Rocky Cape Christian Community

Last year I sent you this picture of the believers at Susanovo, Orenburgskaya, Russia, most of them with German Mennonite names like Enns, Teichroeb, Kehler, etc., but as I may have mentioned at the time, the language of their meetings is Russian. This because a good number of them are Russian converts, and others with dark hair (converted gypsies) have become part of the group.  

Unfortunately I do not have a more recent picture. But I still hear from these people in Russia several times a month. One of the young men, Hans Enns, has a mobile phone and keeps sending me text messages, usually with a Scripture references as a greeting and something to think or pray about for the day.
 
While still in my teens, the Beachy Amish bishop, David Bontrager, told of his travels behind the Iron Curtain: "Riding on a train through Siberia I saw a person whom I felt certain was a Mennonite, so I asked him in German, 'Bist du ein Mennonit? (Are you a Mennonite)?' He turned and gave me a solemn look before he asked a question of me, also in German, 'Bist du gläubig (Are you a believer)?' That is the only thing that matters anymore in Russia."
 
That story impressed me deeply and I never forgot it. Then, years later, riding in a vehicle with Hans Enns (the boy from Susanovo, pictured above) I ran into the same thing. Hans startled me by asking suddenly, "Von wua komen de Mennoniten häa, en wuaromm heeten de soo's daut? (Where did Mennonites come from and why do people call them that)?"
 
I began by telling him about Menno Simons, how he found Christ in the Netherlands, and joined the Anabaptists. "What does 'Anabaptist' mean?" Hans asked next. "Who were the Anabaptists and what happened to them?"
 
The comical aspect to our conversation was that we conducted it in Plattdeutsch -- a particular dialect of Plattdeutsch, to be sure -- that has virtually become an Anabaptist/Mennonite language. After all these centuries of isolation, Hans and his people in Russia still speak exactly like the rest of us Plattdeutsch Mennonites throughout the world (except they use Russian instead of Spanish or English loan words). They still dress and eat exactly like we do. They work like us, and what is more, they still think just like us and believe what we do, following Christ to the best of their understanding. But . . . they have forgotten who Menno Simons was and know nothing about Reformation history!
 
Stalin and his purges, I thought to myself as Hans and I discussed our common origin, sure accomplished something. But neither Stalin, nor any number of catastrophic events before or since  have been able to quench completely what Jesus began in . . .

Russian Mennonite Mission

No adventures or hardships of the first Mennonite settlers in Russia compared in drama with what the twentieth century brought them. Everything, after the old Gemeinden left for Canada in the 1870s, turned end for end and upside down. Everything changed forever—yet the more things changed the more they stayed the same (humans failing, getting themselves into terrible predicaments while God stays faithful and comes out victorious every time). 

The twentieth century brought an end to the Mennonite settlements in Russia. Communist insurgents overthrew and killed the Tsar, letting loose the bloodiest revolution in world history, followed quickly by mass starvation, two world wars that obliterated millions in eastern Europe and displaced not only the Mennonites of Russia but also the ones that had stayed behind in the Vistula Delta. In the meanwhile, repercussions of those same wars drove many thousands of those that had moved to Canada from there to Mexico, Central and South America—soon to be joined by their kinfolk, a flood of refugees from war-torn Europe, carving new homes from the wilderness in Paraguay and Brazil. 

All of these twentieth century migrations took place in tragedy and high adventure—at the price of very large numbers of lives. But out of what seemed like absolute disaster—economic, social and spiritual disaster—new life sprang up again and again in places no one could have imagined. By the 1980s one hundred thousand Russian Mennonites lived in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan in Central Asia. Many thousands more lived in Siberia. Another hundred thousand in Latin America. During the 1980s and 90s, 125,000 Russian Mennonites poured from eastern Europe back into Germany, and from there large numbers have moved on to Canada or places further afield (South America and Australia).

In the face of all these developments it has become impossible to maintain any set of stereotypes or for generalities regarding the Russian Mennonites to hold. The “worldly ones” that stayed with their prosperous farms and goods in Russia when the old Gemeinden left in the 1870s, soon became the poorest of them all. In the depths of their distress during and after the World Wars they found God in an awesome revival. Beginning in a concentration camp north of the Arctic Circle, the revival spread until it touched the hearts of millions—both Mennonites and native Russians—and those that resettled to Germany and Canada, later on, suddenly found themselves far more conservative in lifestyle and outlook, far more Biblically-oriented, than most descendants of the old Gemeinden that had left Russia generations before.

 
Baptism at Espelkamp in Germany, four years ago. This congregation of resettled Russian Mennonites (Mennonitische Brüdergemeinde) has over three thousand members and has maintained a strong witness for Christ in a secular society. In Germany, these recent immigrants from Russia have opened private Christian schools (in the Detmold, Bielefeld and Espelkamp areas) attended by thousands of children, and they are eager for missions, sending workers to many countries overseas.  

The Gemeinden that moved to Canada in the late nineteenth century (Old Colony, Bergthaler, Chortitzer, Kleingemeinde, etc.) struggled hard, for many years, to keep their identity. But constant pressure to assimilate, to lose their togetherness and distinction as the family of God, finally broke up their communities in that country and scattered them far and wide. Their more conservative members regrouped in Latin America and it was there, in Paraguay, that a new opportunity for Gemeinde as mission presented itself.

Sommerfelder and Chortitzer Mennonites, hoping to preserve their way of life, settled in the heart of the Paraguayan Chaco during the 1920s. There in the frontier village of Schoenbrunn, Mennonite families wrestled new farms, new mud-brick houses, fruit orchards and a school from the wilderness. But they did not work unobserved or alone. Curious men—and later women and children—emerged cautiously from the bush to stare at them. Glistening black hair, barely dressed, if at all, in animal skins, speaking a totally unintelligible language, they were the Lengua people, and later came the Chulupí and the Ayoreo (los Moros). 

The people of Schoenbrunn made friends with their new neighbours. They gave them food and clothes in exchange for work. One young man in particular, Johann Funk, took an interest in these people and learned how to speak their language. This opened many doors, and before long the Lengua people began asking him questions. They asked him if he could teach their children how to read. Above all they asked him about spirits—good or bad spirits of whom they lived in constant dread—and Johann told them about God.

 
Young Lengua couple, the man in clothing acquired from the Mennonites, in housing that remained typical until recent times.

One thing led to another. The Mennonites built a school for the Indians and began to hold regular teaching meetings for them, introducing them to God and the Bible. They commissioned Johann Funk to work full time with the Lengua and Chulupí tribes and soon gave him a helper, Bernhard W. Toews. This man (son of Heinrich and Maria Toews), who had a deep experience with the Lord Jesus while suffering from typhus as a teenage immigrant from Canada, had given his life to making the Gospel known in the Chaco. Only it did not seem clear to him, right away, how that should come about. This is what Bernhard wrote, shortly before his sudden death by a heart attack, in 1974:

Our Gemeinde (the Sommerfelder group from Canada) did not lack a vision for outreach to other people. We knew that Christians must carry the Gospel to the world. But to go out and establish mission stations was simply not our way.

My experience while growing up in Canada sheds some light on this matter. I remember vividly what happened more than fifty years ago. The Mennonite missionary to India, Peter Penner, came through the churches in Canada telling of all that had been taking place in the churches overseas. He spoke in one of our congregations and my parents took me along to hear him. Among other things the missionary told us how the children of India pray just like we do, “Du lieber Heiland mach mich fromm, das ich in den Himmel komm” (Dear Saviour, make me a godly person so I may get to heaven). He said they sang just like we did and he had an Indian child with him who sang Gott ist die Liebe and Jesus liebt mich ganz gewiss. I was deeply moved by that meeting and could not sleep for a long time that night.

Many people in our Gemeinde discussed the idea of missions and as a child I got the impression they were a very good thing. I also got the desire to work among the heathen some day. But in some discussions on the subject reservations were expressed as well. Some of our people felt it was presumptuous for us to go out and think like the pious Pharisee that we were so much better than the rest and had something to offer out of ourselves. Some thought that modern mission work would take us away from our Christian pattern of life and from being the quiet in the land. The Gospel, these people believed, must be presented in its purest form, and the best way to do that was to support the work of Bible translation into foreign languages. Our Gemeinde supported the British and Foreign Bible Society, and we took up offerings for them. Through all this, our parents had the best of intentions to do what was right.

Then when we came to the Chaco and found ourselves suddenly living right in and among the Lengua people that knew nothing about God or the Gospel, we had many deep thoughts about our responsibility. The British and Foreign Bible Society had already translated some of the Scriptures into Lengua speech, for use in the Anglican missions. We supported them with what we could. Then, in 1935 the recently arrived Mennonite refugees from Russia set up a missionary society, Licht den Indianern (Light to the Indians), on the Fernheim Colony. We did not get directly involved right away but we asked ourselves whether we would have the ability to do such a work. 

Then, in the 1940s, when we spread further into the south (Suedmenno, Paratodo) we once again came into direct contact with uncivilised tribes. So here our Gemeinde started to work with them. It was a modest beginning but things soon started to move. The first brother to work as a full time missionary among the Indians was Johann M. Funk, whom we later ordained to the ministry among them. 

At the same time, around our older villages further north, the Indians kept asking if they could send their children to our schools, and if we could not come and teach them about God. We could not expect all of these people to move to Yalve Sanga (a mission community established by the Fernheim Colony Mennonites) so I got asked by the church to take on the work of starting an Indian school and mission at Loma Plata. With the large family we had to support it was not easy for me to take on the assignment, but with the support of Mennonite people abroad it became possible. 

My first assignment was to bring the Lengua people together from all their scattered camps throughout the region. Our colony set aside a piece of land for that. We started out with 224 Lengua people. I learned their language and set up a school for them. Our first school was under a tree where we hung a blackboard from the branches. The children and young people sat on logs. Slates to use for writing got donated by our colony schools.

 
Chaco Indian children in a school built and staffed by the colony Mennonites.

For many it was too difficult to learn how to read. They preferred to just listen as I read from the Bible and explained it to them. They understood so well I was amazed at their capacity to process what I told them. We had the four Gospels and the book of Acts in their language, thanks to the work of the Anglican mission. Some of the Indians, even though they never learned how to read, knew large parts of these Scriptures by memory. 

After a period of years we were able to put up a decent school. On 5 October 1957 we celebrated our first baptism there with 34 converts. About 1,300 Indians and around a thousand Mennonites came for the occasion. Soon after this Sister Eleonore Matthies came from Canada to work with my wife at the mission.

In 1957 we began another mission at Pozo Amarillo after the Indians of that area begged us to come. My brother Heinrich Toews came to work there. Then in 1960 all the Mennonite colonies in the Chaco began to co-operate in the Indian Settlement Project overseen by MCC. That has rapidly expanded from there.[1]

What was mission work to accomplish? On what mission has God sent his people in our time? As in Russia, generations earlier, the Gemeinden in Latin America asked themselves these questions in the twentieth century. Is mission work primarily that of bringing individuals to belief in Christ, or shall it involve much more?

Martin W. Friesen, describing a visit to Loma Plata in Paraguay, wrote:

One day I accompanied Bernhard Toews on a walk through the Indian village. We stopped to visit at a number of shelters and spoke with the people. In front of one of them sat an old woman. “This sister,” Bernhard told me, “is always so thankful we came to Paraguay, bringing them the Gospel and a new way of life. As a young woman she lived with her husband in a Lengua encampment on the site of the present village of Lindenau. A sickness broke out among them and many died. The witch doctors had done everything they knew but could not stop it. So they concluded one of their people must have offended the evil spirits and it was up to them to find out who he was. They did their hocus pocus and decided it was this woman’s father. Four men went to his grass shelter, early in the morning and called him. As soon he emerged they shot him full of arrows. He could run a short distance yet before he crumpled and died. Then they beheaded him, cut up his body and burned it slowly, piece by piece. This was how they hoped to appease the evil spirits. Everyone accepted the action because they thought the witch doctors were only doing what they had to do.”

 
Lengua woman in front of her grass house. When the house got old or too dirty to use, it was simply destroyed and a new one built.

That was how these people lived, in constant terror of the unknown and powerless before the spirit world. This Lengua woman, now a believer in Christ, could not express her thankfulness adequately, for having gotten delivered from this terrible darkness and spiritual evil. . . . We also, when we try to imagine the night of paganism in which our brown neighbours lived, have to join with them in praising God for their deliverance. We often find it difficult to make headways with them in material and cultural things. Everything goes so slowly. But many of the Lengua people have settled down and learned how to raise crops. Churches, schools, clinics and co-operatives have taken shape in their settlements, and some of their own people have tried hard to bring their culture onto a higher level. Instead of us getting impatient with them and wondering why it takes so long for them to get ahead, we should learn more about their past and realise how far they have already come. Only then can we help them in an understanding way to help themselves.

At this time (1977) there are 443 baptised Indian believers at Pozo Amarillo, 315 at Loma Plata, and 354 at Nueva Vida.[2]

Certainly, Russian Mennonites in Latin America saw the necessity of sharing the Bible and Jesus’ salvation message as part of the responsibility God had given them. Diedrich Lepp, a refugee from Russia, finished translating the New Testament into the Lengua Indian language by the early 1970s. Gerhard Hein, another refugee, translated the New Testament into Chulupí, and the rest of the Bible soon followed. But nothing said more about what the Mennonites believed and how they understood God, than the witness of the colonies themselves:

A North American visiting the Paraguayan Chaco in 1947 wrote:

Fernheim was founded in 1930 by Mennonites who had fled from Russia to Germany,  hoping to proceed to Canada. However, Canada had closed its doors because of the depression and unemployment. Because the refugees could not stay in Germany, MCC had invited them to settle in the Chaco of Paraguay. Some 1,800 of them followed that invitation. 

The first years in Paraguay were extremely difficult. People and animals were always thirsty, but lack of water was just one of the problems. Five years later the immigrants at Fernheim had dug 198 wells, of which 75 had yielded salt water. 

Then there was the heat. The refugees had never experienced heat like that before. Gardens and crops dried up like a desert. . . . As if all this wasn’t enough, there were the grasshoppers. . . . The people had to stand by and watch their first crops disappear. And then there were their new neighbours, the Indians, mostly three tribes: Lengua, Chulupí, and Moro (Ayoreo). They were hunting and gathering nomads. The scarcity of food was probably one of the major reasons that led them to adopt family planning by infanticide. The most common way of killing an infant at birth was by stuffing hot sand in the baby’s mouth. 

The Lenguas and Chulupis were rather friendly and peaceful, but the Moros were warriors. They killed missionary Kornelius Isaak who ventured out to bring them the Gospel. Mission work among the Indians began within a few years after the Mennonites got to the Chaco, and in 1935 they organised a mission society called Licht den Indianern (Light to the Indians). 

We were impressed. In the providence of God, flight from communism was turned into mission work through colonization. These people had so little themselves, but one of their first concerns was the Indians. They shared with them what they had: food, clothing, knowledge and faith in God. 

Elfrieda and I listened to the stories and saw their houses, crops, schools, hospitals, roads. We kept asking, “How did you accomplish all this in a mere twenty-five years?” 

We received many answers, “We worked hard. Faith. God blessed us.” The most frequent answer was cooperation. They were in a life-and-death struggle together. They helped each other as neighbours, laughed and cried together, bought and sold cooperatively. If it hadn’t been for their co-op, they would have gone under like all other foreign settlers before them in Paraguay. Even the worship services of the several Mennonite groups were held jointly three Sundays each month.[3]

The colony hospital, Hochstaedt, Chaco, Paraguay, where a constant stream of Native American and Paraguayan people come for medical attention.

A number of years ago I visited a Sommerfelder Mennonite family that had moved from a colony in Mexico to Canada. There they had joined a more progressive English-language church, much involved in missions. “Do you ever miss Mexico?” I asked the man.

“One thing I do miss,” he told me, “is the friendly relationship we had one with another on the colony. In Mexico we’d have the neighbours dropping in all the time. On the way to and from town, people would stop by just to talk. Sometimes there would be several neighbours on our yard at once. If I had to do something they’d just carry on talking among themselves until I’d come back. We worked together all the time. I used to know everything that was going on and how everyone felt about things. But here in Canada we are left alone. People work far away. Every farmer just goes tearing off to his own fields. . . . ”

Community—Gemeinde—as mission? Even though few descendants of the Russian Mennonites would put that to words, their life in brotherly and sisterly solidarity—a life in which “church” is an experience that keeps right on going, day in and day out, all year long—is their most powerful testimony to the transforming, world changing, life-giving hope and promise of Jesus’ Gospel. Only where that life breaks down or gets lost, where it has degenerated until it is only an outer shell from which the warmth and light of Jesus’ love has fled, do its colonies stand as sad reminders of what they should be offering to the world but no longer have themselves.

Margarethe and Helena Penner, La Honda Kolonie, Zacatecas, Mexico in 1980.

Too many descendants of the Russian Mennonites have forgotten their mission from God during the last century. Where they no longer shine as visible Gemeinden in a dark world, spiritual apathy, apostasy, or even vice and crime have made their inroads—to the distress of the faithful and the astonishment of their neighbours. But is this surprising? “The story of God’s people,” wrote Jakob Kroeker, a Russian Mennonite leader in 1922, “is sometimes the story of defeat as well as of blessing.” With this he went on to say:  

Right after the conquest of Jericho, the children of Israel suffered defeat. Even Joshua, their courageous leader, wished himself back in the wilderness out of which they had just found their way. What had happened? Hadn’t God promised to give them every place on which the soles of their feet would tread? And now this weakness, this inability to stand, this terrible defeat in the face of the enemy!

What happened with Joshua and the Israelites has happened repeatedly to God’s people ever since. Right after the great victories, right after we enter the promised land, overcome our enemies, and everything starts to go well for us, we become careless. We think we can slip by with hiding a little bit of sin, and our enemies overcome us again. 

We stand in such a place today. Only a little while ago the power of God worked mightily among us. The wind of God blew through the entire Gemeinde, awakening many and stirring up within us a longing for all that Christ promised to give us. We set out boldly and conquered new spiritual ground. We feared nothing. Our Joshua (Jesus) led us across the Jordan from the old life into the new where we enjoyed deep and holy Gemeinschaft in him. New strength and vision came to us from heaven. But how quiet it has gotten among us now! 

How strange that we should now shrink back, and fear, and that so many of us should fall! Hearts have turned to water and many say, “Oh that we had stayed on the other side of the Jordan.” 

But, as in Joshua’s time, we have work to do. God deals with us as a people and where one has sinned we all bear the consequences. “Where one member suffers we all suffer with it.” Through one Spirit we were baptised into one body and where the ravages of sin—as in the case of Achan—affect the body, we all feel the pain. We all grow weak, and must all take responsibility and accept discipline for that one member’s sin. 

On the other hand, just like the sin of one man affected the whole in Joshua’s time, so the earnest prayer and fasting, the faithful witness of a few may save many. The Lord listens to the cry of his repentant people, tells them to get up and take care of matters at hand. 

Our struggle today is with the powers of darkness. To fight against them we may well be weak. God works with the weak. But he will not work with us if we are impure. If we have hidden sin among us, we can expect nothing but defeat, for the only way to live and conquer in the promised land is to walk with our captain in light. Then, if we deal with sin and overcome the enemy within, we shall conquer again. We shall move once more from strength to strength, from glory to glory, into the boundless possibilities of a life that is hidden with Christ in God.[4]

What would need to happen for Jakob Kroeker’s people, the Russian Mennonites, to recapture his vision in our time? To bring what began in the Netherlands, what spread through the Vistula Delta, through Russia and Canada to Latin America and beyond, into flower and fruit again?

Old Colony Mennonite pioneers on freshly cleared land at Blue Creek, Belize, in the 1960s. Chopping their way deep into the rain forest the first settlers buried thirty-five children in six weeks time, due to unsafe drinking water. But the colony survived. Hundreds of families (including a number of Susan's Krahn cousins) moved in from Mexico.

Before people regain lost ground or strike out, safely, in a new direction, they must know from where they came and what brought them to where they are now. Dangerous misconceptions must go. New influences, new streams of thought coming in need to get evaluated and handled in the Spirit of Christ to avoid further disaster. It is true, the most traditional colonies of Russian Mennonite background have lost much. But so have the non-traditional acculturated Mennonites, and so have the “born again.” For any or all of us to get back onto the right way, the Way of Jesus and his suffering Gemeinde, enduring all things, bearing all things, hoping all things for the Kingdom of God, we need a healthy respect for what past generations accomplished. We need to spot and identify faith where true faith was in action. We need to take what was right from the past, apply it to the present and project it into the future, leaving past mistakes but honouring those that have gone before by honouring what they accomplished—often at price of their earthly goods, and their lives.

Respecting and building up respect where it is due, is the way of Christ. (Look at Jesus and his attitude to Moses, or Paul and his respect for the law and the prophets.) Only as we do that will Jesus help us to help one another.

 
School at Osterwick, in the Paraguayan Chaco, 1950s.

Unfortunately for the Russian Mennonites and their descendants, two American historians writing during the second World War, C. Henry Smith and John Horsch, first published their story in the English language.[5] While their accounts included much factual information, they left non-German-speakers with a slanted and largely negative picture of what took place. From these writings, for instance, arose the myth that the Mennonites promised never to do mission work in Russia.[6] Other myths grew up surrounding their fabulous wealth, their boundless corruption, their internal divisions (much use being made of letters and articles written during periods of conflict) and the harsh maintenance of civil order in the colonies.[7]

Seeing the Mennonites of Russia in this light, American churches and Bible Schools began to give lectures entitled “Lessons from the Russian Mennonites.” English-language preachers, totally unfamiliar with anything written or said by the Russian Mennonites themselves, drew their own conclusions (based on presumption) of what had happened. From their moralistic approach—coupled with stories of spiritual and social problems on the colonies in Latin America, the testimonies of ex-members from those colonies, and in recent times, movies that portray Old Colony Mennonite life in the most negative light—emerged a grim picture indeed. Worst case scenarios got presented as normative while the vision that sustained the Russian Mennonite Gemeinden on their epic journeys around the world got downplayed, misrepresented (sometimes even ridiculed), or totally ignored. 

All this has brought people around the world—in many cases even the descendants of the Russian Mennonites themselves—into confusion regarding the origins of this movement. Was something dreadfully wrong about it to start with? 

A good thing—the right thing—to do with every tree, Jesus said, is to know it by its fruits. While there are indeed many worm-eaten or rotten apples lying beneath the branches of the Russian Mennonite Gemeinden, it is high time we looked at them objectively enough to see how many good apples still hang on the tree. 

In an unbroken stream, from the sixteenth century to now, the Dutch, North German, and East European Gemeinden have produced serious-minded godly people, seekers for the truth. Not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of young people growing up in the colonies today are reading their Bibles, praying, and looking to God for direction in their lives. Serious-minded praying leaders from colonies all through Latin America (many of whom I know personally and stand in contact with) long for better things and seek for ways to honour God through a meaningful life together.

What are the old-style Gemeinden obviously still producing? Through thick and thin, after nearly five hundred years, they are still producing people—large numbers of people—in whom the fear of God dwells to greater or lesser degrees. Let us not underestimate the value of that. To the contrary, let us stand with them. Let us seek and work and pray together until we “all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). 

There is nothing wrong with the Russian Mennonite idea of the co-operative colony. To the contrary, for settling on wild frontiers (such as in the Paraguayan Chaco, in the Brazilian rainforest, or in far northern Canada) the colonies have shown themselves remarkably suited. Not only have they gotten established in the most challenging of locations, in the face of incredible hardship, they have flourished where few other settlers have managed to survive. 

The first vision of the Gemeinden (the vision of the Dutch Anabaptists) to carry Jesus’ Gospel to the world by living it out, collectively, for all the world to see, is a good one. It stands firmly grounded in the words of Jesus himself (John 13:35), and it is a model tested and proven by numberless other believers from the Apostles’ time to ours. 

Like a vast river basin, all its main arteries, its channels, its tributaries still in place, waiting for the rain to fill them up and start flowing again, the Russian Mennonite movement lies partially dormant, partially obscured in our time. Shall we plough it under and plan for something else in its place—or shall we pray for the rain to fall?

Young Mennonite couple with their first home and child, Belize, Central America, 1960s.

Years ago, in the city of Chihuahua, Mexico, a policeman walked up to me and started asking questions. He could see I was a Mennonite and approached me as such: “How are things in your village? What are your young people like?” The more I told him, the more he asked about what we believed, and the more enthused he got. “You are the first menonita I’ve met,” he told me, “who is a cristiano. Are there more people like you in the colonies?” 

Be that. Be Christian Mennonites, if that is what you are, and the world will soon figure it out. Your light will shine, even though you speak Plattdeutsch, eat Russian food, and live on a colony in Latin America. 

The world and all the rest of the Lord’s church stands in need of seeing what you do—based on the example of your courageous godly ancestors—and of hearing what you have to say. Read what Gerhard Wiebe and Martin C. Friesen and Isaak Dyck wrote, then get up and do! Can you imagine how brightly the light of God-fearing, Christ-honouring, welcoming colonies would shine in today’s troubled world?

Please Jep, please Franz, or Neet, or Willem, or whoever you are, do not let us down! Your story is not over yet. Only, its next chapter must be written by you.

Peter

Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au

Notes:

[1] From Kanadische Mennoniten bezwingen eine Wildnis, Loma Plata, Paraguay, 1977

[2] ibid.

[3] Peter J. Dyck, in Up from the Rubble, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1991.

[4] Unterbrochenes Siegesleben, Wernigerode, Germany, 1922.

[5] In The Story of the Mennonites, Berne, Indiana, 1941, and Mennonites in Europe, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1942.

[6] Before the Moravian Brethren entered Russia, Orthodox authorities feared their proselytising and had a decree issued in 1763 making it illegal to seek converts among members of the state church. When the Mennonites arrived twenty years later, however, the issue did not come up. Cornelius Krahn, writing for the Mennonite Encyclopedia states: “In recent times, particularly in America, the charge has been made that the Mennonites of Russia promised not to do any evangelistic or missionary work in Russia. The fact is, however, that none of the Mennonite privileges contained such a restriction.”    

[7] After the more conservative Gemeinden left Russia in the 1870s the colonists increased in wealth and sometimes in luxury. Up to that time they had lived a basically austere, and often impoverished life. Even the painting of houses and barns, or planting flowers was discouraged by the most conservative. Private wealth was seen as suspect. Only in later years, and outside the boundaries of the colonies themselves, did a few Mennonite families (around a dozen all told) live on luxurious private estates that later got depicted as the norm. While Kleingemeinde and Mennonite Brethren dissidents complained much of moral disorder on the colonies, it is now known that some of their accounts lacked objectivity, and conditions were not generally as dismal as they later came to be described. While the Mennonites did cooperate with Tsarist authorities in civil government, no Mennonites actually served as policemen on the colonies or in law enforcement. Those positions, even on the colonies, were always given to Russians.