Early Mennonite Brethren history

[Neto]

Here's an article about self-defense in the case where the former government has collapsed, where in essence there is no government existing, so none to take the role assigned to it in Scripture (Rewarding good & punishing evil).

Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
Visual Storyteller · 11m
Selbstschutz (Self-Defence Units) and Benjamin H. Unruh
Abram Kröker, editor of the Ukraine Mennonite Friedensstimme wrote that Mennonites are “predestined to foreshadow … even in an imperfect way, the great peace among nations in the Thousand-Year-Reign [of Christ].” And among all denominations, “it has pleased God,” according to Kröker, to “present and manifest” through the Mennonites this “pearl of evangelical truth gained at great cost by our fathers” (note 1).
And it is because of this theological hope that “our youth are raised differently,” Kröker reminds his readers; “not military bravery or fighting are presented as the highest civic virtues, but rather sacrifice, suffering and renunciation for the sake of others. In all our schools, non-resistance is explicitly taught and impressed [upon students] according to the Mennonite catechism” (note 2).
But taking up arms in self-defence was nuanced differently by his colleague and influential teacher and theologian Benjamin H. Unruh:
“This was not about the rich historical legacy of refusing armed military service, but the recognition of the right to self-defence with respect to crimes against the very lives of innocent people, in particular women and children, by criminal elements from the ranks of former army and marine soldiers … It [is] exclusively about the repulsion of unlawful acts of violence by self-proclaimed, local and limited regionally operative forces in the form of individual gangs or groups of gangs. Certainly our Anabaptist forefathers were never thinking of such a case when they penned the Schleitheim Confession 400 years ago.” (Note 3)
For Unruh, armed defence by Mennonites in this extraordinary state of emergency (without a recognized government or law enforcement) was “not a general abandonment of the received tradition of non-resistance,” for the renunciation of every armed force still remains the “highest Christian ideal.” Rather, armed defence is a theologically tolerable option, a question of conscience—however difficult and painful—for each to answer on their own before God. Unruh’s aim was to help the younger graduates of his Commerce School in particular connect what they found necessary to do out of deep conviction with the world of faith and their church (note 4).
“We were all supposedly volunteers although great pressure was put on us to join the Selbstschutz (self-defence units) … Professor Benjamin Unruh’s attitude was one of tacit support for resistance. Somewhat of a shock to me. He was my Bible instructor and was highly educated … . Everyone in Halbstadt looked up to him. I was greatly influenced by his attitude towards the Selbstschutz as were others.” (Note 5)
Some 100 to 120 students from the Halbstadt Commerce School in the Mennonite Molotschna Settlement with some of their teachers formed an active Selbstschutz unit (note 6).
A letter written from Halbstadt on January 29, 1919 to an American Mennonite friend reported in broken English that
“[a]ll men until 50 years—Mennonites and colonists—are armed and weaponed ‘until the teeth’ and formed a redoubtable power. … Our losses of men till now are very little indeed, but the brigands have lost very many. … You can imagine our situation here that has could [sic] thrust the Mennonites to such measures.” (Note 7)
Support was broadly based; before one battle a leading Mennonite minister prayed on his knees together with his own sons and the young men from the Halbstadt unit billeted in his home. After the prayer, according to one billet, the minister looked at his sons and said: “I hope you will do your duty” (note 8).
By mid-February the First Mennonite Infantry Regiment had helped liberate some German villages (non-Mennonite) including Andreasburg, eleven kilometres north of Molotschna. There they found many dead, including a middle-aged German man whose half-naked body lay on a table without visible wounds, but with the heart cut out. The infantry captured 10 prisoners, and the Mennonite soldiers executed them on the village perimeter. After this deed Unruh was quickly brought up from Halbstadt to lecture the soldiers not on a Mennonite peace theology, but on a key principle of the ancient Christian “Doctrine of Just War.”
“He regretted the execution of the prisoners. Despite the brutality of the enemy, a Christian should not judge or seek revenge. He pointed to the enormous task we must perform in protecting our villages and thereby our loved ones from such bands. … This speech by our highly esteemed teacher impressed all of us deeply, and each promised to do his duty.” (Note 9)
In another case, the Commerce School students “courageously” attacked a Russian village “and soon had the bandits on the run, leaving about seventy dead behind them,” as told by one estate owner. “Our boys did better than any of the trained Russian soldiers or officers … and pumped fear into the enemy” (note 10). Makhno’s men were generally “bad shots,” he reported, “while our boys lay behind fences and ditches and took good aim. They allowed the enemy to come close, and then laid down one of the attackers after another” (note 11).
What's to learn from this in different times?
See also my previous posts:
· “Good Friday 1919: Mennonites lay down their arms. Pray for forgiveness,”
· "We have provoked the sword,”
· “Prayer in Molotschna in the Days of Terror 1919,”
· “Advent 1918 and German troops withdrawal,”
---Notes---
Pic: Benjamin H. Unruh (Mennonite Archival Image Database. CA MHC 044-37.0).
Note 1: Abram Kröker, “Mennonitentum und Wehrlosigkeit,” Friedenstimme 17, no. 38 (November 16, 1919) 2. https://chor.square7.ch/pletk96.pdf; “Einige Gedanken zu unserm Wehrlosigkeitsprinzip,” Friedensstimme 16, no. 53 (September 21, 1918) 2, https://chor.square7.ch/pletk63.pdf.
Note 2: Kröker, “Einige Gedanken,” 2. On the "Schleitheim Confession," see https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Schle ... Confession.
Note 3: Cited in Heinrich B. Unruh, Fügungen und Führungen: Benjamin Heinrich Unruh, 1881–1959 (Detmold: Verein zur Erforschung und Pflege des Russlanddeutschen Mennonitentums, 2009) 139f.
Note 4: Ibid., 141.
Note 5: Gerhard Wiens, in Irmgard Epp, ed., Constantinoplers—Escape from Bolshevism (Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2006) 47f.
Note 6: “Nonresistance on Trial, or Selbsterlebtes und Selbstschutz. Molotschna Mennonite Settlement, 1918–1919.” No date. From Mennonite Library and Archives—Bethel College, https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/289_74771_Se48.pdf.
Note 7: Willems, “Letter to Peter Jansen, January 29, 1919,” reprinted in: “Some Information Concerning Mennonites in Russia,” The Mennonite 34, no. 39 (October 2, 1919) 4, https://archive.org/details/mennonite34 ... 8/mode/1up. The American Mennonite editor is understandably shocked that “as a measure of self-preservation, Russian Mennonites, the most conservative non-resistant people on earth, have been driven to taking up arms in self-defence.”
Note 8: “Nonresistance on Trial, or Selbsterlebtes u. Selbstschutz.”
Note 9: Ibid.
Note 10: J. Toews, “Biography of Jacob C. Toews, 1882–1968,” translated by Frieda Toews Baergen (Leamington: Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Association) 33, https://www.ekmha.ca/collections/items/show/42.
Note 11: Ibid., 34.

Here is the photo which accompanied the article, as posted in the FaceBook Mennonite History & Genealogy group:


I have never advocated for this type of understanding of the use of weapons, but neither have any of us ever been in this type of situation.

[Neto]

This article is not just about MB history in Russia, but also the greater Mennonite people as a whole during the sojourn there in the Russian Empire. (In fact, the Kleine Gemeinde, whose positions I would strongly critique in other contexts, were the ones who had it right this time. They held the Biblical view, while my own group, the MBs, were also drawn into this travesty of looking to an earthly king-kingdom for deliverance and vision.)

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days
By Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, posted on the Mennonite History & Genealogy FB group, which focuses on Dutch Mennonite history in the Russian Empire, and in other places to which this people were scattered.

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days
If only it were so. It was not only a fringe group of Russian Mennonites who believed that they were living the Last Days. This view was widely shared--though rejected by the minority conservative Kleine Gemeinde.
In 1820 upon the recommendation of Rudnerweide (Frisian) Elder Franz Görz, the progressive and influential Mennonite leader Johann Cornies asked the Mennonite Tobias Voth (b. 1791) of Graudenz, Prussia to come and lead his Agricultural Association’s private high school in Ohrloff, in the Russian Mennonite colony of Molotschna.
Voth understood this as nothing less than a divine call upon his life (note 1; pic 3). In Ohrloff Voth grew not only a secondary school, but also a community lending library, book clubs, as well as mission prayer meetings, and Bible study evenings. Voth was the son of a Mennonite minister and his wife was raised Lutheran (note 2).
For some years, Voth had been strongly influenced by the warm, Pietist devotional fiction writings of Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling. Jung-Stilling considered Napoleon’s defeat in Russia and eventual collapse as the overthrow of the First Horseman of the Apocalypse (Revelation 6), and as such a heavenly indictment of the Enlightenment’s philosophical claim to establish the new age by reason alone (note 3; sample pic 4).
Tsar Alexander I and many in his circle were also influenced by German Pietists. In 1814, the Tsar and Jung-Stilling met in Württemberg—the home state of the Alexander’s mother, and where his sister was also queen. Jung-Stilling had become convinced that Russia was predestined to oppose the antichrist and inaugurate a millennial kingdom and the rebirth of Christianity. “Praise the Lord, who has made the greatest monarch of the world and especially of Christendom into a great instrument for the preparations of his Kingdom” (note 4).
Jung-Stilling promoted the idea that Western Europe was the future kingdom of the antichrist, and that Russia was the great sheltering, protecting eagle foretold in scripture; in Russia “the fleeing ‘wise virgins’ were to be ‘kept secure from the great tribulation’” (note 5).
Already in his popular allegorical novel Heimweh (“Longing for Home”), Jung-Stilling's protagonist Prince Eugenius gathers the faithful and leads them to “Solyma” a distant land of peace that would become a refuge for all true Christians at the end of time (note 6).
Jung-Stilling’s fiction became seen by many as prophetic, and the novel served to launch the migration of radical German Pietists to South Russia for decades, particularly those from Württemberg who hoped to escape the persecution of the antichrist.
Of special note for Voth and other Mennonite readers was that Heimweh’s Prince Eugenius—an Abrahamic figure—meets and marries a spiritually insightful “noble beauty” from a “Swiss Mennonite family,” his biblical “Sarah” (note 7).
Elder Görz, like his friend Tobias Voth, shared the conviction that history was capable of unanticipated leaps forward toward a final consummation in the Last Days—perhaps in their lifetime.
The next generation’s most influential Russian Mennonite preacher, Bernhard Harder of Halbstadt, was also strongly influenced by the millennialist writings of Jung-Stilling and believed that the mid-century chaos of European revolutions was yet again a sign of the rise of the antichrist.
Harder was as convinced as Voth and Görz that the Russian monarch was a divinely ordained bulwark against the “pestilence,” and “vain and sinister schemes of democrats” and “servants of Satan” (note 8).
While Mennonites did not fit easily or fully into the mold of German Pietists, they were at least “distant cousins.”
We do not fully understand the Mennonite devotion to Tsar and state in the nineteenth century, or the self-understanding and mission of our “non-resistant” ancestors in Russia, without considering Jung-Stilling and the hopes, fears and expectations of the era that he helped to shape.
But … what about the Kleine Gemeinde?
Klaas Reimer of the Kleine Gemeinde was greatly troubled by a discussion with tne Rudnerweide elder: “We quickly came around to the [oncoming] ‘thousand-year reign [of Christ]’ and how at that time the spears would be made into scythes and the swords into plowshares and that this millennium would soon be instituted” (note 10).
Prussian Mennonites had sent multiple copies of a booklet by Swabian Pietist Johann J. Friederich on “the faith and hope of the people of God living in the era of the antichrist” to the Ohrloff Church, which alarmed Reimer.
Friederich sought to show that End Times persecution by the antichrist had begun in 1800, which—according to his reading of scripture—would precede the imminent arrival of the Thousand Year Reign (note 11).
Reimer emphasized that such matters were of no concern to Menno in his Foundations book, nor were they consistent with the popular biblical history read by Mennonites over generations, The Wandering Soul (note 12).
While this seems to be a correct reading of the tradition, “the sixteenth century was, like the present, a time of feverish preoccupation with the approaching End of all things,” writes Reformation scholar Walter Klaassen (note 13). Anabaptists in the Low Countries under the influence of Menno taught a penitent life in patient, peaceful endurance until the Great Judgement. Though they had abandoned broader diabolical conspiracies and violent apocalyptic fantasies since the Münster fiasco, these Mennonites had their own form of discipline to keep the devil in check, namely through excommunication and avoidance of those under the ban, and in this way uphold the purity of the church in anticipation of the salvation of the Lord (note 14). That is an important strand of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition.
Certainly the majority of Russian Mennonites were convinced that world time was now accelerating and bringing with it terrifying and joyful things, according to the prophetic Word. When challenged by Kleine Gemeinde founder Klaas Reimer, Elder Görz allegedly told his interlocutor: “If the apostles were alive and here today, they would teach differently than what they had taught” (note 15).
Strange? Klaassen’s reflection that that preoccupation was not unlike “the present” gives me pause to think ...
---Notes---
Note 1: Letter, Tobias Voth (Graudenz) to David Epp, October 22, 1821. In Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 871, reel 35. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Pic 3.
Note 2: Voth’s autobiography is included in P. M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 689, https://archive.org/.../TheMennoniteBro ... ussia1.../. See also John B. Toews, “Tobias Voth: The Gentle Schoolmaster of Orlov: A Document of 1850 [‘A word about school discipline’],” Mennonite Life 33, no. 1 (March 1978): 27-29. https://ml-archive.bethelks.edu/.../ml. ... 978mar.pdf.
Note 3: A. Walicki, The Flow of Ideas: Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to the Religious-Philosophical Renaissance (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 103, 132. Cf. For an exhaustive literature review of Jung-Stilling on the “eternal east,” Alexander I, and on Christian Russia, cf. Gerhard Schwinge, Jung-Stilling als Erbauungsschriftsteller der Erweckung: eine literatur- und frömmigkeitsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 133–156, https://digi20.digitale-sammlungen.de/.../bsb00046226....
Note 4: In Gustav A. Benrath, “Glaube und Frömmigkeit bei Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling,” in Blicke auf Jung-Stilling.Festschrift, edited by Michael Frost, 95–113 (Kreuztal: Wielandschmiede, 1991), 108. In that year, the Austro-Prussian-Russian coalition marched victoriously into Paris.
Note 5: Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 570f.; 1025 fn. 350; 97.
Note 6: Jung-Stilling derived “Solyma” from Jerusalem, and the Jewish word “shalom,” which means peace.
Note 7: Cf. Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling, Heimweh, parts 1–3, vol. 4 of Sämmtliche Werke (Stuttgart: Scheible, 1841) pt. 1, bk. 1, 67–72. https://books.google.ca/books?id=1Cf16Q ... &q&f=false. Cf. also “Jung-Stilling über Menno Simons,” Mennonitischer Rundschau 20, no. 34 (August 23, 1899), 1, https://archive.org/.../sim_die-mennoni ... ./mode/2up....
Note 8: Bernhard Harder wrote two hymns in response to the assassination; Geistliche Lieder und Gelegenheitsgedichte, vol. 1, edited by Heinrich Franz (Hamburg: A-G, 1888), https://chortitza.org/Pis/Hard1.pdf; no. 521, 568f.; and no. 533, 583. Cf. also “Mennonites in Asia,” Herold of Truth 39, no. 8 (April 15, 1902), 117, https://archive.org/.../heraldoftruth39 ... 9/mode/1up.
Note 10: Klaas Reimer, “Ein kleines [sic] Aufsatz or A Short Exposition: The Autobiography of Aeltester Klaas E. Reimer (1770-1837),” in Leaders of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia, 1812 to 1874, edited by D. Plett, 121–156 (Steinbach, MB: Crossway, 1993), 134, https://www.mharchives.ca/download/1261/.
Note 11: Cf. Johann Jakob Friederich, Glaubens- und Hoffnungsblick des Volkes Gottes. Aus den göttlichen Weissagungen gezogen. On Friederich, see especially: Renate Föll, Sehnsucht nach Jerusalem. Zur Ostwanderung schwäbischer Pietisten (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 2002), https://tvv-verlag.de/pdf/foell_sehnsuc ... usalem.pdf.
Note 12: Reimer, “Ein kleines [sic] Aufsatz or A Short Exposition,” 134; Joh. P. Schabalie, Die Wandelnde Seele (Stuttgart, 1860), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008917852; on Menno, cf. Marjan Blok, “Discipleship in Menno Simon’s Dat Fundament,” in Menno Simons: A Reappraisal, edited by Gerald R. Brunk, 105–130 (Harrisonburg, VA: Eastern Mennonite College, 1992), 122, n.50.
Note 13: Cf. Walter Klaassen, Living at the End of the Ages. Apocalyptic Expectation in the Radical Reformation (New York: University of America Press, 1992), xi; cf. also “Eschatological Themes in Early Dutch Anabaptism,” in The Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion to their History and Ideas, edited by Irvin B. Horst, 15–31. Leiden: Brill, 1986) 1,5-31.
Note 14: See Helmut Isaak, Menno Simons and the New Jerusalem (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2006), 93f.
Note 15: Reimer, “Ein kleines [sic] Aufsatz or A Short Exposition,” 136.

I hope that these separate links will work for those who are not members of the FB group where this was posted. These are for the photos which were included in the original post.

[Neto]

This video isn't directly about Mennonite Brethren, as the woman telling the story doesn't say, or the Russian to English translation doesn't make it clear.
But if you want to hear more about what this period in Mennonite history in the USSR (WWII) was like, listen to this video. (You will have to set it to give subtitles, and to translate to English, unless you understand Russia. I can tell that it isn't doing the greatest job of translating, but I know no Russian at all. Although it is interesting that occasionally I hear a word that I understand from my knowledge of Portuguese.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-0OrINGL4M

[MaxPC]

Neto, I appreciate this thread. It is not only informative but it also parallels incidents I am seeing in this current era.

[Neto]

January 1, 1874. 150 years ago a proclamation for military service for all men was made in the Russian Empire, leading to the mass exodus of approximately 1/3 of the entire Mennonite population in the Empire at that time.
(This is the event that lead to the immigration of all but one of my ancestors who came to the States, to do so. One of my great grandfathers came 16 years later.) The lives of those who remained there was drastically upset just over 40 years later, when the Empire collapsed.