Mennonites and Their Heritage

Harold Stauffer Bender (1897 – 1962) was a prominent professor of theology at Goshen College (Goshen, Indiana) and Goshen Biblical Seminary. His accomplishments include founding both the Mennonite Historical Library and The Mennonite Quarterly Review. He served as President of the American Society of Church History, and was a major scholarly influence on fellow Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder.



C. Henry Smith (1875 – 1948) was a Mennonite historian born in Metamora, Illinois. Smith was the first (known) American Mennonite to earn a Ph.D., doing so at the University of Chicago in 1907. C. Henry Smith (the "C" simply an initial he adopted) taught two stints at Goshen College and became the first dean of the college, before going on to teach at Bluffton University for the rest of his life. Smith's doctoral dissertation was published as The Mennonites of America in 1909 and remained the only comprehensive Mennonite history of American Mennonites into the 1950s.