Mennonite Weekly Review

On my desk is War, Peace, and Social Conscience: Guy F. Hershberger and Social Ethics by Theron F. Schla­bach, published by Herald Press, 2009, 724 pages, $39.99.

Marlin Jeschke, of Goshen, Ind., is retired from teaching at Goshen College.

This is the biography of Guy F. Hershberger (1894-1989), an Iowa farm boy who became professor of history and sociology at Goshen (Ind.) College from 1925 to 1965. It is a thorough review of this notable Mennonite Church leader during an era of far-reaching change — the Depression, World War II, urbanization among Mennonites and the civil rights movement in America.

Through these turbulent times Hershberger proved to be the Mennonite Church’s chief thinker on Christian ethics. He served on numerous churchwide committees and wrote tirelessly for church periodicals. He taught in Civilian Public Service camps during World War II, in Europe after the war to promote the peace message among Mennonites there, and throughout the United States.

Hershberger stated his theological and ethical position in War, Peace and Nonresistance (1944) and The Way of the Cross in Human Relations (1958). He distinguished his peace position from that of liberal Protestants, whose pacifism evaporated with the coming of World War II. But he also distinguished his position from that of fundamentalists, even Mennonite fundamentalists, who claimed that wars fulfilled biblical prophecies.

Hershberger even drew the line at coercion, because Christian ethics are shaped by the teaching of the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. That is why he declined to endorse Gandhi’s methods. He emphasized doing justice rather than demanding justice.

Hershberger remained consistent throughout his career, but he did move somewhat in his thinking during the civil rights era, supporting Martin Luther King’s call for civil rights and justice, because King rejected violence and showed love of the enemy. Hersh­berger even participated in a sit-in as part of a racially mixed group of five men in a southern restaurant. When the waiters served only the three whites, they shared their meals with the two African-Americans, which prompted a waiter to bring extra plates. They left a generous tip.

During Hershberger’s career, much of American Christian thought was governed by the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, who believed Christians were required to adopt the methods of the nation. While Hershberger accepted Niebuhr’s observation about corporate evil, he insisted upon seeking to follow the teachings of Jesus, even if the church’s practice fell short of those ideals.

In later life Hershberger seems to have left behind some of the rural community idealism he promoted in the 1930s, once he accepted the movement of American society, including Mennonites, toward urbanization.

Hershberger was a key figure in the founding of Mennonite Mutual Aid in 1945. It has evolved far beyond what he envisaged and what a conservative Mennonite Church would allow at the time.

Schlabach quotes J. Lawrence Burkholder’s assessment of Hersh­berger’s legacy: “His writings bring together ideas which were implicit within the Mennonite tradition but which were largely inchoate before his time. He helped the Mennonite Church to make explicit its ethical norms and its basic stance toward society.”