Sep/Oct 2007

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Paul Gordon Hiebert, Distinguished Professor of Mission and Anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, arguably the world's leading missiological anthropologist, died on March 11 of cancer. He was 74.

Paul combined attributes not easily combined: anthropologically—and theologically—informed scholarship and a passion for God's global missionary purposes. The story of how Paul fruitfully merged these commitments is worth telling.

Born in India (1932) to second-generation Mennonite Brethren (MB) missionaries, Paul was deeply influenced towards missionary service by his evangelistic but erudite father, Johann Hiebert, whose single-minded missionary commitment led him in 1947 to reject the tempting offer of a faculty position in Indian History at the University of Southern California.

Paul often told the story of how, at Taber College (Hillsboro, Kansas), where he studied physics and history, he approached a young lady: "Miss Flaming." "Yes?" I'm Paul Hiebert. I'm going to be a missionary. Would you like to have dinner with me?" So began a romance that would last 57 years, until Fran's own death from cancer in 1999.

A missionary needed theological education, which Paul acquired at the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary (Fresno, Calif.). Inspired in college by missionary anthropologist Jacob Loewen, whose lectures were "exciting," "iconoclastic," and "made so much sense," Paul felt missionaries needed anthropology. And in a family that took education seriously—four of his seven sisters would earn Ph.D.'s—only the Ph.D. would do. So Paul completed Ph.D. coursework in anthropology at the University of Minnesota while also pastoring a church. Then in 1960 he went to India for fieldwork and a six-year ...