Social Holiness: A Way of Living for God's Nation

As friendships with Pentecostals have deepened, I have come to sense that Mennonites and Pentecostals not only have much to learn from each other; we resemble each other in significant ways.

Both traditions - Pentecostals and Anabaptist/Mennonites - have been marginal movements which the dominant Christendom traditions have viewed with suspicion and, at times, contempt. But in the latter half of the twentieth century, both Pentecostals and Mennonites began to find their voices.

From the margins, they are making contributions that the centrist Christian traditions are listening to.

As this happens, they are tempted to become respectable and conventional; they might lose the holiness that, when they are faithful, characterizes both movements. But I have hope that God, in the twenty-first century, will use both Pentecostals and Mennonites to bless many others.

May this book help Pentecostals stay in touch with the social radicalism of their origins. God's Spirit is poured out for a reason! And may it help Mennonites and other Christians discover that radical discipleship of Jesus Christ is only possible when the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus also disturbs and empowers us.

A reprinting of Kreider's 1987 book Journey Towards Holiness.