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 leader of the Church of the Brethren.

Life and work

Donald F. Durnbaugh studied history at Manchester College in Indiana, where he graduated in 1949 with a Bachelor and then worked as a participant of the volunteer program of the Church of the Brethren ( Brethren Volunteer Service ) with refugees in Austria. After returning to America, he continued his studies in history at the University of Michigan and graduated in 1952 with a Master from. The following year he took over the post of Director of the volunteer program of his church. Already at this time he began sources on the history of the Anabaptist- Pietist Schwarzenau Brethren gather in European libraries. This should finally be the foundation of his thesis about the beginning of Schwarzenau Brethren ( Brethren Beginnings ). His doctorate in history was awarded to him in 1960 by the University of Pennsylvania. From 1958 to 1964 he worked as a lecturer at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. From 1962 to 1988 he was a professor at Bethany Theological Seminary, the theological seminary of the Church of the Brethren in Richmond. Then Durnbaugh returned once for a year to the Juniata College, in order to subsequently switch to the Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Here he worked between 1989 and 1993 and was mainly on the Elizabethtown College Center for Anabaptist and Young connected Pietist Studies active.

Durnbaugh issued a series of publications on the history of coming from Germany Schwarzenau Brethren. He has worked out particularly the relations of the Brethren to the Anabaptist movement and became one of the leading historians in the Baptist and Pietism research. In 1987, he was project leader of the Brethren Encyclopedia, a multi-volume encyclopedia of Schwarzenau Brethren. Until shortly before his death in 2006 he worked on a supplementary fourth volume of the encyclopedia. In 1997 appeared with Durnbaughs The Fruit of the Vine, a comprehensive history of Schwarzenau Brethren, which is still regarded as a standard work. Together with the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder was Durnbaugh also behind the 1967 held Believers ' Church Conferences.

Publications (selection)

• The Church of the Brethren. Past and present. Evangelical publishing work, 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.