Paul Peachey

Background

Paul Peachey was born on October 10, 1918, in Elk Lick Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was the second of ten children of Shem, a farmer and minister, and Saloma Peachey. Peachey grew up on an Amish-Mennonite farm in Springs, Pennsylvania.

Education

Paul Peachey attended Eastern Mennonite College in 1941-1945. He also studied at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, the University of Basel in 1948, the University of Frankfurt in 1949, and Sorbonne, the University of Paris in 1952. Additionally, Peachey received a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Zurich in 1954.

Career

In 1945 Paul Peachey was invited by the Mennonite Central Committee to serve on its postwar emergency relief staffing in Belgium and Germany. In 1951 he moved to Switzerland, where Peachey received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Zurich. Then, in 1953 Paul returned to Eastern Mennonite College to teach sociology. Four years later, he took an assignment with Mennonite Central Committee to work in Japan as a peace consultant to missions and churches, so, from 1957 to 1960, Peachey and his wife lived in Tokyo. After returning to the United States, the couple moved to Washington, their home for the next twenty-five years.

In the United States, Paul Peachey served as an executive secretary at the Church Peace Mission in 1961-1967. In 1967 he joined the sociology faculty at The Catholic University of America and taught there until his retirement in 1987. Throughout these years, he participated in both academic and ecumenical bridge-building efforts with Eastern Europe. Peachey also was a fellow at the Washington Center for Metropolitan Studies in 1967-1969 and a secretary at the War-Nation-Church Study Group in 1967-1987. Besides, Paul was an organizer of a research project in Vienna in 1975-1983, a member and past chair of the Institute for Peace and Understanding, a member of the Citizens Planning Council for the Fort Lincoln New Town in 1968-1969, a member of the institutional review board of the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in 1985-1988, and a member of the FORUM for the Common Good. In 1976 Paul and Ellen became the co-founders of the religious retreat center Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community. There Paul served as a study director in 1981-1991. In 1987 the couple became the first permanent residents of the community, and in 2001, they moved to the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community, where they spent the remaining years of their lives.

Additionally, Paul Peachey was a writer. His articles appeared in at least fifteen journals spanning America and Europe. Peachey also published four monographs, several booklets, three edited volumes of research at the Catholic University of America, and over a dozen chapters in other books, including the important The Modem Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision and Towards an Understanding of the Decline of the West. His monograph, Leaving and Clinging: The Human Significance of the Conjugal Union, reflects his devotion and loving relationship with his wife.

Achievements

• Paul Peachey was well known as an activist, writer, and educator. He taught at the Catholic University of America for twenty years. With his wife, Ellen, they were co-founders of the religious retreat center Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community. As a writer, in addition to writing books, Peachey was the author of articles that appeared in fifteen journals spanning America and Europe.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Usable Past?

    (Christendom or believers church? Here a twentieth-century...)

    2008
  • Leaving and Clinging

    (Leaving and Clinging attempts to define the fundamental i...)

    2001
  • Place of the Person in Social Life 1991
  • Building Peace and Civil Society 2007
  • The Church in the City 1963

Religion

Paul Peachey was a man of deep faith and strong convictions. His overarching concerns were the unresolved tension between "creation and grace," between this world and the eternal, a theme he often referenced. He was deeply concerned about the compromises in the Mennonite Church, and especially its institutional forms. Indeed, it was often difficult for Paul to conform to traditional church structures and practices. Yet ironically, he spent his entire professional career working within many religious and secular institutionalized organizations.

Views

Paul Peachey always advocated for peace and reconciliation.

Quotations: "Writing has been part and extension of a vocation in research and teaching in sociology and ethics. In later life, my writing impulse has been strengthened by a growing sense of inter-generational accountability in life learning."

"Much of my work lies at the interface between the processes of nature and the life of faith. Hence, also in the interplay of character with contingency in the life process."

Membership

• Paul Peachey was a chair of the Friendship Citizens Association in 1979-1981.

  Friendship Citizens Association , United States

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  American Sociological Society , United States

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  Society for Christian Ethics , United States

Interests

• Music, gardening, reading, travel

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

Connections

Paul Peachey married Ellen Shenk on June 10, 1945. They had five children, Barbara Peachey Piekarski, Janet, Carl, George, and James Peachey.

Father:

Shem Peachey

Mother:

Saloma Peachey

Saloma Peachey's maiden name was Bender.

Wife:

Ellen Shenk

Daughter:

Barbara Peachey Piekarski

Daughter:

Janet Peachey

Son:

Carl Peachey

Son:

George Peachey

Son:

James Peachey