Old Colony Mennonite boys at school in the village of Hamburg, near Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Mexico, in the early 1980s.

 
Right after the first World War, when all Western countries began to enforce public education, only a tiny minority, only a few Anabaptist groups living in Western Canada, dared stand up against governmental pressure to conform -- to educate the children of Jesus' Kingdom community under the flag and influence of the world. All other Christians, all around the world, capitulated and took public schooling as a matter of course until the 1960s and 70s.
 
But the question of who should teach their children was far from the only one faced by the Russian Mennonites' descendants during the 20th century. I do not know what happened to our neighbour boys, pictured above (we lived in the nearby village of Gnadenfeld, Chihuahua, at the time). All I know is that the last thirty years, for our relatives and friends on the colonies, have gone roughly.   
 
A great war between good and evil, among those that choose to remain nonconformed to the world, rages on -- the never-ending struggle to uphold time-tested values in the face of today's mounting pressure to acculturate and become just like the rest of the world in thought, speech and action. How well have the Russian Mennonites' descendants succeeded, or how miserably have they failed?
 
An ever-expanding host of outside observers stands ready with a hundred different evaluations and urgent commands: "Come this way!" "Go that way!" "Do this!" Don't go there!" Some feel certain the colony people must drop their plain clothes and buggies, their life in the villages and become like mainline Evangelicals to get saved. Others insist they must experience this or that, join this group or the other, or go any one of an ever greater variety of conflicting directions.
 
What, in the midst of all this would Jesus say?
 
Before you start guessing, you should know what he has already said, through prophetic voices among . . .

Russian Mennonites in the New World

Empty plains where nomad horsemen lived in yurts gave place quickly to well-ordered villages among apple and mulberry trees with horizon-to-horizon wheat fields surrounding the Mennonite settlements in Russia. By the mid-1800s many thousands of believing families lived in modest but nicely established farmsteads. Schools, meetinghouses, mills, factories, roads—the colonists had everything they could need or want. But, as described in the previous article (this is the third in a series of four), not all of them pulled together. And the directions in which they headed would carry them into ever greater challenges, hemispheres apart, one from another.

 

Farm in Shipyard Colony, near Orange Walk, Belize, in the 1980s. Village patterns and names, brought from Russia, survive in the New World, but many adaptions have been made to local conditions, especially in the Latin American tropics.

The Mennonites that co-operated closely with the Tsarist government, eager to buy more land and to increase their goods through technological progress, stayed in Russia. But when the government threatened to enforce state-controlled education and some type of military service, large numbers from the old-style Gemeinden (the Old Colony, Bergthaler and Fürstenländer people) moved to Canada. At the same time, an almost equally large number of the “born-again,” the mission-minded and most rapidly acculturating ones, relocated to Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota in the United States.

Each of the three groups had their spokesmen, their men of vision, and their historians to record and interpret what happened through the tumultuous century that followed. In this article, we will only take up the thread of the middle group, the old-style Gemeinden, for whom Gerhard Wiebe, elder of the Bergthal colony near Mariupol, put things to words:

We [at Bergthal] faced a great conflict in having to decide whether to emigrate or not, but our loving Lord kept us all together in the holy spirit of unity, in which we proceeded with confidence in the name of God, even though in great imperfection.

From the time of Christ to ours I am not sure that I have heard of any church group this size (we were around five hundred families, three thousand souls) that so unanimously decided to emigrate such a long distance, except for the Swiss Mennonities who left from Volyhnia to America around the same time. . . .  Unity reigned among us. For that reason the enemy could not triumph over us, although he had managed to plant some seeds of discontent here and there. We noticed that sometimes but hoped it would not put down root and spread. Only after a number of years did the enemy’s seed expose itself in a number of false brothers, and as you know, there is nothing as harmful or dangerous to the Church as having false brothers in our midst. People that maintain the appearance of godliness and profess to follow Christ, but whose hearts are evil. The apostles and early Christians already complained of having such people among them, and if we should have had such people among us from the beginning we could never have moved to Canada like we did. . . .

The Lord gave us a sign of the last times. Before the end, he said, wickedness will take over and the love of many will grow cold. But I am convinced there are still many faithful people among us who watch the spread of apostasy with sorrow and alarm. On the contrary, there are also proud and worldly-minded people who have lost their love for God and his word. All they have left is the love of prestige and a great desire to advance themselves. They have forgotten that Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. . . . Whoever does not humble himself like this little child will never see the Kingdom of God,” and “Whoever believes my words and does what I say shall be saved.”

Oh, brothers and sisters, if this evil root should grow up and go to seed among us, those that stand in charge of our brotherhood would face a very great conflict and evil time. Yet the Lord would not let them go under if faithful believers hurried to support them with much prayer and intercession. Then God would come to their rescue. Only if the enemy, through unfaithful brothers among us, gets the overhand, our church community stands in peril indeed.[1]

Not only the Bergthaler, but an even much greater number of families from Fürstenland and the Old Colony (Chortitza) emigrated to Canada in the 1870s. So did the conservative Kleingemeinde from the Molochna Colony and its branches. For a number of years Canada—after a rough beginning on the prairies, not unlike the first years along the Dniepr two generations earlier—lived up to what its officials had promised. Most people liked the Mennonites and spoke highly of them. But a drastic change occurred after 65,000 young Canadians lost their lives fighting the Germans during World War I.  

An enraged and embittered populace turned on the German-speaking Mennonites, so recently arrived from Russia, so quickly prosperous in their new homes, yet refusing steadfastly to fight the British Empire’s wars, or to assimilate into Canadian society and culture. Martin W. Friesen, born in Manitoba but who moved to Paraguay in the 1920s, wrote:

During and after the first World War a great wave of patriotism swept through the English-background population of Canada. Under pressure from this movement the government passed laws to enforce the rapid assimilation of all foreigners into Canadian society. The initial focus of this melting of cultures (voelkische Verschmelzung) was the national system of public education. After 1919 all schools in Canada had to be English or French and education in Dominion-approved schools became compulsory.
This law was not made because of the Mennonites. Our people, in fact, made up the smallest group of immigrants affected by it, but we took it the most seriously. . . .

What lay heaviest upon our conscience was the military flavour of these newly passed national school laws, the obvious intention of the government to inoculate our children with British patriotism through public education. Coupled with that was the widely spread hatred and irrational phobia of the Canadian people against everything German. We were German in their minds and they distrusted everything we did. A wave of public sentiment rose against us, especially against those of us that refused to go along with the public education laws.

Only the most conservative among our Mennonite people took a stand against the public schools, and even among these groups there was some divided opinion on the matter. Many Old Colony people moved to Mexico (in 1922). They did not bother negotiating long with the government but decided to get out of the Canadians’ hair as quickly as possible. The Chortitzer and Sommerfelder people did not give up that easily. They wanted to stay in Canada that had become a lovely homeland to them. Yes, they would also have preferred to keep their schools German, but when they learned that if they switched to English they might be able to keep their own church-run schools, they informed the government of their willingness to do so.

They sent a letter to Ottawa, expressing that willingness. The government was thankful for that, but right away took the matter another step. Now they said they would send us government-supported qualified teachers, and they would require us to use their government curriculum in our schools. That is where we drew the line. We did not leave Canada because of the German language as so many uninformed people keep saying. . . .[2]

What happened to their parents in Russia, and to their great-grandparents in West Prussia, now set the tone for what happened to all the most conservative Mennonites of western Canada. Never again would they settle for compromises like their relatives that stayed behind under Tsarist rule, or under the Prussians in the Vistula Delta, had made. Militarism and patriotism, these steadfast ones believed, could never co-exist with citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Isaak Dyck, a young Lehrer (teacher/minister) among the Old Colony people that settled south of Winkler, Manitoba, wrote soon after war:

This great military power in Germany had it source in nothing other than that country’s enforced public school system. From the earliest age, patriotism and rank militarism was planted into every German child with the greatest persistence and zeal. That is what made the whole country one massive and nearly invincible military machine, and now the rest of the world’s powers, including England and Canada, want to accomplish the same thing.

Martin C. Friesen, elder of the Chortitzer Mennonites that settled around Steinbach and Grünthal, east of the Red River in Manitoba, wrote:

When the new law came out in 1919 enforcing English as the language of instruction and imposing the government’s curriculum on our church schools we were greatly troubled. . . . New schools got erected in our villages but they were not public schools, they were schools of force (Zwangsschulen) and those of us that refused to send our children paid heavy fines or suffered imprisonment.

Over and over we sent appeals to the government and got answers to this or that, but they never responded to what we were really trying to say. . . . We tried to tell them as clearly as we knew how, that we could not, for any price, relinquish the responsibility God gave us to train our own children. We could never, and would never, hand that responsibility to anyone else.
We told the government we needed to teach our children from the Bible, beginning at the earliest age, because our whole way of life rests on what the Bible says. If we should fail in carrying out this God-given responsibility, our morals, our faith, everything we stand for would suffer shipwreck. We also informed the government in our last appeal that unless we had the freedom to teach our own children as we believed was right, we would find another country in which to live.

West of the Red River the provincial government built a public school in the Mennonite village of Reinland, followed quickly by another one in the village of Neuenburg where the Old Colony elder Johann Friesen lived. Not only did government teachers arrive to hold classes in September, 1920, government inspectors came with them to make sure that all children attended and all parents that opposed got spoken to, and fined or imprisoned should they fail to comply. Isaak Dyck describes what happened when they came to the elder Johann Friesen’s house:

When they asked Ohm Johann Friesen whether one couldn’t speak to God in English as well as in German, or whether the English Bible wasn’t just as true as the German one, he answered: “Our problem with you is not a matter of one language over another. What we refuse to do is send our children to school under your flag and under your teachers to become educated as citizens of the world, learning from the world the way of war. Is it not true that what the school is today will be the Church of tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes,” the inspector replied. “But we would not push for changes right away. I do not see anything drastic happening during the next ten to twenty years.”

Then Ohm Friesen asked him, “What does that flag mean that you raise every morning in your public schools? Is it not the very flag that waves over your battlefields?

This the inspector needed to admit was true.[3]

More and more fines and imprisonments took place among the Russian Mennonites of Manitoba and Saskatchewan after 1919, but for several years the Canadian government miscalculated the strength of their earnest convictions. All other Anabaptist people in North America—the large Swiss-South German settlements in Ontario, many thousands of Mennonites and Brethren in the United States, even the Old Order Mennonites, the Hutterites and the Amish, meekly capitulated and accepted public schooling as a matter of course after World War I. Surely, Canadian officials believed, the Old Colony, Bergthaler, Chortitzer and Sommerfelder people of the prairie provinces would soon give up and do the same.

But they didn’t. And all of Canada—even America and England—looked on in shock and dismay at what happened. On 5 November 1927, after six thousand Mennonites had left Manitoba alone, a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press wrote:

• Yes, the Mennonites have their weaknesses. They are restless and idealistic. . . . But to understand them correctly we have to understand a little about their past. Around one third of the Mennonites now living in the Canadian West hold firmly to the tradition of their ancestors. Because they insist on teaching their own children and flatly refuse to hand that responsibility to outside teachers, they have now reached an impasse with our Ministry of Education.

Pacifists never have it easy during times of war. Here, as chance would have it, that problem was compounded by the fact that these pacifists speak the hated German language. . . .

Yet language is not the real issue in question. These Mennonites’ difficulty with the government revolves around their faith they do not want to lose. They have dug in their heels and stuck to their threat of leaving the country unless they get their privileges back. We thought, at first, they were bluffing, only trying to scare us into negotiating. We never expected these people to be so serious about their faith, or so stubborn as some would call it, that more than four thousand of them would get up and move to Mexico. Then several thousand moved to Paraguay. This latter group is not as conservative as the Old Colonists, but when the province interferes with their education they are just as adamant on their position.

• Even without taking into consideration the truly massive losses this emigration has entailed, one must see what is happening as a far-reaching tragedy for them and for us. Reports come back from Paraguay of many people dying, of the settlers camped along the river unable to get onto the land they have bought. But the Mennonites are familiar with adversity and know how to pull through. Yes, they have their faults. But they also have their virtues—exactly those virtues that every country needs. They make plans, they work, they pay their debts, they keep their promises. Can we not come to terms with them somehow, before any more of them leave?

Another Canadian paper, The Christian Exponent, published an article on 24 April 1928:

These emigrants do not look for better farming opportunities, or ways to increase their wealth. As a religious society they seek nothing but freedom to serve God. Two issues of conscience brought them to their decision to emigrate, both of them grounded in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The Mennonites, seeking to return good for evil cannot take up arms against their fellow-men, to strive and to kill, and they cannot take children away from their parents and subject them to a public education system that exalts the rule of the state over the laws of the Kingdom of God.

When these people refused to cooperate with our public school system we fined them and stuck some of them in jail. They suffered quietly at first, but then they let themselves be heard. They said unless things changed they would leave Canada. We thought they were only threatening us. They would never leave their vast enterprises here and move to another country. But we were wrong.  

We, with our strongly materialistic worldview, did not know the history of these people or what goes on in their hearts. They tore themselves loose from their earthly possessions and moved by the thousands to Mexico and Paraguay. Seldom in the history of Canada have we witnessed a greater tragedy. What a shame we could not find a better solution, come to an agreement, and avoid the loss of so many of our best farmers!

The world looked at the exodus of many Russian Mennonites from Canada (around eleven thousand people all told) in the light of what it cost them in dollars and cents—in lives lost during incredible colonisation ventures in Latin America. But Martin C. Friesen, the Chortitzer elder that settled with his people in Paraguay saw everything in a different light:

Those that went before us always understood Jesus’ words, “if they persecute you in one city, flee to the next,” to be taken literally. This meant that if they had problems about what they believed in one country, they should pack up and leave for another one that allowed them to practice their faith, freely and unhindered. That is what we still believe we should do. If we are honest in what we undertake, God will be with us and bless us.[4]

Martin and Elisabeth (Wiebe) Friesen in their home at Osterwick, in the Chaco, Paraguay, during the 1950s. She was the granddaughter of Gerhard Wiebe (quoted above) who led the Bergthaler people from Russia to Canada. He served forty-one years as Gemeinden Aeltester  (elder of the church community) before his death in 1968. Martin and Elisabeth lived 57 adventurous years together and raised seven children for the Lord.

Isaac Dyck who became the elder of the Old Colony people in Chihuahua, Mexico, after Johann Friesen died, wrote from his little adobe house in the village of Blumenfeld:

One truth the entire Scriptures establish is that whoever lives in a godly way, for Jesus’ sake, will suffer persecution.[5] But even though he has to suffer for it, the believer finds his greatest joy in knowing that the name of God is glorified, and that the teachings of Jesus’ Gospel are being proclaimed throughout the whole earth. Whether that happens deliberately or by chance makes no difference to him. The important thing is that it happens.[6]

What a priceless demonstration of God’s grace is this, that his pure and undiluted Word now works among us humans, and that we can find, through it, the way to salvation in Jesus Christ! Oh, that we might know how to appreciate this enough, using it for the glory of God and the salvation of our souls! . . .

Looking carefully into the time of the Old Covenant, into the time of the first Christians, and into the story of the Gemeinde since then (such as is written up in the Martyrs Mirror) we see that all true children of God, all of Jesus’ followers were born to suffer, to accept patiently the persecution that fell upon them for their choice to serve him. For in this manner God the Lord has proven his people since the beginning of time, like gold is tried in the fire. And it is through the suffering faithfulness of Jesus’ Gemeinde that her light shines into all the world.

The entire Bible, the Old Testament as well as the New, seems to be nothing other than a martyr’s manual—a fact summarised powerfully in Hebrews Eleven where we read about the great of cloud of witnesses that stands around us. Witnesses that overcame all persecution through faith, that withstood every worldly power, that triumphed at cost of their life because their love for God was stronger than death. No flood of tribulation could quench the light of their love, and no mighty stream could wash it away.[7]

Oh that we who carry the name of Christ might look, with the eye of faith, into this mystery of God! Oh that all of us would find our delight in the statutes of God and speak of them day and night! Then, like a tree planted by a stream of water our leaves would never wilt or die. Then we would see how far we have strayed from the steps of the faithful who have gone before us in Christ Jesus. Then the faith they professed and sealed with their blood would be our faith, the covenant they made in baptism would be our covenant, and the standard of holiness by which they lived would be ours again!

The only difference between them and us is that they endured to the end, through terrible persecution and a martyr’s death, but we are still in the fight. They have fought their way through and entered the land of Canaan where milk and honey flows. They have taken it by force, but we are not there yet.

Yes, we are already saved, but only saved in hope. Hope that believes even though it cannot see, and it through this faith in the invisible that we are justified, that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Not only that, but through faith we glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering brings patience, patience brings experience, and experience brings hope that does not let us suffer shame.
Those that have gone before have already entered into rest but we are still in unrest, fighting sin every day, walking by faith and not by sight. . . .

Those that went before us always chose the way of the cross, even though it was a narrow way. Even though all people opposed them for it, and even though it brought great suffering, material loss and no end of trouble upon them. They always looked at the way of the cross as the only good way because it led them to eternal life, to the end of their faith which was the salvation of their souls.[8]

The faith of those that went before us was so firmly grounded in this way of the cross that they walked it joyfully, never doubting but that it would lead them into God’s eternal Zion, that they would carry eternal life as their trophy from it and that it would bring them a thousand lovely advantages, besides. For that one that saves his life will lose it, but the one that loses his life for the sake of the Gospel will save it, as Jesus said. And what should it profit a man if he gained the whole world but lost his soul?
This was the way chosen by thousands of believers, old and young, husbands and wives, young men and young women, the only sure way to salvation because it follows the footprints of Jesus, the footprints of the apostles and all that have entered eternal life with joy. This was the way, the Martyrs’ Way, they pointed out to all the world through their rejection of earthly pleasures, earthly wealth and prestige. This the Way they chose, shocking the world by how little they feared its threats, even the threat of torture, imprisonment and natural death.

Through numberless songs and writings the faithful that went before us witnessed to the joy, the comfort, the peace of heart they found in this Way—so much greater peace than they ever had while they still belonged to the world and lived for themselves.

This witness of the faithful to the Martyrs’ Way we have as a shining cloud and a pillar of fire by night, to guide us through the wilderness of the world. “This is the Way,” the prophet said, “so stick to it. Turn neither to the right or to the left.”[9]

School children walking home in the Mennonite village of Schoenthal (?), Durango, Mexico. Later in the day a herd of several hundred cows, followed by the village herdsman, will return from the communal pasture, each cow knowing just which lane to turn into for feed and milking.

After the second World War another flood of Mennonites whose ancestors had come from Russia left Canada. This time a large number of Kleingemeinde people left the areas around Steinbach and Morris, Manitoba, to settle in Mexico. More Old Colony and Sommerfelder people also moved to Mexico, while a much larger group—both Chortitzer and Sommerfelder—carved new colonies from the rainforest of eastern Paraguay. From all of these places new migrations have continued to Central America, Bolivia, Argentina and elsewhere.

 
The Ebenfelder Kleingemeinde meeting house, Colonia Los Jagueyes, Chihuahua, Mexico, in the 1950s.

Gerhard S. Koop, who moved with a group of Kleingemeinde people from Mexico to British Honduras (Belize) in 1958, wrote:

Our stay in Mexico seemed short. After only eight years, and thirty-four years for the Old Colonists, the Mexican government sought to reform the school system, as well as curtail the purchase of further land by the Mennonites. They wanted to enforce a Social Security system throughout the entire nation. This meant the building of hospitals, schools, sports and recreation facilities in the more populated areas. The building of hospitals was commendable but the building of public schools in our midst was contrary to our religious convictions. The setting up of sports facilities to produce a homogenised society was out of the question.

The net result was that a large number of Mennonites (Kleingemeinde and Old Colony) decided to move to British Honduras in Central America. Realising this, the Mexican government, not wanting to lose so many of their industrious farmers, backed down somewhat with these social reforms, which resulted in the greater portion of Mennonites deciding to remain in Mexico.

In retrospect, the Mennonite historian, Walter Quiring, Chihuahua, Mexico, who wrote the book They Sought a Country, made the following comment when he saw a baby boy lying in his cradle: “Well, where will you eventually erect your farm buildings? In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay or Australia?” The boy may well have erected his farm buildings thousands of miles from his childhood home.[10]

Youth Conference in the 1960s at the Osterwick meetinghouse in the Paraguayan Chaco. Bergthaler, Sommerfelder and Chortitzer Mennonites worked together in founding this colony (the one where Heinrich and Maria Toews settled) and held joint worship meetings from the beginning.

A long trail that began with a suffering Saviour and the persecuted church community of the first centuries, a trail that leads through the Dark Ages, through bloody persecution in the Netherlands, through tough beginnings in the Vistula Delta, in Russia, Canada and Latin America, through prosperity, apostasy and renewal by emigration, has brought the Mennonites of eastern Europe to where they find themselves today.

Will that journey with all its adventures in new lands and places continue? Will the old-style Gemeinden survive to shine again as a light to the world in our time? Probably not. Too much has probably been lost and gone wrong to fix them up or get them to function smoothly again. But if the Russian Mennonites’ epic past is any indication of what their future may hold, not all will be lost. Here and there among the ruins of yesterdays’ visionary undertakings—mass migrations of thousands of people from continent to continent, half way around the world, if necessary, for conscience’s sake—new life will surely spring up again.

Surely some seeds of Gerhard Wiebe’s, Martin C. Friesen’s and Isaak Dyck’s faith, the faith of countless parents who took all Strapazen und Schicksal (tough times and unplanned incidents sent by God) in stride to give their children a life in Christ-ordered society will sprout, bear fruit, and give us all an opportunity to learn from the witness of their lives again.      

In the next and final article of this series we will look at Gemeinde as mission, and how to relate to the Russian Mennonites’ experience in our time.

Peter

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

Notes:

[1] Gerhard Wiebe, Ursachen und Geschichte der Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus Russland nach America, Winnipeg, Canada, 1900.

[2] Martin W. Friesen, Kanadische Mennoniten bezwingen eine Wildnis, Loma Plata, Paraguay, 1977

[3] Isaak M. Dyck, Auswanderung der Reinlaender Mennoniten Gemeinde von Canada nach Mexiko, Blumenfeld, Chihuahua, Mexico, 1970

[4] Letter from the Chaco, Paraguay, to Canada, November 1928.

[5] 2 Timothy 3:12

[6] Philippians 1:18

[7] Solomon 8:9

[8] 1 Peter 1:9

[9] Isaak M. Dyck, Auswanderung der Reinlaender Mennoniten Gemeinde. . . .

[10] Gerhard S. Koop, Pionier Jahre in Britisch Honduras, Spanish Lookout Colony, Belize, 1973 (now in English translation as Pioneer Years in Belize)