Russian Mennonites: A People of Peace and a People of Witness

One way of explaining well who a certain group of people is, is by looking at the unique set of questions they kept on asking, generation after generation. What peculiar issues did Russian Mennonites (or earlier in Prussia) keep struggling with in each new context? What were their experiments as community?

Of course the answers differed in each place and time, and the arguments were divisive. Some experiments failed. Utterly.

Below are two basic sets of questions that Mennonites asked over and again in each generation in Russia/Ukraine. The questions, I would suggest, were unique to their experience; that is, the other Christian communities in their context--Lutheran, Pietist, Catholic and Orthodox--were asking different sets questions

First, and perhaps least surprising, Mennonites in Russia/Ukraine kept asking / being concerned about non-resistance, about being a people who took those New Testament admonitions of peace seriously, and did not return evil for evil, seek revenge or kill.

Mennonites only chose to come to Russia after they were assured that their sons would not be conscripted. In the 1870s, one-third of all Russian Mennonites left for North America when this was threatened. Those who stayed, only stayed because the option of alternative service was offered to the entire community.

And when war, revolution or anarchy was closer, it is easy to document the following questions they struggled with:

What are possible strategies of response when our country is at war? Eg., Russia's war with Japan 1904-5; Is our Alternative Service/ forestry work enough? Should we be sending medics and doctors? Should we collect money for a widows fund? What kind messages of support do we send to the Tsar, etc.
How do we organize and present ourselves politically with a changed government, and seek conscientious objector options? E.g., after 1905 revolution and after the 1918 February Revolution;
What do we owe our government and neighbours in times of war? E.g., the Crimean war, 1853-6; Mennonites tended the wounded (quota for each village), sent wagon loads of feed and food to the front (quota for each village), etc. Mennonites honoured the Tsar and his soldiers and prayed for their victory.
What privileges for conscientious objection are legitimate in a democracy where all citizens share the same rights and responsibilities? E.g., after 1918 February Revolution/.
Can a people committed to non-resistance take up arms in self-defense, or when there is no legitimate government? E.g., after 1918.
Is there a moral difference between self-defense and military engagement (e.g., Selbstschutz and White Army), between self-defense and wars of religion or wars of revenge?
(After recognzed failure, 1920) How does a Christian community confess the sin of its people, repent of grievous wrongdoing, and rediscover its peace bearings again?

These are only a few of the "peace" or "non-resistance" questions Mennonites in Russia struggled with. Whether a next generations like their answers or not and, e.g., are angry about the Selbstschutz or not, it is always an argument that Russian Mennonites found important to have, even as they disagreed.

Second, Mennonites in Russia struggled with a sense of call to be a people of Christian "witness". This set of questions is connected to the first.

At risk of sounding too pious, it must be noted that the concern and determination to be "salt and light" a "model" and "city of the hill" is mentioned time and again in materials from Prussia and Russia.

If they were the "quiet in the land" in Polish-Prussia, it was both a strategy for survival but also stance for witness in more or less toxic or potentially toxic environments: be quiet, be subject, return good for evil, work hard, do not offend, and be patient or long-suffering. (E.g., summary advice from Prussian Elder Gerhard Wiebe to those leaving for New Russia).

While words were important, early preachers from Jacob Denner in Danzig to business people like Johann Cornies in South Russia always mentioned deeds as powerful forms of Christian witness that should at least awaken curiosity in the "Turk, the Jew, and the Gentile" (Denner)--or for Cornies--the Nogai and Jew for example, and be model to others Christian groups.

Curiously while the individual is always being "admonished" in the Mennonite sermon, it is not so individualistic. (This changes toward the 1860s and with the MB movement). Rather, it always seems to be more about forming a people who as a whole are a model and witness to the kingdom of God.

At the most basic level, this usually meant communities marked by orderliness, no one goes hungry, hard work, people of upright behaviour and character etc.

But at another level they are were always also struggling with how to identify and navigate the pressures/options of patriotism, nationalism, and assimilation. In Russia there are very heated debates and fears (or hopes) about education, for example, which are all really rooted in these deeper values. There were different types of "conservatives"--Chortitza elders, Molotschna Old Flemish, Kleine Gemeinde, the whole Bergthal colony, who raised flags about the pace of change, by and large for the sake of unchanging identity.

The questions continued: What are the costs and benefits of adaptation, acts of non-violent protest like mass emigration, or even rebellion for the sake of Christian witness?

Toward the late 1800s early 1900s other forms of these two related concerns arose:

Is it even possible to be apolitical? How might the church identify and negotiate tolerable compromises in inhospitable environments, or when the church is under surveillance? How does a community stay alert to seductive or toxic forces of nationalism in competition to its own confession? What role can a church-based press play, especially in the chaos? How should a faith community respond to “fake news” and propaganda? Do Mennonites have a sufficient theology of the state?

These were all hard questions, and they were all asked and debated by Mennonites in Russia, usually in relation to a real sense of calling to give witness as a Christian community.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

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From USSR to Cherrywood Station: Mennonites winter in Markham-Stouffville, 1924

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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