Additional information
by Joseph Winfield Fretz (Author), Harold S. Bender (Introduction by)
This booklet has been written to foster the development of a program of mutual aid among Mennonites. It assumes that the Mennonites in their various groups constitute Christian brotherhoods based upon a personal experience of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and a loving fellowship in His body, the Church. On this foundation it advocates that the members of the Christian community, locally and as a whole, bear one another's economic burdens and so not only fulfill the law of Christ but strengthen the Brotherhood for its greater tasks of witnessing and building for Christ in the world of today. It is a conscious effort to challenge the secular trend of the times which threatens to denature the Christian community and make its members increasingly dependent upon the state and the commercial world with consequent transfer of loyalty from the church to other agencies.
Author Biography
Joseph Winfield Fretz: sociologist, college president, and institutional innovator, was born 29 September 1910 in Bedminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Fretz's interest in mutual aid extended to his volunteer board work. He served as chair of MCC's Aid Section, and was the executive secretary of the General Conference Mennonite Church's Board of Mutual Aid in the 1940s and 1950s. Although not a founder, he was active in the Mennonite Community Association formed in 1947.
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.
