John Horsch was born in
Germany in Giebelstadt near
Würzburg to Elder Jacob Horsch and his wife Barbara Landes. He married Christine Funck and was the father of three sons and a daughter,
Elizabeth Horsch Bender, wife of
Harold S. Bender.[1]
John Horsch studied for two years at the Bavarian State Agricultural School at Würzburg, graduating with a diploma in 1886. To avoid
military service, he emigrated to the United States in 1887. He was employed by
John F. Funk in the Mennonite Publishing Company, where he did much of the editorial work on German language publications from 1887 to 1895. He then served on the editorial staff of the Light and Hope Publishing Company of Cleveland, Ohio, before moving on to the Mennonite Publishing House of Scottsdale Pennsylvania, where he worked from 1908 to 1941. He worked as an editor and writer on history and theology for 55 years. He passed to his reward on October 7, 1941.[2]
Works
A Short History of Christianity, 1902
Menno Simons : His Life, Labors and Teachings, Scottdale, PA, 1916.
Infant Baptism : Its Origin among Protestants and the Arguments Advanced for and against, Scottdale, PA, 1917.
Modern Religious Liberalism : The Destructiveness and Irrationality of Modernist Theology, Chicago, 1924.
The Principle of Nonresistance as Held by the Mennonite Church : An Historical Survey, Scottdale, PA, 1927
The Hutterian Brethren 1528-1931, Goshen, Indiana, 1931.
Menno Simons' Life and Writings, a Quadricentennial Tribute, 1536-1936, Scottdale, Pa., 1936.