Mennonites, the Queen, the Anthem and Monarchy Generally

For most Canadians, Queen Elizabeth II had been omnipresent their entire lives: on our coins, bills and stamps. In school in the 1960s and early -70s, my generation sang "God Save the Queen" every other day in class, and "O Canada" on the other days. A portrait of the Queen was in every classroom.

I vividly remember lining Niagara Street in St. Catharines as a school child in 1973 when the Queen came whizzing through in a black limo in the rain to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the first capital of Upper Canada, now full of Mennonite farms. That black limo was owned by a wealthy Mennonite fruit farmer—my relative Isbrand Boese!

It is not outside the tradition for Mennonites to sing “God save the Queen/King”. On Sunday, September 20, 1937, 700 people gathered in the Coaldale Mennonite Church (Alberta), and the service concluded with the singing of national anthem ["God save the King”] (note 1). Mennonites organized this celebration to give thanks and to honour 81-year-old Col. J. S. Dennis, long-time commissioner of colonization for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had been instrumental in transporting and settling Mennonites in Western Canada in the 1920s, but also in the 1870s as well. The 1937 service was led by immigration leaders B. B. Janz and David Toews. “It was a most impressive ceremony throughout, notable particularly for the spirit of thanksgiving which pervaded it.”

Similarly in June 1939, when B. B. Janz’s Mennonite Brethren congregation in Coaldale dedicated their large, new church building. A number of public officials were present, and Janz “asked the congregation to rise and sing the National Anthem [God save the King], which concluded a very inspiring and impressive service, permeated with a spirit of thankfulness throughout”. At the time Janz and some others were eager to show that the sympathies of Canadian Mennonites lie with the British monarch, not the German leader Hitler (note 2).

For those who came to Canada in the 1870s too, privileges were sought and granted by the crown. When first scouting out land in Canada, Frank H. Epp’s history notes that “the sales pitch included liberal references to Queen Victoria, herself a German, and to her daughter, who had married the heir to the German crown” (note 3). Upon settlement her representative Lord Dufferin communicated to Mennonites “in the name of Queen Victoria and the empire” that they “are as welcome to our affection as you are to our lands, to our liberties and freedom … you will find protection, peace, civil and religious liberty, constitutional freedom and equal laws’” (note 4). They were settlers—colonists—oblivious in some ways to the brutality of colonialism on Indigenous peoples. But as in Russia, so in the British empire, their assumption was that under a good monarch all people groups would be protected and would flourish.

Deep down, Russian Mennonites were monarchists.

In Russia, every Mennonite school room had a picture of the Tsar. P.M. Friesen's iconic history of Mennonites in Russia opens with a picture of the Tsar. Apparently most homes had one too at the turn of the century.

Not surprisingly in May 1904 at the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Molotschna Colony, Gnadenfeld Elder Heinrich Dirks praised both God and Tsar after which worshippers sang the national anthem in the Gnadenfeld Mennonite Church (note 5). The 1911 Mennonite Ministers’ Manual for elders (bishops) and preachers in Russia includes sample sermons and prayers for “crown feast days,” i.e., services for celebrating royal coronations, accession to the throne, and royal birthdays. A sample service for the blessing of young men entering alternative service units includes the singing of the Russian national anthem (note 6). The Manual emphasizes that government authority / Tsar is God’s appointed and anointed servant to control evil, promote the good, preserve order and security; it is God’s compliant instrument to help build, extend, fortify and promote the kingdom of heaven on earth. Ministers are to teach that Christians not only give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but also pray for, intercede, bless, love, honour, fear, be subject to, obey, and follow the Tsar, so that they might live a quiet and peaceful life, and live out their faith and calling to be a “light to the world” and “the salt of the earth.”

The sudden death of a monarch was an emotional experience for Russian Mennonites. In March 1881 when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, Mennonites expressed great grief upon hearing the news. They marked the Tsar’s death with special worship services, condemnations of the evil mob, hymns of grief written in honour of the “Father of the Nation,” and letters to the Mennonitische Rundschau telling relatives of their grief and “irreplaceable loss” at the hands of “democrats” (note 7). As with the previous generation, there was a lively sense that the purposes of God were at work in and through the Russian Royal Family, through whom God’s kingdom is glorified on earth.

In 2022 Mennonites in Canada processed the loss of their Queen—with an emotion that makes the monarchy of previous Mennonite generations a little more understandable.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1 (and pic): Lethbridge Herald 30, no. 237 (September 20, 1937), 1, 3, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/herald/id/153258/rec/1.

Note 2: Lethbridge Herald (July 5, 1939), 14, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/herald/id/162537/rec/1; cf. Benjamin B. Janz, “Am I a National Socialist?,” in “Canadian Mennonites Loyal to New Fatherland, Leader of Coaldale Colony Declares,” Lethbridge Herald (June 1, 1940), 14, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/herald/id/167501/rec/13. German: “Bin Ich National Sozialist? Bewahre!,” Mennonitische Rundschau 62, no. 2 (January 11, 1939), 4–5, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1939-01-11_62_2/page/n3/mode/2up.

Note 3: Frank Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786–1920: The History of a Separate People (Toronto: MacMillan, 1974), 191, https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/sites/ca.grebel/files/uploads/files/mic_ireduced.pdf.

Note 4: F. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, vol. 1, p. 218.

Note 5: Heinrich Dirks, “Die Centenarfeier der Molotschnaansiedlung," Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1904 2 (1905), 18, https://chortitza.org/kb/mj1904.pdf.

Note 6: Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zunächst für die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Rußland, edited by the Allgemeiner Konferenz der Mennoniten in Rußland (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1911), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/264.097%20Al34h/.

Note 7: Cf. letters from the villages of Fabrikerweise (Mennonitische Rundschau I, no. 23 [May 1, 1881] 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-05-01_1_23/mode/2up?q=alexander), Schönau and Halbstadt (MR I, no. 22 [April 15, 1881], 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-04-15_1_22/), and Grossweide (MR II, no. 1 [June 1, 1881], 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-06-01_2_1/mode/2up).

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To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Mennonites, the Queen, the Anthem and Monarch Generally,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 15, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/mennonites-queen-anthem-and-monarchy.html.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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