Mennonite Biblical Seminary: the Chicago beginning

Mennonite Biblical Seminary opened in Chicago in 1945. It renewed the work of Witmarsum Theological Seminary, whose teaching had stopped during the Depression while its governing board continued seeking a way to reopen. A reorganized board took responsibility for the earlier institution’s property, and Abraham Warkentin became the Chicago school’s first president. The new setting allowed Mennonite students and teachers to share an academic program with Bethany Biblical Seminary of the Church of the Brethren.

This cooperation connected two historic peace-church communities without immediately combining their governing bodies. Students came from Canada, the United States, and beyond North America. In 1958 the Mennonite school moved to Elkhart, Indiana, to begin the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries partnership with Goshen Biblical Seminary. Its story therefore joins the recovery of interrupted ministerial training to a larger effort to study Scripture and prepare workers together across Mennonite conference boundaries.