Elizabethtown College News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
9/3/04
Contact: Mary Dolheimer, director of marketing and media relations, 717-361-1587, dolheimerm@etown.edu
Elizabethtown College’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies presents inaugural book award
ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. – A book that reviewers have called “the definitive work about the Ephrata Cloister” has won the inaugural Dale W. Brown Book Award, presented by Elizabethtown College’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
Author Jeff Bach, a professor at Bethany Theological Seminary in Indiana, was honored for “Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata” at the Young Center’s annual spring banquet. The newly endowed fund will support the annual selection of an outstanding book in Anabaptist and Pietist studies.
Bach served as scholar in residence at the Ephrata Cloister, the 18th-century home to some 200 celibate Pietists, while writing his doctoral thesis for Duke University. “Voices of the Turtledoves,” published jointly by Penn State University Press and Pennsylvania German Society, is a 280-page summary of his research.
The judges who reviewed over a dozen books nominated for the award described Bach’s book “as a clear and concise explanation of the Ephrata Cloister…..original, high quality scholarship…..well organized and masterful.”
The national award, which recognizes an outstanding book in Anabaptist and Pietist studies, was named for Dale W. Brown, a retired Bethany Seminary professor who lives in Elizabethtown and served previously as a fellow at the Young Center. Brown earned degrees from McPherson College, Bethany Theological Seminary and Northwestern University. A noted author and theologian among the historic peace churches, his books include “Biblical Pacifism,” “Understanding Pietism” and “The Christian Revolutionary.”
Donald B. Kraybill, Young Center senior fellow, called the award “a major achievement because it is determined by a panel of independent judges who seek to select the best scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist studies.”
Bach will present a public lecture on his book at the Young Center at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 21. Nominations for the 2005 Brown Book Award are due Dec. 1. Visit the Center’s website at www.etown.edu/youngctr/ for details.
Ranked consistently as one of the country’s best small comprehensive colleges, Elizabethtown College educates nearly 1800 men and women for service through an academic offering of 43 undergraduate majors. The College, which was founded in 1899, is located in Lancaster County near world-famous Hershey, Pa.
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