|
|
|
|
The Author
Anabaptist
Theology in Face of Postmodernity
J. Denny Weaver is Professor of
Religion and chair of the Department of History and
Religion at Bluffton (Oh.) College. He teaches courses in
Christian theology and ethics and a variety of historical
studies. His research interests deal with the
conversation between Anabaptist and Mennonite theology
and the contextual theologies such as black, womanist,
and feminist.
Weaver was born in 1941 to Alvin and
Velma Weaver, of Kansas City, Kansas. With his family he
attended and was a member of the local Argentine
Mennonite Church. He attended Hesston College and
graduated from Goshen College in 1963 with a major in
mathematics. Following graduation, he spent two years at
Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, Ind.),
with a particular focus on Old Testament studies.
While the Vietnam War was widening,
Weaver volunteered with Mennonite Central Committee for a
term of alternative service as a conscientious objector.
He and his wife spent a year in French language study and
then served during 1966-1968 in Algeria under the MCC
Teachers Abroad Program (TAP). Weaver taught English in
an Algerian public school, using French as the language
of instruction.
Weaver was keenly interested in events
and attitudes in the newly liberated Algeria as well as
in France, its former colonial ruler. Efforts to
understand made him much more aware of the need to know
history in order to interpret contemporary events. This
insight reoriented his academic interests toward
historical studies. After the MCC asignmet, Weaver
focused on church history for a year at Kirchliche
Hochschule Bethel, in Germany, and continued that
emphasis in his final year at AMBS. At Duke University,
his doctoral studies were in church history, with a
speciality in sixteenth-century Anabaptism
After teaching at Goshen College for a
year, Weaver joined the Bluffton faculty. For twenty
years he has been refining historical perspectives that
shape his work in theology. His goal is to develop
theology for the peace church that incorporates the
belief that rejection of violence is an intrinsic and
indispensable aspect of the good news about Jesus Christ.
Weaver is a frequent participant in
conferences on Mennonite and believers church theology,
and has written widely on aspects of Mennonite history
and thought. His Becoming Anabaptist (Herald
Press, 1987) was the first book to synthesize the account
of Anabaptist origins from the perspective of polygenesis
historiography. His Keeping Salvation Ethical (Herald
Press, 1997) shed new light on previously uncharted
nineteenth-century Mennonite and Amish theologizing and
developed its relevance for contemporary understandings
of peace-church atonement theology.
His many articles and essays have
appeared in books and dictionaries such as Evangelical
Dictionary of Theology and The Oxford
Encyclopedia of the Reformation, and in academic and
church periodicals, such as Mennonite Quarterly
Review, Conrad Grebel Review, Modern Theology, Archiv fur
Reformationsgeschichte, Fides et Historia, Journal of
Mennonite Studies, Christian Scholar’s Review,
Mennonite Life, Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, Gospel
Herald, and The Mennonite. Subjects include
Anabaptist and Mennonite theology from the
sixteenth-century to the present, use of a peace church
perspective to analyze the classic statements of
Christology and atonement from the early and medieval
church, and the development of statements of Christology
and atonement for the contemporary peace churches.
Weaver is a member of the executive
committee of the Mennonite Historical Society. He also
belongs to the American Academy of Religion, the American
Society of Church History, and the Conference on Faith
and History.
He is a member of First Mennonite
Church of Bluffton, where he has served as deacon, chair
of the pastoral search committee, and frequent teacher of
adult Sunday School classes. He served on the Peace,
Service, and Justice Committee of the Central District
Conference of the General Conference Mennonite Church,
and on three Christian Peacemaker Team delegations to
Haiti. In 1990-1991, Weaver was visiting professor of
theology at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (Winnipeg).
In 1965, Weaver married Mary Lois
Wenger. They have three adult daughters, Sonia Katharina,
Lisa Denise, and Michelle Therese, and four
grandchildren.
Anabaptist Theology in Face
of Postmodernity orders:
|
|
