Orie O. Miller is a well-known name, but the reputation of this Mennonite lay leader, missionary, and businessman may grow, deservedly, in legend and stature with the publication of John E. Sharp’s long-awaited biography, ” (Herald Press).

Miller was a “20th century leader, and considering his extensive leadership in his day in many, many church institutions and agencies, it’s important to introduce Miller to 21st century leaders,” says ’63, steering committee chair of the (ACRS), a community of Mennonite elders and scholars who meet monthly for fellowship and intellectual engagement at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ).

The biography, six years in the making, was initiated and partially funded by ACRS. Other funders include the Brethren in Christ church, and two organizations that Miller helped found, and , known commonly by the acronyms of MCC and MEDA, respectively.

91����Ƶ President says he’s looking forward to reading the biography. “For many years, I have heard fascinating stories about Orie O. Miller and his legacy from those who worked directly with him,” he said. “So many Anabaptist ministries and institutions launched by Orie have improved the lives of people around the globe. I am pleased this project was sponsored by ACRS and rooted at 91����Ƶ.”

At the ACRS May 11 Annual General Meeting, a handful of Miller’s contemporaries will share anecdotes and stories about this consequential man who, from his first pioneering trip as a relief worker to Russia in 1919, forever changed Mennonite education, business, relief work and peacemaking.

The meeting, which begins at 7:30 a.m. with coffee and pastries in the west dining room on the 91����Ƶ campus, is open to the public.

‘Visionary and hard-nosed realist’

Former colleague Calvin Redekop, the ACRS representative to the editorial committee, says Miller’s “work and leadership are difficult to condense.”

“He was a person who represented best the challenges and opportunities of his time, an unusual combination of visionary and hard-nosed realist who expected persons to be accountable,” Redekop said. “He was one of the most disciplined persons I ever knew.”

Redekop served under Miller as administrator of a post-war alternative service program called Pax. Redekop and colleague Paul Peachey ’45 had conceived this program in August of 1950, and a mere eight months later, with Miller’s support and that of MCC, “Paxers” arrived in war-ravaged Europe to help resettle refugees.*

Born in Indiana in 1892, Miller attended Goshen College before answering the call to engage in relief work in 1919 and shortly after, helping to form MCC, for which he served in various capacities, including executive secretary, from 1921-1963.

Miller helped to engage and steer Mennonite values and ministry into a global perspective, while integrating sound business and organizational principles.

He was “an incredible catalyst” with unique organizational skills, and “passionately committed to the church with a vision for mission,” says ACRS founder , who was director of an Anabaptist-Mennonite bookstore financed by Miller and other Lancaster businessmen in the mid-1960s in Luxembourg, Belgium. “He would start a project, then find the personnel and the organizations to carry it on.”

Seeing a need often meant forming an organization to meet that need: Miller was the motivating force behind the founding of many Mennonite organizations, including Mennonite Mental Health Services, Mennonite Indemnity, Mennonite Mutual Aid, Mennonite Travel Service, and several others.

Hundreds of young men were indebted to Miller – and had their lives changed forever – because of Miller’s creation and administration of Civilian Public Service, the alternative to military service that allowed conscientious objectors to fulfill their civic responsibilities.

Miller married into the shoe manufacturing business and ran it with acumen and dedication throughout his life. Yet “to the end his life, he maintained his vision for service, never allowing his considerable wealth to determine his needs,” Gingerich said, adding that Miller could have easily afforded a Lincoln Continental, but instead drove a Ford Falcon.

Miller died in 1977 at the Landis Retirement Home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, yet another enterprise he was instrumental in founding and supporting.

Keim’s work provides inspiration

A standard feature of the ACRS Annual General Meeting is a time to discuss the group’s ongoing work and vision. At one of those times, many years ago, members noted the need for a comprehensive biography of Miller that would address the full range of his personality and involvements not covered in a previous 1969 biography by Paul Erb.

Another inspiration for the Miller project was the work of the late Albert N. Keim ’63, professor emeritus of history at 91����Ƶ and an ARCS member. Keim’s biography of Harold S. Bender, a professor of theology at Goshen College and Goshen Biblical Seminary, was published in 1998.

“Harold Bender was tremendously influential on theological matters in the same way that Orie Miller was tremendously influential in shaping Mennonite influence today,” said ’64, ACRS interim director.

Miller’s accomplishments as a leader are widely recognized. 91����Ƶ houses an , which promotes interdisciplinary activities and scholarship modeled after the man’s visionary integration of business, mission, development, education, justice and peace.

In addition, 91����Ƶ, ACRS, Mennonite Central Committee, and Mennonite Economic Development Associates are in the early stages of planning a leadership conference at 91����Ƶ in early April 2016 that will highlight Miller’s leadership within the Mennonite church, according to, vice president and dean of the .

Editor’s note: In April 2015, the Pax program was chosen as the recipient of the annual Gandhi Center Community Service Award. To read about this event, click .

In late April, Lehman, now 85, made another trip – not quite so far – from his home in Ohio to James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he and nearly 60 other “Paxers,” including organization co-founder and former leader Cal Redekop, received a from JMU’s .

Pax, a program of (MCC), was created in response to the reinstatement of the military draft in the United States after the start of the Korean War. Mennonites, Quakers, Brethren and other conscientious objectors could perform alternative service in Europe, and later in Africa and South America. Pax continued until 1975, three years after the draft ended. By the time the program closed, nearly 1,200 young Americans, and some Canadians, had served in 40 countries.

An ‘influential’ program

Nearly 300 people packed a reception hall at JMU to celebrate the organization’s legacy. Terry Beitzel, director of the Mahatma Gandhi Center, noted that Pax was receiving only the fourth award in the center’s 10-year history. The center gives a global nonviolence award, which has been presented to former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter and South African anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu, and also the community service award, past co-recipients of which include restorative justice pioneer , a professor at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ), and JMU nursing professor Vida Huber.

“Pax was chosen for the award because of its contribution to establishing alternative service programs and influencing the formation of the U.S. Peace Corps, but primarily because of the emphasis on service to others,” said Beitzel, who has taken courses and taught at 91����Ƶ’s and earned a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University.

“Pax serves as an example of service and peacemaking for all of us today,” said JMU Provost Jerry Benson.

Redekop, now 89 and living in Harrisonburg, accepted the award on behalf of Pax and its volunteers.

“I’m only the handmaiden for Pax or handlanger – German for lackey,” he said, before calling up ‘76, who chairs the MCC U.S. board. Hershberger, a professor at 91����Ƶ, spoke of the Pax legacy and how it affected her own MCC work, with husband Jim ‘82, in Central America.

‘Paxers’ still connected

Redekop and Paul Peachey ‘45 dreamed up the new organization while the two were in Europe serving in post-war relief efforts with MCC. (Both Peachey, who eventually taught at 91����Ƶ, and Redekop went on to academic careers in the field of sociology. Redekop is also a former business executive who has written widely on Christian ethics in business.)

Inspired by the Latin word for peace, the Pax program began in Europe with housing projects for war refugees, including German-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine, who were caught between the German and Soviet armies. Redekop, raised in the Midwest in an immigrant community of German-speaking Mennonites from Russia, was able to communicate in the low-German dialect.

The cultural exchange between Paxers and the people they helped was rich and rewarding. Lowell E. Bender ’67, current MCC board member and the evening’s master of ceremonies, was a Pax worker in Germany, Austria and Greece from 1961-63, where he witnessed the long-term devastation caused by the war while constructing new houses for families whose homes had been destroyed years before. Bender came back to the United States after his service and enrolled at 91����Ƶ.

“We were all changed by our experiences,” he said, of the Paxers.

“Many of the Pax veterans still stay in touch with the people they served,” says ‘62, whose interest in the German language and culture began with his Pax tour and eventually led to a teaching career as a German language professor (he retired from 91����Ƶ in 2004). Reunions of the , the unit Glick served in, have been held nine times since 1970, including once in Salzburg, Austria.

Paul M. Harnish ’64, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, visited a large, modern chicken processing co-op that he helped start years ago in an impoverished area of Greece. His little hatchery began with 500 chicks imported from the United States. Harnish remembers his delivery being complicated by the need to spend the night in a hotel with the chicks before he could return to the village.

Editor’s Note: The history of the Pax program is featured in two books: Urie Bender’s Soldiers of Compassion (1969) and Cal Redekop’s The Pax Story: Service in the Name of Christ (2001). A 2008 award-winning documentary Pax Service: An Alternative to War was produced by Burton Buller, Cal Redekop and Albert Keim, a former 91����Ƶ history professor.

Epp and his colleagues collected stories, studies, and statistics for 10 years, culminating in the publication of Pulled Over in 2014. Epp, who is a public affairs professor at the University of Kansas, said his interest in police stops was piqued by  anecdotes from black and Latino students. He also had several students who were command-level police officers, and he observed a microcosm of the “clash of cultures” between those demographics.

Studies he cited show that police are much more likely to stop and search black and Latino people as opposed to whites. Other studies indicate that police are more likely to use violence against people of color as well. Fifty years after the civil rights riots and the marches from Selma, Alabama, and 40 years after the police reforms in response to those altercations, we still have Michael Browns, Epp noted. There is widespread distrust and fear of police among black and Latino populations.

Epp said that this fear and distrust do not result from blatant racism, such as an officer using slurs or being impolite in conduct, but rather from the system of stopping and searching people and cars when no crime has been committed. Termed “investigatory stops,” this tactic has been encouraged in police departments across the nation since the 1980s, he said. As opposed to traffic safety stops, which are in response to illegal or irresponsible driving with clear consequences, investigatory stops are an attempt to preemptively fight crime by stopping suspicious-looking people, trying to find drugs, or seeking to detect other illegal activities.

Because most investigatory stops don’t result in stopping crimes, police leaders have admitted that this policy becomes “a numbers game,” said Epp, in which police profile and stop as many “suspicious” people as possible in order to catch more criminals.

According to one study Epp cited, a young black man has a 28 percent chance of being stopped over the course of a year for investigatory reasons. By comparison, a young white man has only a 12.5 percent chance. And while stopping rates decline for all genders and races as they age, a black man must be around 50 years old to have as low a chance of being stopped as a 25-year-old white man. Whether because of outright training or indirect cultural norms, police officers apparently interpret “suspicious-looking” as “being black.”

“You don’t have to be a frank racist to be influenced by these stereotypes,” Epp said.

Student Hans Bontrager-Singer said he appreciated how Epp emphasized that police training is responsible for much of the racial stereotyping.  “I think it is important to remember that the police are – for the grand majority – trying to do their job the way the force says they need to do their job,” said Bontrager-Singer.

But police assuming, and acting as if, blacks and Latinos engage in more illegal activity than whites “causes real harm to individuals and has a corrosive effect on . . . democracy,” said Epp. Tensions between people of color and the police are rising not just because of events like Ferguson, but because this mutual distrust is reinforced daily by investigatory stops, he stressed.

Epp noted that each race has learned different “lessons” regarding police stops. For white people, if you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear – that’s their lesson. But if you violate the law, eventually you will face consequences based on the severity of your infraction.

For people of color, however, the lesson is different. You “come to view police and the law as arbitrary and unpredictable,” he said. Despite not being given a reason for being stopped, feeling violated, or being held indefinitely without cause, “the best you can do is sit quietly. . . and try to avoid serious confrontation.” Such practices breed fear, and enforce a racial hierarchy of first- and second-class citizens.

Despite evidence that they’re discriminatory and have repercussions, investigatory stops are still lauded as an effective way to prevent crime and create safety, Epp said.

“The problem is not aberrant police practice,” he said. “The problem is a best police practice.”

Epp is a political scientist in the University of Kansas’s School of Public Affairs and Administration, whose bibliography includes The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective, the second most-cited work in its field written since 1990. At 91����Ƶ, he will be presenting “The Police and Racial Discrimination in Amercia” as part of the Albert N. Keim Lecture Series.

Pulled Over will formally receive the American Society for Public Administration’s “2015 Best Book Award from the Section on Public Administration Research” award at the organization’s conference in March this year. In the context of post-Ferguson America, academia had become increasingly interested in the discourse on modern, systemic racism, thus bringing attention to the work of Epp and his colleagues. Epp both relates the individual stories of police discrimination and decries the widespread effect of policies that allow this conduct.

“Pervasive, ongoing suspicious inquiry sends the unmistakable message that the targets of this inquiry look like criminals: they are second-class citizens,” states the Washington Monthly article. “While investigatory stops do enable police to find some lawbreakers and get them off the streets, they also undermine the minority community’s trust in law enforcement and thereby its willingness to share information vital to good police work.”

A talkback will follow the lecture at 6 p.m. in Common Grounds. Epp will be joined by Officer Chris Monahan of the Harrisonburg City Police Department in answering questions and facilitating discussion. The talk-back, co-sponsored by the Black Student Union, invites the community to come hear, share, and process stories of being pulled over, as well as their societal implications.

Harding and his late wife, Rosemarie, were close friends and colleagues of Martin Luther King Jr., during an era when the Hardings were active members of a Mennonite church.

“I come as one who does not like to lecture or preach,” said Harding, during his remarks in chapel on the morning of Feb. 26. Characterizing his visit as a dialogue with everyone else on campus, he invited others’ feedback and thoughts throughout the next two days. “Loving dialogue is part of what keeps me going and keeps us going.”

That evening, Harding continued that conversation as part of the Albert N. Keim History Lecture series, when he spoke about America as an idea that hasn’t yet been fully realized.

“I am absolutely obsessed with the question of how you build a deep democracy in this country,” said Harding, who played an active leadership role during the Civil Rights movement and continues to work toward a more just, participatory society through his nonprofit organization, . He lives in Denver, Colo., where he was a professor of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology from 1981 until his retirement in 2004.

Helped MLK to articulate stance against Vietnam War

In the ’60s, Harding worked closely with King and other Civil Rights leaders, playing important behind-the-scenes roles in the movements to challenge segregation in Albany, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala. Harding also drafted King’s famous and highly controversial speech, delivered in New York City in on April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before King’s assassination.

In it King called for the U.S. to “undergo a radical revolution of values,” adding: “When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” King also explicitly linked capitalistic socio-economic practices to the absence of “fairness and justice” both at home and abroad. This passage – evocative of current questions regarding the U.S.’s role in Iraq and Afghanistan – shows the strong stance and unequivocal language in that Harding/King speech:

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Harding is the author or co-author of five books, including Martin Luther King – The Inconvenient Hero. In the 2009 edition of his book Hope and History, Harding called attention to “the continuing frontiers for justice, for community, for the redemption of the soul of our nation.”

Struggle still necessary for a more just, humane society

He wrote of the continued swamp of materialism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty, along with “antidemocratic, bullying military interventions of our government.” In order to “keep going toward a more just and humane society” we (the people) have to accept that there will be personal, fiscal and psychic costs. Yet by acting out of – and building upon – love, we will “receive the power to carry on the struggle.”

In Hope and History, Harding said he dreamed of a community-based “rainbow wedge,” which would be “a force for the creation of new political, cultural, ecological, and economic realities.”

At 91����Ƶ, Harding explained that being “we, the people” means being active as citizens because, in the absence of this, our leaders will always be happy to step in and take things in self-serving directions.

In December 2013, Harding married another longtime peace and justice activist, Aljosie Aldrich Harding, who accompanied him on the visit to 91����Ƶ. During classes and other discussion, Aljosie encouraged students to live their lives being primarily for, rather that against, things in order to promote change.

The Hardings’ 91����Ƶ itinerary also included visiting an undergraduate African-American history class, a seminary class, speaking at a seminary chapel, and informal lunchtime conversations with students and faculty.

Harding’s ties with the Mennonite Church

Vincent Harding’s long association with the Mennonite Church began in the late ’50s, when he was studying for his doctorate at the University of Chicago and began attending Woodlawn Mennonite Church on the city’s south side. In 1958, five Mennonites – Harding, another African American man, and three white men – decided to travel through the South “to manifest and test our faith in Christian brotherhood.” Harding’s decade-long association with King began on this trip, when King welcomed the five men into his home, though he was in bed recovering from a stab wound.

In his book Martin Luther King – The Inconvenient Hero, Harding wrote:

Before we left, he [King] turned to Ed Riddick, the other African-American traveler, and to me, and he said, very seriously, “You Mennonites understand what we’re trying to do in this nonviolent movement. You ought to come down from Chicago and help us.” I never forgot the invitation, or the reasoning behind it.

Harding and first wife Rosemarie moved to Atlanta, Ga., in 1961 to lead a new, interracial voluntary service unit support by , where they lived around the corner from Martin and Coretta King. (Rosemarie was the first African-American woman to graduate from 91����Ƶ’s sister school, Goshen College; she died in 2004.)

The following year, the Hardings visited 91����Ƶ to talk about their involvement in the civil rights movement, and to challenge the broader Mennonite community to more active participation in the struggle for racial justice.

“It was easy for people scattered around [these] often-isolated Mennonite worlds to have only the weakest possible understanding of what was going on,” recalled Harding during his recent visit.

On being insensitive to the sin of racial prejudice

When the Hardings arrived in Harrisonburg in May, 1962, they were troubled by the 91����Ƶ community’s lack of awareness about the extent of segregation in Harrisonburg itself and, as they later wrote in a report, “a frightening moral insensitivity to the sin of racial prejudice and discrimination.” The couple used the opportunity to challenge those on campus by presenting them with a series of questions, such as whether it was morally acceptable for Mennonite teachers to participate in segregated professional organizations, or whether “Mennonites should continue to take advantage of the false privilege of a pink skin by making use of facilities that are denied to their Negro brothers.”

“Before we left Harrisonburg, we felt that there were many individuals – students and adults – who were beginning to struggle deeply with the implications of discipleship in their situation,” the Hardings wrote later. Harding remained in contact with 91����Ƶ as it began changing, visiting in the late ’70s at the invitation of Titus Bender (then a professor) and again in 1995 as part of 91����Ƶ’s observation of .

Titus and Ann Bender became friends with Harding when they led a Mennonite voluntary service unit in Meridian, Mississippi, from 1958 to 1969. Titus says Harding pushed him personally, and 91����Ƶ collectively, to move forward in realizing that “nonviolence is not inaction” and that “one can work for creative change without being violent.” While the Hardings’ tough questions during their first visit caused some discomfort on campus at the time, the university’s eventual embrace of nonviolent social activism is reflected today by initiatives like the and the undergraduate major in .

Harding inspired restorative justice pioneer Howard  Zehr

Harding also was a major influence on , who is regarded internationally as one of the founders of the field of restorative justice. Today Zehr is co-director of CJP’s .

“I remember sitting at the dining room table with him as he patiently helped a naïve white boy understand racial injustice in this country,” said Zehr, referring to several visits Harding made to his family’s home and church in Indiana. Zehr subsequently enrolled in Morehouse College in Atlanta (MLK’s alma mater) and became its first white graduate in 1966. Harding “was a major factor in developing my consciousness and concern about justice,” Zehr said.

Reflecting on the recent visit, 91����Ƶ professor said that Harding challenged and inspired the university, as he has been doing since he first came to campus more than 50 years ago.

“He reminds us again and again that we are the people we are waiting for. We are the ones who can make change happen,” Sawin said. “It is in our talking together that we are at our most human, and this sacred conversation is what makes us whole and helps move us toward the world that is yet to be – the world we want for our children.”

Choosing to identify with those who are oppressed

During the Feb. 26 evening event, Harding was asked how King, if still living, would assess our country’s progress toward the goals outlined in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Harding responded that King wasn’t expecting miracles. Simple solutions and quick fixes were never part of the plan. He recalled one of the most celebrated ideas King described in that speech, that someday his children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

“How do you get to know the content of a child’s character?” asked Harding, pointing out that King’s vision was itself a plea for greater engagement. Building the beloved community, he said, isn’t limited to passing new laws that, in theory, advance racial equality. Building that community means creating stronger connections and developing relationships across the racial divides that persist in our country.

In his last public presentation at 91����Ƶ, a Thursday morning chapel at the seminary, Harding focused on these words of Martin Luther King Jr.

I choose to identify with the underprivileged.

I choose to identify with the poor.

I choose to give my life for the hungry.

I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.

I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign.

This is the way I’m going.

If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.

If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way.

If it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because

I heard a voice saying, ‘Do something for others.’

All of Vincent Harding’s talks at 91����Ƶ on Feb. 26 and 27 can be accessed online:

“Loved into Life: a personal testimony”

“Is America Possible?”

“Martin Luther King’s Choices and Ours”

.

91����Ƶ’s cross-cultural program may never have come to be, had it not been for the efforts of Albert Keim ’63, dean of students from 1977 to 1984. Keim had a passion for education, service and travel, which he lived out for 35 years at this university.

Keim felt all 91����Ƶ students should be immersed in a culture different from their own before graduation, yielding life-changing experiences.

We are conceiving of the college as… a place – a village – during this four-year phase of the life of our students,” wrote Keim in a 1982 memo advocating for the program.

The rich tapestry of human villages – humans always live in groups – becomes a means to heighten awareness, enrich the learning experience and prepare students for a service which transcends the village and the nation.

…We are reaching for a vision of the world as a sister-brotherhood under the tutelage and guidance of God the Father.

Keim was raised in an Amish community in rural Ohio. “In that tightly knit community I was a child surrounded by grandparents, uncles, aunts and many degrees of cousins,” he wrote in his autobiographical chapter in Making Sense of the Journey: The Geography of Our Faith (2007). “One cannot grow up in an Amish community such as mine without forever being impressed by the benefit of communal mutuality…. Quite frankly I cannot imagine a more desirable environment in which to spend a childhood.”

But he added, “The Amish community is not as good an environment for intellectually ambitious adults.”

At age 20 (1955) Keim was drafted. A conscientious objector, Keim was able to satisfy the draft board by doing two years of service as a volunteer with Mennonite Central Committee, helping refugees in war-devastated Europe. This period overseas, which included a month on a kibbutz in Israel, changed his life path.

“I went to Europe Amish, but by the time I returned, it was clear to me that I could not be an Amishman. I had discovered the world was simply too rich and complex to be narrowed down to the relative simplicity of an Amish life.”

After returning to the United States, Keim earned a degree in history from 91����Ƶ in 1963. He immediately continued his education through a master’s degree in medieval history from the University of Virginia and a PhD in history from Ohio State University

Ann Hershberger ’76, a professor who served with Keim on the task force that launched 91����Ƶ’s cross-cultural program, says she always admired the way he honored his insular, communal past while embracing a broader, more global vision of the world. “He valued his roots and never disrespected them and that was an important lesson for me. He didn’t choose to live in that community but he never lost contact.”

During a “winter term” in 1972-73 Keim and his wife, Leanna Yoder Keim ’68, led the first 91����Ƶ-sponsored cross-cultural trip to Switzerland and Germany, with time in Rome, Paris, London and Amsterdam. (They took along their child, Melody ’83, then age 11.) This optional trip focused on history, Keim’s field of expertise, but the group also took in music, art and literature. At times Keim rented cars and let the students drive and explore on their own.

“He was really a trusting man and he gave us the freedom to experience new things and to see the world,” says Karen Moshier-Shenk ’73, one of Keim’s students on that first trip.

Recalls professor Vernon Jantzi ’64, one of Keim’s contemporaries: “He was so good at dealing with various opinions and issues that arose and always had a way to find a compromise. He was truly an amazing man.”

Keim’s first wife, Leanna, died in 1998. Keim retired two years later and married educator Kathy Fisher ’73. They spent 2000-2001, the first year of their marriage, in Saudi Arabia, where she had worked as a teacher for 20 years. After they returned permanently to the United States, he became a founding board member of the Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg and otherwise led an active life, until his health deteriorated. He died on June 27, 2008, of complications following a liver transplant.

—Rachael Keshishian

Learn more about the four task force members who served with Albert Keim in the following articles:

• Calvin Shenk: Knowing joy and pain around the globe
• Vernon Jantzi: Viewing the program as a spiritual journey
• Ann Hershberger: Experiencing the cauldron of war
• Ken J. Nafziger: Making music with appreciative Cubans

Rachel Held Evans has attracted attention for her nuanced and accessible discussions about current issues in modern Christianity as the author of Evolving in Monkey Town (Zondervan, 2010) and The Year of Biblical Womanhood (Thomas Nelson, 2012) and a popular blog at www.rachelheldevans.com. She has promoted theological and political unity; fostered interfaith dialogue; celebrated powerful women; publicized social justice issues; and led fundraising campaigns for and , among other non-profit organizations.

Evans will speak at 91����Ƶ March 19 during a and also at . Both events are free and open to the public. Campus maps indicating Lehman Auditorium location and parking availability (which is free), are .

Evans has been spotlighted by NPR, Slate, BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian (UK), The Times London, The Huffington Post, and Oprah.com, in addition to speaking at retreats, conferences, universities, and churches of various denominations. In 2012, she was named one of The just-published 2014 edition of Faith: History, Mystery and Challenges Revealed ranked Held Evans No. 4 on its list of leaders shaping the next generation of Christians.

Raised in an evangelical, but progressive household (her father is a professor of Christian thought and Biblical studies), Evans grew up – and still lives – in the small town of Dayton, Tenn., infamously nicknamed “Monkey Town” after the 1925 Scopes Trial that tested the state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2003, she graduated from Bryan College, a nondenominational evangelical Christian college, and embarked on a career as a writer.

Her first book, Evolving in Monkey Town, is aptly summarized by its subtitle: “How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions.” In an interview, Evans recounts, “In my early twenties, after graduation from a Christian college, I began to question everything I’d been taught about origins, the Bible, about religious pluralism, about faith, about politics, about heaven and hell, and about what it means to be blessed by God.”

Her second book also wrestles with the teachings and conventions of her evangelical upbringing. By the age of 9, she writes, “I’d received a lot of mixed messages about the appropriate roles of women in the home, the church, and society, each punctuated with the claim that it was God’s perfect will that all women everywhere do this or that.”

The Year of Biblical Womenhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” chronicles the author’s year-long exploration of the Bible’s “formula” for womanhood. Each month, she delves into a different virtue, and attempts to follow the Bible’s teachings regarding women in her day-to-day life. A diehard Alabama football fan and naturally vociferous on just about any other topic, Evans unfortunately selects Gentleness as her first virtue (a godly woman has a “kind and gentle spirit,” according to Peter 3:4). To curb her tongue and cultivate civility, she tallies her transgressions with pennies in a “Jar of Contention,” leading eventually to a Proverbs-motivated punishment of roof-sitting (as mentioned in her subtitle). And that’s just in the first month of her radical experiment.

Since her first blog post in December 2007, Evans has written, sometimes controversially, about current issues among evangelical and progressive Christians, from gender roles to self-righteousness to homosexuality. She explores religious plurality in a post titled “Learn 91����Ƶ Other Faiths (from the people who actually practice them).” Two of her most popular posts, about her personal search for a faith community to call home, are “15 Reasons I Left Church” and “15 Reasons I Stayed With the Church.”

�������Բ�’ has flourished as a discursive space where believers, wonderers, and searchers congregate. She regularly fosters interfaith discussion. “One in Christ: A Week of Mutuality” was a week-long conversation about the dueling Biblical views of complementarianism and egalitarianism. In the series “Ask A…,” she facilitates discussion between readers and experts in various faith traditions (a series on the topic of hell featured Q & A with a Christian universalist, a traditionalist/exclusivist, and a conditionalist/annihilationist).

Evans’ visit is co-sponsored by the President’s Office, Provost’s Office, Campus Ministries, Albert Keim History Lecture Series, and the Intellectual Life Committee.

Harding also knew that 91����Ƶ was the first historically white colleges in Virginia to admit African-American students and one of the first in the South. But those students couldn’t go into most restaurants in Harrisonburg and their parents couldn’t stay in local hotels when they came to visit their children.

Now 82, Harding is coming back to 91����Ƶ. He is the speaker for the second annual. His topic: “Is America Possible?” He will also speak at the university chapel service earlier that day at 10 a.m. in Lehman Auditorium and at the seminary chapel the next day at 11 a.m. in Martin Chapel.

Harding was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. for the last 10 years of King’s life. Harding is perhaps best known as the person who drafted King’s powerful (and controversial)  speech, in which King announced his opposition to the Vietnam War and criticized the destructive, unfair impact of U.S. economic, political and social policies, both domestically and abroad. King delivered the speech on April 4, 1967, before a group of anti-war opinion leaders at Riverside Church in New York City.

After King’s assassination exactly a year later, Harding became the first director of the . Later he was the senior academic advisor for the PBS television series on the civil rights movement titled “Eyes on the Prize.” In a 2008 interview with Democracy Now, Harding said that King toward the end of his life “was calling us to a way that was very difficult, a way beyond racism, a way beyond materialism and a way beyond militarism.”

Harding founded the Veterans of Hope Project, which continues to collect the stories of people who dedicated their lives to social change. The project is based at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, where he was a professor of religion and social transformation for 23 years until his retirement in 2004.

He says his current work is focused on encouraging America to become “we the people” and to create a “more perfect union” as well as participate in the making of a more just and compassionate world. His most recent book, published in 2013, is America Will Be! It is a volume of conversations on hope, freedom, and democracy between Harding and longtime Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda.

Harding’s other books include There Is a River – The Black Struggle for Freedom in America; Martin Luther King – The Inconvenient Hero; and Hope and History – Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement.

A native of New York City, Harding graduated in history from City College of New York in 1952, then earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1953, before serving two years in the U.S. Army. In 1956 he earned a master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago, followed by a doctorate in history from Chicago in 1965.

In the mid-1950s he learned about the Anabaptist/Mennonite movement of the Protestant Reformation. From 1958 to 1961, Harding was the co-pastor of Woodlawn Mennonite Church in Chicago. He often challenged Mennonites to live up to, and stand up for, their ideals about sisterhood and brotherhood socially and politically. At a conference on Mennonites and Race in Chicago in 1959, Harding met his future wife, Rosemarie Freeney. She was a 1955 sociology graduate of a Mennonite college, Goshen in Indiana, and a member of , where she worked in social services.

Vincent and Rosemarie married in 1960 and, in 1961, settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where they founded the South’s first interracial voluntary service center, Mennonite House, under the auspices of . The center, which was also their home (a block from Martin Luther King’s home), was an important gathering place for movement activists who found respite, hospitality, encouragement and stimulating dialogue. (Just before Rosemarie died from complications of diabetes in 2004, she noted that she had remained a member of Bethel Mennonite Church over her adult life.)

During Vincent’s first visit to 91����Ƶ – and subsequent visits over the years – “he shocked and offended some members of the community, but inspired and energized others,” says 91����Ƶ professor . Among the inspired were two 91����Ƶ professors, John Lapp and Samuel Horst, who helped start a committee that pushed for – and won – integration of the public schools in Harrisonburg.

The Keim History Lecture Series are named for the late Albert Keim, a member of the 91����Ƶ faculty from 1965 to 2000. For seven of those years he was academic dean. Keim was a popular history professor, and his courses included African-American History.

Albert N. Keim’s collection of hundreds of books proved to be much more than a future payoff. The passion was a way of sharing time with his daughter while antiquing, a testament to his love of Anabaptist history and metaphor of his conversion from Amish to Mennonite.

“I think for him, history and books, particularly, had a special meaning,” said Melody Keim, 50. “For him to not have graduated from high school, but to go on and get his Ph.D. … a book was real tangible in explaining his journey.”

On Friday, Apr. 8, 140 rare books in the Keim collection will be auctioned by the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society in Lancaster, Pa. Included in the auction are two 18th century “Martyrs’ Mirror” editions printed in Ephrata, Pa.; a 1785 Germantown, Pa., Christian songbook edition; and a 1765 Nuremberg Bible.

“I just felt like this is an appropriate way to pass on the books,” Melody Keim said. “I felt like Dad would be really happy with that because his roots are in history and this historical society takes a portion of the sales.”

Bound By Books

“Al” Keim died in 2008 at the age of 72 of complications following a liver transplant. He served as a professor at 91����Ƶ for 35 years and was the academic dean from 1977 to 1984.

Keim retired in 2000, but was a mainstay on campus and in the community and admired for his storytelling.

“He was just a very brilliant man, but he made [no fuss] about himself,” said Lois Bowman, the librarian at the school’s Menno Simons Historical Library. “I never saw him strut or show off. He was extraordinary and
exceptional.”

Despite his Amish upbringing, which placed no emphasis on higher education, Keim’s love for history and reading led to a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Mennonite College (now 91����Ƶ), a master’s from the University of Virginia and his doctorate from Ohio State University.

Keim was drafted into the military in the 1950s, but served as a conscientious objector in Germany with the Mennonite Central Committee PAX program. He made many connections and friends in Europe who later helped him add German and Dutch texts to his collection.

Keim also collected some of the first German-language texts printed in America, including “Martyrs’ Mirror” editions by Christopher Saur in the mid-1700s.

“Martyrs’ Mirror” is a Dutch collection of pre-1660 martyr stories, which still serves as the most widely read devotional text for the Amish and Mennonites.

“He pulled them out, and a lot of them were in German, and he’d read them and translate,” said Melody Keim, who first became interested in collecting after spotting a Saur edition when she was 12. “He would be telling me all the other things about the books and how they were used.” The 1785 edition of the “Ausbund,” the oldest Christian songbook still being printed, is an early American version. The 16th century German hymnal is still used today in Amish communities.

Likely To Sell For Hundreds

In Keim’s collection “there’s a good variety of both Mennonite and Amish doctrinal books, songbooks and devotional literature,” said Caroline Wenger, an archivist at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society with 35 years of experience.

Some of Keim’s books have unique inscriptions and notes with family histories. The LMHS believes certain books could sell for hundreds of dollars and maybe more than $1,000.

Keim’s widow, Kathy Fisher, hopes that others will share her late husband’s affinity for the Anabaptist tradition found in many of the books.

“It just combined his love for his daughter Melody, his love for bookstores and his love for history,” Fisher said. “He loved the whole Anabaptist story and he loved the Mennonite Church.”

Melody Keim said there are other collections that the family is not ready to part with and that certain books will be passed on to her two sons, Jeremy and Jonathan Keim-Shenk.

For more information on the auction, contact LMHS at (717) 393-9745, or visit www.lmhs.org.

————————

Tim Chapman is religion editor at the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record. Story used by permission.

By Kate Prahlad, Daily News-Record

Albert N. Keim was remembered Tuesday by his family and friends as a fierce intellectual, an unassuming man and a doting grandfather.

At a memorial service at Park View Mennonite Church, a packed house listened to tributes that celebrated his academic work and his love of his family.

Melody Keim, daughter of Albert N. Keim, remembers her father: ‘Most of all, my father was a storyteller. And it never surprised us that he loved history. After all, what is history but storytelling on a grand scale?’ (Photo courtesy of Daily News-Record)

Keim, 72, died Friday at the University of Virginia Medical Center of complications following a liver transplant. He retired from 91����Ƶ in 2000 after 35 years of teaching. He also served as academic dean of the school from 1977 to 1984.

The former history professor is survived by his wife, Kathy Fisher, his daughter, Melody Keim, two grandsons and seven siblings.

Family and friends said he filled many roles with enthusiasm and a wise outlook on life.

"Al Keim was loved by all of us as a husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, teacher, mentor, colleague and friend," said Barbara Moyer Lehman, a pastor at the church.

A Love of History

Keim earned his bachelor’s in history from 91����Ƶ in 1963. He continued his education at the University of Virginia with a master’s, and then earned his Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University.

He wrote a biography of Harold S. Bender, a professor of theology and author of "The Anabaptist Vision," a short essay aimed at Anabaptists and Mennonites. Keim also wrote "The CPS Story," and was one of only two authors to have two books listed in "The Essential Anabaptist-Mennonite History Reading List."

"Most of all, my father was a storyteller," said Melody Keim. "And it never surprised us that he loved history. After all, what is history but storytelling on a grand scale?"

John Lapp, Keim’s history teacher at 91����Ƶ in the 1960s, said he grieves for Keim and for his unfinished work.

"His singular concern was to help us remember," Lapp said. "He had a wonderful gift of being neither simple, superficial or idealistic."

A Love Of Family

A doting grandfather, Keim enjoyed time with his two grandsons, Jeremy and Jonathan – and enjoyed talking about them, too.

"I think anyone that took classes with him after [his grandsons’ births] knew all about them," said Melody Keim.

He liked to talk tractors and farming with his grandsons, she said.

The oldest of nine children, Keim grew up in an Amish household in Hartville, Ohio. As a young man, he left the Amish community to pursue "intellectual development," Melody Keim said.

He began attending 91����Ƶ, where he met his first wife, Leanna, while they were both students. Leanna Keim died in 1998.

In 2000, Keim married Fisher, and during their first year of marriage, they lived in Saudi Arabia, where Fisher had taught English.

A Love Of Service

Keim also served in Europe as a Mennonite Central Committee Pax volunteer in post-war relief efforts from 1956 to 1958. There, he built villages for Mennonite refugees from the Soviet Union and Poland, his daughter said.

He was instrumental in the creation of the Valley Brethren Mennonite Heritage Center, where he served as the first director in 2001-02 and was a board member from 2000 until his death.

He will be remembered by the community for his "quiet demeanor," "remarkable intellect" and his sense of humor, said James Bomberger, who gave a tribute at the memorial service Tuesday.

"Al spent his life on a journey of discovery, and not just self-discovery," said Phil Kniss, Park View Mennonite’s pastor. "He was on a larger mission for all of humanity."

Albert N. (Al) Keim, 72, professor emeritus of history at 91����Ƶ, died June 27, 2008 at University of Virginia Medical Center. He had a successful liver transplant in 2007, but his health had declined in recent months.

Dr. Keim joined the 91����Ƶ history department faculty in 1965 and retired in 2000. He was appointed vice-president for academic affairs/dean at 91����Ƶ July 1, 1977 and served in that role seven years.

“Al Keim introduced his students to historical and political issues by having them read books which motivated them to think analytically. He was known for his half-sheet five-question quizzes and insightful commentaries on whatever issue was being studied,” said long-time faculty colleague Gerald R. Brunk, professor emeritus of history.

“As academic dean Al both envisioned and brought to reality the Global Village curriculum which has given many students life-changing experiences in other cultures,” Dr. Brunk said. “He devoted himself to making 91����Ƶ a quality Christian liberal arts institution and sought to enable the faculty to excel in their teaching. The legacy he has left will continue to enrich us all.”

Amish Background

The Hartville, Ohio, native grew up in an Amish home and attended Amish parochial schools. He received a BA degree from 91����Ƶ in 1963, an MA from the University of Virginia in 1965 and a PhD from Ohio State University in 1971. His doctoral work focused on the late John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration, and Dulles’ ties with the Federal Council of Churches, an ecumenical organization that sought to influence American foreign policy.

In 1972, Keim received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the 20th Century Christian Socialism movement – particularly the Fellowship of Socialist Christians, an organization created in 1930 by theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

The following year Keim received a grant to edit a volume of essays dealing with the Amish and compulsory education, based in part on the US Supreme Court’s ruling that compulsory school attendance for Amish children beyond the eighth grade is an “unequal restraint” on their religious freedom.

His book, “Compulsory Education and the Amish: The Right Not to Be Modern,” was released in 1975 by Beacon Press of Boston, Mass. He also wrote “The Politics of Conscience: the Historic Peace Churches and War, 1917-1955” (Herald Press, 1988) and “The CPS Story” (Good Books, 1990), a history of alternate service programs during World War II.

Herald Press also published Keim’s major biography, “Harold S. Bender, 1897-1962,” in 1998. Dr. Bender was a prominent professor of theology at Goshen College and Goshen Biblical Seminary, founder of the “Mennonite Quarterly Review” and author of “The Anabaptist Vision,” a 1944 landmark essay that reexamined the Mennonite Church during the troubling years of World War II.

Led First Cross-cultural

In 1972-73, Keim led 91����Ƶ’s first semester-length cross-cultural seminar in Europe, which paved the way for cross-cultural education becoming a graduation requirement in 1982-83.

“Al was my professor when I was an 91����Ƶ history major in the early ’70s,” said Steve C. Shenk of Harrisonburg. “My wife Karen and I were part of the three-month seminar that he led. Al was my hero.

“Then, 30 years later, I became executive director of Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center – my first history job after all this time,” Shenk added. “My close mentor and co-worker turned out to be Al Keim. Retired from 91����Ƶ by now, he was a founding board member and tireless volunteer. He was still my hero.”

Keim married Leanna Yoder Keim on Aug. 27, 1960. She died Oct. 19, 1998. In 2000, he married Kathy Fisher, who survives. Keim wrote a series of reflective articles during 2000-2001 for the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record while he and Kathy lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, their first year of marriage.

Also surviving are a daughter, Melody Ann Keim, Lancaster, Pa., two grandsons, and seven siblings.

He was a member of Park View Mennonite Church, where memorial services are scheduled for 10 a.m., Tuesday, July 1, with interment at Lindale Mennonite Church cemetery.

Memorial gifts may be made to the Valley Brethren/Mennonite Heritage Center, PO Box 1563, Harrisonburg VA 22803 or to Mennonite Central Committee, PO Box 500, Akron, PA 17501.

Father George McLean (r.), general editor, presents Paul Peachey with a copy of his book "Building Peace and Civil Society: An Autobiographical Report from a Believers’ Church" (Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2007). Chapters 1-16 is a collection of essays by Peachey, 1952-2003, nearly all previously published in widely scattered sources. The remaining chapters are autobiographical and published for the first time. Photo by Ray Gingerich

Roman Catholics and Mennonites are engaging each other in discussions at many levels.

A much-reported example was the visit of a Mennonite World Conference delegation to the Vatican in October this year. An extraordinary document, "Called Together: Report of the International Dialog Between the Catholic Church and Mennonite World Conference (MWC), 1998-2003," provides a backdrop for much of the current exchange.

At 91����Ƶ, the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society (ACRS) sponsored a conference entitled "The Church – Catholic and Anabaptist." The initiative for the Nov. 29-30 event was a long-standing friendship between Dr. Paul Peachey and Father George McLean, both emeritus professors at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Peachey and McLean have collaborated in a decades-long global inter-religious dialog in Europe and Asia on issues of violence and peace.

The ACRS is an organization started by a group of retired academics to explore issues relevant to the contemporary scene. Dr. Peachey, a prominent ACRS member, suggested that a conversation between Anabaptists and Catholics on ecclesiology might benefit both parties while helping to clarify disparate ways of being in the world.

Father McLean began the proceedings by pointing out that much inter-religious dialog today is rooted in the notion that differences must be understood as conflict. McLean suggested it be cast in a new way – as "diachronic" – that is, differences change in the context of time and as a result of changing circumstances. A current example of diachronic activity, he pointed out, is "the flurry of discussion between Catholics and Anabaptists."

A dinner discussion ensued where Peachey and McLean regaled the gathering with stories of their global inter-religious encounters.

In a subsequent session Dr. Nancy Heisey related the experiences of the MWC delegation to the Vatican, which provided a wonderful real-time element to the conference.

Two major addresses focused on ecclesiology. Ray Gingerich, professor emeritus of religion of 91����Ƶ, offered an Anabaptist theological perspective on the church. Professor Bill Barbieri of Catholic University offered a descriptive ecclesiological survey of contemporary church issues, especially related to questions of authority.

Perhaps the most important question was the relationship of churchly authority to issues of freedom and coercion from Catholic and Anabaptist points of view.

There is always an asymmetrical quality to Catholic/Anabaptist ecclesial interchange – Catholic verticality and Anabaptist horizontalism. Catholics have a quite precise ecclesiology; Mennonites not so much. This must leave Catholics wondering which strain of Anabaptist thinking represents the Mennonite position.

For ACRS, the encounter was wonderfully engaging and worthwhile. We hope our Catholic counterparts found it equally stimulating.

Albert N. Keim is professor emeritus of history at 91����Ƶ.

Two experts in Anabaptist studies have collaborated on the first scholarly examination of pacifism during the Civil War.

“Mennonites, Amish and the American Civil War,” by James O. Lehman of Harrisonburg and Steven M. Nolt of Goshen, Ind., describes the various strategies used by the sectarian religious groups in responding to the North-South conflict and the effects of war on these communities.

Lehman is librarian emeritus at 91����Ƶ, archivist for Virginia Mennonite Conference and the author of nine congregational histories and a book on 20th century Mennonite revivalism.

Steven M. Nolt, professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College and coauthor of two books on Amish faith and life

Nolt is professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College and coauthor of two books on Amish faith and life, both published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bloodiest War in American History

Integrating the most recent Civil War scholarship with little-known primary sources and new information from Pennsylvania and Virginia to Illinois and Iowa, Lehman and Nolt provide a definitive account of the Anabaptist experience during the bloodiest war in American history with 620,000 dead and over a million maimed and wounded.

The authors focus on moral dilemmas Mennonites and Amish faced that that tested the very core of their faith: How to oppose both slavery and the war to end it? How to remain outside the conflict without entering the American mainstream to secure legal conscientious objector status.

The book serves as a good reminder that not all churches immersed themselves in super-charged patriotism for either the Confederacy or the Union.

“The book is an easy read, with lots of arresting stories of faith under test,” said Albert N. Keim, professor emeritus of history at 91����Ƶ. “Its amazingly thorough research makes the book convincing. After reading it, I was convinced I had just acquired an accurate understanding of my forbears response to the Civil War,” he added.

The 376-page hardback book, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, is available for $39.95 at leading bookstores and at www.amazon.com.

For 50 minutes on Friday morning, Feb. 18, in the President’s Room of Hartzler Library, it was something of a time warp.

Three scholars, part of a seven-member group who assembled in 1952 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to critique the status and direction of the Anabaptist movement, interacted with students in a "Mennonite History and Thought" class.

Irvin B. Horst, 89; Paul Peachey, 86; and Calvin Redekop, 79, outlined their involvement in what proved to be a landmark 12-day meeting that also included John W. Miller, A. Orley Swartzendruber, David A. Shank and the late John Howard Yoder. All were living in Europe at the time, doing graduate study or post-war work with Mennonite Church agencies.

"Dr. Al Keim, professor emeritus of history at 91����Ƶ and author of a major biography of the late Mennonite theologian and educator H.S. Bender, called that gathering "the most creative event in Mennonite history," Mary S. Sprunger, professor of history, told the class in introducing the speakers. "This ‘reunion’ today of three of those original group members is also an historic event."

Dr. Horst, a one-time professor of church history at 91����Ƶ who later taught 18 years at a Mennonite seminary in Amsterdam, was instrumental in bringing the original group together and in providing insight into similarities and differences between American and Dutch Mennonite faith and practice.

"American Mennonites were becoming more and more acculturated, especially after World War II, just as Dutch Mennonites had generations before," Horst said.

Dr. Redekop, a sociologist and author, is the only "Concern" member not of "Old Mennonite" background. Of Russian Mennonite descent, Redekop said he was raised "a fundamentalist" and was "quite taken back" upon enrolling at Goshen (Ind.) College in 1946.

"Although at first I felt like an alien [at Goshen] my experience there made me appreciate my Anabaptist heritage, and I quickly found myself stimulated and encouraged by the interaction in that European group meeting," he told the students.

The gathering became known as the "Concern" movement, and from this initial meeting came subsequent gatherings and the issuing of a series of widely-distributed "Concern" pamphlets addressing several key issues they felt the Mennonite Church needed to squarely face.

"Even though we all had done graduate study in church-related areas, our group didn’t focus as much on theological issues as on polity – the question of power and authority in the church and are we congregationally structured or more of an authoritarian body," Dr. Redekop said.

"Our aim was to ‘critique’ the Mennonite Church, not to set it off in a new direction," Redekop stated. "We all were influenced by the thought and writings of Harold S. Bender, the most prominent Mennonite leader of the 1940s and 1950s."

"Unfortunately, Bender felt threatened by our efforts, when really what we wanted was to take his work a step farther," Peachey said. "However, a number of the younger generation of Mennonites appreciated what we were trying to do."

"Our desire was to work at reform and revival as an Anabaptist people and not to promote divisiveness and schism," Redekop said. "I think we achieved that goal."

He noted that an intentional church community, Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Ill., evolved from the "Concern" movement with one of the group members, John W. Miller, giving leadership.

"I wanted to introduce students to the story of these young Mennonites who were trying to find a way to make 16th century Anabaptism relevant for the church in the 1950s and ’60s," Dr. Sprunger said. "They took these issues seriously and dared to propose radical ideas about New Testament congregationalism to a hierarchical church leadership that didn’t welcome the Concern group’s critique of Mennonite denominationalism.

"Even though they wore suits and listened to lectures on Mennonite history, this was a kind of activism," she said. "Scholarly research, discussion and publishing was their way to raise issues and call the church they loved to be more faithful."

"The speakers captured an important topic that still faces the church today – distribution of power," said Paul J. Yoder, a junior history and social studies major from Harrisonburg. "I appreciated the emphasis on reform that they voiced. It’s rare to get to talk with and hear from actual figures that we’re studying in class," Yoder added.