I walk in a commercial area I have not been in before and discover the Peace Mennonite Church. I don’t personally know any Mennonites and will have to admit that I often confuse the Amish and the Mennonites. I would like to visit Pennsylvania Dutch country some day, have some shoo-fly pie and witness the Amish and Mennonites for myself. I do admire the Mennonites’ beliefs in peace and justice and think there is something to be said for plain dress without ornamentation. No more focusing on designer labels, just focusing on the person. The Mennonites do all those things that I aspire to, but never do.
According to the Peace Mennonite Church’s website, it welcomes visitors:
We practice the radical welcome of God. Whether you are single, married, divorced, widowed, straight, gay, bi or unsure, transgender, cisgender or non-binary, documented or undocumented, we welcome you. We believe that black and brown lives matter and that white privilege is real. We believe that Christ loves our whole selves.
Whether you are mobile or have limited mobility, verbal or non-verbal, blind or deaf, on the spectrum or have a difference in intellectual ability, we welcome you.
We welcome friends of Jesus and church-phobics, religious refugees and agnostic doubters, tree-hugging vegans and red-meat eaters; crying babies and patient grandparents, the unemployed and over-employed, people who think they know it all and those who have hard questions.
We welcome the least, the last, the lost, upper class, middle class, working class, and people with no class at all. We love sinners and saints, neighbors, friends, strangers and enemies.
We don’t care if your family came here from Russia, Germany, or Switzerland hundreds of years ago to escape persecution or if you recently became interested in Anabaptism. Everyone is welcome.
Let’s learn more about the Mennonites.
According to Wikipedia, the Mennonites are members of certain Christian groups belonging to the church communities of Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons (1496–1561) of the Friesland region of the Netherlands. Through his writings, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders. The early teachings of the Mennonites were founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held to with great conviction despite persecution by the various Roman Catholic and Protestant states. An early set of Mennonite beliefs was codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, but the various groups do not hold to a common confession or creed. Rather than fight, the majority of these followers survived by fleeing to neighboring states where ruling families were tolerant of their belief in believer’s baptism. Over the years, Mennonites have become known as one of the historic peace churches because of their commitment to pacifism.
In contemporary 21st-century society, Mennonites are described either only as a religious denomination with members of different ethnic origins or as both an ethnic group and a religious denomination. There is controversy among Mennonites about this issue, with some insisting that they are simply a religious group, while others argue that they form a distinct ethnic group. Historians and sociologists have increasingly started to treat Mennonites as an ethno-religious group, while others have begun to challenge that perception. There is also a discussion about the term "ethnic Mennonite." Conservative Mennonite groups, who speak Pennsylvania German, Plautdietsch or Low German or Bernese German fit well into the definition of an ethnic group, while more liberal groups and converts in developing countries do not.
There are about 2.1 million Anabaptists worldwide as of 2015 — including Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites and many other Anabaptist groups formally part of the Mennonite World Conference. Mennonite congregations worldwide embody the full scope of Mennonite practice from "plain people" to those who are indistinguishable in dress and appearance from the general population. Mennonites can be found in communities in 87 countries on six continents. The largest populations of Mennonites are in Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India and the United States. There are Mennonite colonies in Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Paraguay. Today, fewer than 500 Mennonites remain in Ukraine. A relatively small Mennonite presence, known as the Algemee Doopsgezinde Societeit, still continues in the Netherlands, where Simons was born.
History
The early history of the Mennonites starts with the Anabaptists in the German and Dutch-speaking parts of central Europe. The German term is "Täufer" or "Wiedertäufer" — "Again-Baptists" or "Anabaptists." These forerunners of modern Mennonites were part of the Protestant Reformation, a broad reaction against the practices and theology of the Roman Catholic Church. Its most distinguishing feature is the rejection of infant baptism, an act that had both religious and political meaning since almost every infant born in western Europe was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. Other significant theological views of the Mennonites developed in opposition to Roman Catholic views or to the views of other Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli.
Some of the followers of Zwingli's Reformed church thought that requiring church membership beginning at birth was inconsistent with the New Testament example. They believed that the church should be completely removed from government — the proto–free church tradition — and that individuals should join only when willing to publicly acknowledge belief in Jesus and the desire to live in accordance with his teachings. At a small meeting in Zurich on January 21, 1525, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and Geore Blaurock — along with twelve others — baptized each other. This meeting marks the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. In the spirit of the times, other groups came to preach about reducing hierarchy, relations with the state, eschatology and sexual license, running from utter abandon to extreme chastity. These movements are together referred to as the "Radical Reformation.”
Many government and religious leaders, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, considered voluntary church membership to be dangerous — the concern of some deepened by reports of the Münster Rebellion, led by a violent sect of Anabaptists. They joined forces to fight the movement, using methods such as banishment, torture, burning, drowning or beheading.
Despite strong repressive efforts of the state churches, the movement spread slowly around western Europe, primarily along the Rhine. Officials killed many of the earliest Anabaptist leaders in an attempt to purge Europe of the new sect. By 1530, most of the founding leaders had been killed for refusing to renounce their beliefs. Many believed that God did not condone killing or the use of force for any reason and were, therefore, unwilling to fight for their lives. The non-resistant branches often survived by seeking refuge in neutral cities or nations, such as Strasbourg. Their safety was often tenuous, as a shift in alliances or an invasion could mean resumed persecution. Other groups of Anabaptists, such as the Batenburgers, were eventually destroyed by their willingness to fight. This played a large part in the evolution of Anabaptist theology. They believed that Jesus taught that any use of force to get back at anyone was wrong and taught to forgive.
In the early days of the Anabaptist movement, Menno Simons, a Catholic priest in the Netherlands, heard of the movement and started to rethink his Catholic faith. He questioned the doctrine of transubstantiation — the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of the blood of Christ — but was reluctant to leave the Roman Catholic Church. His brother, a member of an Anabaptist group, was killed when he and his companions were attacked and refused to defend themselves. In 1536, at the age of 40, Simons left the Roman Catholic Church. He soon became a leader within the Anabaptist movement and was wanted by authorities for the rest of his life. His name became associated with scattered groups of nonviolent Anabaptists whom he helped to organize and consolidate.
Fragmentation and variation
During the 16th century, the Mennonites and other Anabaptists were relentlessly persecuted. This period of persecution has had a significant impact on Mennonite identity. Martyrs Mirror, published in 1660, documents much of the persecution of Anabaptists and their predecessors, including accounts of over 4,000 burnings of individuals, and numerous stonings, imprisonments and live burials. Today, the book is still the most important book besides the Bible for many Mennonites and Amish, in particular for the Swiss-South German branch of the Mennonites. Persecution was still going on until 1710 in various parts of Switzerland.
In 1693 Jakob Ammann led an effort to reform the Mennonite church in Switzerland and South Germany to include shunning, to hold communion more often and other differences. When the discussions fell through, Ammann and his followers split from the other Mennonite congregations. Ammann's followers became known as the Amish Mennonites or just Amish. In later years, other schisms among Amish resulted in such groups as the Old Order Amish, New Order Amish, Kauffman Amish Mennonite, Swartzentruber Amish, Conservative Mennonite Conference and Biblical Mennonite Alliance. For instance, near the beginning of the 20th century, some members in the Amish church wanted to begin having Sunday schools and participate in progressive Protestant-style para-church evangelism. Unable to persuade the rest of the Amish, they separated and formed a number of separate groups including the Conservative Mennonite Conference. Mennonites in Canada and other countries typically have independent denominations because of the practical considerations of distance and — in some cases — language. Many times, these divisions took place along family lines, with each extended family supporting its own branch.
Political rulers often admitted the Menists or Mennonites into their states because they were honest, hardworking and peaceful. When their practices upset the powerful state churches, princes would renege on exemptions for military service, or a new monarch would take power, and the Mennonites would be forced to flee again, usually leaving everything but their families behind. Often, another monarch in another state would grant them welcome, at least for a while.
While Mennonites in colonial America were enjoying considerable religious freedom, their counterparts in Europe continued to struggle with persecution and temporary refuge under certain ruling monarchs. They were sometimes invited to settle in areas of poor soil that no one else could farm. By contrast, in the Netherlands, the Mennonites enjoyed a relatively high degree of tolerance. Because the land still needed to be tended, the ruler would not drive out the Mennonites but would pass laws to force them to stay, while at the same time severely limiting their freedom. Mennonites had to build their churches facing onto back streets or alleys, and they were forbidden from announcing the beginning of services with the sound of a bell.
A strong emphasis on "community" was developed under these circumstances. It continues to be typical of Mennonite churches. As a result of frequently being required to give up possessions in order to retain individual freedoms, Mennonites learned to live very simply. This was reflected both in the home and at church, where their dress and their buildings were plain. The music at church — usually simple German chorales — was performed a cappella. This style of music serves as a reminder to many Mennonites of their simple lives, as well as their history as a persecuted people. Some branches of Mennonites have retained this "plain" lifestyle into modern times.
The Mennonite World Conference was founded at the first conference in Basel, in Switzerland, in 1925 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Anabaptism.
Russian Mennonites
The "Russian Mennonites" today are descended from Dutch Anabaptists, who came from the Netherlands and started around 1530 to settle around Danzig and in West Prussia, where they lived for about 250 years. During that time, they mixed with German Mennonites from different regions. Starting in 1791, they established colonies southwest of the Russian Empire or present-day Ukraine and beginning in 1854, also in the Volga region and Orenburg Governorate or present-day Russia. Their ethno-language is Plautdietsch, a Germanic dialect of the East Low German group, with some Dutch admixture. Today, many traditional Russian Mennonites use standard German in church and for reading and writing.
In the 1770s Catherine the Great of the Russian Empire acquired a great deal of land north of the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine following the Russo-Turkish War and the takeover of the Ottoman vassal, the Crimean Khanate. Russian government officials invited Mennonites living in the Kingdom of Prussia to farm the Ukrainian steppes depopulated by Tatar raids in exchange for religious freedom and military exemption. Over the years, Mennonite farmers and businesses were very successful.
Between 1874 and 1880 some 16,000 Mennonites of approximately 45,000 left Russia. About 9,000 departed for the United States — mainly Kansas and Nebraska — and 7,000 for Canada, mainly Manitoba. In the 1920s, Russian Mennonites from Canada started to migrate to Latin America — Mexico and Paraguay — soon followed by Mennonite refugees from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Further migrations of these Mennonites led to settlements in Brazil, Uruguay, Belize, Bolivia and Argentina.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Mennonites in Russia owned large agricultural estates and some had become successful as industrial entrepreneurs in the cities, employing wage labor. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1921, all of these farms whose owners were called Kulaks and enterprises were expropriated by local peasants or the Soviet government. Beyond expropriation, Mennonites suffered severe persecution during the course of the Civil War, at the hands of workers, the Bolsheviks and, particularly, the Anarcho-Communists of Nestor Makhno, who considered the Mennonites to be privileged foreigners of the upper class and targeted them. During expropriation, hundreds of Mennonite men, women and children were murdered in these attacks. After the Ukrainian-Soviet War and the takeover of Ukraine by the Soviet Bolsheviks, people who openly practiced religion were in many cases imprisoned by the Soviet government. This led to a wave of Mennonite emigration to the Americas — U.S., Canada and Paraguay.
When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 during World War II, many in the Mennonite community perceived them as liberators from the communist regime under which they had suffered. When the tide of war turned, many of the Mennonites fled with the German army back to Germany where they were accepted as Volksdeutsche. The Soviet government believed that the Mennonites had "collectively collaborated" with the Germans. After the war, many Mennonites in the Soviet Union were forcibly relocated to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Many were sent to gulags as part of the Soviet program of mass internal deportations of various ethnic groups whose loyalty was seen as questionable. Many German-Russian Mennonites who lived to the east — not in Ukraine — were deported to Siberia before the German army's invasion and were also often placed in labor camps. In the decades that followed, as the Soviet regime became less brutal, a number of Mennonites returned to Ukraine and Western Russia where they had formerly lived. In the 1990s, the governments of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine gave these people the opportunity to emigrate, and the vast majority emigrated to Germany. The Russian Mennonite immigrants in Germany from the 1990s outnumber the pre-1989 community of Mennonites by three to one.
By 2015, the majority of Russian Mennonites and their descendants live in Latin America, Germany and Canada.
The world's most conservative Mennonites in terms of culture and technology are the Mennonites affiliated with the Lower and Upper Barton Creek Colonies in Belize. Lower Barton is inhabited by Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites, whereas Upper Barton Creek is mainly inhabited by Pennsylvania German speaking Mennonites from North America. Neither group uses motors or paint.
North America
Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the Netherlands eastward to Germany in the 17th century. As Quaker evangelists moved into Germany they received a sympathetic audience among the larger of these German-Mennonite congregations around Krefeld, Altona, Hamburg, Gronau and Emden. It was among this group of Quakers and Mennonites, living under ongoing discrimination, that William Penn solicited settlers for his new colony. The first permanent settlement of Mennonites in the American colonies consisted of one Mennonite family and twelve Mennonite-Quaker families of German extraction who arrived from Krefeld, Germany, in 1683 and settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Among these early settlers was William Rittenhouse, a lay minister and owner of the first American paper mill. Jacob Gottschalk was the first bishop of this Germantown congregation. This early group of Mennonites and Mennonite-Quakers wrote the first formal protest against slavery in the United States. The treatise was addressed to slave-holding Quakers in an effort to persuade them to change their ways.
In the early 18th century, 100,000 Germans from the Palatinate, a region in southwestern Germany, emigrated to Pennsylvania, where they became known collectively as the Pennsylvania Dutch — from the Anglicization of Deutsch or German. The Palatinate region had been repeatedly overrun by the French in religious wars, and Queen Anne had invited the Germans to go to the British colonies. Of these immigrants, around 2,500 were Mennonites and 500 were Amish. This group settled farther west than the first group, choosing less expensive land in the Lancaster area. The oldest Mennonite meetinghouse in the United States is the Hans Herr House in West Lampeter Township. A member of this second group, Christopher Dock, authored “Pedagogy,” the first American monograph on education. Today, Mennonites also reside in Kishacoquillas Valley — also known as Big Valley — a valley in Huntingdon and Mifflin counties in Pennsylvania.
During the Colonial period, Mennonites were distinguished from other Pennsylvania Germans in three ways: their opposition to the American Revolutionary War, which other German settlers participated in on both sides; resistance to public education; and disapproval of religious revivalism. Contributions of Mennonites during this period include the idea of separation of church and state and opposition to slavery.
From 1812 to 1860, another wave of Mennonite immigrants settled farther west in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. These Swiss-German speaking Mennonites, along with Amish, came from Switzerland and the Alsace-Lorraine area. These immigrants — along with the Amish of northern New York State — formed the nucleus of the Apostolic Christian Church in the United States.
There were also Mennonite settlements in Canada, who emigrated there chiefly from the United States — upstate New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
According to a 2017 report,
"there are two basic strains of Mennonites in Canada: the Swiss-South German Mennonites came via Pennsylvania, and the Dutch-North German Mennonites came via Russia or Ukraine. In the late 1700s and early 1800s “Swiss” Mennonites from Pennsylvania settled in southern Ontario. In the 1870s, a large group of “Russian” Mennonites from Ukraine moved to southern Manitoba. Further waves of “Russian” Mennonites came to Canada in the 1920s and 1940s". In the last 50 years, Mennonites have been coming to Canada from Mexico.
During the 1880s, smaller Mennonite groups settled as far west as California, especially around the Paso Robles area.
Alternative service
During World War II, Mennonite conscientious objectors or COs were given the options of noncombatant military service, serving in the medical or dental corps under military control or working in parks and on roads under civilian supervision. Over 95% chose the latter and were placed in Alternative Service camps. Initially the men worked on road building, forestry and firefighting projects. After May 1943, as a labor shortage developed within the nation, men were shifted into agriculture, education and industry. The 10,700 Canadian objectors were mostly Mennonites (63%) and Doukhobors (20%).
In the United States, Civilian Public Service provided an alternative to military service during World War II. From 1941 to 1947, 4,665 Mennonites, Amish and Brethren in Christ were among nearly 12,000 conscientious objectors who performed work of national importance in 152 CPS camps throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. The draftees worked in areas such as soil conservation, forestry, fire-fighting, agriculture, social services and mental health.
The CPS men served without wages and with minimal support from the federal government. The cost of maintaining the CPS camps and providing for the needs of the men was the responsibility of their congregations and families. Mennonite Central Committee coordinated the operation of the Mennonite camps. CPS men served longer than regular draftees, not being released until well past the end of the war. Initially skeptical of the program, government agencies learned to appreciate the men's service and requested more workers from the program. CPS made significant contributions to forest fire prevention, erosion and flood control, medical science and reform of the mental health system.
Membership
In 2009, there were 1,616,126 Mennonites in 82 countries. The United States had the highest number of Mennonites with 387,103 members, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 220,444 members. The third largest concentration of Mennonites was in Ethiopia with 172,306 members, while the fourth largest population was in India with 156,922 members. Europe, the birthplace of Mennonites, had 64,740 members.
Africa has the highest membership growth rate by far, with an increase of 10% to 12% every year, particularly in Ethiopia due to new conversions. African Mennonite churches underwent a dramatic 228% increase in membership during the 1980s and 1990s, attracting thousands of new converts in Tanzania, Kenya and the Congo. Programs were also founded in Botswana and Swaziland during the 1960s. Mennonite organizations in South Africa, initially stifled under apartheid due to the Afrikaner government's distrust of foreign pacifist churches, have expanded substantially since 1994. In recognition of the dramatic increase in the proportion of African adherents, the Mennonite World Conference held its assembly in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 2003.
In Latin America growth is not a high as in Africa, but strong because of the high birth rates of traditional Mennonites of German ancestry. Growth in Mennonite membership is steady and has outpaced total population growth in North America, the Asia/Pacific region and Caribbean region. Europe has seen a slow and accelerating decline in Mennonite membership since about 1980.
Organization: North America
In 2015, there were 538,839 baptized members organized into 41 bodies in United States, according to the Mennonite World Conference. The largest group of that number is the Old Order Amish, perhaps numbering as high as 300,000. The U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches comprises 34,500 members. 27,000 are part of a larger group known collectively as Old Order Mennonites. Another 78,892 of that number are from the Mennonite Church USA.
Total membership in Mennonite Church USA denominations decreased from about 133,000, before the MC-GC merger in 1998, to about 114,000 after the merger in 2003. In 2016 it had fallen to under 79,000. Membership of the Mennonite Church USA is on the decline.
Canada had 143,720 Mennonites in 16 organized bodies as of 2015. Of that number, the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches had 37,508 baptized members and the Mennonite Church Canada had 31,000 members.
As of 2012, there were an estimated 100,000 Old Colony Mennonites in Mexico. These Mennonites descend from a mass migration in the 1920s of roughly 6,000 Old Colony Mennonites from the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In 1921, a Canadian Mennonite delegation arriving in Mexico received a privilegium, a promise of non-interference, from the Mexican government. This guarantee of many freedoms was the impetus that created the two original Old Colony settlements near Patos Nuevo Ideal, Durango, Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua and La Honda, Zacatecas as well as many communities in Aguascalientes.
On the other hand, the Mennonite World Conference cites only 33,881 Mennonites organized into 14 bodies in Mexico.
Organization: Europe
Germany has the largest contingent of Mennonites in Europe. The Mennonite World Conference counts 47,202 baptized members within seven organized bodies in 2015. The largest group is the Bruderschaft der Christengemeinde in Deutschland or Mennonite Brethren, which had 20,000 members in 2010. Another such body is the Union of German Mennonite Congregations or Vereinigung der Deutschen Mennonitegemeinden. Founded in 1886, it has 27 congregations with 5,724 members and is part of the larger "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mennonitischer Gemeinden in Deutschland" or AMG (Assembly/Council of Mennonite Churches in Germany), which claims 40,000 overall members from various groups. Other AMG member groups include: Rußland-Deutschen Mennoniten, Mennoniten-Brüdergemeinden (Independent Mennonite Brethren congregations), WEBB-Gemeinden and the Mennonitischen Heimatmission. However, not all German Mennonites belong to this larger AMG body. Upwards of 40,000 Mennonites emigrated from Russia to Germany starting in the 1970s.
The Mennonite presence remaining in the Netherlands, Algemene Doopsgezinde Societeit or ADS (— ranslated as General Mennonite Society — maintains a seminary, as well as organizing relief, peace and mission work, the latter primarily in Central Java and New Guinea. They have 121 congregations with 10,200 members according to the World Council of Churches, although the Mennonite World Conference cites only 7680 members.
Switzerland had 2,350 Mennonites belonging to 14 congregations which are part of the Konferenz der Mennoniten der Schweiz (Alttäufer), Conférence Mennonite Suisse (Anabaptiste) (Swiss Mennonite Conference).
In 2015, there were 2,078 Mennonites in France. The country's 32 autonomous Mennonite congregations have formed the Association des Églises Évangéliques Mennonites de France.
Once home to tens of thousands of Mennonites, the number of Mennonites in Ukraine in 2015 totaled just 499. They are organized among three denominations: Association of Mennonite Brethren Churches of Ukraine, Church of God in Christ, Mennonite (Ukraine) and Evangelical Mennonite Churches of Ukraine (Beachy Amish Church – Ukraine).
The U.K. had but 326 members within two organized bodies as of 2015. There is the Nationwide Fellowship Churches (UK) and the larger Brethren in Christ Church United Kingdom. Additionally, there is the registered charity, The Mennonite Trust — formerly known as "London Mennonite Centre" — which seeks to promote understanding of Mennonite and Anabaptist practices and values.
In popular culture
Mennonites have been portrayed in many areas of popular culture, especially literature, film and television. Notable novels about or written by Mennonites include “A Complicated Kindness” by Mirian Toews, “Peace Shall Destroy Many” by Rudy Wiebe, “The Salvation of Yasch Siemens” by Armin Wiebe and “A Year of Lesser” by David Bergen. Rhoda Janzen's memoir "Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” was a best-seller. In 1975 Victor Davies composed the Mennonite Piano Concerto and in 1977, composer Glenn Gould featured Manitoba Mennonites in his experimental radio documentary “The Quiet in the Land,” part three of his Solitude Trilogy. In 2007, Mexican director Carlos Reygadas directed “Silent Light,” the first ever feature film in the Russian Mennonite dialect of Plautdietsch. Mennonites have also been depicted on television, including in episodes of “Schitt’s Creek,” “Letterkenny” and “The Simpsons,” which was created by Matt Groening, himself of Russian Mennonite descent. Andrew Unger's satirical news website The Daily Bonnet pokes fun at Mennonite culture and traditions.
Always a fun read, and I have yet to walk away thinking I had wasted my time. Thanks!