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I am grateful for Cal Redekop’s little book, European Mennonite Voluntary Service: Youth Idealism in Post-World War II Europe, especially since I was an early participant in the formation of this program but until now did not know what took place after we both left Europe, Cal in 1952 and I in 1953. Indeed I wish that I had been able to read this instructive book in my later work for MCC in Korea (1953-56) and under the Mennonite Mission Network as a missionary in Japan, beginning in 1959. In this book Redekop narrates a slice of the history of the Mennonite Central Committee relief and refugee resettlement work in Europe after WWII that perhaps has been overshadowed by a sister program—the MCC Pax program (earlier narrated in The Pax Story: Service in the Name of Christ, 1951-1976, also by Redekop) that sent more than 1,100 North American young men to Europe and later elsewhere in refugee resettlement programs. In fact, Redekop was the European director of both programs in their formative stages. In this second book Redekop, a trained sociologist and a participant-observer, provides a critical historical analysis of the innovative service of the young MCC volunteer “relief workers” who, serving “in the name of Christ” (the MCC motto), created a European Mennonite international work-camp program (MVS or MFD, in German Mennonitischen Freiwillingendienstes), not only as an expression of their discipleship but also as a witness to their faith. At the end of World War II the international work-camp movement brought diverse groups of idealistic young people and refugees together in physical labor to meet the material needs of recent enemies as a way to foster peace and reconciliation among both the war victims and offenders. These MFD/MVS Christian work camps included Bible study and worship to add a spiritual dimension to the healing process. During each work camp, a clear pattern emerged: the creation (birth) of community out of a diverse, often alienated group of individuals who through daily labor, discussion, study, and worship would form a new community, encounter conflict and (often dramatically) find reconciliation, and in the end depart in a fond farewell (death) scene. Thus the work camp experience became a transformative (or conversion) experience, a paradigm of a new way of life for many when they returned to their everyday life. Hence, from the beginning, the MVS vision was more than emergency relief and rehabilitation (e.g., refugee housing); it was also development, here a holistic ministry of the spiritual renewal and unity of our European counterparts, the Dutch, German, Swiss and French Mennonites. Redekop provides a fine-grained analysis of the rapid expansion of MVS-MFD and its sudden demise or “transmogrification.” In general terms he explains the consequences of the lack of differentiation between the emergency relief, rehabilitation, and the further goal of development (whether economic, social, or spiritual). More specifically he shows that as the need for relief (emergency response to disasters/calamities) receded and rehabilitation (refugee resettlement, reconstruction of housing, etc.) was completed, the MVS “transformative” experience began to lose both its meaning and motivation. Further, instead of unifying the European Mennonites, the diversity of interests and theology of the four groups hastened the demise of the MVS-MFD visionary program. In
terms of my earlier MCC experience in Korea and later as an MNN
missionary in Japan, I have found troubling the North American
Mennonite practice of a sharp differentiation between short-term relief
and rehabilitation (MCC work) and the longer-term mission work/church
planting (institutionalization/indigenization). Yet Redekop’s volume
illustrates the fact that ignoring differentiation can lead to
“transmogrification.” Indeed, this book needs to be read and pondered. |
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