Frisian or Flemish, sprinkling or pouring?

In Russia, there were two groups of Mennonite settlers—the Flemish and the Frisians. Land scout Jacob Höppner was Flemish, and his partner Johann Bartsch was Frisian—that flipped later.

If you looked closely, the Frisian men in the 1820s wore long beards and their clothing had buttons; the Flemish were more conservative and only used hooks (note 1).

In church the differences were more pronounced. When baptizing, the Frisians sprinkled, whereas the Flemish poured. The latter required two character witnesses before baptism (note 2).

Before the first settlers left for Russia in 1788, the Frisian and Flemish Mennonite elders still had not settled the issue of intermarriage—in some cases requiring rebaptism.

The Flemish received communion from the elders sitting; the Frisians standing, followed with footwashing (note 3). The Frisians received the communion bread from the elder on a clean handkerchief and ate with caution and respect; the Flemish did not have that practice (note 4).

In both the Frisian and Flemish congregations “all knelt down in mental [silent] prayer” at the start of worship (note 5). The Flemish ministers sat and read a sermon; the Frisian ministers stood and were more free when preaching (note 6).

We know that in Prussia the Flemish did not sing at the communion service but sat quietly until the sermon began and departed “unsung” as well. Frisian Mennonites however sang “psalms and other Lutheran hymns,” Abraham Hartwich described in the early 1700s (note 7).

Relationships were hardly friendly between the Mennonite groups. Hartwich—a generally unsympathetic observer—noted that the Flemish found the Frisians to be too loose and referred to them as dirt- or manure-carts (Dreckwagen). Why? Because they accepted any kind of Mennonite.

Not to be undone, the Frisians referred disparagingly to their more rigorous Flemish brethren as “Münsterites,” for their rigorous and frequent application of the ban (note 8).

In 1819, a significant group from the newly created (1808) Prussian “United Frisian and Flemish Mennonite Church” arrived in Russia and established the Rudnerweide congregation on the eastern edge of the Molotschna.

The others in Molotschna deemed the group as Frisian; their push for ecumenical renewal, mission networks was foreign. The Flemish viewed their materials as innovations which were ultimately destructive to the fabric of Mennonite faith and life.

The rift came to a head in 1826 when Frisian Rudnerweide Elder Görz was asked by the elder-elect of the large Molotschna Flemish Church, Bernhard Fast, to preside over his ordination—by-passing the Flemish elder in Chortitza, and signaling a more united Flemish-Frisian Mennonite vision. In reaction, four ministers and three-quarters of the Flemish congregation left the newly ordained elder and church in Ohrloff to form the “Pure Flemish Church” (Reinflämische Gemeinde) or “Large Church,” led by Jacob Warkentin (note 9).

In the Flemish tradition, only the elder—not the preachers—were ordained with the laying on of hands (note 10).

The divisions and misunderstandings between the Flemish and Frisian Mennonites in Russia were largely healed by 1853 with the republishing of the 1660 “United Flemish, Frisian, and High German Anabaptist-Mennonite Confession” (“Rudnerweide Confession”)—just in time for the new divide between the secessionist Mennonite Brethren and the now “old church.”

The differences between the Flemish and Frisians ceased to be geographical or ethnic descriptors already in the 1580s. Even then the terms described two different parties in the church with a mix of ethnic backgrounds (note 11).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Illustration: Dirk Philips (1504-1568), the first elder of the Danzig Mennonites. Philips’ strong views on church discipline and the ban for the creation of a pure church contributed to the growing differences between Flemish and Frisian factions. His efforts to mend differences proved to be unsuccessful. Picture source: https://hdl.handle.net/11245/3.19322.

Note 1: Tobias Voth report copied in The New Evangelical Magazine, and Theological Review [London], 10 (March 1824) 91-92. https://books.google.ca/books?id=szoEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA91#v=onepage&q&f=false. The earlier traditions around beards and clothing changed over time in Prussia; cf. Hermann G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1569–1919 (Danzig, 1919), 111, https://archive.org/details/diedanzigermenno00mannuoft/page/n129/mode/2up?q=1808.

Note 2: "Ein alter Brauch," Mennonitische Blätter 59, no. 1 (1912), 5, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1912/1912-01d.JPG.

Note 3: Ibid., and also Voth, The New Evangelical Magazine.

Note 4: Abraham Hartwich, Geographisch-Historische Landes-Beschribung [sic] derer dreyen im Pohlnischen Preußen liegenden Werdern (Königsberg, 1723), 291, http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10000874.html. See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/communion-and-white-handkerchief.html.

Note 5: William Allen, Life of William Allen: With Selections from His Correspondence, vol. 1. (Philadelphia: Longstreth, 1847), 402, https://books.google.ca/books?id=bLUmXra1oWcC.

Note 6: "Ein alter Brauch," 5.

Note 7: Hartwich, Landes-Beschribung, 290.

Note 8: Cf. Hartwich, Landes-Beschribung, 279. See previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/munsterite-ultimate-mennonite-insult.html.

Note 9: Cf. letter from Molotschna elders and teacher Tobias Voth to Prussian church leaders, in Peter M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 135-141; esp. 137, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 10: Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 50f.

Note 11: For more on the early beginnings of both groups, see GAMEO https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Flemish_Mennonites, and https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Frisian_mennonites.

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To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Frisian or Flemish, sprinkling or pouring?," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 29, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/frisian-or-flemish-sprinkling-or-pouring.html.

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