Campus Address: Department of History Home Address: 126 Sunset Dr.
Bluffton University Bluffton, OH 45817
1 University Dr.
Bluffton, OH 45817
Campus Phone: (419) 358-3278 Home Phone: (419) 358-2456
Campus Email: bushp@bluffton.edu
Education:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Ph.D. (History) August, 1990; M.A. (History) May, 1987
Dissertation Title: "Drawing the Line: American Mennonites, the State, and Social Change,
1935-1973"
University of California, Berkeley, California
B.A. (Political Science) June, 1981 magna cum laude
Honors, Awards and Grants:
Awarded the Charles DeBenedetti Prize in Peace History from the Peace History Society in 2003- 2004 (for "The Political Education of Vietnam Christian Service, 1954-1975," Peace and Change, 27:2 {April, 2002}: 198-224).
Participant, the Rhodes Consultation on the Future of the Church-Related College, 2000-2002
Project Director, Institutional Renewal Grant
My book Dancing with the Kobzar was accepted for inclusion into the
Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History book series, Fall 1999
My book Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties was nominated for the Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society for Church History and the Awards in Excellence in the Study of Religion, in the category of First Book in the History of Religions, by the American Academy of Religion, Fall, 1999.
Awarded the C. Henry Smith Peace Lectureship, 1997-1998
Recipient, Research Grants, Bluffton College Study Center, 1995, 1997 and 2001
Chosen as a Young Scholar in American Religion at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, 1994 (had to decline participation in the larger program).
Awarded the Dean Shirley Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award, Phillips University, 1992-1993
Recipient, Research Grants, from Oklahoma Foundation for the Humanities and the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Wheaton, Illinois, 1991
Publications:
Books:
Underway: Scorched Earth: Rust Bowl Resistance in the American Midwest (manuscript completed; under review for publication)
Dancing with the Kobzar: Bluffton College and Mennonite Higher Education, Telford, Pennsylvania: Pandora Press US, 2000.
Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in Modern America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Articles (Academic Press):
“’If God were a Capitalist, the Mennonites would be his Favorite People’”: Economics, Mennonites, and Reflections on the Recent Literature,” Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2005.
“Violence, Nonviolence, and the Search for Answers in History,” in J .Denny Weaver and Gerald Biesecker-Mast, eds., Teaching Peace: Nonviolence and the Liberal Arts, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 77-88.
"Bluffton College and Progressive Anabaptism, 1899-1999," in James Hodges and James O'Donnell, eds., Cradles of Conscience: Ohio's Independent Colleges and Universities, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003), 52-63.
"What Would History Look Like if 'Peace and Justice' Really Mattered?" Fides Et Historia, XXXIV: 1 (Winter/Spring, 2002): 49-56.
"The Political Education of Vietnam Christian Service, 1954-1975," Peace and Change, 27:2 (April, 2002): 198-224.
"Anabaptist Visions at the Library of Congress (and Other Tales from the Edge of Evangelicalism)" in David Weaver-Zercher, ed., Minding the Church: Scholarship in the Anabaptist Tradition (Telford, PA: Pandora Press, US, 2002), 72-86.
"Economic Justice and the Evangelical Historian," Fides et Historia XXXIII: 1 (Winter/Spring, 2001): 11-27.
"'United Progressive Mennonites': Bluffton College and Mennonite Higher Education, 1913-1945," Mennonite Quarterly Review LXXIIV (July, 2000): 357-380.
"The Solidification of Nonresistance: Bluffton and World War, 1917-1945," Mennonite Life 55:1 (March, 2000): 1-10.
"Vietnam and the Burden of Mennonite History," Conrad Grebel Review, 17:2 (Spring, 1999): 5-27.
"The Flexibility of the Center: Mennonite Church Conflict in the 1960s," Mennonite Quarterly Review, LXXII (April, 1998): 189-206.
"Anabaptism Born Again: Mennonites, New Evangelicals, and the Search for a Usable Past, 1950-1980," Fides et Historia XXV (Winter-Spring, 1993): 26-47.
"Military Service, Religious Faith, and Acculturation: Mennonite G.I.'s and their Church, 1941-1945," Mennonite Quarterly Review LXVII (July, 1993): 261-282.
"'We have Learned to Question Government': Mennonite Dissent from Church-State Compromise, 1940-1945," Mennonite Life 45 (June, 1990): 13-17.
"A Neighborhood, a Hollow, and the Bloomfield Bridge: the Relationship between Community and Infrastructure," Pittsburgh History, 74 (Winter, 1991): 160-172.
Articles (Popular press):
"Lessons of History," The Mennonite 4:40 (October 23, 2001): 6-7.
"Christian Propriety and the Fourth of July," The Mennonite, 2 (July, 1999): 6-7.
"'To Follow the Carpenter of Nazareth': For a century and a half, workers and church people have organized together. A Brief history," Sojourners 27 (September/October, 1998): 28-34.
"Can Martin Luther King be Rescued from the Taming of Pop Culture?" Gospel Herald, 90 (January 20, 1998): 1-3.
"Prophetic Anger: The Lingering Power of Evangelical Populism," Sojourners, (January- February, 1997): 34-37.
"Drawing the Line on Who We Are," The Mennonite, 111 (July 9, 1996): 6-7.
Reviews:
Review of Eugene McCarraher, Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought, in Fides et Historia, forthcoming.
Review of Calvin Redekop, ed., Creation and the Environment: An Anabaptist Perspective on a Sustainable World in the Journal of Mennonite Studies 20 (2002): 266-267.
Review of Donald Kraybill and Carl Bowman, On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish and Brethren, in the American Historical Review 107:1 (February, 2002): 225.
Review of Albert Keim, Harold S. Bender, 1897-1962 in The Catholic Historical Review, (April, 1999): 331-332.
Review of Fred Kniss, Disquiet in the Land: Cultural Conflict In American Mennonite Communities, in Church History 68:2 (June, 1999): 516-18.
Review of Theron F. Schlabach and Richard T. Hughes, eds., Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacifism in Unexpected Places, in Peace and Change 24:2 (April, 1999): 254-256.
Review of Richard C. Anderson, Peace was in their Hearts, in Mennonite Life, 53 (March, 1998): 34-5.
Review of Paul Toews, Mennonites in American Society: Modernity and the Persistence of Religious Community, in Direction, 26 (Fall, 1997): 96-8.
Review of Mark Noll and George Rawlyk, eds., Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States, in Brethren in Christ History and Life XXI (April, 1997): 155-159.
Review of Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in Nineteenth Century America, in the Journal of Social History, 30 (Spring, 1997): 739-741.
Review of James Juhnke, Vision, Doctrine, War: Mennonite Identity and Organization in America in Fides et Historia, XXVI (Winter/Spring, 1994): 165-166.
Review of Martin Marty and A. Scott Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed, in the Journal of Social History, (Fall, 1993): 146-149.
Review of Calvin Redekop, Mennonite Society, in the Journal of Social History, 24 (Summer, 1991): 879-880.
Review of Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion in the Journal of Social History, 22:3 (Spring, 1988).
Papers Delivered:
“’If God were a Capitalist, the Mennonites would be his Favorite People’: Economics, Mennonites, and Reflections on the Recent Literature,” presented at “The State of the Art of North American Mennonite History,” University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Oct. 2, 2004.
"What Would History Look Like if "Peace and Justice' Really Mattered?," presented at "Christian Scholarship...for What?" Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, September 28, 2001.
"The Robust Life and Uneasy Death of Evangelical Populism," presented at the biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History, Pt. Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA, October 20, 2000
"The Vietnamese Trauma of Mennonite Central Committee," presented at "The Politics of Peace Movements: From Nonviolence to Social Justice," sponsored by the Peace History Society, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, April 28, 2000
"C. Henry Smith, Bluffton College, and a Progressive Anabaptist Vision," presented at "Anabaptism and Postmodernity" Conference, Bluffton College, August 8, 1998
"Vietnam and the Burden of Mennonite History," C. Henry Smith Peace Lecture, Goshen College, April 1, 1998/Bluffton College, April 28, 1998.
"C. Henry Smith and a Bluffton College Vision," presented at "Communities of Memory: a Bluffton College -- Goshen College Symposium on Teaching Peace," Bluffton College, May 28, 1997.
"'Christ is Bigger than the United States': Conflicting Loyalties in the recent Mennonite Historical Experience," Presented to the Ninetieth Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, San Francisco, CA, April 19, 1997
"Still in the Bender Past? Recent Developments in Anabaptist/Mennonite Peace Understandings," presented at "Historiography and Christian Faith," Biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith and History, Grand Rapids, MI, Oct. 11, 1996.
"The Elasticity of the Center: Mennonites in the 1960s," presented at "Mennonites and Conflict: New Directions in Scholarship," Goshen College, Goshen, IN, June 7, 1996.
"Mennonite Visions and the New Evangelicals," presented at "Anabaptist Vision(s) in the Twentieth century: Ideas and Outcomes," Goshen College, Goshen, IN October 15, 1994.
"Teaching War and Peace in American History: Reflections on a Recent Foray" presented at "Non-Violent America: The Teaching Task," sponsored by The Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, March 25, 1994.
"Mennonites, Social Responsibility, and Niebuhr’s Critique of Pacifism," presented to the fifteenth annual Mid-America Conference on History, Stillwater, Oklahoma, September 16, 1993.
"Finding a 'Positive' but Prophetic Witness: Mennonites Confront the Cold War," presented to the session of the Conference on Faith and History, annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Washington, DC, December 29, 1992.
"The Mennonite Community Reevaluated: Preserving Religious Identity amidst Change, 1935-1970," presented to the Agricultural Studies Section, Western Social Science Association annual meeting, Denver, CO, April 24, 1992.
"Uneasy Partners: A History and Analysis of the EPA's Science Advisory Board,” Working paper delivered to the Executive Committee of the Science Advisory Board, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, August, 1989.
Teaching Experience:
Bluffton University, Bluffton, Ohio: Associate Professor of History, 1994-1999;
Professor of History, 1999-present
Courses taught (undergraduate level):
Foundations of American Civilization (US History survey to 1877)
The Making of Contemporary America (US History survey since 1877)
War and Peace in American History
US Environmental History
First Year Seminar
African American History
Christian Values in the Global Community
History: Theory and Application
Ohio and the Old Northwest
US Women’s History
Issues in Modern America
Graduate courses taught, Bluffton University:
American Studies: Postwar America, 1940-1970
American Studies: War and Peace in American History
Phillips University, Enid, OK: Assistant Professor of History, 1990-1994
Courses taught:
US History to 1877
Gilded Age to the Progressive Era
US History Since 1877
Modern America
Colonial America
World Civilizations
Antebellum America
Community College of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD: Instructor in History, 1988-1989
Courses taught:
American Cultures
African American History
(These courses were taught in Patuxent Institution, a maximum security state penitentiary in
Jessup, MD).
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA: Teaching Assistant, 1986-1987
Other Research Experience:
Historical Consultant, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC January to September, 1989
Historian, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC, Summer, 1988
Community and Academic Service:
Chair, Department of Religion and History, Bluffton University, 2005 to present
Vice-Chair of Faculty, Bluffton University, 2005 to present
Historian, Central District Conference, Mennonite Church USA, 2005 to present
Manager, campaign of Mitch Kingsley for Allen County Commissioner, Winter 2003-Nov, 2004
Vice-President and Member, Executive Committee, Allen County Democratic Party, 1999-present; Chair of the Central Committee, April, 2000 to present; candidate recruitment subcommittee, Fall 1999, Fall 2001, Fall, 2003
Member, Executive Board, Mennonite Historical Society
Consulting Editor to Mennonite Life
Consultant to Lima City Schools for curriculum unit on local history, 2003-2004
Anonymous reader for book manuscripts: University of North Carolina Press, 1999; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000; Indiana University Press, 2005
Co-Manager, campaign of Mitch Kingsley for Allen County Commissioner, Spring-Fall, 2000
Vice‑President, Board of Directors, DC Habitat for Humanity, Inc., 1988 ‑ 1990.
Member, Board of Directors, Pittsburgh Habitat for Humanity, Inc., 1986 ‑ 1987
Professional Organizations:
Organization of American Historians
Conference on Faith and History
Mennonite Historical Society
Peace History Society
Updated Fall, 2007
