Forgotten Practice of Footwashing

The most important and influential Prussian Mennonite leader in a century, Danzig Elder Georg Hansen, taught in the late 1600s that footwashing is “necessary for salvation (Seeligkeit)”—symbolic of the community’s deep commitment to humility and mutual service as a strategy for establishing the Lord’s kingdom. In this regard, he echoed Danzig’s first Anabaptist elder, Dirk Philips, a century earlier (note 1). He shaped a tradition.

Hansen “disciplined” an accomplished but haughty (in Hansen’s perspective) portrait painter in the congregation in 1697, for example, for painting “graven images,” and barred him from communion, footwashing, and membership meetings (note 2).

A century later, a new confession of faith was published by Elbing Mennonite Elder Gerhard Wiebe in 1792, which was taken to Russia and reprinted for another century and more (note 3). While the government is a divine ordinance to obey, according to this tradition, it is ultimately through a servant people that God will bring the world to himself: thus the poor are to be zealously cared for, and with footwashing the community reminds itself to follow the Lord’s example and “serve one another in humility and love.”

A 1888 yearbook gives information on all Russian Mennonite congregations, and notes which ones practice footwashing and which ones do not (note 4). It was practiced in Gnadenfeld, Halbstadt, Herzenberg, Waldheim, Alexanderwohl, Karasan (Crimea), Molotschna Mennonite Brethren (four times per year); "not typically" in Pordenau or Rudnerweide, for example, and not at all in Chortitza.

The 1911 Ministers’ Manual (Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen) gives sample services for footwashing (before or after communion) while noting that many congregations do not practice footwashing (note 5).

While Menno Simons mentioned footwashing only twice—he does not insist on it like Dirk Philips—he does highlight mutual aid, for example, which “is the only sign whereby a true Christian may be known … All those who are born of God, who are gifted with the Spirit of the Lord, … are prepared by such love to serve their neighbors, not only with money and goods, but … in an evangelical manner with life and blood” (note 6).

Why did (most) Russian Mennonites practice footwashing? It connected baptismal vows, a Mennonite understanding of Lord’s Supper, and the ever-present emphasis on discipleship and mutual care.

Following the Ministers’ Manual (1911), preparation for participation in the Lord’s Supper in a “worthy manner” (1 Corinthians 11: 29) included “earnest, humble, and prayerful self-examination,” mutual confession and the holy duty of reconciliation with the neighbour—“so that brotherly love is awakened and multiplied amongst us.” This normally culminated in footwashing and a collection for the poor. The communion service then concluded with an exhortation to faithful discipleship (note 7).

Footwashing is no longer practiced widely among Mennonites with this history through Russia—and with that a formational practice lost, and maybe more. But thinking about it does help to understand the unique legacy of this tradition and who those ancestors were or at least tried to be.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Image: Footwashing scene of the Old Flemish Mennonites at Zaandam, The Netherlands, engraving, ca. 1743, by Jacob Folkema, https://picryl.com/media/voetwassing-bij-de-oude-vlaamse-doopsgezinden-te-zaandam-ca-1740-048121.

Note 1: Georg Hansen, Confession oder Kurtze und einfältige Glaubens-Bekänetenüsse derer Mennonisten in Preußen, so man nennet die Clarichen (1678), question 35. http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?from=rss&id=35959. Cf. also Dirk Philips, The Writings of Dirk Philips, 1504–1568, translated and edited by Cornelius J. Dyck et al. (Waterloo, ON: Herald, 1992), 367f.

Note 2: For primary texts with analyses, see Hans Rudolf Lavater, “Der Danziger Maler Enoch I Seemann, die Danziger Mennoniten und die Kunst,” Mennonitica Helvetica 36 (2013), 11–97. Renowned Canadian novelist Rudy Wiebe has put the story of Enoch Seemann, Mennonite artist, into a beautiful historical narrative in: Sweeter than all the World (Toronto: Jackpine, 2001), 111–136. https://books.google.ca/books?id=UAonPMyassYC&dq. See previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/1690s-scandal-in-danzig-flemish-church.html.

Note 3: Glaubensbekenntniß der Mennoniten in Preußen und Rußland (Berdjansk, 1874), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/bekent74.pdf.

Note 4: H. G. Mannhardt, ed., Jahrbuch der Altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten-Gemeinden (Danzig, 1888), https://books.google.ca/books?id=ok5FAQAAMAAJ&dq.

Note 5: Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zunächst für die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Rußland, Allgemeiner Konferenz der Mennoniten in Rußland (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1911), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/264.097%20Al34h/.

Note 6: Menno Simons, Complete Writings of Menno Simons, edited by J. C. Wenger (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1984) 558; also 559 (different pagination online: http://www.mennosimons.net/fulltext.html).

Note 7: Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdientlichen Handlungen, 21, 49, 83.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Forgotten Practice of Footwashing," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 29, 2023,

Comments

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 ...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...

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...

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...

Nazi German love for Mennonites in Ukraine. Why?

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

Eduard Wüst: A “Second Menno”?

Arguably the most significant outside religious influence on Mennonite s in the 19th century was the revivalist preaching of Eduard Wüst, a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the separatist Evangelical Brethren Church in New Russia in 1843 ( note 1 ). With the end-time prophesies of a previous generation of Pietists (and many Mennonites) coming to naught, Wüst introduced Germans in this area of New Russia to the “New Pietism” and its more individualistic, emotional conversion experience and sermons on the free grace of God centred on the cross of Christ ( note 2 ). Wüst’s 1851 Christmas sermon series give a good picture of what was changing ( note 3 ). His core agenda was to dispel gloom (which maybe could describe more traditional Mennonites) and induce Christian joy. This is the root impulse of the Mennonite Brethren beginnings years later in 1860. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap ( hüpfen ) ...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog