The Mennonite Game: Classroom Version

Last Friday, in Anabaptist History class, I attempted an educational-relationship version of the Mennonite Game. Instead of pointing out what teachers and students shared bloodlines, however, on the chalkboard I traced the patterns showing what teachers taught what students. I told the students this was an attempt to bring a human scale to the world of scholarship on Reformation Era history.

I started with Roland Bainton, a longtime professor at Yale University. Off to the side at the end of an arrow, I listed Dr. Brad A. Gregory, some of whose Teaching Company lectures on the History of Christianity in the Reformation Era we will be listening to in class. Gregory referenced Bainton’s book on Martin Luther: Here I Stand. I quoted from that book by Bainton something I remembered from having read the book in college. Bainton said: “Luther’s treatment of the Anabaptists is one of the great blots on his character.”

Under Bainton's name, at the end of a down arrow, I listed Fred Belk, who was my history teacher at Sterling College, a Presbyterian school. Belk was a student of Bainton’s at Yale. Belk wrote the book The Great Trek, the story about a group of Mennonites who traveled, at great hardship, on foot or in wagons, across much of the territory occupied by the U.S.S.R., to Mongolia where they believed Christ would return soon. I have an autographed copy of Dr. Belk’s book. For my students, I quoted something I remember Dr. Belk saying in class: “The Anabaptists were by far the most Christian of the Reformation Era groups.”

At the bottom of another down arrow, I wrote “Me” because I was Dr. Belk’s student.

At this point, Jared came to the rescue for me and everyone else in the class when he raised his hand and said, “Could you add one more arrow and then put my name up there?”

“Absolutely!” I exclaimed in delight, and, as everyone laughed, I added one more entry that included everyone in the class: “Students.”

Perfect. I wish I had thought of it myself.