Peace theology in transition : North American mennonite peace studies and theology, 1906-2006

Mennonite peace theology in the past 100 years shifted from an emphasis on nonresistance and the witness of a set-apart community toward an emphasis on nonviolent resistance and active engagement of the church with the world. Tracing these developments as well as identifying the notably expanded areas that have been explored in Mennonite peace studies and theology since the 1980s provides perspective for future scholarship in these fields. article concludes with suggested key for new and ongoing research. task of interpreting the development of North American Mennonite peace studies and theology since the early 1900s is a formidable one. Such an overview will necessarily be sketchy and fail to do justice to the many scholars and peacemakers who have helped to shape its development. (1) In general, the past century witnessed a dramatic change in Mennonite peace studies and theology in North America, away from a theology and ethic of nonresistance and a separation of the church from the world toward a theology and ethic of nonviolent resistance to evil and active engagement of the church with the world. impulses that motivated these changes did not emerge primarily from the internal dynamics of conversation among Mennonites. Rather, they were impulses from social, political and cultural life that impacted the life of the Mennonite church. These pressures prodded scholars to look at the Bible more deeply and to set forth rich, provocative and sometimes conflicting visions regarding God's and our human response to injustice, evil and violence in the world. NONRESISTANCE AND THE WITNESS OF A CHURCH SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD: 1906-1950s traumatic events of World War I and World War II, along with influences from modern industrialized society, provided the major impetus for the restatement and development of Mennonite peace theology in the first part of the twentieth century. practical questions that confronted Mennonites who were conscripted into the military forced the church to articulate a peace theology that would convincingly serve as a foundation for the historic practice of nonparticipation in war. Mennonite Church Conference In the Mennonite Church conference--a branch that had preserved the traditional separation of church and world in theology and practice longer than had its sister conference, the General Conference Mennonite Church--the most systematic and definitive statement of Christians and the state appeared in Guy F. Hershberger's War, Peace, and Nonresistance (1944). (2) While Hershberger challenged the quietism of many who believed the church should be withdrawn from the world, he maintained a traditional ethic of nonresistance and a strong church/world dualism, illustrating the role of the witnessing church in the world with the biblical metaphor of a light on a hill. That same year, Hershberger's contemporary, Harold S. Bender, also identified nonresistance as one of the marks of The Anabaptist Vision in an essay by that name that helped to reshape views of the Anabaptist tradition and Mennonite peace theology. (3) John Howard Yoder, a bright young Mennonite from Ohio, entered the peace theology scene in the early 1950s. Yoder was part of a group of Mennonite Church scholars who called for church renewal in a series of pamphlets known as Concern. Teaching and writing in the wake of World War II, and later in response to issues raised by subsequent wars and by revolutionary violence worldwide, Yoder began to set out, in piecemeal form, a coherent Christian peace theology that addressed the hard question: how can a Christian pacifist stand by if a neighbor is suffering from violent abuse by another? In an early pamphlet Yoder responded to Reinhold Niebuhr's charge that pacifists were irresponsible in relation to their suffering neighbors. Yoder reasserted the importance of following the way of Jesus and of trusting in God's power over violence and death more than in our own capacity to manage situations by using violence. …