Discipleship, Generational Change and the Practice of Mennonite History

Abstract. In early 1940s, a generational transition among historians engaged in Mennonite history produced a fine historiographical debate. In 1990s another such transition is bringing even more profound questions for historians committed to Mennonite faith. There are practical questions of how to operate in changed institutional settings and also deeper ones of whether new generation can write convincingly with high professional standards even as they bring their faith commitments and Christian discipleship to-their work. Fortunately, within historical profession a long history of wrestling with objectivity question seems to otter a favorable climate for Mennonite historians who are just now receiving mantle. (1) ********** In 1942 to 1944 MQR carried a notable historiographical discussion. It began when Harold S. Bender, journal's editor who was just then developing what became Anabaptist Vision school of interpretation, joined with fellow-Goshen College historian Ernst Correll to review The Story of Mennonites (1941), magnum opus of C. Henry Smith, a distinguished Mennonite historian at Bluffton College. After a time Smith replied; and before long another of Bender's Goshen colleagues, Robert Friedmann, answered Smith. Historian Paul Toews, in Volume IV of Mennonite Experience in America series, has called discussion one of finer Mennonite historiographical exchanges. (2) Smith, who was near end of his life, personified North American Mennonites' first generation of fully trained Mennonite historians and did so almost alone. He had studied at University of Illinois and then at prestigious University of Chicago to become, in 1907, apparently first U.S. Mennonite to receive a Ph.D. degree. Thereafter he had taught history in Mennonite institutions: first at Goshen, an old or MC Mennonite institution; and then at Bluffton College, an institution of culturally more liberal General Conference Mennonite branch. (3) Meanwhile he also accumulated wealth and was a banker in town of Bluffton, Ohio. (4) Smith had done his advanced studies during so-called progressive era of U.S. history. In nation's universities progressives had great faith that science and professional standards could bring highest of human intelligence to human life and be powerful instruments for enlightened democracy. Such was spirit in which Smith professionalized Mennonite history in United States. Much of historiographical exchange between Smith and Goshen historians had to do with two major issues: first, whether, or in what sense, sixteenth-century Anabaptists had stood for individualism; and, second, validity of what Germans were calling Geistesgeschichte--that is, history written to delve more deeply than just into narrative in order to capture spirit, genius, essence of group or culture under study. Smith's great work had offered quite an individualistic understanding of Anabaptists, from which Goshen historians dissented. Also, Friedmann challenged Smith to go beyond surface story and search for Mennonite essence. Throughout exchange, protagonists kept tone cordial and respectful, and they produced what was indeed a fine discussion of Mennonite historiography. Smith yielded very little on of individualism. As for Geistesgeschichte, he partly agreed, but he warned that it too easily led historians into speculation and philosophy of history and away from interpretations grounded carefully in evidence. (5) Less explicitly exchange also touched a third subject more or less related to issues of both individualism and Geistesgeschichte. That subject was perceptions these Mennonite historians held concerning church and place of educated, trained, professional scholars within it. Taking issue in effect with Smith's American progressivism, Bender and Correll asserted, admittedly as a matter of judgment, that the soundest promise for future of American [and world] . …