Mennonite Weekly Review

GOSHEN, Ind. — Guy F. Hershberger, a Mennonite historian who studied and advocated pacifism, is the subject of a new biography more than 30 years in the making.

Hershberger, a professor of history at Goshen College from 1925 to 1966, is the subject of War, Peace and Social Conscience: Guy F. Hershberger and Mennonite Ethics. Released by Herald Press in late 2009, the book was written by Theron F. Schlabach, professor of history at Goshen College from 1965 to 1995.

The volume follows Hershberger’s life as a Mennonite scholar, ethicist and peace advocate, and especially examines his role in forming the Civilian Public Service program during World War II.

“What’s very important,” said Schlabach, “is that he was applying our pacifism to the military service system. But he went much beyond that to develop a whole application of the gospel and New Testament to social questions.”

The title of the biography is itself homage to Hershberger’s work. During World War II, Hershberger wrote War, Peace and Nonresistance, a book that has become nearly synonymous with Mennonite pacifism.

Schlabach began his biography of Hershberger in 1976 after writing a short biographical tribute to Hershberger for the book Kingdom, Cross and Community: Essays on Mennonite Themes in Honor of Guy F. Hershberger.

“I did that little biographical piece and then kind of decided that my next project really ought to be this biography,” said Schlabach. “I didn’t get started right away, but sometime in the 1980s I started doing some research on it. By the early 1990s I was very seriously into the research. I had decided to make it a project in my retirement, and not go out and try to solicit a lot of support, which was a good decision in some ways, but it also slowed it down.”

Hershberger interacted with Schlabach both socially and in the scholarly sphere. As a student, Schlabach was as Hershberger’s assistant briefly, and the two were neighbors on Eighth Street in Goshen years later.

“I knew Guy professionally,” said Schlabach. “He was a historian. I was a historian. Guy was always very interested in what younger scholars were doing.”

Schlabach was involved in several projects that caught Hershberger’s attention, including the Mennonite Experience in America project, a four-volume book series.

Orie O. Miller, a Mennonite leader during the period between World Wars I and II, might have prompted Hershberger’s rise to prominence as a Mennonite ethicist. During the interwar period, Schlabach said, Miller asked Hershberger to do some writing on peace. Hershberger accepted, and wrote throughout the 1930s in Gospel Herald and Mennonite Quarterly Review while also accepting speaking engagements at Mennonite gatherings.

Hershberger died Dec. 29, 1989.