Currently in Books
The Anabaptist Visionary

Bruce L. Guenther

Albert Keim's mammoth, well-written biography of Harold Bender offers a fascinating glimpse into the public life of one of the most important North American Mennonite leaders of the 20th century.

For 38 years, Bender taught at Goshen College and Seminary in Indiana. His achievements are impressive. He was the main builder of the Mennonite Historical Library, editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review and the Mennonite Encyclopaedia, and a designer of the Civilian Public Service during World War II. His remarkable networking ability put him on a first-name basis with almost all of the key Mennonite leaders in the United States and Europe. He used this network repeatedly to broker arrangements on behalf of the fledgling Mennonite Central Committee and to promote inter-Mennonite unity through Mennonite World Conference.

Bender was at the centre of a new self-understanding of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition--prompted by challenges to traditional leadership structures in the church and to Mennonites' rural, ethnic and sectarian way of life. His most lasting legacy might be a short essay entitled The Anabaptist Vision, which continues to evoke discussion. It served as a manifesto for a new theological system built upon the "rediscovery" of the Anabaptist conception of Nachfolge (discipleship) as the essence of Christianity. It is ironic that despite Bender's appreciation for some aspects of fundamentalism--his favourite professor at Princeton Seminary was J. Gresham Machen--his own work propelled a generation of Mennonites to develop an Anabaptist theology that was sometimes hostile towards North American evangelicalism.

Keim's even-handed treatment of Bender recognizes his complexity. This is not a one-dimensional portrayal of a Mennonite "saint". He shows Bender making decisions that seem motivated by a genuine sense of service, but one also occasionally glimpses actions driven by self-interest and ambition. A workaholic, Bender's leadership style reveals an intense desire for control. Bender is portrayed as a cautious churchman who simultaneously established his credibility as a leader within the narrow Mennonite Church--a church which routinely alienated many of its young people--and built an international reputation as a broad-minded scholar.

Readers may question Keim's decision to depict Bender as a "progressive" whose inclinations were held in check by his intense loyalty to his church and his fundamentalist father-in-law. My only major stylistic criticism is Keim's fluctuating use of undefined terms such as conservative, progressive, conventional and liberal.

Bender's influence has been felt by all Mennonite groups. It comes to the MBs partly through Mennonite Central Committee, but mostly through those who have studied Anabaptist theology and Reformation history since 1960.

Christian humanist influenced early Anabaptist thinking

Peter Penner

ERASMUS, THE ANABAPTISTS, AND THE GREAT COMMISSION. Abraham Friesen. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998. 196 pp.

Abraham Friesen, who hails from Manitoba, is Professor of Renaissance and Reformation history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. One of his strong interests is the Christian humanism of the early 16th century, of whom the scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam, was the "prince". Not only did the life and writings of Erasmus overlap with that of the early Anabaptists, the latter were profoundly influenced by Erasmus.

The thesis of this book is that Erasmus's interpretation of the passages in Matthew 18:18-20 (the Great Commission) and the baptismal stories in Acts directly influenced the Anabaptists to practise the baptism of believers only, not infants as was the practice universally. Most of the reformers (Luther, Zwingli) realized that Erasmus was right, but decided before 1525, for political reasons, to adhere to infant baptism.

Until now no one has shown this as clearly and convincingly as Friesen who is considered a world-class scholar. Admittedly, this book is easier to understand for those who have had courses in European religious history, covering the late 15th and early 16th centuries, but this book is recommended to all those who have wondered why we should even bother with anabaptism. The Great Commission, a profound concept for all Mennonite Brethren, has never had a better interpretation of why we should maintain believer's baptism wherever our witness takes us, and why we should acknowledge those who took us back to the directions that Jesus gave so clearly.

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