After the sixteenth century, second-generation Mennonites of Swiss/South German origin placed little value on university-level education. They were people of villages rather than towns and cities. Some historians suggest that they feared the higher education of their Catholic and Calvinist persecutors. 

However, this volume clearly describes the persistent efforts in 1907-09 of Mennonite leaders and lay persons from this tradition to establish a school “in the West,” a sister institution to Goshen College founded earlier in Indiana. While formal training was important, a Mennonite church-owned and controlled school would avoid the temptations inevitably involved in a secular institution, a school of another denomination, or even the influence of the Dutch/Russian Mennonites at Bethel (Kan.) College. At the outset of the twentieth century, within a Mennonite church immersed in two-kingdoms theology, Hesston College was established to provide training for young people with needed protection from the ways of “the world.”

The founders of Hesston College could not have imagined the extraordinary transformation Mennonites, along with other denominations, would experience over the next 100 years. Mennonites transitioned from a rural to a predominantly urban people, from an uneducated to a college-educated people, from a church separated “from the world” to a middle-class church largely indistinguishable from low-church, evangelical Protestant denominations in North America. Recently, the Mennonite Church merged with the General Conference Mennonites whose influence the founders had feared in 1909.

How did Hesston College fare in these transitions? Sharp’s volume suggests that the Hesston College faculty, staff, and administration remained responsive to the Mennonite church throughout the twentieth century. Although the Hesston College curriculum in 2009 mirrors the programs of study at other church-related and secular institutions, Hesston College professors might argue that their  efforts reflect the perspective and influence of Mennonite history.

Has Hesston College led the church in the past century or only followed trends arising out of the inevitable changes occurring within the church and higher education? The college has maintained and possesses a greater concern than the denomination as a whole for the unique, historical, Anabaptist character of Mennonite thought and ethics. The Hesston College focus on discipleship (following after Christ), part of Mennonite piety for centuries, is representative of a continuing college concern for a Mennonite practice no longer as emphasized in the broader church.

Unlike most other Christian colleges in the United States, Hesston College, Goshen College, and Eastern Mennonite University are legally owned by the Mennonite church. Most other Christian colleges are owned by boards that then relate more or less closely to a particular denomination. The legal governance model shapes college institutions in both positive and problematic ways. While not the subject of this volume, the impact of church ownership on Mennonite educational institutions deserves attention.

John Sharp has written a history of Hesston College, not simply a collection of tales arranged in chronological order. A proper history of Hesston College requires appropriately collected facts placed interpretively in the historical context of the development of the American West and the Mennonite Church. Sharp has successfully accomplished the historian’s task. In portraying this history for his readers, Sharp’s voice is that of a storyteller with a keen sense of place, phrasing, and the curious facts that make the story come to life.

Since 1909, many generations of young people have experienced and can bear witness to the uniquely intense social, religious, and academic character of Hesston College. This uniqueness continues. Even now Hesston College remains geographically isolated. The college community, the Internet notwithstanding, is still thrown back on itself socially. An introverted student or faculty member who requires constant external stimulation or prefers not to be part of a community risks being unhappy in the Hesston College environment. A School on the Prairie gives credence to the phenomenon that every generation since 1909 has referred to as “the Hesston Experience.”
—Jim Mininger
Claremont, California