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Rolling across the Minnesota prairie, sitting in the back of our van, I am reading Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny. My wife, while driving, calls out, "We're passing Tammy Wynette." I look out the window and see two buses emblazoned with the words "America's First Lady." "Who's that?" my daughters casually ask, without looking up from their books. As Wynette's buses fade into the green horizon behind us I wonder how many of us have had the same uninspired disinterest in Menno Simons, "The World's First Mennonite."
Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny is a fine coffee table book published in 1996 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the first Mennonite's birth. The price is steep but it is a volume to cherish forever.
The book opens with 23 two page chapters one page written and one page images which give a quick outline of the important moments in Simon's life. The chapters are brief but hold emotional impact as the sufferings of the early Anabaptists come to light. Could I persevere under the constant threat of death? It continues with "The many faces of Menno", a section devoted to drawings, etchings and paintings of the man through the past 500 years. As an artist, I found it most interesting to compare how different artists from different times and places rendered the man. The book's concluding section takes us on a journey through Mennonite life from the tortured beginnings to a more comfortable time of acceptance in the 18th century. Images range from powerful ones of martyrdom to latter ones of comfortable family life. I am especially moved by two small engravings of a fleeing Dirk Willemsz turning back to save a pursuer, bent on killing him, who had fallen through the ice. In the end Willemsz was still martyred.
The layout and artwork is superb throughout. This is a book which should be left on coffee tables for people to browse through. At a time when many within our churches don't know and don't care about original roots of Mennonite churches this accessible book is a useful tool to easily bring our beginnings into focus. It is not a book for anyone looking for an indepth portrait of the man. However, it is a wonderful, honest and handsome introduction to the man and his times through word and picture.
I have few complaints concerning Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny. I wished for more detail in some captions -- particularly in the middle section. There are a few minor typographical mistakes. In any case, I recommend this book highly. As Tammy Wynette criss-crosses the heartland of America trying to keep her legend alive so I wish this book would rest on the coffee tables of Mennonite homes across this land and keep alive the beginnings of our church.
Ray Dirks is an artist and curator in Winnipeg, MB.
A trend in recent religious publishing has been the appearance of material targeted at spiritual life and experience. One could point to the popularity of books such as The Cloister Walk, Chicken Soup for the Soul, or the more academic and quickly-expanding Paulist Press series, Classics of Western Spirituality, (which also includes a volume of early Anabaptist writings). C.J. Dyck, long-time professor and author, joins this trend with the publication of Spiritual Life in Anabaptism, a collection of devotional sources by early Anabaptists, accompanied by Dyck's introductory and editorial remarks. As the book cover suggests, Dyck is trying to offer some balance to the widely held but incomplete picture of Anabaptism as being strong in ethics but weak in vibrant faith. In Anabaptism Revisited, (a Festschrift in honour of Dyck, edited by Walter Klaassen), Dyck is described as having "edited and facilitated the publication of more volumes on Anabaptist and Mennonite subjects" than anyone else. This book carries with it the feeling of a labour of love. Dyck has been retired from teaching since 1989, so this is no "publish or perish" project. He has done most of the translation from original documents, and his concern is not so much strict theology as it is "to add to this literature on spirituality readings from a tradition which is not yet well-known".
Dyck follows a format in which he offers some introductory comments in each chapter, adds occasional brief comments into the text, but allows the bulk of the book to be taken up by the voices of early Anabaptists. The chapters include topics such as a discussion of the Apostles' Creed, the new birth, discipleship, letters of faith and encouragement, and prayers for the heart.
I think this book can be a very useful tool in several ways. Dyck suggests that it can be used on an individual or group basis, or perhaps as a resource for a spiritual retreat.
The format of the book relatively brief chapters, broken up by comments and readings from various sources, lends itself to picking and choosing short portions without compromising a larger sustained argument. In fact, if I were to lodge a complaint, the book sometimes includes such short readings or comments that lack of continuity within a chapter can result.
The content of the book includes reflections on the spiritual life that range from the very moving to the historically curious. An example of the latter category is a section from the early sixteen hundreds that presents stern warnings about the sinfulness of smoking.
The chapter entitled "Letters of Faith and Encouragement" stands out to me as intensely emotional. To read letters to spouses or children written by Christians whose martyrdom is imminent feels like an invasion of privacy, and yet the survival of these letters gives us a profound insight into the experience of our forebears, and a deep challenge to our faith. Here Dyck succeeds in the aim of his work. The chapter on lifestyle also offers provocative insights, especially to our commercially successful lives. One hardly knows how to react to bold statements such as "Big celebrations, meals, and weddings are perilous for new Christians, for 20the world is so spoiled that all of these things are driven by vanity through which the human spirit becomes estranged from piety and wholesome thoughts," or "a Christian must, for better or for worse, go through this world with limited means, with a clear intention to follow Christ. . ." Dyck has also done readers a service by making a particular effort to locate and include 16th-century materials written by women, an effort that is being pursued even further by other scholars. Spiritual Life in Anabaptism is a fine book, the kind that can encourage reflection on faith, stimulate thought, and serve as both illustrative and generative material for sermons and teaching opportunities. Paul Doerksen teaches at MB Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, and is a member of Fort Garry MB Church.
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