Episode 16: Donald Kraybill
Interview Date: 8 January 2021. Interviewer: Simon Pellew. Research and questions by Simon Pellew.
Dr Donald B. Kraybill is Distinguished College Professor, Senior Fellow, and Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Elizabethtown College., Pennsylvania. Internationally recognized for his scholarship on Anabaptist groups, with a particular emphasis on the Amish, Professor Kraybill is the author or editor of many books and dozens of professional articles. He is also well known for Upside-Down Kingdom, written in 1976 and published in 1978, with the purpose of reconciling his sociological training and perspectives with theological ones. His newest book, What the Amish Teach Us, is a collection of 22 short essays that infuse storytelling with informative reflections. Each essay is a lesson that the author has learned from the Amish.
Donald Kraybill - Timed Interview Summary
0:00 - 4:05
Introductions. Simon Pellew takes over the interviewing slot in what is a tribute to the power of mentoring, since Donald Kraybill had a profound influence on Simon’s life and later management practice as the CEO of a London training and development charity, PECAN, through Donald’s book Upside-Down Kingdom and through a sociology course, during a spell that the youthful Simon spent in America (see Simon Pellew, Episode 14, 28:47 - 39:52). The interview is a reunion as Simon and Donald have not met for 35 years! Donald Kraybill is Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and also Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, a research group which Donald helped set up at the college in 1989. Elizabethtown is in south-eastern Pennsylvania, about two hours west of Philadelphia and in the heart of the area where Mennonites and Amish came to settle in the early eighteenth century. Elizabethtown College is a small liberal arts college, that was established in1899 by an Anabaptist group called the Church of the Brethren.
4:06 – 14:44
Family background. Donald was born in 1945 in a small town called Mount Joy, close to Elizabethtown. His parents were farmers, and members of Mount Joy Mennonite Church. He grew up a farm boy, immersed in traditional Mennonite culture. His parents did not have enough money to own land, but were sharecroppers, which meant that Donald moved with his family six times by the age of 16. All of the friends of Donald’s father own farms but because Donald’s grandfather has served as a Mennonite minister without pay, it is only when Donald is thirty that his father has enough capital to buy a farm, a big achievement. Donald’s mother can trace her Mennonite ancestry all the way back to Germany and Switzerland. Donald grows up with a strong sense of separation from the world. It is a caring and loving family. Although Donald is baptized at eight years of age, it is only when he is in public high school as a teenager and president of the local chapter of Youth for Christ that he becomes conscious of what a personal commitment to Christ means. Pacifism is a tenet of Mennonite faith and Donald’s father faces conscription in the Second World War but gains a farm deferment because the production of food is seen as a national priority.
14:45 - 27:32
The origins of the Anabaptists in Switzerland and the main immigrant strands to the United States. The Protestant Reformation in Germany in 1517 under Luther is mirrored in Zurich, Switzerland under the theologian Huldrych Zwingli. The young university students of Zwingli refuse to baptize their children and insist on adult baptism (“ana” meaning second or further baptism). The separation of church and state is a second idea emerging from Anabaptism. Since the Anabaptist groups were ruthlessly persecuted, the spirit of forgiveness and non-violence becomes woven into the fabric of their faith, the principle of non-resistance. The Sermon on the Mount and the Gospels are central to the practice of the Anabaptist groups who seek to answer the question: What does it mean to follow Jesus in daily life? In Switzerland the Anabaptists are known as the Swiss Brethren and for 170 years up to 1693, they are one group. At that point, they divide into the Mennonites and the Amish. They migrate to North America as separate groups. A third contingent emerging from the Swiss Brethren are the Hutterites (named for the reformer, Jacob Hutter) who form in 1527, move to Austria and come to North America in the late nineteenth century. and emphasize the common ownership of property. A fourth group are the Baptist Brethren who form in Germany in 1708 emerging out of radical pietism in the Lutheran tradition. They come to the United States in the 1720s and in 1908 change their name to the Church of the Brethren – this is the group which founded Elizabethtown College. Conversely, the Moravians are pre-Reformation by 75 years and there is no connection in Europe between them and the Amish.
27:33 - 38:37
College education and external influences in the 1960s. Attends public college in Millersville for two years and then goes to Eastern Mennonite College for the last two years of his undergraduate studies. Is affected by the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship with an emphasis on speaking in tongues. Some parts of the Mennonite community are being affected by Pentecostalism. Don does not feel pious enough to participate at that stage. He also learns more about the history of Anabaptist martyrdom. Influenced academically by Marx and Weber. The Vietnam war is a cultural watershed. Mennonite pacifism means the refusal of conscription and Donald appeals to the Draft Board for voluntary service (President Kennedy has recently established a tradition of community action through his Peace Corps). Donald works in agricultural development in Central America, encountering absolute poverty for the first time, which moves him deeply. This is also the first time that he moves outside his home culture. The value of taking a siesta in Honduras (which, at first, he puts down to laziness) challenges his ethnocentrism, as does operating in a foreign language. Reflection on the need for attachment: Donald’s academic work and contact with outside cultures has created a very wide social and professional circle. But assessing his fifteen closest friends, they would still all come from the Amish community.
38:38 – 49:49
Marriage and ordination as pastor. Donald marries in his final year of study, graduates from Eastern Mennonite College in 1967 and moves back to his wife’s church, made up of 50-60 families near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The senior pastor needs help and Donald is ordained at the age of twenty-seven. He is the first pastor not to have to wear the distinctive suit, symbolizing separation from the world, which was the habitual dress of Mennonite pastors since the 1920s. He and the other pastor preach alternative Sundays, the pastor preaching from Paul’s letters and Donald from the synoptic gospels. He notices that the congregation particularly like any reference to the blood of Christ as the Amish religious sensibility has historically been Christocentric. Donald’s continuing graduate studies make him self-aware about the culturally constructed nature of church practices and there is an increasing cognitive dissonance between his mode of preaching in the Amish church and what he is reading on the two-hour train journey to his graduate studies in Philadelphia.
49:50 - 58:29
Graduate studies. Becomes aware that his study-group friends are either Jewish or Afro-American and realizes that because of their history of persecution the Amish are also alienated and retain a folk belief that “The Man” may one day come to get them again. The reading of social constructivist, Peter Berger, who becomes Donald’s most serious intellectual mentor profoundly influences his thought. The internalizing of culture. A discussion of The Homeless Mind and the Rumour of Angels. Donald notes the bridge between Berger’s theories and The Upside-Down Kingdom because it raises the question of whether the concept of God is socially constructed. The book is in some ways Donald’s response to the questions raised by Peter Berger.
58:30 - 1:10:59
Upside-Down Kingdom. Written in 1976-77 and published in 1978. Was Donald’s way of addressing social constructivism by focusing on the historical Jesus. Donald is astonished that the book has stayed fresh (it was republished on its 40th anniversary). It appeals to the 25-35 age group who are trying to make sense of this philosophical challenge. The book argues that Jesus’s teaching was counter-cultural (upside-down) to first-century Palestinian modes of thinking. On re-reading the book to prepare for the interview, Simon is shocked that what he took to be his own ideas when setting up PECAN (Peckham Evangelical Churches Action Network), particularly equal pay for all staff, were borrowed from Donald’s work. Simon takes from Upside-Down Kingdom the sociological importance of the symbols of power in any culture. For Simon the orthopraxis of making Jesus real again in the culture is paramount. However, for Simon there is a tension between Christian social action and evangelism. A discussion of how this plays out in Amish culture, which even in its relief organizations does not specifically set out to evangelize. The example of a tragic classroom shooting of Amish girls. The immediate forgiveness of the deceased perpetrator and his family by his Amish neighbours leads to 2,400 stories on national media. This is seen by the Amish as a more powerful form of evangelism than tracts.
1:11:00 - 1:15:37
The separation of church and state. DK’s first book, Our Star-Spangled Faith, expresses scepticism about the co-opting of the Christian faith by American nationalism. There is a human tendency to do this. Simon is more sceptical about the taking of state money to support Christian social enterprise, something which he did, albeit reluctantly. Noting that there is more state money subsidizing social care, such as Medicare, than Americans care to admit, Donald is more relaxed about the Amish taking government funds for social programs, provided that there is no obligation to do something in return
1:15:38 - 1:30:33
Academic Career. Donald completes his PhD in 1975, having first engaged in part-time teaching in 1971. Our Star-Spangled Faith in published in 1976, then Upside-Down Kingdom, then Facing Nuclear War in 1982. Donald becomes interested in the Amish in about 1985. He has already taught a seminar every year on the Amish to his students, but it is the Harrison Ford film, Witness (1985) which really gets Donald started on Amish studies and he begins to incorporate the film into his seminar. Witness treats the values of Amish culture with sensitivity, although the plot would never had happened. It was filmed in Lancaster County. Simon reminds Donald that 35 years ago, he had driven Simon around Lancaster County. Simon vividly remembers three things: seeing a barefoot Amish farmer, the contradictions of some Amish co-owning a telephone booth (hence the conflicted attitude to poverty, wealth and modern technology) and the fact that Lancaster County is in the shadow of the nuclear facility at Three Mile Island. What got Donald interested in the Amish, as reflected in his 1989 book, The Rules of the Amish, is that they are bargaining and negotiating with modernity. “Where to draw the line between being in the world but not of the world”. The Amish are in 31 states in the US having over 500 settlements and over 2,500 local congregations each of which has the authority to determine its own rules about the use of technology. The smart phone is the current focus of debate, because of the cardinal principle of the Amish of separation from the world. Now with smart phone, the whole world is in the hands of an Amish teenager.
1:30:34 - 1:44:11
The shadow side of Anabaptism. Even in his seminary year in a Mennonite college Simon was intrigued by stories of pastors being thrown out of their homes, so asks Donald about the dark and angry side of Anabaptism. Donald acknowledges that even with their peacemaking credentials the Amish are only human. The Bergholz Barber case at which Donald Kraybill testified. The tensions between choosing to live free from state interference and using the state’s power of prosecution.
1:44:12 - 1:51:06
Christianity, the American State and Donald Trump. The interview took place on 8 January 2021 two days after the Capitol riots. Donald Kraybill is very worried about how some evangelicals have sided with Donald Trump and believe that he was ordained by God to achieve certain cultural objectives. The danger is that the term, evangelical, becomes tarnished to the point where other Christians like Donald Kraybill would be reluctant to be identified with the term, evangelical. But as a sociologist, Donald acknowledges that he has to develop empathy and understand what has driven them to this place, and also that as Peter Berger would say, his own Mennonite world, in which he is very comfortable, is socially constructed. The importance of humility and the ability to walk in another person’s moccasins.
1:51:07 - 1:53:35
Current work. Has just finished a book made up of 22 short essays called What the Amish Teach Us, which is to be published later in 2021. His children are urging him to write some family history and also to work on his own autobiographical puzzle. It is his “next calling.”