The Activist Impulse: Four Historical Case Studies

American Protestants from many different religious traditions and denominations both contributed to and felt the effects of the controversy between conservative evangelicals and modernists in the early decades of the twentieth century. Anabaptists were no exception. While fundamentalists within small, outsider traditions, such as the Mennonites and Brethren, had much in common with other fundamentalists, patterns of development within these contexts were complicated by the fact that Anabaptists cherished certain distinctive features, such as nonviolence, strong discipleship, and community bonds, as well as simple lifestyles that made for unique manifestations of the fundamentalist phenomenon. The importance of these distinctive features can be seen by the persistent questions that emerged during these decades and that continue to facilitate historiographical debate, especially among Anabaptists. Could Anabaptists adopt the attitudes, concern for rigid orthodoxy, and the theological orientation of American fundamentalism while preserving core Anabaptist virtues and distinctives? Did aggressive efforts by traditionalist-minded Anabaptists to maintain the “right fellowship” constitute its own form of fundamentalism? These questions are complicated further by the fact that in the Anabaptist context, fundamentalism often constituted cultural innovation and even progressive tendencies, not necessary the ultra-conservatism to which it is often equated today.

The next four essays of The Activist Impulse seek to address some of these complex issues. It is safe to say that figures that make an appearance in this section—such as Daniel Kauffman, Alva J. McClain, John S. Hiestand, and William Anders—are anything but household names, even in Anabaptist circles. Yet these individuals are noteworthy because the tensions and paradoxes that characterized both their private and public lives are representative of the complex cultural negotiations that Anabaptists felt during these years and the way that American fundamentalism served both to challenge tradition among ethnic Protestants as well as provide new avenues for refashioning faith for a modern American context.

The first two essays below are devoted specifically to Mennonite bishop, Daniel Kauffman, a significant historical figure for the Anabaptist-evangelical relationship. Serving as editor of the Gospel Herald, the primary serial for the (Old) Mennonite Church, from 1908 to 1943, Kauffman was one of the most influential Mennonite leaders during the first half of the twentieth century. In this capacity Kauffman guided American Mennonites through the fundamentalist-modernist debates of the 1920s and 1930s. Because of his role in these decades, he since has become a figure that represents Anabaptist accommodation to American fundamentalism. In their respective essays, “Fundamentalists, Modernists, and a Mennonite 'Third Way': Reexamining the Career of Bishop Daniel Kauffman” and “'I Submit': Daniel Kauffman and the Legacy of a Yielded Life,” Notre Dame doctoral student in History, Benjamin Wetzel, and Eastern Mennonite University historian, Nathan E. Yoder, effectively counter this interpretation of Kauffman, asserting instead that his response to the broader currents of American religious culture is more nuanced than previously represented.

Since Kauffman’s era Anabaptists have made various attempts to integrate the evangelical and Anabaptist traditions in intentional and creative ways. One such example is the founding of Grace Theological Seminary, the denominational seminary for the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches. In his essay, “A Cord of Many Strands: Reexamining Grace Brethren Identity and the Fundamentalism of Alva J. McClain,” Grace College historian M. M. Norris argues that the origins of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches are more complex than is often assumed and that American fundamentalism was only one of several forces that shaped the seminary’s founder, Alva J. McLain. A popular teacher, McClain attempted to find a workable synthesis of dispensationalism and Brethren piety.

In his essay, “Misfits and Fundamentalists: The Question of Evangelicalism and Defection among Lancaster and Franconia Mennonites,” Grace College historian Jared S. Burkholder then moves the focus to an examination of the Lancaster and Franconia (Pennsylvania) Mennonite conferences during the first half of the twentieth century. He considers the relationship between evangelical influence and Anabaptist defection, tracing dissenting movements led by local ministers John S. Hiestand and William Anders who journeyed from conservative Mennonite circles to conservative evangelicalism. While it is tempting to interpret theses schisms purely as a result of outside fundamentalist encroachment, Burkholder suggests that the controversy was a product of competing fundamentalisms and that the dissenters merely traded one form of conservative religiosity for another.*

Each of these "case studies" offers a significant contribution to an important revisionist reading of historical evangelical Anabaptist relationship. Whereas the standard reading holds that conservative evangelicals infiltrated Anabaptist communities with their fundamentalist ideas, these chapters demonstrate how certain aspects of fundamentalism were already latent within these Anabaptist communities, leading to reactions to modernism that in some ways paralleled and in other ways diverged from the conservative evangelical reaction. These essays will thus be important to any historian working in American religious history and should also be of interest to those within Anabaptist communities seeking to understand their tradition better.

*The above paragraphs are slightly adapted from The Activist Impulse,  101-103.