Donald Kraybill | |
---|---|
Born | 1945 (age 78–79) |
Occupation(s) | Educator, author |
Known for | Research and writing about Anabaptist groups, in particular the Amish |
Academic background | |
Education | PhD Sociology |
Alma mater | Temple University |
Influences | John Hostetler |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Elizabethtown College |
Donald B. Kraybill (born 1945) is an American author,lecturer,and educator on Anabaptist faiths and culture. Kraybill is widely recognized for his studies on Anabaptist groups and in particular the Amish. He has researched and written extensively on Anabaptist culture. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and Senior Fellow Emeritus at Elizabethtown's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
Kraybill was born in Mount Joy,Pennsylvania,in 1945 to a Mennonite family and grew up on dairy farms in Mount Joy,Lampeter and Morgantown. [1] [2] [3] His surname Kraybill is a form of the name Graybill which is a typical Mennonite and Amish name,first recorded in America in 1728. [4] He graduated from Lancaster Mennonite High School in 1963. [3] After attending Millersville University for two years, [3] he received a bachelor's degree from Eastern Mennonite University in 1967,a master's degree from Temple University in 1971,and a PhD in sociology from Temple University in 1976. [1] [5] At Temple he was a research assistant to John Hostetler,a recognized authority on Amish society who had himself grown up Amish and who was influential in Kraybill's interest in studying the groups. [2]
Kraybill served for five years as an associate pastor in Lancaster County,Pennsylvania,at the Willow Street Mennonite Church and served four years as the associate director of Mennonite Voluntary Service as a conscientious objector. [1] [3]
He started teaching sociology at Elizabethtown College in 1971. [1] [3] From 1979 to 1985 he chaired the Sociology and Social Work Department and from 1989 to 1996 was director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown. [5] He was provost of Messiah College from 1996 to 2002 before returning to Elizabethtown in 2003. [1] [5]
In October 2005,Young Center was awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a three-year collaborative research project entitled "Amish Diversity and Identity:Transformations in 20th Century America." In addition to Kraybill as senior investigator,the investigative team included Steven Nolt,a professor of history at Goshen College in Indiana,and Karen Johnson-Weiner,a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Potsdam. A national panel of seven scholars advised the research team throughout the project. [6]
The NEH grant enabled the researchers to investigate the Amish experience at the national level,giving attention to geographic expansion,the growth of diversity,changing conceptions of identity and evolving patterns of interaction with the larger society. The team also explored how the Amish have contributed to shaping the identity of a nation that made exceptions in the areas of education,Social Security,and child labor for a religious minority living on its cultural margins. The project resulted in a website;an international conference,The Amish in America:New Identities and Diversities,held in 2007;and a book,The Amish.[ citation needed ]
Kraybill is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. [7] [5] He is widely recognized for his studies and expertise on Anabaptist groups and in particular the Amish. [8] [9] [10] [11]
Kraybill retired in 2015 and planned to continue his research in his retirement. [2] He was succeeded as director of the Young Center after his retirement by Nolt. [10] Elizabethtown College holds his papers in their Earl H. and Anita F. Hess Archives and Special Collections. [3]
Kraybill has authored or edited nearly 30 books on various aspects of the lives of Plain sects. [2] He writes almost exclusively on the groups within the Anabaptist faith such as the Mennonites,Amish,and Bruderhof.[ citation needed ] In addition to academic books —largely published by Johns Hopkins University Press —he also writes popular books sold in gift shops to tourists,interested in learning more about the plain sects. He is one of two experts frequently quoted by reporters to give background to news stories involving the Amish. [1] He also served as a consultant for the PBS show The American Experience series The Amish. [12]
Book projects include Amish Grace:How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (Jossey-Bass,2007),a discussion of the Amish response to the school shooting at Nickel Mines,and The Amish Way:Patient Faith in a Perilous World (Jossey-Bass,2010),an exploration of Amish spiritual life and practices,both with coauthors Steven M. Nolt and David L. Weaver-Zercher. Kraybill also authored Concise Encyclopedia of Amish,Brethren,Hutterites,and Mennonites (Johns Hopkins University Press,2010),which provides basic information about these four Anabaptist groups in North America,and coauthored (with Karen M. Johhson-Weiner and Steven M. Nolt) The Amish,a comprehensive description and analysis of Amish life and culture.[ citation needed ]
In 2014 he published a book related to five beard-cutting attacks on Amish people in eastern Ohio in the fall of 2011,which led to the arrests of sixteen members of a maverick Amish community in Bergholz,Ohio. Kraybill assisted federal prosecutors in understanding Amish beliefs and practices and served as an expert witness at the federal trial in 2012. He wrote a book about the attacks,investigation,trial,and aftermath:Renegade Amish:Beard Cutting,Hate Crimes,and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers. In August 2014,the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the hate crimes convictions,a ruling that generated much response. [13] [14] [15]
Kraybill was selected to research and write a centennial history of Eastern Mennonite University,his alma mater,that was published in 2017. [16] In 2021 he wrote What The Amish Teach Us published by Johns Hopkins University Press,and simultaneously released a podcast What I Learned From The Amish with producer Elizabethtown College student Eric Schubert. [17] [18]
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(September 2021) |
Kraybill lives in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, with his wife. [2] [11] He and his wife are members of Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren. [11]
Anabaptism is a Christian movement which traces its origins to the Radical Reformation in the 16th century. Anabaptists believe that baptism is valid only when candidates freely confess their faith in Christ and request to be baptized. Commonly referred to as believer's baptism, it is opposed to baptism of infants, who are not able to make a conscious decision to be baptized.
Jakob Ammann was a Swiss Anabaptist leader and the namesake of the Amish religious movement.
Plain people are Christian groups in the United States, characterized by separation from the world and by simple living, including plain dressing in modest clothing. Many plain people have an Anabaptist background. These denominations are largely of German, Swiss German and Dutch ancestry, though people of diverse backgrounds have been incorporated into them. Conservative Friends are traditional Quakers who are also considered plain people; they come from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds.
The Old Order River Brethren, formerly sometimes known as York Brethren or Yorkers, are a River Brethren denomination of Anabaptist Christianity with roots in the Radical Pietist movement. As their name indicates, they are Old Order Anabaptists.
Anabaptist theology, also known as Anabaptist doctrine, is a theological tradition reflecting the doctrine of the Anabaptist Churches. The major branches of Anabaptist Christianity agree on core doctrines but have nuances in practice. While the adherence to doctrine is important in Anabaptist Christianity, living righteously is stressed to a greater degree.
Old Order Mennonites form a branch of the Mennonite tradition. Old Order are those Mennonite groups of Swiss German and south German heritage who practice a lifestyle without some elements of modern technology, still drive a horse and buggy rather than cars, wear very conservative and modest dress, and have retained the old forms of worship, baptism and communion.
The New Order Amish are a subgroup of Amish that split away from the Old Order Amish in the 1960s for a variety of reasons, which included a desire for "clean" youth courting standards, meaning they do not condone the practice of bundling during courtship. Tobacco and alcohol are also not allowed. They also wished to incorporate more evangelical elements into the church, including Sunday school and mission work. Some scholars see the group best characterized as a subgroup of the Old Order Amish, despite the name.
Amish Mennonites came into existence through reform movements among North American Amish mainly between 1862 and 1878. These Amish moved away from the old Amish traditions and drew near to the Mennonites, becoming Mennonites of Amish origin. Over the decades, most Amish Mennonites groups removed the word "Amish" from the name of their congregations or merged with Mennonite groups.
Carl Bowman is an American sociologist, who is widely recognized for his studies of Anabaptist religious groups and is perhaps the foremost expert on the social and cultural history of the Church of the Brethren.
The Beachy Amish Mennonites, also known as the Beachy Amish or Beachy Mennonites, are a Conservative Anabaptist tradition of Christianity.
Steven M. Nolt is an American scholar who serves as Senior Scholar and Professor of History and Anabaptist Studies at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. The author of fifteen books, most of which focus on Amish and Mennonite history and culture, Nolt is a frequent source for journalists and other researching Anabaptist groups. He was often quoted in the aftermath of the 2006 West Nickel Mines School shooting at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.
The Amish, formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss and Alsatian origins. As they maintain a degree of separation from surrounding populations, and hold their faith in common, the Amish have been described by certain scholars as an ethnoreligious group, combining features of an ethnicity and a Christian denomination. The Amish are closely related to Old Order Mennonites and Conservative Mennonites—denominations that are also a part of Anabaptist Christianity. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, Christian pacifism, and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor replace face-to-face conversations whenever possible, and a view to maintain self-sufficiency. The Amish value rural life, manual labor, humility and Gelassenheit.
The Swartzentruber Amish are one of the largest and most conservative subgroups of Old Order Amish. The Swartzentruber Amish are considered a subgroup of the Old Order Amish, although they do not fellowship or intermarry with more liberal Old Order Amish. They speak Pennsylvania German as their mother tongue as well as English.
Over the years, as Amish churches have divided many times over doctrinal disputes, subgroups have developed. The "Old Order Amish", a conservative faction that withdrew in the 1860s from fellowship with the wider body of Amish, are those that have most emphasized traditional practices and beliefs. There are many different subgroups of Amish with most belonging, in ascending order of conservatism, to the Beachy Amish, New Order, Old Order, or Swartzentruber Amish groups.
A Seeker is a person likely to join an Old Order Anabaptist community, like the Amish, the Old Order Mennonites, the Hutterites, the Old Order Schwarzenau Brethren or the Old Order River Brethren. Among the 500,000 members of such communities in the United States there are only an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 outsiders who have joined them.
The Byler Amish, also called Alt Gemee, are a small conservative subgroup of the Amish. They are known for the yellow color of their buggies, which earned them the nickname "yellow-toppers" and for wearing only one suspender. They are the oldest Old Order Amish affiliation that separated for doctrinal and not for geographical reasons.
Old Order Anabaptism encompasses those groups which have preserved the old ways of Anabaptist Christian religion and lifestyle.
The New Order Amish Fellowship or New New Order Amish, most commonly called New Order Christian Fellowship, is the most progressive affiliation among the New Order Amish. Because some scholars see the New Order Amish just as a subgroup of the Old Order Amish, the New Order Christian Fellowship is thus the most progressive affiliation among the Old Order Amish. In spirituality, they are close to Beachy Amish. Their use of horse and buggy transportation and their preservation of the German language distinguishes them from the Beachys, except for the Old Beachy Amish who have also retained the German language but drive cars.
Conservative Anabaptism includes theologically conservative Anabaptist denominations, both in doctrine and practice. Conservative Anabaptists, along with Old Order Anabaptists and assimilated mainline Anabaptists, are a subset of the Anabaptist branch of Christianity.