This year’s C. Henry Smith Peace Lecture at Bluffton University will address the 20th-century Mennonite historian for whom it is named.

Dr. Perry Bush, a professor of history at Bluffton, will examine “The Professor as Peacemaker: C. Henry Smith and the Mennonite Intellectual Tradition, 1920-1948” at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 3, in Founders Hall. The presentation is free and open to the public.

The author of a forthcoming book about Smith, Bush will outline the important part he played in the development of an emerging new role for Mennonites early in the 20th century—as public intellectual. Smith pioneered the role through a long and increasingly busy public speaking career after World War I. His growing prominence crested in the late 1930s as he developed a following across the church, in many secular circles and even on regional radio. In his public activism, he advocated a consistent Mennonite peace position as the world again turned to war.

Bush will also discuss another role in Smith’s peace advocacy—as a voice for unity within Mennonite churches in a time of deep division. In light of current struggles within the broader Mennonite church, he will assert that Smith’s voice and role as a leading church intellectual may be increasingly relevant.

Bush’s next book, to be published in September, is “Peace, Progress and the Professor: The Mennonite History of C. Henry Smith.” It is his fourth, joining “Rust Belt Resistance: How a Small Community Took on Big Oil and Won” (2012), “Dancing with the Kobzar: Bluffton College and Mennonite Higher Education” (2000) and “Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in Modern America” (1998). His Ph.D. and master’s degree, both in U.S. social history, are from Carnegie Mellon University, and he has taught U.S. history as a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine.

Smith taught at Bluffton for 35 years, from 1913-48, after spending 10 years at Goshen College. After his death in 1948, his estate established a trust in his name that funds projects—including the lectureship—that promote the Mennonite peace message.