190 / The Crisis Years of 1915-1930

Church" and stated that it "accepts the Bible as the divinely inspired Word of God, as, we are sure, do all its readers. ." The Exponent favored openness and freedom of discussion on church issues and problems. Its editors were convinced that if the Mennonite Church was to fulfill its mission it would need to distinguish between traditional customs and permanent gospel principles. By conferring together perhaps its members could find the way it ought to go. It promoted inter-Mennonite cooperation and unity-something it considered necessary if the world was to be convinced of the validity of the Mennonite interpretation of Christianity. Throughout the existence of the Exponent its two editors, Vernon Smucker (1924-26) and Lester Hostetler (1927-28), were both Ohio men from the Amish Mennonite communities of Wayne and Holmes counties respectively.

The Conservative Reaction

It was thus during the decade of 1920-30 that the Mennonite Church, and the Ohio and Eastern Amish Mennonite conferences in particular, polarized into two conflicting groups. To those in control of the church's institutions and in conference leadership the issues became as clear as they were for the major Protestant denominations in the heyday of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. They saw their position and program threatened by the movement of the younger and more educated group who advocated changes and updating in missions, journalism, relief work, and Christian education. Accordingly at Garden City, Missouri, in 1921 the Mennonite General Conference adopted a statement on Christian Fundamentals.' The viewpoints on cardinal Christian doctrines were here stated in fundamentalist language, and the document became something of a test for soundness in faith though it was hardly a radical departure from previous doctrinal statements. Mennonite conferences and the controlling bodies of Mennonite institutions were in the main supportive of the Garden City statement, though the conference expressly declared that "this statement does not supersede the eighteen articles of the Dort Confession, which the Church still confesses and teaches."

The controversy that raged in the Mennonite Church during the decade of the 1920's perhaps reached its climax in the decision of the Mennonite Board of Education to close Goshen College for the academic year of 1923-24. This oldest college of the church was