Farms, Faith and Foibles: A Meditation Three Years After Submitting Seven Points on Earth

That a book titled Mennonite Farmers was awarded the Wallace Ferguson prize may have baffled members of the CHA who rightfully might link this prize to a book with a somewhat broader theme; it certainly surprised me. I am, nevertheless, deeply honoured with this award and now with this chance to reflect on the book. Certainly, it is pertinent to ask, what do the terms “Mennonite” and “Farmers,” as well as “global,” “place” and “sustainability,” that appear in the subtitle, offer a discussion set in global history generally, and agricultural and environmental history in particular? For whatever reason, in the various reports and reviews on Mennonite Farmers to date, it is the term “Mennonite” that has generated more discussion that any other of the terms within the title and subtitle. Moreover the linkage of religion and sustainability has been of particular interest. I address this concern in both the first part of this reflection, written before the CHA session on Mennonite Farmers at York University on May 29, and the second part, written after hearing Brian Froese and Andrew Watson’s comments in that session. I admit that the title Mennonite Farmers wasn’t my idea; it arose from readers’ reports in the adjudication process; I had wanted the title to be “Seven Points on Earth,” the title of the SSHRC Insight research program, highlighting the breadth of the project and its comparative global dimensions — seven far flung places, seven grad students, seven languages spoken, and seven forms of farming. I reasoned that the subject of “Mennonite” in this book pointed to more than its religious content. In much of my writing the subject of Mennonites has served as case study related to a variety of questions, including those of gender, ethnicity, diasporic identity, community-nation relationships, and now with Mennonite Farmers, the intersection of environmental and agricultural themes, and the dialectics of local place and global forces. In a way, Mennonites serve as a useful case study in rural history quite simply because, in their global diaspora, they have been disproportionately rural; not until the 1970s, for example, were there more Mennonites in cities in Canada than on farms or villages. Their migrations to the Russian Empire and North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and then farther to Siberia and Central America in the early twentieth century, were almost exclusively as farm settlers. Then, too, when Mennonites joined the modern missionary movement in the nineteenth century, they often employed the strategy of the Christian farm village, evident to this day. Given this history of transoceanic diaspora and global missions, the Mennonites have become a global community and present the possibility of a comparative global study of agriculturalists at the local level in the context of industrialization. And yet the religious component of “Mennonite” seems to have captured the attention of readers. Johns Hopkins University Press, and one of the readers in the adjudication process, said the proposed title “Seven Points on Earth” was vague, not descriptive, somewhat useless; now, Mennonite Farmers was catchy and evocative, and I knew University of Manitoba Press, the Canadian publisher, would agree. Perhaps the literary renaissance of nationally acclaimed writers in Canada —Rudy Wiebe, Di Brandt, David Bergen and Miriam Toews, and many others — have generated this interest. Perhaps it’s that the most audacious of Mennonites, the horse-and-buggy folks who live just a good hour from Toronto, and a similar distance from Johns Hopkins’ berth in Baltimore to Amish-rich Lancaster County, have captured the popular imagination of urban masses appreciative of themes of simplicity, place, and closeness to nature. Certainly, the book …