Mennonites as the Persecutors???

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
haithabu
Posts: 361
Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2016 6:11 pm
Location: Calgary
Affiliation: Missionary Church

Re: Mennonites as the Persecutors???

Post by haithabu »

The thing about Mennonites in the Ukraine: if you were a young Mennonite man in the Crimea in 1942, you would have grown up being told there is no God and that bourgeois morality is invalid and right or wrong are what the Party says they are; your teachers would have encouraged you to inform on your parents if you received Christian instruction at home, and you were very likely to have seen one of your parents taken away never to be seen away.

One man I knew who grew up in that setting spoke of seeing the pastors and elders taken away, then other men in the church who stepped forward to take their place were taken away as well, and their replacements in turn, until by the beginning of the war 90% of the families in his village were fatherless.

In such circumstances, how are the young men expected to make informed moral decisions? Individual Mennonites from the Ukraine may have something to ask forgiveness for depending on how they conducted themselves, but the Mennonite people as a whole do not.
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YorkandAdams
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Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2017 10:12 am
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Re: Mennonites as the Persecutors???

Post by YorkandAdams »

haithabu wrote:In such circumstances, how are the young men expected to make informed moral decisions? Individual Mennonites from the Ukraine may have something to ask forgiveness for depending on how they conducted themselves, but the Mennonite people as a whole do not.
informed moral decisions? hopefully if they were christian they would use the bible as their moral compass. But even if they did not receive the proper christian education, they are without excuse in front of God.

I have often wondered how many of the young mennonite men in our churches today would remain nonresistant if the enemy was at our gates. Lets say tomorrow, Lancaster County, Pa was invaded. Would we leave our homes where we are comfortable and flee, being willing to allow the enemy to take everything in order to remain commited to our beliefs? Or would we turn a "blind eye" to our beliefs. Hopefully we would stand strong, but that would be a true test. In fact i belive part of the reason that were are not as effectice as our ancestors is because we have never been tested the way our ancestors were.
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