By John Landis Ruth. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, No. 39. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 2001. Pp. 1390. $59.99.

Ruth's remarkable tome is perhaps best viewed as two continuously intertwining works: a meticulous, scholarly history and an extended family genealogy. This sometimes

cumbersome combination is evident throughout as the book weaves its way from early 17th-century Zurich, up the Rhine to the Palatinate, across the sea to Pennsylvania, through numerous theological and organizational challenges, and finally in the late 20th century to a mission effort that establishes churches throughout the world. This careful narrative includes over 100 pages of fine-print footnotes, argues for specific historical details such as which group of Mennonites migrated to North America in 1710, and interprets issues as diverse as the Amish schism and the influence on Lancaster Mennonites of tobacco farming and the Sunday School Movement. Yet the work also includes numerous lists of names and stories of individuals that do not directly advance the historical narrative, such as a roster of Mennonite pioneer families from 1717 (198-99) and the exploits of storekeeper "Blind Johnny" Wenger (818-21).

The thorough combination of formal history and family genealogy means that it is not always easy to discern the priorities and themes guiding the larger narrative. An early comment by R. also seems to suggest that the genealogical side of this work should be given the greater weight: "this lengthy, slow-paced story has been written primarily to help the Lancaster Conference family to muse, to revisit eras and moments in the unfolding of that family's life" (40).

Still, it is a mistake to view this book as an in-house work relevant only to descendants of those early Swiss immigrants and a handful of Mennonite historians. Several features make this volume valuable to those outside that tradition. For example, the slow-paced combination of formal history and family storytelling provides access to the outlook and commitments of people quite different from us. It enables us to encounter Lancaster Mennonites along their history by sketching periods of extended persecution and migration, describing chance encounters with Quakers and Dunkers, recounting stories that capture poignant moments and individual personalities, discussing poetry and representative hymns, attending to the importance of fraktur and scattering photographs throughout. The effect is analogous to a good biography or novel: we are enabled imaginatively to enter into a worldview substantially different from our own. In the process, people long dead ask us why we do not share their deep commitments to faithfulness, simplicity, and care of the Earth.

Another of the work's features that commends it to a wider audience is the care with which R. attends to church divisions of various types. Starting with the Amish division in 1693, the narrative highlights the interplay of theological convictions and strong personalities in creating these divisions. The clashing of personalities and convictions of people who desperately desire to be faithful to God repeats itself in various ways in the creation of the Amish, River Brethren, United Brethren, Brethren in Christ, and the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church. Those committed to the ecumenical movement might profit from R.'s depiction of the interplay of personality and conviction in these various movements.

The questions raised by the historical narrative constitute another worthy feature. For example, R. repeatedly muses on the irony that these peaceful, hard-working, recently persecuted people played a significant, seemingly unconscious role in displacing Native Americans. The relevance of this irony obviously extends beyond Mennonites and beyond the 18th century.

Another provocative question is raised when R. notes that by accepting a restriction on evangelization in exchange for governmental toleration, Mennonites in the Palatinate began a process that "would lead over the following century to a more inward and less discipleship-oriented piety, and become the norm in Pennsylvania" (107). This historically-generated observation about the change in the character of faith when a group restricts its evangelistic impulse is relevant to our contemporary setting where consciousness of religious pluralism and tendencies towards relativism pressure Christians to refrain from explicitly sharing their faith. R.'s observation raises questions about the ways in which the embodiment of the Christian faith might be transformed in conceding to these pressures.

Other questions raised include issues of land ownership, the relationship between wealth and spirituality, the role and limits of church discipline, the place of factors ranging from television to education in enculturation, and ways in which world mission returns to challenge one's assumptions about the world. R. does not answer such questions directly but allows the telling of the history to confront us with quandaries.

Those willing to spend time with this lengthy, often-meandering narrative of a seemingly peripheral people will find their time well spent.

JOSEPH J. KOTVA, JR.
First Mennonite Church, Allentown, Penn.