Power, Authority, and the Anabaptist Tradition

Founded in part on a rejection of "worldly" power and the use of force, Anabaptism carried with it the promise of redemptive power. Yet the attempt to banish worldly power to the margins of the Christian community has been fraught with dilemmas, contradictions, and, at times, blatant abuses of authority. In this groundbreaking book, Benjamin W. Redekop, Calvin W. Redekop, and their coauthors draw on classic and contemporary thinking to confront the issue of power and authority in the Anabaptist-Mennonite community. From the power relationships of the sixteenth-century Peasants' War to issues of contemporary sexuality, the topics of Power, Authority, and the Anabaptist Tradition are sure to interest a wide audience.

Contributors: Stephen C. Ainlay, College of the Holy Cross • J. Lawrence Burkholder, President Emeritus, Goshen College • Lydia Neufeld Harder, Toronto School of Theology • Joel Hartman, University of Missouri • Jacob A. Loewen, missionary, retired • Dorothy Yoder Nyce, Writer and former Assistant Professor, Goshen College • Lynda Nyce, Bluffton College • Wesley Prieb (deceased), former dean, Tabor College • Benjamin W. Redekop, Kettering University • Calvin W. Redekop, Conrad Grebel College, emeritus • James M. Stayer, Queen's University, Ontario

The Johns Hopkins University Press

The Anabaptist and Mennonite groups broke with the inherited system of intermingled religious and political power in the 16th century, but such a radical and innovative stance can provide cover for a naked power that operates as though invisible. Historians and social scientists, many with a personal or academic Mennonite background, explore the possibilities and the evidence. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Benjamin W. Redekop is an assistant professor of social science at Kettering University. Calvin W. Redekop is a professsor emeritus at Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo, Ontario. His books include Mennonite Society, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, and Creation and the Environment:An Anabaptist Perspective on a Sustainable World (edited), all available from Johns Hopkins.