"This book is about practicing the politics of Jesus in our contemporary world. That endeavor is deeply personal, involving one’s faith and practice in the company of those who have responded to Jesus and his claims on their lives. This practice also includes collaborating with many others, from different religious and moral traditions, who work for a sustainable world characterized by justice and peace. This book involves an interdisciplinary conversation between biblical studies, history, theology, ethics, and the social sciences. During different periods of my life I was compellingly drawn to these various disciplines as tools in my quest for understanding and for authentic social engagement. Such an endeavor offers hopeful new possibilities but also poses great risk. It promises new collaborative insights and life-transforming possibilities that can emerge at the intersection of various disciplines. The risk is going beyond one’s depth in any discipline and that one’s contributions will consequently be superficial at best. Nevertheless, the nature of the challenge to follow Jesus in our contemporary world compels us to attempt such an interdisciplinary endeavor. My personal search began as a teenager trying to make sense of the Vietnam War and wrestling with how to respond. Like many in my generation, I agonized over the destroyed lives and communities. The United States government claimed that it was a sacrifice that needed to be made for the cause of freedom and democracy. However, the traditional Mennonite community in which I had grown up taught me that all resort to lethal violence was incompatible with Christian faith. I was drawn to that peace position but instinctively knew that a faithful response had to go beyond saying no to war. It had to include active social engagement in the human dilemmas that lead to war in the first place. Such convictions led me and my wife Ruth to take a short-term mission assignment in the Philippines as a young married couple. There we met hardly imagined social oppression, debilitating poverty, struggling grassroots churches, determined revolutionaries, brutal police and military forces, and courageous social activists. This was much more than we had anticipated and changed our lives forever. That encounter shaped my subsequent educational pursuits. On one hand, I was drawn to biblical studies in an effort to figure out how such things relate to the life and vision of Jesus. On the other hand, I was drawn to various academic disciplines that could help me interpret and engage our contemporary world. Unlike others who are deeply indebted to the thought of John Howard Yoder, I cannot claim that my initial encounter involved an intellectual conversion. Instead, Yoder’s formulation of the politics of Jesus gave me the intellectual tools and the courage to continue on the path of nonviolent social engagement I was already traveling. That journey included six more years in the Philippines in the company of evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics deeply committed to the life of the church and social transformation. My mature faith was formed there. My mentors were Filipino intellectuals and activists such as Melba Maggay, Jose DeMesa, and Karl Gaspar. They included grassroots pastors such as Gerry Balucas and poor couples such as Paz and Bert Laurio who somehow survived in the slums of Manila. These mentors kept me honest by constantly reminding me that authentic theology and social theory had to come from the ground up and needed to be relevant in communities of the poor and marginalized. Oddly enough, I again encountered John Howard Yoder’s thought when I returned to the United States and began my doctoral studies at The Catholic University of America. I told Joseph Komonchak, my program advisor, that Yoder was the Mennonite theologian and social ethicist I could not ignore. His immediate response was that I should consider doing my dissertation on Yoder. That is both ironic and hopeful. Komonchak is thoroughly committed to the Catholic just war tradition, yet he encouraged me to pour myself into the study of a Mennonite pacifist thinker. Other members of the faculty, such as Stephen Happel and Cynthia Crysdale, thoroughly enjoyed helping me shape my research project. William Barbieri, the young moral theologian on the faculty, agreed to be my dissertation advisor and spent many hours helping me formulate my research and guiding the long process of writing. This book is a product of their combined efforts, even though I personally bear final responsibility for what has emerged. I owe them a debt of gratitude and thank all of them for making possible this truly ecumenical project. It is a sign of promising new collaboration in the global church that could not even have happened in the recent past. I thank my C. Henry Smith Series editor J. Denny Weaver for his skillful and efficient oversight throughout the publication process. His conviction that this would be a significant book was contagious, and he had many helpful suggestions that improved the final product. I thank Michael A. King, the publisher at Cascadia Publishing House, for his commitment to this book and his guidance at various steps in the process. I also thank my colleagues Nancy Heisey, Ted Grimsrud, Mark Thiessen Nation, and Ray Gingerich at Eastern Mennonite University for their encouragement and willingness to read and give feedback on portions of the book. Most of all, I thank my wife Ruth for her partnership and constant encouragement. I am sure that her practical insights, which grow out of her work as the co-director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University and our former joint mission assignment in the Philippines, have found their way into this book in ways that even I can no longer decipher. I also thank our three children Krista, Stephen, and Sara for their unwavering encouragement and belief in their dad. Their keen interest in creating communities characterized by justice and peace in the way of Jesus is an inspiration to me. I could not have written this book without the support of my family. —Earl Zimmerman
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