As you can see, my title refers to the nineteenth century, but I hope to say something for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While I do not believe in using history for polemics, I do believe that history should be a kind of dialogue between past and present. If it is to be a dialogue, then we must let it speak to us. But I will let you decide whether it speaks to the present or not.

I could have given this talk a different title: "What Might Have Been: Twentieth-century Mennonites and Humility." I believe we might have kept the humility motif more intact and central to our understandings of the faith and what makes for faithfulness than what we did. I guess it is no secret that I think that the Mennonite Church reformers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (the people of the period I have labeled the "Quickening" because there was such an increase in activity as Mennonites began to build colleges, publishing houses, orphans' homes, and hold young people's programs) would have done better if they had constructed their new, more activist, more outreaching Mennonite Church more by reworking the humility theology of the nineteenth century and less by abandoning the motif. The "what might have been," in my vision is a deeper understanding of the prophetic, evangelistic possibilities of nineteenth-century Amish and Mennonite humility theology.

Humility theology dominated among (Old) Mennonites in North America in the first three-fourths of the nineteenth century. The original and clearest voice for humility theology was Christian Burkholder (1746-1809), a bishop in the Groffdale district in Lancaster Conference. In 1792, Burkholder wrote a manuscript in the form of a dialogue. On one side, he had an earnest youth asking questions of his pastor. In turn, the pastor kindly answered the youth's questions, explaining the faith in very clear, simple, yet profound language. Burkholder called it Nützliche und Erbauliche Anrede an die Jugend (Useful and Edifying Address to the Young).

The Address was not printed right away, but by 1804 the ministry in the Lancaster area decided it ought to be published. The book sold fast, and before the year was out, they published another version of it. The Address caught on so well that it was reprinted eight more times in German in the nineteenth century. In 1857 it was translated into English and published four times during the century. That says something about the importance of Burkholder's book.

We can see the Address's importance also in the way nineteenth-century Mennonites picked up and used the language of humility and its understandings. Humility became the dominant way of thinking about the nature of Christ and the Christian life and of our relationship to the world. The emphasis on humility continued until roughly 1875 or 1880 when the "Quickening" generation brought in different ideas, which to some degree replaced it, although not completely.

Burkholder's purpose was outreaching. The Address was not a book to help Mennonites to withdraw into themselves. Burkholder conceived of humility as a Christian message for all Christian churches in America - not just a Mennonite emphasis, or a Mennonite peculiarity, or a Mennonite genius. He also understood humility to be a message of deliverance from the evils emerging from the denominational pattern in America. This was a new America where the church was disestablished. It was a free market, and anybody could start a church. The chaos and bickering of the new pattern disturbed many Christians, and many others became argumentative.

Burkholder saw the need for more humility in Christians' relationships with each other. The opening sentence of his introduction to the Address declared:
The chief motive [for producing] this work is the present declining state of the Christian Church in which there is such a great difference in the performance of external worship: as also in the external demeanor of its members towards each other; as one has still some fault to find with his neighbor - thus following his own will and inclination....

Many persons, Burkholder wrote a bit later, saw "the present state of Christendom as a Babel." All of this he said was contrary to what the Apostle Peter had written: "All of ye be subject to one another, and be clothed with humility; for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the Humble."2 (1 Peter 5:5) Burkholder was addressing a problem in the American context. Thus, it was a message for the larger society, not just a message for Mennonites. He offered humility as a means for church renewal, not just for purifying his own group.

Burkholder went on to build an all-embracing theology of humility. He was not a systematic theologian; he was a pastor. However, the Address does come together to create a holistic understanding of what Christ was about and how we are to follow Christ.

In his first chapter, Burkholder called his reader to repentance. Repentance meant changing the heart to an attitude of humility. He wrote: "The fruit of true repentance grows in a change of heart, for the heart of man by nature is proud and conceited; but the heart of a penitent is humble and contrite." The repentant heart, Burkholder emphasized, "imitates the virtues of our Savior while on earth," who described himself as "meek and lowly in heart." The one who truly listens to the Word of God, Burkholder went on to say, becomes "converted; namely, from pride to humility, from incontinence to chastity, from hatred to love, ...from...lying and cheating to truth and honesty."3 When Burkholder looked at Christ, he saw the meek and humble and submissive Christ, not Christ as a mighty warrior. Burkholder explained to his young hearers:
In the days of His incarnation, Christ set the pattern of a lamb, and thus by endurance, suffering, and patient submission, yea, by suffering the most painful and ignominious death on account of us sinners, He gained a triumphant victory over the world, sin, death, and the devil.
There was triumph, but it was triumph through being lamb-like.

Burkholder also wrote extensively on the nature of the new birth. He called people not so much to Christ's sacrifice on the cross as to the example of Jesus in his manger.
Christ has given us in His birth a pattern of true humility. Thither, namely to His manger, we are to direct our course. Indeed He has given us in His birth, doctrine, and life, an example of childlike humility.

From that basic understanding of Christ and Christ's incarnation, Burkholder went on to make many applications for the Christian life. He made the humility attitude a part and parcel of nonresistance. In fact, nonresistance and humility become inseparable Siamese twins. Burkholder applied humility to politics. He maintained that the humble did not wish to be politically powerful and exert their will over others the way the rulers of this world do. As for more personal applications, he insisted that an inner attitude of humility would bring an outward appearance of humility in attire and demeanor. In regard to worship, Burkholder viewed with skepticism the revivalist emphasis on giving a personal testimony concerning one's own religious experience. To him such testimonies so often seemed egotistical and prideful.

Thus without being a systematic theologian, Burkholder offered a quite coherent and holistic set of theoretical and practical understandings of the meaning of Christ's incarnation, example, and death, and of what Christian faithfulness was all about. He set it forth in basic, clear, understandable language, as a good pastor uses when counseling an earnest, inquiring youth.

As I have tried to emphasize, Burkholder saw his book as a message of renewal - and renewal not just for Mennonites, but for all of American Christianity. Burkholder's outlook became so dominant that it really became the major Mennonite formulation of the faith for the next sixty or seventy years. Thus in 1980 a young scholar, Joseph C. Liechty, could publish a landmark article in The Mennonite Quarterly Review with the title, "Humility: The Foundation of Mennonite Religious Outlook in the 1860s."

In his studies, Liechty focused on another nineteenth-century Mennonite leader, John M. Brenneman of Elida, Ohio. Brenneman was much more than a local leader. If there was any person at mid-century who was a continental Mennonite leader, it was Brenneman. His family had come from Virginia, and he had many contacts there. But far more importantly, the railroads were coming and people were moving to the frontier. There were scattered little groups of Mennonites and Amish struggling on the frontier and needing pastoral care. Brenneman traveled extensively to provide pastoral help to these scattered folk. He went from place to place to help with various types of church problems. He had friends everywhere. One friend he wrote to frequently was preacher Peter Nissley of Mount Joy, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Brenneman wrote his own small book of humility theology, Pride and Humility, published in 1868. Its basic theology was very much like that of Christian Burkholder. Again, Brenneman made many practical applications for life in nonresistance, political attitude, dress and demeanor, even behavior at the table. Like Burkholder, John M. Brenneman was interested in church renewal and outreach. He supported the young John F. Funk in his advocacy of Sunday school.

I have heard Joseph Liechty refer to John M. Brenneman as a "spiritual genius." Both Liechty and I think that we found in the humility era a deep and vital faith, a deep and vital spirituality, a profound and vital understanding of Jesus Christ. But when we say that, we run against the grain of most historical interpretations of early nineteenth-century Mennonitism. Historians and other commentators who have written about that period have often used phrases such as "dead and formal," "unenlightened," "moribund," or, to use the words of historian Samuel F. Pannabecker, the "dark ages."

Well, what about the "dark ages" thesis? I looked at that when I wrote Peace, Faith, and Nation. What I found was that whereas various writers have used the "dark ages" idea, they have not agreed on what made those ages dark. Robert Friedmann in his Mennonite Piety Through the Centuries wrote as if the problem was a matter of straying from pristine Anabaptism. Pannabecker pointed mainly to decline in literacy and a lack of progressive outlook. He suggested that Mennonite leaders were really more literate when they came over from Europe than they were a hundred years later, and the nineteenth century was a low point. Reformers touched by revivalism, like Daniel Kauffman and J.S. Hartzler in their book Mennonite Church History, spoke of dead "formalism," a lack of fervor, and failure to be active for mission. Others such as the Reformed Mennonites and Jacob Stauffer, who were inclined to be Old Order, had been sure that the deterioration came about due to lack of discipline. Old Order reformers believed that the church would achieve deeper spirituality through discipline. Today we often hear these set against each other. If you have a strong church discipline, that is legalism and that is not spiritual. But the Old Orders believed discipline was the path to spirituality.

My point is that quite a few different voices have agreed that the first three-fourths of the nineteenth century were the "dark ages" of Mennonite history. Yet, when we look a little more closely, they do not agree about what made them dark. So the dark ages charge is not one charge but many. In short, the various "dark ages" interpretations rest on the different authors' beginning assumptions and on the biases they have brought to the subject as much as on the evidence. Now we all bring our biases or orientations to the writing of history, and so I do not mean to be harsh with these writers with whom I disagree. Still, I think they did bring quite a bit of preconception to their writing. I would also add that one other reason the period has been treated poorly in history is that there is a bias in a written culture against a people who express themselves primarily in an oral way. This was a period in which most people expressed themselves in an oral way or through their folk culture. Most did not write clearly. For those of us who come later and look at the documents, this establishes a bias against them. We look at them as not very educated if they could not articulate or write down what they believed.

However, I offer a third comment, in which I am more critical of the humility era thinkers. I believe that one major charge against the humility period of Mennonite history is true. That is, it did not take seriously enough the idea of proclamation. The advocates of humility did not take seriously enough the Great Commission or the understanding that Jesus came to proclaim the coming Kingdom of God, and that Christ left us, his followers, with the task of carrying through in that proclamation. They did not take seriously enough the mandate to be prophetic.

These people did have a message that American society needed. The United States was an aggressive and bragging society. It got into the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and it pushed back the Indians. It needed the message of humility and the idea that Christ offered another way. So my assumption is that the humility message had great possibilities for being prophetic. A prophetic message of humility was needed in the society where the advocates of humility lived.

But there is a built-in dilemma in proclaiming a humility theology. How can we actively preach a humility theology? For the humble, the temptation is to be self-effacing and to draw inward. I fear the humility generation did not solve that dilemma. They grabbed one horn of the dilemma by being personally humble and even making a great virtue of it. Personally, I agree that this is important. Still, they almost entirely let go the other horn of proclaiming.