Foreword
Anabaptists and
Postmodernity
Bluffton College, in cooperation with
the Mennonite Historical Society, is pleased to
inaugurate the new C. Henry Smith Series with Anabaptists
and Postmodernity.
Several factors make this an auspicious
time to launch such an open-ended project. This first
volume appears in the centennial year of Bluffton College
and thus christens the college’s second century. For
the Western world, the appearance of the series marks the
turn to the third millennium—every volume will carry
a publication date of 2000 or later. And since the C.
Henry Smith Series appears as a parallel to the
time-honored Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History,
it makes a major contribution to the vision of the
Mennonite Historical Society to provide leadership in the
ever-widening range of Mennonite studies.
Most important, this series arrives at
a time of particular significance for the future
character—the future faithfulness—of
Anabaptists and of the Mennonite churches. Standing on
the doorstep of the third millennium, Anabaptists and
Mennonites face a greater variety of influences and
challenges than at any previous time of their sojourn in
North America. Such challenges run the gamut from
assimilation and loss of identity for those in tune with
North American culture to being turned into commodities
by the tourist industry for those who resist North
American culture.
A current dimension of these challenges
is the need to respond to the impact of the loss in wider
society of a sense of common truth. The last two
centuries of the demise of Western Christendom involved
arguments about whether the supposed foundation of the
“universal truth” of Western civilization is or
should be located in the Christian tradition or on
supposedly universal, rational principles identifiable
outside of Christian tradition. In the twentieth century
the demise came to include loss of the idea that a common
narrative or a common truth might exist. This demise of
Christendom and loss of the sense of a common truth,
accompanied by a rising tide of pluralism and relativism,
have come to be known as postmodernity.
Anabaptist intellectuals are responding
in a variety of ways to such challenges, and Mennonite as
well as other Anabaptist churches are affected by them,
often without specific awareness of that impact. The
series of books projected for the C. Henry Smith Series
is not about postmodernity or the series of conditions
and challenges of early-twenty-first-century North
American culture per se. Rather, the series will
specifically address theological, cultural, social, and
historical issues raised for Anabaptists by the ferment
in North American and Western society.
Anabaptists and Postmodernity
is an appropriate volume to inaugurate the series. The
essays reflect multiple disciplines and modes of inquiry:
literature, theology, rhetoric, history, philosophy, and
sociology are among the prominent ones. As such it
foreshadows the variety of volumes to follow.
For the volume in hand, the
introduction and twenty essays constitute a microcosm of
the condition called postmodernity as well as the debate
about it and the response to it that is occurring in the
Anabaptist churches. There is no grand narrative or
universal consensus on the character of postmodernity,
nor does this volume attempt one. In fact, the authors of
these essays understand postmodernity in different and
conflicting ways; they make both positive and negative
claims about its potential contribution to Anabaptist
thought and about the Anabaptist response to it. But in
this cacophony of voices readers will begin to discover
the diverse and multifaceted character of the phenomenon
called postmodernity.
The essays published in Anabaptists
and Postmodernity were selected from some thirty-six
presentations made at the conference “Anabaptists
and Postmodernity” that was held at Bluffton
College, August 6-8, 1998. Gerald and Susan
Biesecker-Mast originated the vision for that conference
and made it happen in a masterful way. It was only
fitting, therefore, that Gerald and Susan edit this
volume of papers emerging from that conference.
Susan’s opening essay provides a
superb introduction both to the subject of postmodernity
and to the individual printed essays. As the series
editor, I am deeply grateful to Gerald and Susan for
their excellent and unstinting work in organizing the
conference and now in editing this volume. Readers will
certainly appreciate their efforts.
The development of the C. Henry Smith
Series owes much to Michael A. King, editor and
publisher, Pandora Press U.S. He supported the concept of
the series since its inception. And it has been a
pleasure working with Michael as editor and publisher of
this volume, which bodes well for the future of the C.
Henry Smith Series.
Without the warm support of scholarship
in service of the church and the generous commitment of
institutional resources by Bluffton College, President
Lee Snyder, and Academic Dean John Kampen, neither the
conference on Anabaptists and postmodernity nor the
series that Anabaptists and Postmodernity inaugurates
would have happened. Those who will produce the C. Henry
Smith Series and those who read the volumes will be ever
grateful.
—J. Denny Weaver, CHS Editor, Bluffton College
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