Four Books on Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies

By Maxwell Kennel

Anabaptist and Mennonite studies is a broad interdisciplinary conversation with distinct subfields and institutions with differing approaches to its study, several of which intersect with the scholarly study of religion. For example, Anabaptist and Mennonite theologians have long been concerned with articulating Anabaptist political theologies that strive for justice and peace, and historians of Anabaptism have had their own historiographical journeys from normative to post-confessional positions that reckon with the usability of the past in the present. The discourse on Mennonite literary production (often stylized as “Mennonite/s Writing”) is going strong, with a regular conference series in North America, and the sociological and anthropological study of Anabaptist and Mennonite identities has pockets of energetic scholarship, from the Journal of Mennonite Studies and the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College and its book series.

Below I will point to four books that show the diversity and breadth of Anabaptist and Mennonite studies and provide a way into this fascinating conversation, in which I have been an active participant over the past several years. Each title is an edited collection, most of which feature a range of voices in the areas of Anabaptist history, Mennonite political theology, and Mennonite literature.

Profiles of the Radical Reformers: Biographical Sketches from Thomas Müntzer to Paracelsus, Edited by Hans-Jurgen Goertz and edited and translated by Walter Klaassen (Herald Press, 1982)

Edited by Hans-Jurgen Goertz and Walter Klaassen, Profiles of the Radical Reformers: Biographical Sketches from Thomas Müntzer to Paracelsus provides a fascinating look into the history of Anabaptist radicalism and dissent, including lesser-studied figures like Paracelsus. Originally published in German in 1978, these biographical sketches give a well-sourced picture of various 16th-century figures who were part of the “Radical Reformation,” which contemporary Anabaptist and Mennonite theologians interpret and receive. The introduction by Goertz provides a brief look at his work on reformation and revolution, while each essay is written by a scholar who specializes in studying the figure they are writing about. The out-of-print title can still be read online or used copies can be found for a reasonable price, Although somewhat dated, this book represents a serious and fascinating movement in the study of Anabaptism by historians in the 1970s and 1980s where historians eschewed overly normative and confessional interpretations of the radical reformers.

Toward an Anabaptist Political Theology: Law, Order, and Civil Society, by A. James Reimer, edited by Paul Doerksen (Cascade, 2014)

Many theologians and ethicists will have heard of the Mennonite tradition because of the work of John Howard Yoder, whose book The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans, 1972) was very popular and influential in conversations about the social gospel, and whose pattern of sexual abuse has given rise to a reckoning within the Anabaptist and Mennonite tradition with sexual violence (partly represented by the last text mentioned below). I highlight Toward an Anabaptist Political Theology: Law, Order, and Civil Society—a posthumous collection of working papers by Mennonite theologian A. James Reimer—to point toward another path that Anabaptist and Mennonite theologies could have taken more seriously when it was being developed (and still can!). Where Yoder was an American, Reimer was a Canadian; where Yoder challenged the state, Reimer welcomed more engagement with government and law; and where Yoder disavowed secular and philosophical approaches, Reimer was more open to philosophy and metaphysics. Appearing in the “Cascade Theopolitical Visions” series alongside other Anabaptist-inspired texts by Kyle Gingerich Hiebert, P. Travis Kroeker, and Elizabeth Phillips, this book represents another way that the Anabaptist and Mennonite studies conversation could go that would examine more subtly the entanglements of church and state, secularity and religion, and theology and philosophy.

After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America, edited by Robert Zacharias. Penn State University Press, 2015

Anabaptist and Mennonite studies are far more interdisciplinary than one might imagine. The discourse includes literary, poetic, dramatic, and artistic figures and writers, and literary-critical reflection on Mennonite literary art. After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America, represents the beginning bloom of the conversation on Mennonite/s Writing from nearly a decade ago, which has continued to expand in new directions. Many of the authors in this collection, edited by Robert Zacharias, have gone on to produce literary and critical works that extend the conversation on minority and transnational literatures within and beyond the Mennonite context.

Resistance: Confronting Violence, Power, and Abuse within Peace Churches, edited by Cameron Altaras and Carol Penner (Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2022)

The distinctive approach to peace and violence within the Anabaptist and Mennonite tradition is no longer highlighted as prominently as it once was. This shift is largely because of self-criticism within the discourse, which seeks to avoid the appearance of triumphalist moral superiority—especially in the face of sexual abuse scandals and simplistic presentations of Anabaptist history that paint the whole tradition with one brush. Even so, the reckoning with violence by Anabaptist and Mennonite scholars continues, as demonstrated in Resistance: Confronting Violence, Power, and Abuse within Peace Churches. In this volume, editors Cameron Altaras and Carol Penner provide space for a diverse group of writers to analyze power in institutional contexts, drawing from the deep wells of the tradition to provide visions of peace and justice that cut across insider/outsider distinctions.

These four books were formative for me, and each one opens up a conversation with a rich array of texts and questions that early career scholars may well want to consider.

Maxwell Kennel is the director of Pandora Press and editor of its Anabaptist and Mennonite studies series. He is the editor of Astrid von Schlachta’s Anabaptists: From the Reformation to the 21st Century, Trans. Vic Thiessen (Pandora, 2024), and Thomas Kaufmann’s The Anabaptists: From the Radical Reformers to the Baptists, Trans. Christina Moss (Pandora Press, 2024).