A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

without incurring harm,25 The belief that spiritual principles must be "implanted," as opposed to truth emerging from a careful reformulation of age-old truths in the light of a new and complex society, was consistent with Mennonite Brethren self-understanding in the 1940s* As a people in relative isolation, they felt no need for new theological precision. The period following the Second World War changed that, however The tension over conscientious objection, the surge in education in society generally in the post-war era, and in- creasing confrontations between faith and world, called for a new theological identity. The institutions of higher education were slow to provide the theological vigor to address this growing concern. In the post-war years the calls for a more distinctive Men- nonite philosophy of education appeared in various places. The most sustained effort began at Pacific College (later Fres- no Pacific College) in the 1960s. Several faculty members at- tempted to focus the purpose of the newly-accredited senior college in the Pacific College idea. Here was a specific call to be an "Anabaptist Mennonite college/26 Paul Toews, a long-time faculty member, examined the Fresno Pacific struggle for identity in a paper titled "From Pietism to Secularism via Anabaptism: An informal history of 175 A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH the changing ideals and relationships between Fresno Pacific College and the Mennonite Brethren Church, 1944-1984 "21 He observed that the early Pacific faculty of the 1960s and 1970s were children of the 1940s and 1950s who came of age at a time when their parents were busy acculturating to Amer- ican society. "They were the first generation reared beyond the boundaries of the Mennonite village,"28 Toews wrote, us- ing imagery made prominent by fellow faculty member Del- bert Wiens in his classic study, "From the Village to the City."29 Toews referred to that era as the cultural and intellectual emancipation that came with breaking out of the boundaries of ethno-religious culture. Among other things it was a re- thinking of the relationship between the past and the present. "The transitional nature of the 1940s to 1960s called for a re- assessment of history. This was the generation that rediscov- ered the Anabaptist tradition."30 The Pacific College Idea was a codification of the Anabap- tist faith as applied to higher education. It was a new charter for how Christians should function in the world. The Idea moved the definition of Mennonite Brethren education from its preoccupation with the purity of the soul and i