Myron S. Augsburger

Myron Shenk Augsburger was born on August 20, 1929, in Elida, Ohio, one of six children of Clarence and Estella Augsburger. His siblings were Fred, Donald, Anna Mary, Daniel and David. He grew up in a Mennonite farming community grounded in faith. In Elida he met Esther Kniss, whose family had returned from missionary service in India. Esther later recalled that their first date came when she was 15 and that her parents then limited them to one date a month, so the couple sat together on the school bus every day and went ice skating after school. They married in Elida on November 28, 1950.

Augsburger earned a Junior College Bible Diploma from Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1950, followed by an AB in 1955 and a ThB from Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 1958. He completed a Master of Divinity at Goshen Biblical Seminary in Goshen, Indiana, in 1959, then a ThM (1961) and ThD (1964) at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He did postgraduate work at George Washington University (1964), the University of Michigan (1965), the University of Basel in Switzerland (1974) and Mansfield College, Oxford (1980), and was scholar in residence at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1980 and 1981. He received ten honorary doctorates, the first from Houghton College in 1966.

Augsburger and Esther began their ministry at Tuttle Avenue Mennonite Church in Sarasota, Florida, a new congregation that Virginia Mennonite Conference asked them to lead. He later pastored in Richmond and Harrisonburg, Virginia. From 1955 to 1961 he preached with Christian Layman's Tent Evangelism, a Mennonite revival ministry, and from 1961 until 1996 he led city-wide evangelistic meetings with InterChurch, Inc., across the United States, Canada and Jamaica, at times drawing as many as 7,000 people. He preached at conventions of the Evangelical Fellowship of India in 1964, 1969 and 1973, lectured on some 60 campuses as a Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar, and spoke at the Mar Thoma Convention in Kerala, India, in 2008. In 1969 Time magazine named him one of the five most influential "preachers of an active gospel" in America.

Augsburger joined the Eastern Mennonite College faculty as professor of theology in 1963. In July 1965, at age 35, he became the fifth president of Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary, the youngest president in its history, and he served until 1980. He opened the campus to wider influences, launching an all-school seminar called "Discipleship in a Brave New World" in 1966 and bringing an international faculty member each year. An interdisciplinary, team-taught core curriculum titled "Christianity and Civilization" was introduced, and drama, instrumental music, intercollegiate athletics and off-campus programs in Washington, New York, Atlanta, Quebec and Mexico grew. The Hartzler Library and the Suter Science Center were built during his tenure, and the school changed its name to Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary. EMU development director Phil Helmuth later said Augsburger had the vision and stature to guide EMC from a rather insular school into a national player among Christian liberal arts colleges.

After a year at Princeton Theological Seminary, Augsburger and Esther accepted an invitation from the Mennonite Board of Missions to plant a church in Washington, D.C. Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill was named in March 1981, and he served on its pastoral staff until 1987. He was moderator of the Mennonite Church General Assembly from 1987 to 1989. In May 1988 he became president of the Christian College Coalition, today the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, serving roughly ninety Christian colleges. The coalition opened its Los Angeles Film Studies Center and partnered with the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Oxford during his tenure, which emphasised racial and ethnic diversity. Some member presidents questioned whether his focus on social justice and peace theology was pulling the coalition to the left. He led professors to lecture in Moscow in 1992 and worked with evangelical leaders on the Russian American Christian University. He later taught as an adjunct or guest professor at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Union Biblical Seminary in Pune, a college in Addis Ababa and the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia, and served as overseer for special ministries for Virginia Mennonite Conference.

Augsburger described himself in the Anabaptist tradition of Christ-centred discipleship and peacemaking. Time magazine called him a dedicated integrationist and pacifist in 1969. In 1972 he met U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird at the Pentagon to talk about the Vietnam War. He admired Billy Graham's ecumenical example of working beyond his own circles, and recalled Graham telling a Washington audience in the early 1980s that he was not a pacifist like Myron but had become a nuclear pacifist. In later years he urged Christians to respect people of other faiths while emphasising the uniqueness of Jesus, and to rediscover the primacy of the gospel so that ethics would come out of walking with Jesus. He served on boards including Evangelicals for Social Action, the Evangelical Environmental Network and Call for Renewal, and on the board of reference of Christians for Biblical Equality.

Augsburger was married to the artist and sculptor Esther Kniss Augsburger for more than 75 years. Esther received the first art degree awarded by Eastern Mennonite College, taught art and organised international conferences for Christian artists; with their son Michael she created the sculpture Guns Into Plowshares, made from thousands of handguns collected in Washington, D.C. The couple had three children, John, Michael and Marcia. Michael died before his father. Augsburger was known for his oratory, his memory for poems and scripture, raising swans, baking pies (Esther joked about his "Shooberry" pie), singing and planting trees, and he was a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Harrisonburg. From 2019 the couple lived at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in Harrisonburg.

Augsburger wrote more than 20 books. They include Called to Maturity (1960), Plus Living (1963), Invitation to Discipleship (1967), Faith for a Secular World (1968), the historical novel The Broken Chalice (1971), The Expanded Life (1972), Quench Not the Spirit, Principles of Biblical Interpretation in Mennonite Theology (1975), Walking in the Resurrection (1976), Faithful Unto Death (1978), Practicing the Presence of the Spirit (1982), Evangelism as Discipling (1983), Nuclear Arms with Dean Curry (1987), The Peacemaker (1987), The Christ Shaped Conscience (1990), The Deacon with his daughter Marcia (1990), How to Be a Christ Shaped Family with Esther, The Robe of God (2000), the Preacher's Commentary on Matthew, Soli Deo Gloria (2007), The Fugitive, a story of Menno Simons (2008), and The Kingdom Is for Real (2012). His novel Pilgrim Aflame, about the early Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler, became the basis of the film The Radicals, on which he is credited as a writer. He also contributed to the Mennonite Encyclopedia and to magazines such as Christianity Today.

Augsburger helped bring a once-separate Mennonite church into conversation with the wider American evangelical movement while keeping its witness for peace. His presidency reshaped Eastern Mennonite University, and he was a founder of both the Christian College Consortium and the body that became the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, which he later led. The congregations he helped start, Washington Community Fellowship, Community Mennonite Church and Park View Mennonite Church, continue, and generations of students, pastors and evangelists in North America, India, Africa and Europe cite his preaching and teaching.

Augsburger received ten honorary doctorates from Christian colleges, universities and seminaries, beginning with Houghton College on June 6, 1966. Time magazine listed him in 1969 among the five most influential "preachers of an active gospel" in America. He was a Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar and the featured Staley lecturer in 1986, and he held the title of president emeritus at Eastern Mennonite University.

Myron Augsburger died peacefully in October 2026 at the age of 97. His funeral home obituary gives the date as October 15, 2026, while WHSV, reporting Eastern Mennonite University's announcement on October 15, said he died on the Wednesday morning (October 14). A cause of death was not made public. He is survived by his wife Esther, his son John (Beverly Stauffer), his daughter Marcia (Steve Goff), granddaughters Lara Lyko and Caitlin White and their families, and his sister Anna Mary Good. McMullen Funeral Home is handling arrangements, and memorial service details are to be announced. His obituary closes with 2 Timothy 4:7: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."