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).

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