About the Authors

Douglas (Jake) Jacobsen is Distinguished Professor of Church History and Theology at Messiah College, Grantham, PA where he has taught since 1984. From 1992 to 1998 Jake helped direct the Re-Forming the Center project which examined the moderate center of American Protestant faith in historical, sociological, and theological perspective. More recently he has written (with Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen) Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation (Oxford, 2004). His other works include the award winning Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Indiana University Press, 2003) and A Reader in Pentecostal Theology: Voices from the First Generation (forthcoming). Jake is currently researching and writing about the global history of Christianity.

 

 

Rodney J. Sawatsky was an administrator for church-related colleges for more than twenty years. He served as President of Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo, Ontario from 1989 to 1994 and as President of Messiah College from 1994 until 2004. As a leader within the realm of church-related higher education, Rodney championed the importance of hope as both a Christian and an educational virtue. Sawatsky was also a scholar of Mennonite history and his groundbreaking examination of Mennonite identity in America was published posthumously as History and Ideology: American Mennonite Identity Definition Through History (Pandora Press, 2005). His other publications include The Limits of Perfection: A Conversation with J. Lawrence Burkholder (Pandora Press, 1996).