Widows, refugees, the unchurched, orphans and decommissioned soldiers: Building Church in Neuland, Paraguay

They were in unchartered waters when the Neuland (Colony) Mennonite Church in Paraguay was organized on November 12, 1947 under the innovative leadership of Hans Rempel (1908-2001).

Rempel was ordained during German occupation of Ukraine, when “simple, untrained men and women called the believers together, read the Word, sang, and prayed” (note 1).

And for the others? In resettlement camps in Warthegau (annexed Poland) Rempel was encouraged by Heinrich Winter, the "last elder of Chortitza" to “make a new beginning ... like a farmer breaking up hard unplowed ground” (Jeremiah 4:3).

After the refugees arrived in Paraguay in 1947, the church issues were many and the need for innovation was urgent.

First, what should be the role of women in church leadership? The tradition was very restrictive. The men however were largely missing and many of the women had experience of leadership in the re-establishment of church services during the German occupation of Russia. Innovation in this regard was however minimal.

Second, before the Stalin-era church marriage ceremonies had been restricted to members of the congregation, which in effect was the entire adult community. In Neuland, however, up to 40% of individuals sixteen years and older were unbaptized in 1950 (note 2).

The younger immigrants had spent their entire youth under an atheistic regime, suffered the disintegration of church life under Stalin, were heavily exposed to the ideology of National-Socialism, and had experienced so much loss and grief that a feeling of God's absence of God was more real than God’s presence. Not all of the refugees who were ready to marry were at the same time ready to count themselves amongst the baptized.

However some concerns were more trivial and easier to handle, for example:

Third, in the post-war refugee camps and on board the refugee ships there were many who participated in open prayer meetings, often encouraged by the Mennonite Central Committee representatives. But prayer meetings outside of worship were seen as an innovation by some of the older members, who in pre-World War I Russia had been taught to pray in secret (Matthew 6:5-6).

Fourth, in order to build-up the scattered community, the Neuland ministerial established a regular pot-luck lunch after worship on the first Sunday of the month. This too was challenged by some who could not connect this innovation to their memory of church.

The fifth and most difficult issue was the problem of re-marriage.

“Women with their children had to piece together a new existence alone, build their houses, drive their oxen and horses, and clear the brush. And then there were the men whose families had been sent back to Russia. They were without women to help them with household work. Many were trapped in these almost insoluble problems, and they entered into new marriage-like relationships without having dissolved their marriages with the separated partner.” (Note 3)

Initially the congregation excommunicated such individuals; but on July 17, 1949 a regulation was unanimously passed by the Conference of Mennonites in South America that allowed remarriage under specific conditions: If marriage partners have been separated from each other for seven years and have had no communication during this time; or if the spouse living in the Soviet Union or its controlled territories has remarried or is in a common-law marriage. Persons who are already living common-law but whose seven years waiting period has not yet been completed, may only be legally married after the seven-year period has expired for both individuals. In these cases individuals were allowed to be baptized in good faith and have their new marriages blessed by the community of faith.

Opportunity was also given for individuals to confess any guilt and to be granted forgiveness by the congregation. However congregational members were forbidden to enter into new marriage relationships if they knowingly had a spouse living overseas who had not remarried (note 4).

Some twenty-eight members who could not accept these changes around remarriage left to form their own church, the short-lived Chortitzer Mennonite Church.

Sixth, intra-Mennonite denominational differences: On April 4, 1948, Neuland held its first baptismal service at a farmstead with a larger than average barn in the village of Lichtenau, Neuland (note 5).

"A large number of the people singing the hymns have personally experienced the faith and testing about which they sing. Many of them have come through the fires of persecution and have been tested by the agonies of famine, warfare, revolution, terror, imprisonment, flight, separation from loved ones ... . Hymns such as these have helped to sustain them and have given them courage through long seasons of suffering." (Note 6)

Soon after baptisms began, the old divide between Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren churches reared its head again, connected too to aid dollars. B. B. Janz, the inspirational leader of the 1920s emigration from the USSR, was present in Paraguay when the first refugees arrived 1947 and insisted that all MB churches adhere strictly to immersion baptism, and that all persons baptized by another mode be re-baptized. This caused unnecessary bitter feelings and harmed mutual respect and cooperation. Refugees had all but forgotten this division in their common suffering (or never knew of it to begin with). Moreover in the resettlement camps in Warthegau (annexed Poland) in 1944, Benjamin Unruh (baptized MB) was absolutely clear with new leaders (all were under his tutelage) that that old division must not be reintroduced. But here the opportunity for birthing something new was thwarted.

Seventh: What does a Mennonite congregation do with decommissioned soldiers? Initially this was not a problem. All of the Mennonite men Rempel's age or younger had been German soldiers. But with time, it was important for Rempel to recover this part of the tradition with a major publication for a next generation:

"I was heavily wounded and taken behind the lines. I did not have to shoot anyone; this was God’s gracious provision to me. That being said ... the peace witness of our Mennonite people was indeed heavily assaulted. In the storm and stress of this terrible time it was also widely forgotten. But it was not eradicated; our people recall it ... . Because they are asking, especially in our student circles, I have gratefully undertaken this compilation [on Russian Mennonite alternative service]." (Note 7)

Rempel's account is free of all judgement on those many young men who were plucked from their families and villages and thrown into the war. But it is also a confession that the church was under heavy attack, and in the confusion lost its direction. In the 1970s, Rempel was confident that the church would recover its historic peace witness (note 8).

During this time in Paraguay Rempel was pastor to (my uncle) Walter Bräul--a German soldier at age 16--who grew up under Stalin and had no experience of church. I interviewed Walter years later, and he was grateful that unlike some other faith leaders in the colonies, Rempel had an open mind. And that won him over. And for my mother who was younger, the struggle before her baptism was with "forgiving even Stalin" who had brought so much grief to the family. Here too Rempel was a faithful counsellor. 

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Hans Rempel, “Vom Anfang der Mennonitengemeinde in Neuland," in 25 Jahre Kolonie Neuland, 1947–1972, edited by Walter Regehr, 65–78( Karlsruhe: Schneider, 1972), 85.

Note 2: J. Winfield Fretz, Pilgrims in Paraguay: The Story of Mennonite Colonization in South America (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1953), 87, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001448782.

Note 3: Rempel, “Vom Anfang der Mennonitengemeinde in Neuland,” 69.

Note 4: Cf. Rempel, “Vom Anfang der Mennonitengemeinde in Neuland,” 69–71.

Note 5: Rempel, “Vom Anfang der Mennonitengemeinde in Neuland,” 67f.

Note 6: Fretz, Pilgrims in Paraguay, 90; also 98f.

Note 7: Hans Rempel, Waffen der Wehrlosen: Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in der UdSSR (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 1980), 147f.

Note 8: H. Rempel, Waffen der Wehrlosen, 148.

Pic 1: Hans Rempel, from idem, Waffen der Wehrlosen; Pic 2: Volendam Colony, in P. and E. Dyck, Up from the Rubble; Pic 3: Regehr, 25 Jahre Kolonie Neuland.