Too lazy to go to church? You could be fined!

In New Russia church attendance for foreign colonists was obligatory.
Colonists were required to take the religious commandments and teachings of their tradition to heart, and to follow them scrupulously.
If a colonist was uninterested or “lazy” with regard to church attendance, there could be trouble. First they received a warning; after the third offence the colonist could be fined. After that, the fine is doubled, and the person would be required to do a full day of community service as punishment (note 1).

This policy for foreign settlers was enforced. The circular distributed to the German Lutheran and Catholic villages of the Sarata Colony, Bessarabia (near Crimea) in 1844 and 1845 is highly detailed (see below). The document contents are included in the historical collection of Mennonite leader Benjamin Unruh (note 2).

In the circular letter from the Sarata district mayor, the policy above is quoted with some angry words about how lazy and disobedient people had been in the past year (1845). Church attendance was sometimes very pitiful in Sarata, with only 3 to 6 adult worshipers. On one Sunday, 4 wagons passed the pastor going in the other direction! To address this, the district office chose to forbid anyone from entering or leaving the colony after 8 am on Sunday.

For the Mennonite colonies no similar document on church attendance has been identified yet; however we know that the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists intervened in Mennonite church affairs on more than a few occasions. Under Johann Cornies, chairman of the powerful Agricultural Society, a church elder was disposed and his congregation dismantled (note 3).

In another case, Guardianship Committee President von Hahn and Cornies pressured three elders and fourteen ministers to sign a letter drafted by Cornies’ office declaring a new elder “unworthy of his office and demanding him not to officiate any longer.” The offending Elder Heinrich Wiens was to be removed for resettlement to Siberia, but managed to flee to Prussia after almost three months house arrest in the German village of Prischib (note 4).

   The state's expectation of the various non-Orthodox religious institutions was to instill moral behaviour and social discipline to their own people, which would in turn guarantee public order. The state sponsored these goals, for example, with generous financial assistance for the construction of the first Molotschna church buildings, as in Rudnerweide (10,000 Rubles Banko; note 5).
   Robert Crews’ analysis is correct, I think:
“Imperial confessional identities were reshaped through the pursuit of religious goals within the framework of tsarist laws and institutions. … Police intervention on behalf of the state and true religion bound … non-Orthodox [faiths] to the tsarist political order, transforming both.” (Note 6)
   The larger goal (of which the fines are only one part) was to guide the community (e.g., the Mennonite community) to faithfully remake itself and promote “new visions of religious orthodoxy” while—if we use Crews’ lens—“deepening their integration in, and subordination to, the expanding institutions of the empire” (note 7).
   It is helpful to see the actions of Johann Cornies from this perspective: his role was to implant Mennonitism successfully into the state; in turn, the state functioned as a guardian of Mennonite orthodoxy—e.g., as model people, as a light on a hill, etc., arguably consistent with the tradition.
   There are many examples of the state wanting Mennonites to become better, truer Mennonites (and the same for German Lutherans, for example). The “confessional, imperial state” understood itself as the protector of true religion, and when necessary addressed threats “from within the camp of believers themselves. Rather than disrupt imperial rule, the pursuit of [e.g., Mennonite, Lutheran or Islamic] orthodoxy formed an essential foundation of tsarist state-building on the southern frontiers of the empire” (note 8)—using Crews’ language.

Some extreme forms of discipline—Siberian exile—remained a punitive option for religious dissidents even after legal reforms in 1861 (note 9). The early Mennonite Brethren secessionists were threatened with this possibility. According to State Counsellor Busch “… when Molotschna Mennonites were asked what should be done with the sectarians [Mennonite Brethren], they answered” (consistent with Russian law and precedent) “that the only option is to banish the leaders from the Russian empire, and to send those ensnared by them to the outer regions of the empire, to settle them on the Amur River or in the Caucasus.” Some were imprisoned locally—a preferred strategy in Chortitza—and a few banished beyond the empire; those who returned were imprisoned in Siberia until they “opened their hearts to the voice of truth and recanted from their errors” (note 10).

In these examples it is not a stretch to speak of “imperial Mennonitism,” with the Tsar as patron and guardian.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: “Extract from Domestic Adjustment Administration of New-Russian Foreign Colonies, Sec. 1.1: On the Religious Duties of the Colonists,” Konrad Keller, The German Colonies in South Russia: 1804 to 1904: Volume I and Volume II, trans. A. Becker (Lincoln, NB: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1968; 1973), 52; GER: Die deutschen Kolonien in Südrussland, vol. 1 (Odessa: Stadelmeier, 1905), 61, https://books.google.com/books?id=YwvvjnJOENUC&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Note 2: “An die Schulzengerichte des Sarataer Gebietsamtes von Sarataer Gebietsamt, July 31, 1846 [?],” in Benjamin H. Unruh Collection, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. From Mennonite Library and Archives--Bethel College, B. H. Unruh Collection MS. 295, Folder 14. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_295/folder_14/SKMBT_C35107061313230_0030.jpg.
Note 3: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/religious-toleration-in-new-russia-and.html.
Note 4: H. Neufeld, “Report Regarding the Exile of Jakob Warkentin, Altona, Molotschna,” translated by Ben Hoeppner. 13, 14, 15 [15; 17] https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/sa_2_1171/; Tagebuch von Jakob Wall 1824–1859. Part II. Jacob Wall fonds vol. 1086, file 5a. From Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, MB, Part II, June 3, 1847, https://chortitza.org/Eich/WallOr2.htm. Further details in Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 5: "Rudnerweide," in Margarete Woltner, ed., Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen am Schwarzen Meer (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1941), 138, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/woltner.pdf.

Note 6: Robert D. Crews, “Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (2003), 50–83; 83. See also Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Also: Paul Werth, The Tsar’s foreign faiths. Toleration and the fate of religious freedom in imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
Note 7: Crews, “Empire and Confessional State,” 54.
Note 8: Crews, “Empire and Confessional State,” 57.

Note 9: Cf. A. Rasin, editer and translator, Sammlung der Gesetze und Verordnungen der Staatsregierung bezüglich der Organisation der Lebensverhältnisse der auf Kronsländereien angesiedelten Landbesitzer (bisherigen Kolonisten) (St. Petersburg, 1871), par. 54.5, 37, 39, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk232.pdf. Cf. also D. Myeshkov, Die Schawarzmeerdeutschen und ihre Welten: 1781–1871 (Essen: Klartext, 2008) 426–435. Further details in Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia.

Note 10: E. H. Busch, ed., Ergänzungen der Materialien zur Geschichte und Statistik des Kirchen- und Schulwesens der Ev.-Luth. Gemeinden in Russland, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: Gustav Haessel, 1867), 259f., https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_V9IMAQAAMAAJ.

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To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Too lazy to go to church? You could be fined!,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 15, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/too-lazy-to-go-to-church-you-could-be.html.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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