Robert E. Kraus

Family/Spouse: Cynthia L. Kraus. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

OBITUARY

C. Norman Kraus, Professor Emeritus of Religion, ordained Mennonite minister, author of books on church history, theology, peacemaking, and social justice, and a lifelong Christian disciple whose teaching took him to countries in Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America, died April 6, 2018 at the age of 94. His family said the cause was congestive heart failure.

Early on Kraus developed an interest in history and religion, particularly that of his Anabaptist faith. He attended Eastern Mennonite College and graduated from Goshen College in 1946 with a bachelor?s degree in Bible. After teaching history at Eastern Mennonite School for several years, he returned to Goshen in 1949 to pursue a seminary degree and teach at Goshen College in the Bible Department. In 1953 he completed a Masters in Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, followed by a PhD in Religion from Duke University in 1961. He taught at Goshen College for thirty years, founding and directing a Center for Discipleship program there in 1971 that focused on helping students and lay Christians explore effective discipleship across disciplines and vocations.

In 1980 Norman Kraus and his wife Ruth accepted an assignment from Mennonite Board of Missions to work with the Mennonite churches in Japan. After 18 months of language study in Tokyo, the couple moved to Sapporo, where Kraus lectured and taught for 6 years while also writing a two volume Christology, Jesus Christ Our Lord: Christology from a Disciple?s Perspective and God Our Savior: Theology in a Christological Mode, published first in Japanese and later in English. Among his more recent publications are: An Intrusive Gospel: Christian Mission in the Postmodern World (1998); Using Scripture in a Global Age: Framing Biblical Issues (2006); On being Human: Sexual Orientation and the Image of God (2011); and The Jesus Factor in Justice and Peacemaking (2011).

Born February 20, 1924 in the Warwick River Mennonite Colony, Kraus was raised in the farm village of Denbigh, Virginia, now a part of Newport News. The experience of growing up in a pioneer Mennonite community, whose northern, Pennsylvania-German, pacifistic culture was radically at odds with the martial, post-Civil War ?English? culture of the surrounding Virginia community, profoundly affected his world view. It became his life?s quest to understand the church?s mission of peace and justice and to explore how the visible church could manifest the teachings of Jesus. Kraus taught a model of the church as a ?community of the spirit,? and ?an authentic movement at the grassroots level to promote the personal-social goal of God?s kingdom on earth.? His books The Community of the Spirit (1974) and The Authentic Witness (1979) are among his most widely read.

In 1958, Kraus wrote Integration: Who?s Prejudiced, one of the first public attempts by the Mennonite Church to address its own implicit biases. Raised in the ?Jim Crow? South, he knew firsthand the ?brand of racial attitudes? his church community brought to its involvement with the segregated black community. As he wrote in 2013, revisiting his childhood in the Warwick River Colony, blacks were neighbors and fellow workers on the farm, but ?the intimacies of friendship were strictly limited by the cultural system, no matter what happened in a private setting.?

In Goshen, Indiana, where he settled in 1949 and strict segregationist codes were still the law, he began to take on a role as educator, reporter, protestor, and advocate for racial equity and social justice. Though he never considered himself an ?activist,? while living in Durham, North Carolina from 1959 to 1961, he joined black students at a Roses? lunch counter sit-in and was in the courtroom to support fellow Duke students arrested in the protests.

In 1963 at the request of Mennonite Central Committee, Kraus spent six weeks in Georgia and Tennessee helping leaders better assess whether and how to engage in the nonviolent student movement. There he joined a young Julian Bond for conversation and a cup of coffee and interviewed Ralph Abernathy, who memorably told him that the church?s light had turned out to be a tail light. When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, Kraus was asked to lead a march from Goshen College to downtown Goshen and gave the memorial address.

Norman Kraus married Ruth Smith in 1945, and raised a family of five children: Yvonne, Jo Anne, John Norman, Bonnie, and Robert. After his stint in Japan, he retired from Goshen College, moving back to his home state of Virginia to settle in Harrisonburg where he continued teaching part-time, writing, and occasionally preaching. In Harrisonburg, he served as interim pastor at Community Mennonite Church in 1990-91, was a member of the Park View Mennonite Church, and more recently worshipped with the Shalom Mennonite Congregation.
In 1997, Norman lost Ruth, his companion of 52 years to leukemia. In 1998 he married Rhoda Short Hess, who survives him. He is also survived by his five children and their spouses, eight grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. They grieve the loss of his earthly presence while celebrating the great gift of his long, fruitful life. A memorial service will be held on April 28 at 3:00 pm at the Community Mennonite Church, 70 S. High Street, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

C. married Ruth Smith in 1945. Ruth (daughter of Perry Smith and Susanna Brenneman Smith) was born on 24 Nov 1919 in Lima OH; died on 7 Jun 1997 in Harrisonburg, VA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

OBITUARY

Daily Press
June 10, 1997

RUTH S. KRAUS

HARRISONBURG ? Ruth S. Kraus, 77, of 1210 Harmony Drive, died Saturday, June 7, 1997, at her home in the afternoon.

She was born Nov. 24, 1919, in Lima, Ohio, and was the daughter of the late Perry and Susanna Brenneman Smith. She was baptized at the age of 11 in the Salem Mennonite Congregation and remained an active member of the Mennonite Church. She studied Bible and music at Goshen College. She married Norman Kraus on May 16, 1945.

A wife and mother, she worked as an office manager and bookkeeper at the Burkholder Dairy in Newport News, as a bookkeeper at the Durham, N.C., Public Health Department and as a secretary in the registrar?s office at Goshen College.

She was an active member of her church congregation teaching Sunday school and summer Bible school. She was active in the WMSC by helping with the local migrant program and teaching nutrition courses to women in a poverty-stricken area in the city of Goshen. She also served with the Oaklawn Psychiatric Center Women?s Auxiliary and the Assembly Mennonite Congregation, of which she was cofounder and charter member. She, along with her husband, made a number of teaching and pastoral missions abroad. She and Norman served with MBM for seven years in Japan; she was the treasurer of the mission from 1982 to 1987.

She moved to Harrisonburg in 1988 after her retirement and was an active member of the Park View Mennonite Church and helped with various local volunteer work.

She is survived by her husband, Norman Kraus of Harrisonburg; five children, Yvonne Forman of Hasting on Hudson, N.Y., Jo Anne Okamoto of Yonkers, N.Y., John Kraus of Greensboro, N.C., Bonnie Connelly of Sparta, N.J., and Robert Kraus of Chapel Hill, N.C.; one sister, who is the last of five siblings, Clara Dangler of Continental, Ohio; and eight grandchildren.

Mrs. Kraus will be cremated at the Kyger & Trobaugh Funeral Home Crematory in Harrisonburg. Interment will be private.

Notes:

In the early days Clyde was a plasterer.

Clyde married Phebe Kraus on 6 Dec 1922 in Hyattsville MD. Phebe (daughter of Abram Shenk and Fanny Coffman Shenk) was born on 26 Jan 1902 in Denbigh, VA; died on 24 Apr 1967 in Denbigh, VA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Perry married Susanna Brenneman Smith in 1905. Susanna (daughter of Joseph Brenneman and Catherine Musser Brenneman) was born on 2 Oct 1883; died in 1962 in Elida OH. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

He was in construction and did landscaping for the city. He was also a postman for a few years.

Samuel married Amanda Ella Hooley. Amanda (daughter of Daniel Hooley and Barbara Kauffman) was born on 10 Dec 1875 in Wayne Co, OH; died on 6 Jun 1939 in Hyattsville, MD. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Abram was a farmer and a deacon.

Abram married Fanny Coffman Shenk on 6 Mar 1890. Fanny (daughter of Bishop Samuel Coffman and Frances Weaver) was born on 30 Oct 1865 in Rockingham County, VA; died on 3 Jan 1904 in Denbigh, VA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Died of TB when Phebe was 3 yrs old.

Amos married Sarah Frances Good Schmidt. Sarah (daughter of Henry Good and Elisabeth Brunk Good) was born on 31 Mar 1852 in Rockingham County, Virginia, USA; died on 15 Jun 1891. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Joseph married Catherine Musser Brenneman. Catherine (daughter of Martin Musser and Anna Ummel) was born on 21 Dec 1840 in West Salem, Wayne County, Ohio, USA; died on 17 Nov 1900. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]