Mennonite Weekly Review

If there is one thing Mennonites should know a lot about, it should be Menno Simons — the 16th-century Anabaptist leader whose name others used to give their church its name.

The cover of Augsburger’s book

Myron Augsburger worries that the opposite is true.

“I don’t think that many Mennonites today know as much as they should about him,” said the former president of Eastern Mennonite University and author of The Fugitive, a book from Herald Press that recounts the story of Menno’s conversion, life and service to the fledgling Anabaptist movement in the 16th-century.

“They don’t really know the kind of person he was, the challenges he faced, the things he suffered for his beliefs or the deep quality of his faith in Jesus.”

If Mennonites today think of Menno Simons at all, says Augsburger, they think of him mostly as someone who stood for, and promoted, peace and justice.

“Menno certainly was committed to peacemaking and serving others,” he said, noting that he didn’t wear a sword — unusual for a man during that time.

“But Menno was about much more than that. Most of his writings are about faith and the quality of life that begins with rebirth. He was very much concerned that people come to know Jesus. He didn’t just talk about ethics.”

Mennonites today also don’t know much about Menno the person, he said, noting that in addition to being a church leader, he was a husband and father of three children.

They also don’t know much about how he lived for years as a hunted man with a price on his head, fleeing from place to place in an effort to evade the police —or that, unlike so many of the other Anabaptist leaders of his time who were executed for their beliefs, he died of natural causes.

“It’s amazing that he escaped martyrdom and was able to die in his own bed,” Augsburger said. “This stands in sharp contrast to many of his contemporaries.”