"Should Holy Baptism be offered to Deaf-Mutes (1886)?”

In 1886 the General Conference of the Mennonite Congregations in Russia (elders and ministers) adopted the following resolution: “A deaf-mute who desires Holy Baptism may be baptized, providing he is not an idiot (blödsinnig), and an understanding of baptism is first introduced to him as far as possible” (note 1).

A. G. Ambarzumov, a Protestant Armenian who had been trained in Germany and Switzerland for teaching the deaf, started a small initiative in the Mennonite “Molotschna Settlement” in Ukraine/South Russia in the 1870s. After a difficult start, benefactors in the Molotschna embraced the idea of a larger institution for the deaf—the first such institution in South Russia--especially because of the demonstrable results produced in the lives of students.

“After only four months, Herr Ambarzumov could demonstrate encouraging results; the students were able to pronounce almost all vowels and consonants and speak and write some words" (note 2).

The institution's name--"Mary School for the Deaf" (Marien-Taubstummenschule) was chosen to commemorate the silver anniversary of the reign of Alexander II, and as a demonstration of Mennonite loyalty and willingness to contribute to the state. Alexander's wife was the German-bashing, Danish-born Russian Empress Maria Fjodorowna.

Similar training schools for the deaf were established during this time in England, Germany and the USA. For those motivated by faith “it was justified as providing access to the New Testament, the path of salvation,” equivalent to the “education of the ‘savages’ of the New World” (note 3). The private initiative in Molotschna was officially transferred to the General Conference of the Mennonite Congregations in Russia in 1884 under the oversight of the Molotschna Mennonite School Board.

After a second, well-attended public examination of deaf students in the Ohrloff Mennonite Church in 1886, “those who to this point had doubted the possibility that deaf-mutes could learn anything, were now convinced on the basis of these achievements" (note 4).

That same month in 1886 the General Conference of the Mennonite Congregations in Russia (elders and ministers) adopted the resolution above.

In 1905, its director proudly reported on three graduates ready for faith and life, who “now understand wherefore they live and recognize their responsibilities to God and their neighbour, and that one day they too will have to give an account before God for all they do or leave undone” (note 5). That year the school prepared for a fourth class of ten students—almost all from the larger Mennonite community.

What was the thinking of the times?

If persons can understand the gospel and also understand the call to discipleship, then they are "accountable," and need to/can make a decision for faith and baptism, or not. Until then Mennonites would have assumed that "deaf-mutes" cannot hear the gospel, they cannot read the New Testament, they cannot articulate a confession of their faith in word or in writing, and so they are like children--under God's care, of course, but not accountable for a decision of faith, for which a request to be baptized is the sign.

Notably in traditional Mennonite inheritance practice, deaf-mutes, as well as epileptics, the intellectually disabled, physically handicapped and the blind traditionally received a double-inheritance (note 6).

Addendum

Fast forward some decades. Mennonites lost control of all social institutions after the 1918 Communist Revolution, but the school remained a school for the deaf. These children however were murdered during German occupation. Ben Stobbe writes in his travel blog (2017):

“On the way to Tiege in the Orlovo area, we passed the memorial monument to the 131 deaf and mute children who were killed by the Nazis in WWII. It is a tribute to Ukrainians in this area in that they wanted a monument to remember the children. At the top of this monument is a bell that rings in the wind. Etched around and near top of the monument are children's faces. The chiming bell reminds us of the children.” (Note 7)

This is consistent with what we know otherwise about the Nazi regime: those born deaf were categorized as “defective” and “biologically inferior human material” and typically sterilized. Schools for the deaf were considered a product of Christian sentimentality in which “the greater the degree of idiocy, feeblemindedness, blindness, deafness or other physical handicap was, the greater the public expenditure for these biologically inferior people” (note 8). The singular goal of the Nazi "genetic health policy" was “to give back and maintain the health, resilience, and performance capacity of the German Volk”—and “no clear and rationally thinking fellow German national has ever doubted the legitimacy of racial legislation,” according to a rationale published for the ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in the Nazi paper read by Mennonites in Ukraine. The policy “has resulted not only in an increased birth rate and a considerable decline in unsuitable elements, but has also impacted, among other things, the crime statistics,” according to the unnamed author (note 9).

But for at least four decades Mennonites in Russia had embraced these so-called weaknesses as important for them as an Anabaptist-Mennonite community. On her death bed in 1884, the unwed estate heiress Helene Schröder willed 6,000 rubles to help establish the Mary School for the Deaf, 6,000 rubles to secure the future of the Ohrlof High School Library, and 6,000 to overseas mission (note 10).

Follow the money: passion for education, charitable work (“inner mission”), and foreign mission were all connected, and marked the self-identity and sense of worth of the larger Mennonite community in this era—including the baptism of those formerly thought to be blödsinnig.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Heinrich Ediger, ed., Beschlüsse der von den geistlichen und anderen Vertretern der Mennonitengemeinden Rußlands abgehaltenen Konferenzen für die Jahren 1879 bis 1913 (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1914), 21, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/MJ/MK1.pdf.

Note 2: Abraham Görz, “Kurzgefaßter Bericht über die Marienschule für Taubstumme in Blumenort in Südrußland,” in H. G. Mannhardt, ed., Jahrbuch der Altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten-Gemeinden, 143–147 (Danzig, 1888), 145, https://books.google.ca/books?id=ok5FAQAAMAAJ&dq&fbclid. For more background information, cf. Margarita Dick, "'Marien- Taubstummenschule' in Tiege, Molotschna," https://chortitza.org/Buch/MDick.pdf.

Note 3: Jan Branson and Don Miller, Damned for their Difference. The Cultural Construction of Deaf People as ‘Disabled’ (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002), 125f., https://books.google.ca/books?id=KBaFchM0dowC&dq.

Note 4: Görz, “Kurzgefaßter Bericht über die Marienschule für Taubstumme," 145.

Note 5: Johann Wiebe, “Werte Freunde!” Report, School for the Deaf, Tiege, July 1905. In Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 3450, reel 75. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.

Note 6: Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 809, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/page/n845.

Note 7: From http://benstobbe.blogspot.com/2017/05/. One Mennonite doctor participated in the requested examination of these children before their killing; cf .Dmytro Myeshkov, “Mennonites in Ukraine before, during, and immediately after the Second World War,” in European Mennonites and the Holocaust, edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 217f.

Note 8: Karl Lietz, “The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich,” in Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, edited by Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman, 114–120 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002), 117, https://books.google.ca/books?id=8d56MtJWQ7sC&dq.

Note 9: “Schutz gegen Volkszerfall,” Ukraine Post, no. 8 (February 27, 1943), 4, https://libraria.ua/en/numbers/878/32422/.

Note 10: See editorial note (attached) to “Drei Landgüter mennonitischer Gutsbesitzer,” Mennonitische Rundschau (January 28, 1885), 2n., https://chortitza.org/kb/eklas114.pdf.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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