Blogger’s Note: I thought I had posted this the week following the Brethren in Christ Historical Society’s annual meeting on October 19, but it seems WordPress failed to do so. Apologies! In any case, here’s the brief report.
At Saturday’s Brethren in Christ Historical Society annual meeting, Clyde Martin — a leader in the United Zion Church, a denominational body descended from the eighteenth-century River Brethren movement — paid tribute to historian and churchman E. Morris Sider by invoking the term “patriarch”: one who commands respect for his age and great wisdom. Dr. Sider, he added, has earned this title because of the great wisdom he has evidenced in his careful yet voluminous writings on Brethren in Christ history.
Certainly the more than 200 people who gathered on Saturday night to honor Sider — the founding editor and executive director of the Historical Society — shared Martin’s sentiments. The evening was full of tributes — both prepared and impromptu — from a variety of people: friends and family members; former students; faculty and Historical Society colleagues; fellow teachers and church leaders. They praised Sider for (among other qualities) his deep knowledge, his servant’s heart, and his selfless devotion to the Historical Society and the church for many decades.
We’re hoping to publish all the prepared tributes in the April 2013 issue of Brethren in Christ History and Life. Stay tuned.
Dr. Morris Sider was one of my professors when I attended Messiah in the 1960s. As an English major, of course I had to take various English history courses. I learned a great deal about history from Morris, and also how to retell history from him. After I graduated, and returned as an instructor at Messiah, after grad school, Morris was then a colleague. It took me some time before I could comfortably switch from saying “Dr. Sider” to saying “Morris.”
Many thanks to Morris for setting such a high bar of a standard in retelling history.