex than is often assumed and that American fundamentalism was only one of several forces that shaped the seminary’s founder, Alva J. McLain. A popular teacher, McClain attempted to find a workable synthesis of dispensationalism and Brethren piety.

In his essay, “Misfits and Fundamentalists: The Question of Evangelicalism and Defection among Lancaster and Franconia Mennonites,” Grace College historian Jared S. Burkholder then moves the focus to an examination of the Lancaster and Franconia (Pennsylvania) Mennonite conferences during the first half of the twentieth century. He considers the relationship between evangelical influence and Anabaptist defection, tracing dissenting movements led by local ministers John S. Hiestand and William Anders who journeyed from conservative Mennonite circles to conservative evangelicalism. While it is tempting to interpret theses schisms purely as a result of outside fundamentalist encroachment, Burkholder suggests that the controversy was a product of competing fundamentalisms and that the dissenters merely traded one form of conservative religiosity for another.*

Each of these "case studies" offers a significant contribution to an important revisionist reading of historical evangelical Anabaptist relationship. Whereas the standard reading holds that conservative evangelicals infiltrated Anabaptist communities with their fundamentalist ideas, these chapters demonstrate how certain aspects of fundamentalism were already latent within these Anabaptist communities, leading to reactions to modernism that in some ways paralleled and in other ways diverged from the conservative evangelical reaction. These essays will thus be important to any historian working in American religious history and should also be of interest to those within Anabaptist communities seeking to understand their tradition better.

*The above paragraphs are slightly adapted from The Activist Impulse,  101-103.