Donald F. Durnbaugh

Donald F. Durnbaugh (born November 16, 1927 in Detroit , Michigan , † August 27, 2005 in Newark , New Jersey ) was an American church historian and a senior representative of the Church of the Brethren .

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Donald F. Durnbaugh studied history at Manchester College in Indiana , which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1949 , and then worked as a participant in the Church of the Brethren's volunteer program ( Brethren Volunteer Service ) with refugees in Austria . After returning to America, he continued his history studies at the University of Michigan , graduating with a master's degree in 1952 . The following year he assumed the position of director of his church's volunteer program. During this time he began to collect sources on the history of the Anabaptist-Pietist Schwarzenau Brethren in European libraries. This should ultimately become the foundation of his dissertation on the beginning of the Schwarzenau Brethren ( Brethren Beginnings ). He received his doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960 . From 1958 to 1964 he was a lecturer at Juniata College in Huntingdon , Pennsylvania . From 1962 to 1988 he was professor at Bethany Theological Seminary , the theological seminary of the Church of the Brethren in Richmond . Then Durnbaugh returned to Juniata College for a year, before moving to Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He worked here between 1989 and 1993 and was primarily active at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies , which is affiliated with Elizabethtown College .

Durnbaugh edited a number of publications on the history of Schwarzenau Brethren, who came from Germany . He particularly worked out the relationship between the Brethren and the Anabaptist movement and became one of the leading historians within research on Anabaptists and Pietism. In 1987 he became project manager of the Brethren Encyclopedia , a multi-volume encyclopedia of the Schwarzenau Brethren. Until shortly before his death in 2006, he worked on a supplementary fourth volume of the encyclopedia. In 1997, Durnbaugh's The Fruit of the Vine appeared, a comprehensive history of the Schwarzenau Brethren, which is still regarded as a standard work today. Together with the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder , Durnbaugh also stood behind the Believers' Church conferences that took place from 1967 onwards.

Publications (selection)

• The Church of the Brothers. Past and present . Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-7715-0119-9 .
• On Earth Peace: Discussions on War / Peace Issues Between Friends, Mennonites, Brethren, and European Churches 1935-1975 Elgin, Illinois, 1978; ISBN 0-87178-660-5 .
• The Brethren Encyclopedia Volumes I – III, as editor, 1983.

Web links

• Dennis L. Slabaugh: Durnbaugh, Donald F .. In: Mennonite Lexicon . Volume 5 (MennLex 5).