Mennonites in the Global Village

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939–1970: A People
Transformed, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian
Entrepreneurship and Politics, and Remembering Saskatchewan:

In 1996, the final volumes of a four-volume history of Mennonites in the
United States up to 1970 and a three-volume history of Mennonites in
Canada also up to 1970 were published. In this volume Leo Driedger, a
well-known Canadian sociologist, discusses the Canadian Mennonite
experience in the last half of the 20th century.

The book is a collection of 10 essays on different aspects of the
Mennonite encounter with modern life. The author suggests that before
1940 most North American Mennonites were rural and agricultural people
living in relatively isolated communities where traditional village
values and ways of living were perpetuated. That changed very rapidly
during and after World War II when Mennonites by the thousands moved to
the towns and cities. There they entered the professions, operated
businesses, lived and worked in close proximity with people who did not
necessarily share their values and ideals, and read or listened to
modern newspaper, radio, and television communications. They faced the
challenge of preserving and protecting cherished traditional values
while living and working in a modern society dominated by global rather
than local values and lifestyles.

The first essay provides an overview of worldwide Mennonite
demographics showing dramatic membership increases in less-modern
countries such as Africa and India and stagnation or modest growth in
Europe and North America. The other nine chapters deal almost entirely
with the Mennonite experience in Canada and the United States. In these
chapters, the author relies mostly on various sociological theories, on
broad Canadian or North American statistical data, and on two massive
Mennonite statistical surveys undertaken in 1972 and 1988. The specific
topics covered include the emergence of Mennonite professionals;
individualism; life in one small, relatively isolated rural Mennonite
community; the impact of mass media; attitudes regarding the role of
women; problems and challenges faced by Mennonite teenagers; efforts by
Mennonite academics to integrate secular and sacred concerns; and
changes in the Mennonite peace witness.

The various essays, some of which use different sociological
interpretive models, are well-crafted individual building blocks. Each
chapter has a good introduction and conclusion, but linkages between the
various chapters are inadequate, and the book as a whole has neither an
introduction nor a conclusion. As a result, it provides numerous helpful
and interesting reference points for further scholarly research, but not
a coherent, comprehensive, and integrated interpretation of the
Mennonite experience in the last half-century.