Alan Kreider

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The Reverend Dr Alan Fetter Kreider was born at Goshen, Indiana on 8 November 1941. He was ordained at the London Mennonite Fellowship in 1975. He has been Associate Professor of Church History and Mission at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary since 2004. His main interests are peace and ecclesiastical history.

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[edit] Education

Alan Kreider was educated at Goshen College, Indiana (BA 1962), Princeton University (1962-63), Heidelberg University (1963-64), Harvard University (AM 1965) (PhD 1971), and the University of London (1966-68). He has been the recipient of a Danforth Fellowship (1962-68), a Harvard Travelling Fellowship (1966-67), and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (1972-74). In 1995 he was accorded the status of Master of Arts in the University of Oxford and his name was added to the Register of Congregation.

[edit] Appointments

[edit] Goshen College

Alan Kreider was Assistant and Associate Professor of History at Goshen College 1968-1983.

[edit] London

He spent 1974-2000 in England as a Missionary with the Mennonite Board of Missions. He was Warden and Director of the London Mennonite Centre 1974-1991 and Elder of Wood Green Mennonite Church, London 1975-1991. In 1979 he became an Adjunct Lecturer in Church History at London Bible College, where he remained until 1983.

[edit] Manchester

He spent 1991-95 in Manchester as an Adjunct Lecturer in Church History at the University of Manchester and as Theologian in Residence at the Northern Baptist College. During this period he was also a Visiting Lecturer at the Eastern Mennonite Seminary (1991) and at the Bible College of New Zealand (1993). In 1993 he became Book Review Editor for Anabaptism Today and continued to serve in that role until 2000.

[edit] Oxford

In 1995 he moved to Oxford, where he remained until 2000, as both Director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture at Regent’s Park College and a member of the Oxford University Theology Faculty.

[edit] Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

In 1999 he became an Adjunct Member of the Faculty of the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, becoming Associate Professor of Church History and Mission in 2004.

[edit] Other Activities

Alan Kreider is a prolific public speaker. He has taken part in a debate on the arms race with Marshal of the Royal Air Force The Lord Cameron of Balhousie as part of the London Lectures on Contemporary Christianity at All Souls Church, Langham Place (1982) and with Lord Trefgarne, Edward Leigh MP, and Canon Paul Oestreicher, at the Cambridge Union Society (1983). In 1997 he preached at the Mennonite World Conference in Calcutta and in 2001 he delivered three speeches in Japan to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese Mennonite Church.

Alan Kreider (sometimes with his wife, Eleanor) has given the Staley Lectures at Goshen College (1987 and 2001), the Laing Lecture at London Bible College (1994), the Tyndale Christian Doctrine Lecture at the Tyndale Fellowship, Cambridge (1996), the Schrag Lectures at Messiah College, Pennsylvania (2001), the Menno Simons Lectures at Bethel College, Kansas (2001), the Believers Church Lectures at Fresno Pacific University, California, (2002) and the Annual Lecture at the Macquarie Christian Studies Institute, Sydney (2005).

Alan Kreider has been a member of the Shaftesbury Project on Christian Involvement in Society (1978-1983), Evangelical Peacemakers (1983-1992), the Anabaptist Network Steering Group (1991-2000), the Missiology of Western Culture Project History Group (1992-97), and the Mennonite-Roman Catholic International Dialogue (2000).

[edit] Publications

  • Jean Michel Hornus, It is not lawful for me to fight: early Christian attitudes toward war, violence, and the state (translated with Oliver Coburn) (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1980)
  • English chantries: the road to dissolution (Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, 1979) - North American Conference on British Studies, Jon Ben Snow Prize, Honorable

Mention (1980)

  • War: Christian attitudes (Nottingham: n.p., 1983)
  • Time to choose: a GrassRoots study guide on the nuclear arms race from a Christian Perspective (et al.) (Lytchett Minster, Poole, Dorset: Celebration, 1983)
  • Handling Problems of Peace and War: An Evangelical Debate (with John Stott and

Jerram Barrs, ed. J. Andrew Kirk) (Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1988)

  • Journey Towards Holiness: A Way of Living for God's People (Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1986; Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1987) - The Other Side Magazine Book of the Year (1987); Silver Angel Award for Religion in Media (1987); translated into Japanese (2001)
  • Worship and evangelism in pre-Christendom (Cambridge: Grove Books, 1995)
  • Culture and the Nonconformist tradition (edited with Jane Shaw) (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999)
  • The change of conversion and the origin of Christendom (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1999)
  • Becoming a peace church (with Eleanor Kreider) (London: New Ground published in association with HHSC Christian Press, 2000) - translated into Korean (2003)
  • Coming Home: Stories of Anabaptists in Britain and Ireland (edited with Stuart Murray) (Waterloo, Ont.: Pandora Press, 2000)
  • Christianity and the culture of economics (edited with Donald A. Hay) (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001)
  • The origins of Christendom in the West (ed.) (Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark, 2001)
  • Composing music for worship (edited with Stephen Darlington) (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2003)
  • 'Military Service in the Church Orders', in Journal of Religious Ethics vol. 31, no. 3 (2003), 415-442
  • 'Peacemaking in Worship in the Syrian Church Orders', in Studia Liturgica (2004), 177-

190

  • A Culture of Peace: God’s Vision for the Church (with Eleanor Kreider and Paulus Widjaja) (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 2005)
  • 'Beyond Bosch: The Early Church and the Christendom Shift', in International Bulletin for Missionary Research (April 2005)