In This Issue

In This Issue The year 1995 marks the 75th anniversary of the Mennonite Central Commit tee (MCC), a Christian benevolent organization of response to human need. During this year, the role of MCC is being celebrated in special publications, symposia, exhibits, and in other ways. The anniversary celebrations reveal once again that MCC is more than an agency for Christian witness and service. MCC also has played a decisive role in the development of Mennonite identity in the United States and Canada. In this issue Mennonite Life offers a contribution to the MCC historical memory. Robert Kreider, a former editor of Mennonite Life, is a beloved elder states man of MCC. His essay in this issue is a revised version of a presentation given at the MCC 75th Anniversary Symposium at Fresno Pacific College in Califor nia in March. Kreider is also the curator of a special museum exhibit on MCC history, “The Gift of Hope,” at Kauffman Museum on the Bethel College Campus. The exhibit was funded in part by the Kansas Council for the Humani ties. It will be open until June 1996. MCC history is properly seen in a wider context of denominational, religious, and national history. The Mennonite impulse to Christian benevolence has been, and remains, a world wide phenomenon. The article by John B. Toews on German Mennonite relief work between the great world wars of this century, offers some possibilities for comparison. Toews, professor of history at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, has been a frequent contributor to Mennonite Life. The Radical Reformation and Mennonite Bibliography has been an annual feature of Mennonite Life. Barbara Thiesen is the Technical Services Librarian and Co-Director of Libraries at Bethel College. It has been my privilege to serve as editor or co-editor of Mennonite Life for two terms, 1975-1980 and 1989-1995. I am now withdrawing from the editorship for a second time. My wife, Anna Kreider Juhnke, and I will spend the coming academic year as Center Fellows at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Communications regarding Mennonite Life editorial matters should be sent to John Thiesen and to Raylene Hinz-Penner, arts editor, at Bethel College. James C. Juhnke 2 MENNONITE LIFE MENNONITE June 1995 Vol. 50 No. 2 LIFE Editor James C. Juhnke The Multiple Visions of MCC's 75 Years 4 Robert S. Kreider Managing Editor and Book Review Editor Forgotten Goodness: John D. Thiesen The Deutsche Mennoniten-Hilfe (1920-1932) 12 Editorial Assistant John B. Toews Barbara Thiesen Radical Reformation and Mennonite Front Cover MCC clothing distribution in Vienna-Rosental, Bibliography, 1994 18 Austria, April 13, 1948. Barbara Thiesen Back Cover Russian Mennonite refugee transport in Berlin, Book Reviews 1923. These were persons separated because of 28 sickness and sent to Lechfeld. The numbered per sons on the picture are: (1) David Becker, Berlin; (2) Alexander Fast, Berlin, representative from Caucasia; (3) Benjamin H. Unruh, representative of the Russian Mennonites; (4) Jakob Kroeker, Wernigerode am Harz, director of the “Licht im Osten” mission; (5) Mrs. D. M. Hofer, Chicago, 111., representative from U.S.A.; (6) D. M. Hofer, Chicago, 111., representative from U.S.A.; (7) Abraham Warkentin, Oberursel, Germany, repre sentative of Deutsche Mennoniten-Hilfe. Photo Credits All photos from the Mennonite Library and Ar chives, Bethel College. MENNONITE LIFE (ISSN 0025-9365) is an il lustrated quarterly magazine published in March, June, September, and December by Bethel College, 300 East 27th, North Newton, Kansas 67117-0531. Second Class postage paid at North Newton, Kansas 67117. POSTMAS TER: Send address changes to MENNONITE LIFE, Bethel College, 300 East 27th, North Newton, Kansas 67117-0531. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: U.S. one year, $15.00; two years, $22.00. Foreign one year, $18.00; two years $25.00 (U.S. funds). Indexed with abstracts in Religion Index One: Periodicals, American Theological Library As sociation, Chicago, Illinois; Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, California; and available online through BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Serv ices), Latham, New York, and DIALOG, Palo Alto, California. JUNE 1995 3 The Multiple Visions of MCC's 75 Years by Robert S. Kreider The birth of the Mennonite Central for a conference. They boldly called Catherine Hodder and a Rwanda pas Committee was so ordinary. No ener for an inter-Mennonite program in mis tor refugee drove from Goma in Zaire gizing vision statement. No recogni sions and service, a conference of his toward the Rwanda border. Tim tells tion of a breakthrough in inter-Mennon- toric peace churches, peacemaking, of how along the side of the road lay ite relationships. Just thirteen men peace education, prison reform, atten wrapped corpses. Beyond them, meeting in July 1920, in a frame church tion to the problems of labor, and ur huddles of refugees. The closer they on Prairie Street in Elkhart, Indiana. ban welfare—a sweeping agenda that is approached to the border, numbers Not a representative group: 10 from the suggestive of the MCC that emerged thickened. And then on a ridge, a broad Mennonite Church and three from in its second birth in the 1940s and valley spread below them. A stagger groups of Prussian-Russian immigrant 1950s—the World War II years and af ing sight. Across the valley and into background. No photographs of the ter. the distance, a solid carpet of human meeting. Just another committee meet ity: 300,000 ... 500,000 ... 700,000 refu ing and only briefly noted in Mennon A House of Many Windows gees. Numbers lost their meaning. Far ite periodicals. They drafted a work below in the distance they saw the tiny ing agreement, using the words “tem I step aside now and confess that I form of a UN truck with food, sur porary” and “tentative.” This new feel ill at ease with this term “vision.” rounded by a tightly-packed mass of committee was to “function with and The vision format of a Martin Luther people. Tim thought of the enormity for the several existing relief commit King “I have a dream” or a Harold of the task of organizing an equitable tees ... and to take charge of all gifts Bender “Anabaptist Vision” seems to distribution in that valley of misery. for South Russia and [provide for] the ill fit the MCC. Vision is defined as The three knew that they must go equitable distribution of the same.”1 So “the sight of things normally hidden down among the people. Tim tells of matter of fact and so minimal. One from human eyes.” It is especially picking his way through the narrow, wonders whether this inter-Mennonite characteristic of apocalyptic literature. almost invisible spaces that separated committee would have been formed The book of Daniel speaks of vision at family from family, “taking care to without the insistence of a delegation least 14 times, but Jesus uses it only avoid the cooking fires, the bundles of of four from Russia—outsiders telling once. The essence of vision is seeing possessions, the sick, the dying and North Americans what to do. One into the distance—talcing a long view. those already [dead], the makeshift senses it was a reluctant marriage—af I am, thus, drawn to the metaphor of shelters.” Everywhere they walked fection developing later, much later. In windows. MCC is a house of many they were among those who had mur that quite ordinary setting at Prairie windows. Like any metaphor, it can dered and those who had lost family in Street, two young men met for the first be useful for a time, but often it be the slaughter—Christians killing Chris time: Orie Miller of Akron, Pennsyl comes shopworn. As we saunter about tians. And then in Tim’s words, “We vania, and P. C. Hiebert of Hillsboro, in the MCC experience, we shall peer saw sights more stunning than ... the Kansas. But for our people, oh, the through many windows. hundreds of thousands: people caring difference that partnership. for each other ... the dying not aban Probing for a vision for this infant The Valley of Vision doned ... the sharing of food and water MCC, one might find the seeds a year ... children aged six or seven holding earlier in Clermont-en-Argonne, Last August Tim Lind, a veteran of in their arms and comforting baby sis France. There sixty idealistic and im Africa service, returned from Rwanda ters and brothers—the parents dead ... patient college-age Mennonite young with memories that haunt the con children looking up smiling.”2 Incom men, who at war’s end were serving science. In the aftermath of the mas prehensible—that valley of death and with a Quaker reconstruction unit, met sacre, Tim and country representative life, cruelty and compassion, Golgotha 4 MENNONITE LIFE and the Resurrection. A 17th century Puritan poet, inspired by the 22nd chapter of Isaiah, offers for us a biblical metaphor for that dis tant valley: Lord, High and Holy. Meek and Lowly, Thou hast brought [us] to the valley of vi sion, where [we] live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin, [we] be hold thy glory.3 Thus far we have peered through these windows: 1. MCC was born and is reborn in valleys of tragedy. The Great War with its aftermath of revolution, civil war, hunger and famine. World War II with its 50 million dead, the Holocaust, the Gulag, nuclear terror. And a recent U.N. report that 1.3 billion persons live in utter poverty—70 percent of these Housing for Mennonite refugees in Gronau, West Germany, immediately after women.

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