Congregational Discipline: Trouble with "the Saints”

Gerhard Wiebe was elder of the Elbing-Ellerwalde (Polish-Prussia) Mennonite Church from 1778-1796, which includes the years of early immigration to Russia. His ministerial diary lists many names, and each comes with a story (note 1).

Wiebe’s accounts of church discipline are particularly revealing for helping us understand the first immigrant generation to New Russia.

After preaching the gospel, the elder's most important duty was discipline, and this elder kept note of everything. Wiebe’s cases included:

• regular incidences of drunkenness;

• bar-tending at “The Kruge” [pitcher / name of inn], with music and all manner of “wicked things”;

• leading an “immoral” lifestyle;

• dancing in “The Lame Hand” pub [?],

• stealing pigs;

• licentiousness and leading a worldly life;

• jeering and fist-fighting on the street;

• excessive agitation and anger (mixed with alcohol);

• forgery of payment records, non-payment of debts;

• engagement/ marriage to a Lutheran, or to a Frisian Mennonite;

• premarital intercourse (early arrival of baby for newlywed couple);

• adultery with a married woman; whoring;

• accusation of rape [?] made by a woman of ill-repute with beer involved;

• a woman who left her husband and refused to return;

• a man who lived with his widow’s daughter and then married her (wedding by a Reformed minister);

• a paternity accusation and request for support payment for child born out of wedlock;

• a woman who beat her maidservant multiple times and threw her out without payment;

• a man who verbally abused, choked and pushed down a pregnant woman on the street over a land rental contract, etc.

The accused were normally first required to appear before the ministers and elder after the church service, and then for a second offense, before the entire “brotherhood” for decision. They were asked to clarify, confess, apologize, reconcile and make a promise of improvement.

Some will think: “I can’t believe that this happened in a Flemish congregation!” The list of his Frisian counterpart, Elder Heinrich Donner from the Orlofferfelde Congregation is almost as interesting (note 2).

As far as Elder Wiebe was concerned, to warn and to apply congregational discipline to “obstinate and gross sinners,” i.e., members “living immorally and sinning against God’s commandments” was the next most significant formational task of the minister or elder after “pure and spotless” biblical preaching, teaching, baptism and communion (note 3).

As his colleague Flemish Elder Peter Epp in Danzig emphasized, it is the elder’s high duty to stand guard when others sleep, to admonish and call forth Christian responsibility and the pursuit of unity and perfection—not rashly, with rigour or in anger, but with a love of justice and truth, in kindness and with one’s own example, compassionately sharing in the need and misery of others (note 4).

Wiebe, Donner and Epp were each trained in “the lap of the congregation” (note 5) and together display a recurring emphasis in Mennonite ministry: to form a disciplined, visible “pure and spotless” church which can be a light to the world as they await patiently a new kingdom of righteousness. It is the community that is saved, and that is why it is separated. “You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming … Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him” (2 Peter 3:11–14).

Despite these convictions, the Prussian elders offered little support to their people leaving for Russia in the first years. Elder Peter Epp was willing to join the settlers but died before leaving Danzig. The first group to settle Chortitza seemed to be a similarly mixed bag. Some early “troublemakers landed in jail until they came to their senses” (note 6). Heinrich Heese, who married into the Mennonites, knew the first settlers well, and years later was unimpressed with many: ignorant, discontented, distrustful, abusive and lethargic (note 7)!

"None but saints"? These diaries can make Mennonites more honest in their story-telling, and help us better understand the leadership intentions and nature of the church community from which the early Russian Mennonites had their beginnings (note 8).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pic 1: Elbing City, 1720 (Merian), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbl%C4%85g#/media/File:Elbl%C4%85g-_miedzioryt_z_XVIII_wieku.jpg .

Pic 2: Rembrandt, 1641, Portrait of the Dutch Mennonite preacher Cornelius Claesz Anslo and his wife Aaltje Gerritsdr Shouten.

Note 1: Gerhard Wiebe, “Verzeichniß der gehaltenen Predigten samt andern vorgefallenen Merkwürdigkeiten in der Gemeine Gottes in Elbing und Ellerwald von Anno 1778 d. 1. Januar.” Transcriptions from the original by Willi Risto, https://chortitza.org/Buch/Risto1.pdf. ALSO Ingrid Lamp: https://mla.bethelks.edu/Prussian%20Polish.../wiebe.html.

Note 2: Heinrich Donner and Johann Donner, Orlofferfelde Chronik, transcribed by Werner Janzen, 2010. From Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, Prussian-Polish sources (online), https://mla.bethelks.edu/Prussi.../orlofferfeldechronik.html.

Note 3: G. Wiebe, “Verzeichniß,” 162, 171.

Note 4: Peter Epp, “Abschiedspredigt von Peter Epp, gehalten am 2. August 1789,” in Diese Steine: Die Russlandmennoniten, edited by Adina Reger and Delbert Plett, 20–21 (Steinbach, MB: Crossway, 2001), 20-21, https://www.plettfoundation.org/publications/diese-steine-die-russlandmennoniten/. One the tasks of an elder to keep the congregation pure, in peace and harmony, and to punish the quarrelsome, cf. hymn for the installation of a new elder in: Geistreiches Gesangbuch, zur öffentlichen und besondern Erbauung der Mennonitischen Gemeine in und vor der Stadt Danzig (Marienwerder, West Preußen, 1780), no. 298, http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=8000.

Note 5: The training of ministers and elders is noted in Prussian government documents copied in Georg von Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck, Beiträge zur Kenntniß der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Europa und Amerika, Part I (Berlin, 1821), 279, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009717700.

Note 6: George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland, vol. 1 (Lage: Logos, 1997), 90f.

Note 7: Heinrich Heese, et al., “Das Chortitzer Mennonitengebiet 1848: Kurzgefasste geschichtliche Übersicht der Gründung und des Bestehens der Kolonien des Chortitzer Mennonitenbezirkes,” https://chortitza.org/Ber1848.php#Eg.

Note 8: A few ministerial diaries from Russian Mennonite period survived and have been deemed worthy of translation and publication. Cf. Jacob D. Epp, A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880, translated and edited by Harvey L. Dyck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013); Diaries of David Epp: 1837–1843, translated and edited by John B. Toews (Vancouver, BC: Regent College, 2000).

Comments

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws. It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement! In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...

Diary of Johann Jantzen, 1843-1903

Johann Jantzen was born in 1823 in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, West Prussia, resided in Neuendorf near Danzig, and migrated late to Russia (1869), then Central Asia, and finally in 1884 to Nebraska, USA. He died in 1903. Decades later his descendants translated his diary of notable annual highlights, entitled: Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839 ( note 1 ). The little West Prussian villages he names regularly are familiar place to many with Russian Mennonite family history: Schönau, Neu Münsterberg, Schönsee, Lakendorf, Neuteicherwalde, etc. While most Russian Mennonite families left Prussia much earlier than Jantzen, his diary offers a picture of the typical rhythm of life that Mennonites lived in West Prussia over generations. It also offers something I did not expect. The revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a local impact which he mentions, and he gives us a hint as to the other political highlights and episodes of civil unrest that were on the mind...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog