Gerald Schlabach is an emeritus professor in the Department of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he taught for twenty years and also served for six years as chair of the Department of Justice and Peace Studies. Previously he taught history at Bluffton College, a Mennonite liberal arts college in Ohio. Gerald received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied ethics in the Department of Theology.
During much of the 1980s, he worked in Central America with Mennonite Central Committee, an organization dedicated to peace, justice, Christ-like service and global education. A Roman Catholic as of Pentecost 2004, Gerald is a Benedictine oblate, is deeply involved in the Bridgefolk movement for grassroots dialogue and unity between Mennonites and Catholics, and continues to call himself a “Mennonite Catholic.”
Gerald is married to Joetta Handrich Schlabach, editor of Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook, and former pastor of Faith Mennonite Church in Minneapolis. They now alternate between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala.