Young Center Conference Day One

I’ve just returned from a three day conference at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College (PA). The conference theme was the life of Alexander Mack Jr., whose father founded the Brethren movement in Schwarzenau, Germany in the 18th century. Mack lived 91 years, experiencing the migration to North America, the beginnings of Brethrenism in America, as well as the turmultuous years of the Seven Year’s War and the American Revolution. He was a minister, writer, and apologists for the Brethren and spent part of his life as a celibate member of the Ephrata “cloister,” one of America’s earliest pietist communities and utopian societies.

The conference began on Wednesday and it was a fascinating day. We toured early Brethren sites in Philadelphia and Lancaster County, PA with Jeff Bach, Brethren historian and leading authority on the Ephrata community, as our guide. Bach’s book, Voices of the Turtledoves: The sacred World of Ephrata, has become the standard interpretation and history for Ephrata since it was published with Penn State Press in 2005. The book is invaluable for the way it corrects previous interpretations such as those based on the Chronicon Ephratense, an imaginative narrative that was written by a member of the community itself (Brother Lamech), as well as Julius Sachse’s account, The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania: 1694-1708 (1895), which contains many misrepresentations. Jeff is a wonderful scholar and extremely gracious. Along the way, I was privileged to talk to Gary Kochheiser, a Grace College alum who has a keen sense for the historical development and identity of the Grace Brethren movement. A pastor in the “Conservative” branch of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches, Gary is a personal friend to John Whitcomb, who gained a reputation at Grace Seminary for his militant fundamentalism and his endorsement of “flood geology” in the 1960s. I was able to glean much from Gary’s insightful perspective on all things Brethren. After returning to the Young Center and enjoying a small reception, we began the conference proper with an opening presentation by Dale Stoffer, a historian at Ashland University and expert on the “progressive” Brethren Church. Stoffer, who has written a history of Ashland, provided an overview of Alexander Mack Jr.’s life and religious career, setting the stage for the presentations to come. We were off to a wonderful start!