Spring 2026 · Vol. 55 No. 1 · pp. 119–121
Book Review
A Meditation on Going Home
Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024. 246 pages.
Delbert Wiens, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and History of Culture at Fresno Pacific University (FPU), has long been an influential public figure and “dangerous mind” in the Mennonite Brethren church. The words dangerous mind are used in the title of a 2015 (Wipf & Stock) festschrift of essays that celebrate Wiens’s publications and impact. They reflect his willingness to push ideological boundaries. Delbert now attends a congregation that has joined Mennonite Church USA.
After he retired, I ran into Delbert in the Hiebert Library archives (FPU). He immediately spent thirty minutes in animated reflection on the 2002 book by Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees and Wannabes (Harmony), a reflection on relationships within the community of contemporary young women and how these social systems (often hierarchical) affect women and society at large. Wiens used Wiseman’s work to make a connection between his own continued reflection and writing on how people view themselves and act in different social, historical, and political contexts. I was impressed that Delbert was staying current in his reading as well as integrating popular themes into his own reflections.
Wiens’s Meditation is a fascinating look at his personal life history, and it documents a variety of experiences that led to the development of his unique ideas. Wiens often notes the influence and experiences of his spouse, cardiologist Marjorie Gerbrandt, as well as his parents, H. R. and Barbara Wiens. He discusses the relevance of “critical analysis” of everything and notes a tremendous appreciation for the Bible.
Wiens became influential in the Mennonite world in the 1960s and 1970s through the publication of two important essays, “New Wineskins for Old Wine” (Christian Leader October 12, 1965) and “From the Village to the City” (Direction Oct. 1973–Jan. 1974). These articles noted the impact of modernization, urbanization, and secularization on traditional forms of Mennonite life in North America, with implications for society at large.
In his memoir, Wiens notes ironic similarities of practice in traditional, modern, and postmodern societies even as beliefs and systems changed. In his home community of Corn, Oklahoma, for example, a local doctor practiced a traditional form of what one might call “socialism” or perhaps just simple goodwill. As Delbert puts it about the doctor, “He practiced a tacitly accepted ad hoc form of ‘insurance’ that permitted him p. 120 to ‘tax’ the richer with a larger fee so that he could survive and prosper” (117) even as he performed services for poorer people at very little cost.
This book fleshes out the foundation of Wiens’s influential articles, with detailed context and stories along with new ideas and their implications. In the 1990s, for example, Wiens conducted a number of lectures in Fresno Pacific’s teacher education and master’s degree programs that introduced large groups of students to what has happened to communication when traditional communities confronted modernity and postmodernity. These presentations were extremely relevant to various groups of students, many of whom came from traditional immigrant families.
This book also allows Wiens to spend a great deal of time on other publications of influence, for example, Ilya Prigogine’s 1997 book, The End of Certainty (Free Press, for twenty-two pages) and Hans Frei’s 1974 work, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (Yale UP). Although these sections have the feel of lengthy book reviews or mini-lectures, they provide insight into his earlier (1970s) and later (1990s) work and thinking.
I was surprised that Wiens does not spend time on his Hutterite roots and, in this regard, the assumed impact of his mother, Barbara Kleinsasser. Delbert does make a comment about his Hutterian relatives’ use of the Hutterisch dialect but no discussion of whether there might be any Hutterian impact on his own thinking. The Hutterites have lived communally for five hundred years, and, in their purposely small colonies, fifty thousand people continue to live in a very distinct kind of community that mixes the traditional with the modern.
Delbert talks about life in the village of Corn as iconic and, he thinks, representative of traditional Mennonite village life with traditional Mennonite village values. This appears to be, at least to some extent, the “home” cited in the book’s title as central to his “meditation.” Even though Delbert also grew up in Reedley, California, and attended high school there, he doesn’t seem to view Reedley quite the same way.
The publisher’s description of the book states that “This book tells the story of his recovery of the wisdom of his elders,” and “This book circles around its center (chapters 4–9) that describes the faithfulness and character of his elders.” For Delbert, “recovering the wisdom of his elders” means trying to put old wine into new wineskins, the eternal battle between what is viewed (by Delbert) as the important wisdom of elders but elders whose beliefs and practices need some kind of transformation in order to have any value for younger generations.
Unfortunately, the book is missing an index, something I believe is absolutely essential for a book like this. The work itself, however, is filled p. 121 with important insights on our very rapid movement to accept a variety of new social, economic, and philosophical beliefs and practices—without thinking much about it.
