Fall 2023 · Vol. 52 No. 2 · pp. 170–172
Book Review
Mennonite in Motion: The Life and Times of John H. Redekop Ph.D.
John H. Redekop. Abbotsford, BC: Fraser River Books, 2022. 397 pages.
The title of this book is perfect. Mennonite in Motion is the whirlwind journey through the full, rich, and long life of a man who has been constantly “in motion.” This was not merely motion for its own sake, it was the motion of a man who found himself, and often put himself, at the center of swirling events of his times and places.
The book is structured by the places he lived. From there it is oriented by significant events that occurred in each place, followed by reflections {171} titled “My Spiritual Pilgrimage.” By the time Redekop was twelve years old, he was beginning his involvement in local community, involvement that would be expanded into denominational roles, along with Canadian political and international involvements.
The larger story begins with his family’s ancestry in Ukraine. The tribe of Mennonites which gave birth to Redekop is profoundly shaped by its long chapter in what had been for them a land of extravagant opportunity. Regarding this history, Redekop speaks for many of us who grew up in this tribe: “I am grateful for my Mennonite heritage. Only after considerable travel and some maturing did I come to appreciate that for me, it was a great gift. The past shapes us. The German proverb is apt: ‘Keine Herkunft, keine Zukunft.’ (No story of the past; no story in the future)” (14).
Both sides of Redekop’s family were among those who saw the storm clouds of “Russification” and the coming Russian Revolution earlier than some others. His maternal side, [Wiebe] left southern Ukraine in 1904 and the paternal side in 1913 to settle in the Canadian prairies. From birth, Redekop’s is a deeply Canadian frontier story. He was the youngest of six in a rugged pioneering community of early settlers attempting to carve out homesteads. His own birth came in the heart of the Depression of the 1930’s. He tells a story from those times which comes to define his life and drive.
“I do not remember exactly when, but many years ago, one of my older sisters decided to inform me about a certain event in our family history. She simply told me that when my father discovered that my mother was pregnant with me, he had cried. I was stunned! Who wants to be an unwanted child? Who wants to realize that his father wished that he had never been born? My self-esteem plummeted. Then as I reflected on what I had been told, I realized that in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression . . . With my birth he would have another mouth to feed, another person to clothe” (12). Thus, the story of the “Mennonite in Motion” can be read as a story of the vindication of this “unwanted” child.
The family lived on their Saskatchewan homestead until Redekop was twelve years old when the family moved to Abbotsford. Here he attended Mennonite Educational Institute. Upon graduating, Redekop began his life of moving, first to Vancouver to attend the University of British Columbia, then to Germany, then to the United States for graduate education. Redekop then took teaching positions, first in Fresno California and then at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, from 1968 to 1994. Redekop’s journey takes him back to Abbotsford, BC. Abbotsford and Waterloo are effectively the two centers of gravity around which much of the account circles, as Redekop describes the various layers of {172} the culture of each place, his own intellectual and spiritual journeys there, and the developments within and beyond the Mennonite world.
Among many topics, several strands of these accounts stand out, beginning with the intellectual and cultural journey of the Mennonite Brethren faith community into which he was born. This is a place that deeply anchors Redekop, and he brought his analytical skills as contributions to this journey from his earliest days of writing for the Canadian Mennonite as a university student at UBC. As a thinker and writer, Redekop’s intellectual presence was felt in virtually every institution connected with North American Mennonites in greater and lesser ways, from Mennonite Central Committee, to Multiply, to various schools and denominational structures. Much of Redekop’s energy was spent shaping the national and regional realities of the Mennonite world. The forty years he spent as a columnist for the Mennonite Brethren Herald was a highly visible legacy.
The second notable strand of these accounts relates to Redekop’s involvement with the larger Canadian evangelical identity. Here Redekop meticulously details his involvement with the work of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. Redekop’s reflections on a life of deep involvement bring to view the complexities of the times, institutions, problems, and solutions of which he was a part, providing the reader with hard-earned insights. He summarizes some of the dynamics of these complexities, noting that there was “also considerable support [for his own involvement], much of it unfortunately expressed privately later. Many perceptive people . . . develop courage and boldness to speak only privately after public discourse has ended. I experienced that many times in later years” (168).
Mennonite in Motion tells an individual’s journey in the context of a tribal people on a journey themselves. Those like me who, while twenty years Redekop’s junior, overlapped with many of the places and events it describes will be drawn to the familiarity. As often as not, I personally knew or at least knew of the teachers, leaders, and preachers he writes about. But as I read the book, I kept gleaning new insights into the various “motions” the Mennonite Brethren tribe has gone through. These were buried in the story of John Redekop himself. Perhaps a sequel could plumb more broadly and explicitly the tribal “motions” here seen through the eyes of one who was at the center of the pivotal times and junctures of those movements. But for now, Mennonite in Motion will keep the attentive reader occupied in a delightful life story.
