Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada and the Russländer Centenary (2023)

In 2019, the Canadian Parliament declared the second week in September as “Mennonite Heritage Week.” The bill and statements of support recognized the contributions of Mennonites to Canadian society (note 1).

2019 also marked the centenary of a Canadian Order in Council which, at their time of greatest need, classified Mennonites as an “undesirable” immigrant group:

“… because, owing to their peculiar customs, habits, modes of living and methods of holding property, they are not likely to become readily assimilated or to assume the duties and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship within a reasonable time.” (Pic)

With a change of government, this order was rescinded in 1922 and the doors opened for some 23,000 Mennonites to immigrate from the Soviet Union to Canada. The attached archival image of the Order in Council hangs on the office wall of Canadian Senator Peter Harder—a Russländer descendant.

2023 marks the centennial of the arrival of the first Russländer immigrant groups to Canada. Thousands of Mennonite families from the USSR were the recipients of massive relief aid from co-religionists through 1930, and the beneficiaries of an open, generous immigration policy. These immigrants brought skills that would benefit Canada—and with many children as well who would indeed adapt quickly and contribute in many fields.

In this light, it is also sobering to read (August 2023) of the downsizing plans for the flagship Russländer congregation in Ontario—the Waterloo-Kitchener United Mennonite Church (note 2). The “majority” of members are “in their 70s” and “most newly retired members prefer to spend their Sunday mornings elsewhere.” The church building will be torn down, property sold, affordable housing built, with a small meeting space for the congregation and for Community Justice Initiatives. That is a good vision for the asset, inspired by the tradition.

The building has an expansive Sunday School wing which once housed over 200 children. Those baby-boom kids and their children are also doing many good things—but elsewhere. As typical Canadian children of immigrants, most of my generation married outside more narrow ethnic Russian Mennonite lines. But like so many other urban immigrant Canadian church groups, the gift and/or baggage of language and culture, including church culture were hard to transplant in a cohesive and inviting manner that would last two or more generations. This congregation had some highly educated, progressive leaders, but insularity in some aspects is inevitable for an immigrant church group—Mennonite or otherwise. Perhaps Mennonites did not come with a strong inter-cultural skill set, though their mono-ethnic colonies in Russia/Ukraine were surrounded and by so many other cultural groups—Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Tatars, Bulgarians, other Russian Germans, Swedes, Greeks, etc. (who also lived in closed, cultural communities)—ultimately making them a good fit for Canadian multiculturalism.

In this centenary year, many younger Russländer descendants are looking to rediscover their roots. Their baby-boomer parents who stepped away for a time, perhaps “with baggage to sort through,” now find that they are the “story keepers” and elders and are looking for something informed, wise, inspiring and hopeful to say ... “when they [the next gen] shall ask.”

Here are just two of many possible starting points.

 

First, gratitude. Whatever complaints Mennonites may have about Canadian politics and politicians, this kind of historical or “genealogical work” strongly recommends that those complaints be couched in gratefulness, at the beginning and the end. Where would any of us rather be? This is the country our parents desperately wanted their children to enjoy. Minimally, the week is an opportunity to celebrate and show gratitude for those ancestors who risked the journey, the larger Mennonite faith community in Canada and the U.S.A. that oversaw their well-being through famine to immigration, and to a country that welcomed them despite many reservations of accepting more “Germans speakers” and war resisters after WW1. Mennonite historical work teaches us gratitude.

Second, Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada can celebrate the fact that Mennonites brought and bring the kind of memory and historical perspective and commitment to civil life that builds-up people who want to be good and honourable, and who want to build a just, truthful, honest community and strong political fabric.

It was unfortunate to hear some Mennonites respond to recent pandemic lockdowns or health measures in the following manner: "This government is like the communism our parents fled!” That statement falls far wide of any historical truth, and worse: it inflames and tears at the social fabric of the country that welcomed our parents—that's the kind of thing we learn from genealogical work.

Here the memory of those families “left behind” and unable to emigrate in the 1920s can help sharpen Mennonite gratitude. Allow me to offer some examples:

What Mennonites experienced in the Soviet Union was a context and system designed to break them: break their ability to be good to their neighbour; their ability to be truthful and honest towards officials; their ability to participate honourably in civic life; their ability to grow in godliness; their ability to live in peace instead of constant fear.

Today some Mennonites in Canada love to complain about taxes. Just like the communism we left behind? Soviet taxes were designed to crush, impoverish, starve and break our people and their memory in order to create a new Soviet people. That’s something different than collecting taxes for schools, roads, hospitals, policing, fire, child welfare, care for the weak, and the common good as determined by a democratically elected government. Mennonites developed their own form of internal tax for alternative service and schools, as well as mutual aid where government support was absent.

Many Mennonites love to debate what is true and false, right and wrong and today some fear government ideological intervention in education, for example. Just like the communism we left behind? At some point Soviet communism made the debate as such impossible. There was one official organ of truth. All lived in fear. Those who dissented were arrested, disenfranchised imprisoned, banished, tortured and killed. Books were censored. That’s something completely different.

Canadian Mennonites connected to the church respect the importance and power of faith, and in recent years some felt the government infringed upon their right to gather during the pandemic. Just like the communism we left behind? By the late 1920s the Soviet Union banned churches from teaching children; ministers were heavily repressed; church buildings were expropriated and closed; private scripture reading, family prayer and hymn-singing at funerals or weddings was heavily punished—including heavy fines, arrest, and sometimes torture. That’s something completely different.

Vaccines became a faith issue for some Canadian Mennonites who refused to be vaccinated and then complained about religious persecution. Just like the communism we left behind? What recent archival work shows clearly is that all Mennonite ancestors in Russia—even the most conservative with roots in Chortitza—were freely desiring and benefiting from vaccines (especially cow pox) from the early 1800s and on. Any argument against vaccines based on Mennonite experience or faith is simply made-up. In fact, Mennonite ancestors would judge such a complaint against the state as ungodly.

When a Russian Mennonite critiques any Canadian (or American) political party or government policy today as somehow “just like the communism we left behind,” it is nothing but poor memory, bad genealogy and ungrateful and dangerous opinionating not anchored by history. And it tears at the social-political fabric of the country that so generously opened its doors to us.

Without pontificating, Mennonite descendants can do worse than to dust off the Confession of Faith which every Mennonite ancestor memorized and used as their lens to view the world, including the state, the Tsar, the head of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers, and all others with authority over them.

We know they prayed for the Tsar, celebrated royal feasts—even in church—and had an almost pious love for the "Father of the Nation" (at least until the twentieth century).

This was also completely consistent with the various Mennonite confessions of faith which implored them to pray for the king and government with supplications, intercessions and thanksgiving.

“For there is no government except of God, … therefore all believers … are commanded by the word of God to fear their authority, to honor and to be obedient to it in all things which are not contrary to the word of God. Government must be given tribute, duties, and taxes in accordance with the teaching of the Lord … who says we must be obedient” (1853 Rudnerweide Confession, note 3).

Like it or not, that is how they thought. Their criteria for good and bad governance—whether from the Tsar indirectly or more directly from junior government authorities, or even later with the Bolshevik Revolution—was quite simple. Every government was judged by the church asking these questions: “Can we lead a good, honourable civil life?” Can we “lead a peaceful and quiet life, in all godliness and honesty”? (from the 1853 Confession). And where this was ultimately not possible, they tried to emigrate. And Canada—after strong lobbying by fellow Mennonites already in Canada, leveraging their reputation with the Canadian government—opened its doors.

Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada can help us recall and celebrate the fact that Mennonites brought and bring the kind of memory and historical perspective and commitment to civil life that builds-up people who want to be good and honourable, and who want to build a just, truthful, honest community and strong political fabric.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

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Photos

• Waterloo-Kitchener Mennonite Church their first elder, Jacob H. Janzen and wife. From GAMEO. Jacob H. Janzen, received an honorary doctorate from Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas; https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Janzen,_Jacob_H._(1878-1950).
• A copy of the Mennonite "Privilegium" (Charter of Privileges, 1800) signed by the Tsar with the Mennonite commitment to the state to be a "model community."
• 1919 Order in Council, posted on Twitter by Senator Peter Harder, 1918.

Note 1: Ed Fast, Member of Parliament for Abbotsford, BC, Private Members’ Business, February 27, 2019, https://openparliament.ca/debates/2019/2/27/ed-fast-2/.

Note 2: Madalene Arias, “The facility of faith: Fading churches and growing ones both face big decisions about buildings,” Canadian Mennonite 27, no. 17 (August 24, 2023), https://web.archive.org/web/20230829102947/https://canadianmennonite.org/stories/facility-faith]. On the congregation, see GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Waterloo-Kitchener_United_Mennonite_Church_(Waterloo,_Ontario,_Canada).

Note 3: 1853 Rudnerweide Mennonite Confession; consistent with 1632 Dordrecht, 1660 Frisian-Flemish, 1766 Ris, and 1902 Russian Mennonite Brethren Confessions. Cf. Howard John Loewen, One Lord, One Church, One Hope, One God: Mennonite Confessions of Faith (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1985), https://archive.org/details/onelordonechurch02loew/page/122/mode/2up?q=1853.

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada and the Russländer Centenary, 2023," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), August 31, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/mennonite-heritage-week-in-canada-and.html.