Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 2 (2004), p. 231

Strangers at home is a collection of fifteen essays, many of which originated as papers presented at a 1995 conference ‘The quiet in the land? Women of Anabaptist traditions in historical perspective’. As the title of the book intimates, these essays seek to expose the paradoxes and ironies in the lives of women from Anabaptist traditions. (Not only are Amish and Mennonite women treated, but early Anabaptist, Old Order River Brethren and Quaker women are all subsumed under the designation ‘Anabaptist’.) Thematically the editors have chosen to portray the dilemmas of Anabaptist women and of the scholars that research them as one of positioning, ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’. This is not an innovative approach to Anabaptist studies, as such a boundary is integral to Anabaptist self-definition, yet the editors are successful at defining it with nuance in their introductory essay in a variety of ways: scholars and the closed communities they are researching; Anabaptist women on the periphery of patriarchal communities; gender studies versus mainstream Anabaptist scholarship. However, it is the dialogue engaged in by the essays themselves that illuminate and expand the complexity of boundaries for Anabaptist women.

Methodology is the beginning point in this collection. Hasia R.Diner, in a solicited article, contends that both insider and outsider knowledge contributes to comprehensive scholarship. She draws on her own experience of 232 the agricultural researching both Jewish woman (as a Jewish woman herself, she benefited from intuitive knowledge) and Irish women, in which her observer status allowed her to see what the Irish themselves could not. Diane Zimmerman Umble brings this discussion into the specificity of being a Mennonite researching her own people. In a relationship where scholars and subjects share an ethnic identity, the scholar must recognize that as well as the multiple positions she holds – woman, scholar, Mennonite – her subjects also position her, complicating her research. Beth E.Graybill expands on Diner’s discussion of intuitive knowledge, and, I suspect, speaks for other scholars in this volume when she acknowledges that sharing an ethnic identity with her subjects demands that she think critically about her own assumptions.

Other essays move the conversation beyond methodology. Katherine Jellison’s article about American government New Deal officials studying Amish communities in the mid-twentieth century and Cathy Ann Trotta’s article on nineteenth-century Mennonite missionary to the Hopi, Martha Moser Voth, have the potential to explore gendered interaction across boundaries. Unfortunately, both essays too quickly dissolve any tension between Anabaptist women and ‘outsiders,’ and instead identify commonalities between the two groups discussed. Kimberly D.Schmidt’s and Royden K.Loewen’s essays examine with more subtlety the assimilation of Mennonite women as they move from communities that maintained ethnic distinctions into more mainstream American society. The Quaker women of Barbara Bolz’s essay made use of the Quakerideal of silence to propel themselves beyond theQuaker community into public ministry. These essays suggest that boundaries for Anabaptist women are porous, even as they are vital to the self-identity of Anabaptist women.

Other essays examine communities whose boundaries are more intractable. Marlene Epp writing about post- World War II Mennonite refugee communities in Paraguay and Margaret C.Reynolds in her essay on an Old Order River Brethren communion breadmaking ritual, demonstrate how important women are in the formation of their communities, calling into question the editors’ contention that a peripheral position for women means being ‘outside.’ According to Epp, great effort was expended by the established Mennonite leadership to ensure that women refugees would conform to mainstream Mennonite values of family and church. Old Order River Brethren women more willingly contributed to the maintenance of traditional gender roles in the communion ritual, as it gave them a position of influence within the community. While less concerned with boundaries, the essays by Jeni Hiett Umble and history review Linda Huebert Hecht on sixteenth-century Anabaptist communities, also demonstrate how integral women were to their communities.

In another solicited essay, Jane Marie Pederson concludes the volume with a look at Anabaptists and antimodernism. This is a disappointing conclusion, for Pederson fails to differentiate between the variety of women examined in this book, whether that be distinct Amish or assimilated contemporary women. Not only is the essay confusing in this regard, it also overlooks the very complexities that the essays have meticulously revealed. Likewise Julia Kasdorf in an otherwise insightful essay about contemporary Mennonite women poets and their conflicted relationship with the Mennonite community prematurely, given the complexities these essays emphasize, asks why ‘couldn’t all Mennonites be seen as a people who strive to break boundaries and dissolve polarities’ (p.335)? The essays in this book demonstrate that the ability to do so is varied, and the desire is, at best, ambivalent among Anabaptist women.

Strangers at home is a most welcome addition to the still limited amount of scholarship on Anabaptist women. However, its appeal and usefulness will not be limited to scholarship of Anabaptism and gender. Methodology, gender and community formation, self-definition of minority groups, assimilation – all are relevant to a larger group of scholars, particularly those engaged in ethnic studies.