Mennonite Weekly Review

On my desk is Christian Bride, Muslim Mosque by Paul Wiebe, published by Komos Books, 2008, 228 pages, $13.49.

James C. Juhnke, of Wichita, Kan., is professor emeritus of history at Bethel College.

Paul Wiebe has written what he calls “a (highly) fictionalized memoir” of his growing-up years (1944 to 1956) in a Mennonite family and church community in Aberdeen, Idaho. Although he has changed the names of people and places, anyone from Aberdeen will recognize much of what they read.

This is a comic novel, set in a biblical frame. It begins in an orchard and ends with a rapture. It includes 12 stories, all told from the viewpoint of a lad named John Reisender whose ancestors emigrated from Russia.

Reisender’s great-grandmother was married in a mosque in Central Asia under circumstances too embarrassing for the family to talk about openly. She was a member of the Great Trek (1880-1884) led by Claas Epp Jr. to the place of Jesus’ expected second coming.

The Great Trek, and the wedding in the mosque, are not the central focus of this novel. To that extent, the title may be a bit misleading. This is mostly a story of a young man coming of age in small-town America. At the end, it is also a story of returning home and, in spite of everything, reclaiming a faith to survive by.

The comic craziness of the characters of this novel may remind some readers of Armin Wiebe’s outrageous Flat Germans from southern Manitoba in his book, The Salvation of Jasch Siemens. John Reisender of Aberdeen stumbles into multiple embarrassments in Sunday school, in the town pool hall and bar, in the school classroom, on the football field, in a cave, and on a blanket at a beach with his girlfriend.

His earnest daily vacation Bible school teachers fumble ridiculously in their attempts to teach the Bible, to rescue unsaved children and to recruit their hapless charges for overseas missionary service. Reisender’s irreverent Aunt Lena balances things out by skewering the fundamentalists with wry and perceptive comments.

After leaving Idaho in 1956, Wiebe graduated from Bethel College in North Newton, Kan., and earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago. He taught comparative religion at Wichita State University but left a tenured position there to begin a career as writer of comic novels. Christian Bride, Muslim Mosque is his fourth novel, but the first one that focuses on a Mennonite community.

Wiebe has not yet broken through to a mass readership and big-name publishers. Nor has he been “discovered” as a Mennonite writer whose works are discussed at Mennonite literature conferences. Perhaps that time will come.

One of Wiebe’s claims to fame is the title of his first novel, Benedict XVI. It is the tale of an oversexed rogue adventurer who rose from Amish origins to become the pope of the Catholic Church. That book was published in 2003, two years before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger chose Benedict XVI as his papal name. Wiebe disclaims any foreknowledge. The event did trigger a great flurry of hits on his Web site.