Historian Troy Osborne shares several principles that he followed when he created the new survey of the Anabaptist story from Herald Press.
Troy Osborne is a historian at Conrad Grebel University College, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research and teaching center on Mennonite history and the Reformation, particularly on the development of the Dutch Anabaptist tradition. Troy is a member of Waterloo North Mennonite Church. He graduated from Hesston (Kansas) College, Goshen (Indiana) College and Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (now Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary), in Elkhart, Indiana. In June, Troy’s new book, “Radicals and Reformers” was published through Herald Press, the publishing imprint of MennoMedia; it is the first book in the Anabaptism at 500 suite.
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When Herald Press invited me to write a new survey of Anabaptist history for use in colleges, universities and seminaries, I agreed to take on the ambitious challenge without sufficiently appreciating the scale of what lay ahead, despite having experience teaching Mennonite and Anabaptist history in colleges in Canada and the U.S.
When Anabaptists from across the world commemorate the 500-year anniversary of the first adult baptism in Zürich, Switzerland, in 2025, they will celebrate the symbolic birth of the Anabaptist movement, which had separate origins in several European regions. Anabaptism, scholars now argue, did not have one beginning point from which it spread, but different streams coalesced into a movement that recognized commonalities among adult-baptizing groups.
As the narrative moved beyond the 17th and 18th centuries, into the growth, splits and movement brought on by the modern world, the story only became more complicated, making it increasingly more difficult to synthesize without losing a sense of the differences that give the movement its rich complexity. By the end of the 19th century, Anabaptism included the Old Order group, new churches in Indonesia and India, and the thriving Mennonite commonwealth in Ukraine. The diversity of Anabaptism grew even more rapidly in the last half of the 20th century, as it expanded across the globe and beyond the confines of rural North American communities, while being influenced by the forces of colonialism, modernism, fundamentalism and evangelicalism.
The story of the Anabaptists evades easy synthesis, and its subjects continue to disagree who truly belongs in the narrative. To shape the messiness into something usable, several principles shaped my approach to “Radicals and Reformers”:
1. Focus on lived experiences
The book emphasizes how Anabaptists have lived out their faith in changing times and places. Rather than trace Mennonite doctrine or attempt to distill essential Anabaptist teachings, I was interested in how faith is lived out. Confessions of faith are helpful ways to summarize shared convictions, but they may not always be internalized at the lay level. For example, as part of their devotional practice, my maternal grandparents faithfully read from “Daily Guideposts,” while my father’s parents read Sunday school materials published by Herald Press every morning. Both grandparents planted churches in Indiana and Michigan, yet, as far as I know, none of them read “The Anabaptist Vision,” H.S. Bender’s portrait of 16th century Anabaptism that shaped the Mennonite identity after World War II. By looking at stories of the “person in the pew,” Anabaptist history becomes much more dynamic than focusing only on what theological essentials might convey.
2. 500 years of faithful change
Similarly, I tell the story of the Anabaptists as they transitioned from radical reformers to settled and established churches. Instead of quickly moving from the movement’s radical origins to the global spread of Anabaptism, skimming past the intermediate 300 years, I guide readers back to the intervening period, when Anabaptists, looking to renew their churches, found new spiritual or intellectual resources, often from other traditions. This chronological commitment also meant including honest accounts of when Anabaptists fell short of their ideals or acted in ways that 21st century readers would find unacceptable. From apocalyptic kingdoms to conforming uncritically to the world around them, Anabaptists have been all too fallible, at times. However, they have also been creative in integrating new spiritual streams, like pietism, which thoroughly spread across many Anabaptist groups, renewing their spiritual life for centuries.
3. A global movement
Over the past half century, Anabaptists have transformed from a movement of 600,000 Europeans and North Americans into a global movement of 2.2 million members, mostly living in Africa and Asia. The history of those churches can be seen in the volumes of the Global Mennonite History series. I was grateful to have histories written by local authors, when it came to telling the story of the spread of Anabaptism beyond its communities in Europe and North America. The history of the creative ways that the gospel is shared in new contexts was one of the most rewarding aspects of working on this project.
4. A text for all readers
The driving force behind the book was to develop a new text for use in classrooms. In my classes at Bluffton University and Conrad Grebel University College, students were curious and eager to learn, but they did not always have a lot of background about the history of Christianity or hold religious commitments of their own. The history, therefore, had to be told in an invitational way, to readers from a variety of backgrounds. With this goal in mind, the editors organized a panel of historians from North American universities, seminaries and colleges to offer feedback throughout the process. Their help was invaluable in shaping the content, as well as the usability of the text. Students at Eastern Mennonite University, Bethel College and Canadian Mennonite University took several chapters for a test drive, and their evaluations were valuable when editing drafts of chapters.
For 500 years, Anabaptists have lived out their faith in changing times and new places, producing a complicated history that can resist easy generalizations. It would have been impossible to write a history of the Anabaptists that included all the rich variety of local and global stories and practices, but I hope that the book rings true, no matter which part of the Anabaptist story someone is part of. I am grateful for all the people who helped me tell this amazing and astounding story of how a group of priests, students and peasants, hoping to reform the 16th century church grew into a global movement.
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