A. James Reimer
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A. James Reimer (b. 1942) is a Canadian Mennonite theologian with a dual academic appointment: he is a professor at Conrad Grebel University College, a member college of the University of Waterloo, and a professor in the Toronto School of Theology, a consortium of divinity schools federated with the University of Toronto.
Reimer was born and raised in small-town southern Manitoba. As a teen, he was baptized in the local Mennonite church. He holds undergraduate degrees from Canadian Mennonite Bible College (now Canadian Mennonite University) and the University of Manitoba; he also spent a year studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York City before moving to the University of Toronto, where he earned an M.A. in History and a Ph.D. in Theology, the latter degree conferred by the University of St. Michael's College. His doctoral dissertation, directed by Gregory Baum, was a comparative and contrasting study of the political ramifications of theology in the respective thinking of Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich.
Reimer's own theology is not typically Mennonite (vis-a-vis John Howard Yoder), in that his point of departure is not the Sermon on the Mount but the classical imagination of trinitarian orthodoxy. Though he is deeply concerned with Christian social ethics, he insists that ethics must have a ground external to itself. The triune God, for Reimer, constitutes such ground. While writing his doctoral dissertation, Reimer became deeply troubled and conflicted about the theology of Emanuel Hirsch, a German Christian nationalist and Nazi sympathizer. Fearing that he was being swayed by Hirsch's arguments, Reimer sought to offset Hirsch's influence by aligning himself more concretely with left of center politics. He joined the New Democratic Party and was an active party member for several years before finally resigning his membership over certain of the party's socio-ethical positions, particularly a woman's right to choose. Today, Reimer's overall political vision remains left of center. Though he is a pacifist, he has argued that God's activity in the world cannot be reduced to any one ethical ideology; otherwise transcendence becomes domesticated.
Reimer has been quite productive as an academic. He has published numerous articles in various journals; select articles have been compiled to form the content of two of his books: Mennonites and Classical Theology, and Paul Tillich: Theologian of Nature, Culture and Politics. His very first book was a revision of his doctoral dissertation, titled The Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich Debate: A Study in the Political Ramifications of Theology. He has also coedited a compendium of essays on the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His areas of expertise include Anabaptist history, Christian ethics of war and peace, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the German church struggle during the Nazi regime. Over the years he has directed several theses and dissertations on these and other related topics.
