Rudy Wiebe reflects on life, faith, and writing

Rudy Wiebe

Rudy Wiebe has never understood why so many Mennonite authors seem to think they have to leave the church in order to be writers.

“It’s a profound fallacy to think that thoughtful and imaginative people can’t be Christians,” Wiebe told about 80 people who came to hear him speak Apr. 21 at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). “Jesus was a great storyteller.”

Wiebe, who graduated from Mennonite Brethren Bible College in 1962, said that religion had played a positive role in his life, noting that he has good memories of how the lay ministers in his boyhood home emphasized the goodness of God.

At the event, held to mark the publication of his newest book, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, Wiebe talked about growing up in the mid-1930s to late 1940s in the pioneer community of Speedwell, Saskatchewan, home to about 200 Mennonite homesteaders who came to Canada as refugees from the former Soviet Union.

During a question and answer period, Wiebe talked about the negative reaction to his first book, Peace Shall Destroy Many. “There is something very powerful about words,” he said, noting that he had not anticipated the controversy the book generated. Part of the problem, he said, was that the leadership in Mennonite churches at the time was still in the hands of people who spoke German better than English, with the result that “they couldn’t read English very well – they couldn’t understand the nuances. In fiction, there is more going on than the surface words.”

Wiebe also talked about the criticism that writers shouldn’t include things that are negative. “A lot of life isn’t pretty,” he said. “We struggle through it, and we struggle on.”

Wiebe has known tragedy himself, including the suicide of his son. “There are things you can never resolve,” he said. “Sometimes you have a damaged life, but God gives grace. You try to help others, even if you can’t help yourself.”

That grace comes from curious places, as he found out after surgery for cancer six months ago. He was later told by his wife that, after the operation, as he was drifting in and out of consciousness, he was humming the tune of an old hymn his parents had sung many years ago. “Something like that is almost instinctive, profoundly embedded in our souls,” he said.

As for being considered a “Mennonite writer,” Wiebe said that it’s “just part of who I am. I am also a western Canadian writer, and a North American writer.” Wiebe is a member of Lendrum MB Church, Edmonton.

—John Longhurst, CMU News