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Series Editor's
Preface
Dancing with
the Kobzar
The editors of Studies in Anabaptist
and Mennonite History welcome the opportunity to help
Bluffton College celebrate its centennial with Perry
Bush’s well-researched, sprightly story. Few
features of twentieth-century American Mennonite history
are more puzzling or profound than the growth, character,
and influence of church-related institutions. In this,
Mennonites fit a broader modern pattern, for a vast
increase in the number and the complexity and the power
of institutions is a major part of modern history.
Since institutions are really clusters
of people, Bush’s book is full of human foibles. Its
pages deliver arresting tales of personal stories and
aspirations. They tell of the difficulties and joys a
variety of Mennonites have found as they have tried to
form and work at common ideals. Naturally, being humans
with active minds and wills, those Mennonites often found
themselves in conflict. Indeed conflict helps make this
book the engaging tale it is. But Bluffton College could
grow and function well only when its people also
cooperated and acted as a community. For that, they
needed common vision. Bush is especially masterful at
capturing the moods and spirit of the BC community and at
pointing to Blufftonites’ common vision(s).
At the same time, Bush offers evidence
and insights that apply more widely than to BC. His book
is American Mennonite history—and American religious
history. There are many points at which this is true:
constant interaction of a historic peace church with
American Fundamentalism and American Evangelicalism, for
instance; and providing a case study in America’s
pattern of church-related higher education. Three themes
are especially notable. They are large themes; too large,
perhaps, for definitive answers in one book. But with
them, Bush raises and speaks to important historical
questions.
One theme is the special nature of
Bluffton as a Mennonite college and more broadly a
church-related one. Bluffton is and has been a Mennonite
institution, but its market has been primarily other than
Mennonite. That pattern is interesting, both for
Bluffton’s story and for examining how church
institutions function. How does an institution’s
governing ideology interact with market forces? More
broadly, do the church’s hopes and its will for its
institutions make much difference? Or are religious
institutions about as likely as other modern institutions
to depart from their stated purposes to follow other
logics: those of the market, of institutional
self-preservation, and of the nature of modern
institutional structure itself? If the questions sound
pessimistic, Bluffton’s example may not.
A second theme is much reference to how
Bluffton College and its people behaved in times of war.
The pervasive, often insidious influences of modern
nationalism is a central concern in all twentieth-century
history, and how pacifists have responded and coped is a
central issue in peace church histories. This book offers
ample illustrations of that theme.
A third very engaging theme, a favorite
for Bush, is that Bluffton College has worked from a
certain “progressive” version of an
“Anabaptist vision” of activist peacemaking.
That motif surely raises questions. Amid all the other
lights of which Bush writes—including immigrant
Mennonite traditionalism, boosterism, youth culture,
American campus culture, patriotism, conservative and
liberal political or social pressures, American
Evangelicalism, and more—how much were Blufftonites
really able to see and follow that vision? And what
really were the sources of the vision? How much did the
vision truly arise from Anabaptist and Mennonite
understandings of the faith and what else may have shaped
it? Is its “Anabaptism” more than a slogan?
Thoughtful people are asking such questions of other
versions of Anabaptist vision, and this version raises
them as well. Bush provides some evidence.
Such are some key historical issues. At
times the issues emerge indirectly. More directly, Bush
offers a moving tale of vigorous people with interesting
aspirations. It is a tale lively with ideas, arts, faith,
pranks, athletics, financial struggles, promotions,
peacemaking, patriotic fevers, self-giving service. It is
a tale of humans operating at their best—and
sometimes less. It is full of moods, hurts, and triumphs.
The editors of the Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite
History series commend this volume as one that tells a
dynamic story and in so doing addresses significant
historical themes.
—Theron Schlabach, Editor-in-Chief, Studies in
Anabaptist and Mennonite History
Dancing with the Kobzar
orders:
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