Award-winning author passionate about peace

By Angelika Dawson

Rudy Wiebe

This was Wiebe's third appearance at the festival. He said it was important to him to be a part of the event, because he feels strongly that arts and peace go well together.

"I liked it when the Arts and Peace festival was set up as an alternative experience to the military hardware on display at the [Abbotsford International] Airshow," he said, describing a tour he participated in, in which he saw a Hercules aircraft. "It's a wonderful machine, you know, and I know what they can do with this up in the Arctic, helping human beings do good things. But here [we were told], you can drive three tanks in there, you know, to blow people up! The same machine can help and hurt . . . It's these ironies in life that artists can express so well."

As he declared in his workshop, Wiebe has had many ironies in his own life, starting with the publication of his first novel, Peace Shall Destroy Many (McLelland and Stewart, 1962). The novel, which began as his master's thesis in creative writing, chronicles the life of a Mennonite community in Saskatchewan during World War II. Protagonist Thom Wiens struggles to come to terms with his community's peace stance at a time of war.

Wiebe had initially intended to write about Shakespeare and war ("like a good Mennonite, you know"), but his professor encouraged him to think in more original terms.

"'You may be the only person who can write about Mennonites,' he told me." Wiebe took his advice. He was also inspired by Goethe, who insisted that a writer write about the people one knows, where one lives.

"Every people has a story, and if you're a good writer you can make it live for other people."

Just before his first novel was published, Wiebe began work as the first editor for the MB Herald. At his interview he informed the committee that Peace Shall Destroy Many was about to be published and offered them a manuscript to read. They declined.

The book was met with diverse reactions. The public liked it, the church didn't. Although many Mennonites acknowledged that it was an often honest depiction of the church, they felt that it did the church a disservice to discuss it in a public forum.

One church leader wrote to Wiebe and said it felt like "washing dirty laundry in the front yard of a neighbour." He insisted that the book painted an entirely negative view of the church, and added that the next church conference might have some uncomfortable moments for Wiebe. The author said he should have been ready for the reaction, but wasn't.

Reflecting back on it, he said he felt that although there were many reasons for the strong, negative reaction to the book, one should not underestimate the barrier of language. Church leadership at the time still spoke primarily German, and the attitude towards fiction was an uneasy one.

While the book has many positive things to say about the Mennonite church, Wiebe said its form and the subtleties of language could have prevented many from appreciating the ironies of the novel. The reaction to the book led to his resignation at the Herald.

Ironically, while one branch of the Mennonite church was rejecting Wiebe because of Peace Shall Destroy Many, he said another branch "opened their arms" to him for the same reason.

Goshen College, in Indiana, invited Wiebe to teach creative writing. The move turned out to be one of the most enriching experiences of his life, deepening his faith and encouraging him to grow as a person and writer.

Twenty years, several more books and awards later, Wiebe is still actively committed to peacemaking, and is a charter member of the Lendrum Mennonite Brethren Church in Alberta. He is often asked questions about pacifism, and jokes about the ridiculous questions that are put his way in interviews.

"'What would you do if a guy with a machine gun was attacking your family?' Well, there's not much you can do, is there?" he laughs, recalling the question of a radio interviewer.

But then Wiebe grows serious. "All we can do is talk, and if we are beyond talk, we suffer. You flee, and then you suffer because of the flight. And how many people have suffered? Why do we have 30 million refugees in the world? It's not the right way to think!"

Wiebe feels strongly that Christians should reconsider the pacifist vision of the Anabaptist tradition, now that Canada is participating in the war in Afghanistan.

"'Our country is at war' -- I hate that language," he says passionately, "because you then think that all the normal rules of living are out the window. It allows us to kill people. Christians, of all people, should understand this -- it's [not a matter of] save yourself, but care for the community."

As a writer and a Christian, Wiebe feels that his is a unique voice ("every writer has a unique voice") because most writers in Canada are not Christian thinkers; they have somehow rejected faith, or see it as something they have moved beyond.

"I've never grown beyond it," he said. "The older I get, it makes me respond in the deepest way to the problems I experience in life. I do respond deeply through a New Testament way of looking at the world, and I can't get rid of it -- I don't want to! I'd be silly to deny Jesus' teaching. It's the most important way to understand what the world is about."