At the University of Waterloo's fall 2008 convocation, he was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus, an honor seldom bestowed on retired faculty.
His doctoral dissertation, directed by Gregory Baum, was a comparative and contrasting study of the political ramifications of theology in the respective thinking of Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich.
Reimer's own theology was not typically Mennonite (vis-à-vis John Howard Yoder),[5] in that his point of departure was not the Sermon on the Mount but the classical imagination of trinitarian orthodoxy.
[8] While writing his doctoral dissertation, Reimer became deeply troubled and conflicted about the theology of Emanuel Hirsch, a German Christian nationalist and Nazi sympathizer.
[10] His very first book was a revision of his doctoral dissertation, titled The Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich Debate: A Study in the Political Ramifications of Theology.