Eastern Mennonite University ─ A Century of Countercultural Education

In this unique educational history, Donald B. Kraybill traces the socio-cultural transformation of Eastern Mennonite University from a fledgling separatist school founded by white, rural, Germanic Mennonites into a world-engaged institution populated by many faith traditions, cultures, and nationalities.

The founding of Eastern Mennonite School, later Eastern Mennonite University, in 1917 came at a pivotal time when industrialization and scientific discovery were changing the world around the Mennonite community, and the increasing availability of secular education offered tempting alternatives to the deeply religious Mennonite way of life. In response, the Eastern Mennonites founded a school that would “uphold the principles of plainness and simplicity,” where youth could learn the Bible and develop skills that would help to advance and further the church. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the university’s identity evolved in pace with individual Mennonite identity in the face of churning moral tides and accelerating technology, and it now defines its mission in terms of service, peacebuilding, and community.

This comprehensive, well-told history of the distinctly nontraditional Eastern Mennonite University by a leading scholar of Anabaptist and Pietist studies reveals how the school has mediated modernity while remaining consistently Mennonite. A must-have for anyone affiliated with EMU, it will appeal especially to sociologists and historians of Anabaptist and Pietist studies and higher education.

Donald B. Kraybill is Distinguished College Professor at Elizabethtown College and founding editor of Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. He is the author of several books, including Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World, also published by Penn State University Press.