History of the Russian Mennonites

By 1860, the mix of entrepreneurial individualism, exposure to new ideas and horizons, intellectually and emotionally compelling preaching of conversion by Eduard Wüst a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the nearby Separatist Evangelical Brethren Church, community dysfunction and lack of common vision, growing social and economic disparities, rumours of restlessness and revolution among Russia’s serfs, authoritarian leadership and moral laxity—were all part of that context in which eighteen Mennonite men felt compelled to submit a “Document of Secession” to the Molotschna Elders, dated January 6, 1860. They pointed to the “decay of the entire Mennonite brotherhood,” with examples of baptized brothers who at the annual fairs “serve the devil” in their public misdeeds, and of the ministers who watch and sit idly by ( note 1 ). “It was very natural that with such a decay of church, faith and morals, a reaction set in,” with individuals demanding “an end to the...