On Mennonite political involvement

Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood: Europe – Russia – Canada 1525–1980 James Urry. University of Manitoba Press, 2006. 400 pages.

In this book James Urry, well-known for his exhaustive research on the Russian Mennonites, begins with their Reformation origins as Anabaptists in the Netherlands and continues with their life in Prussia, Russia, and finally Manitoba.

He shows that throughout their long history Mennonites have been extensively involved in politics, even though according to their earliest Confession, the Schleitheim Articles of 1527, the believer had moved into the kingdom of God and was no longer involved in the kingdoms of this world. The latter kingdoms, while ordained of God, were seen as outside “the perfection of Christ” because of their reliance upon the “sword.”

While no longer tormented by their rulers, Mennonites generally found themselves an unappreciated and sometimes unwelcome minority after the Reformation, owing to their refusal to fully recognize the political and legal jurisdiction of their earthly rulers. This led them to negotiate various agreements with their rulers whereby they were allowed to maintain their religious distinctives. The most formal of these were the legal charters called Privilegia and the best known Privilegium was issued by the Russian Tsar in 1800.

Under its terms Mennonites in Prussia were granted blocks of agricultural land in southern Russia, exempted from bearing arms and swearing oaths, and generally, as they saw it, allowed to create what in some ways became a Mennonite state within the larger state. The Mennonites also came to understand that they were expected in return to live as law-abiding and exemplary subjects, sharing their agricultural skills with the surrounding population.

An earlier 1763 manifesto had directed all potential foreign settlers to refrain from evangelism among fellow Christians (as opposed to “Mahometans”). Today’s Mennonite Brethren who are sometimes critical of their forebears for accepting this provision should note that Urry carefully documents the recurring endeavours by the Mennonite Brethren from their beginnings in 1860 to evangelize their neighbours, including the Orthodox, in an apparent defiance of the Privilegium. This activity created a considerable amount of tension with other Mennonites who feared the loss of the Privilegium as a result.

Urry next shifts to those Russian Mennonites who immigrated to Manitoba in the 1870s after obtaining what they saw as a new Privilegium. However, given the fact that Canada was a democracy, they slowly came to understand that, rather than seeking new Privilegia to secure their rights, they would need to participate in the democratic process as citizens equal to all other citizens and hope for the best. (Actually, Urry shows, their forebears had begun the process of seeking public office many years earlier, most notably in the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament and the Russian Duma.)

In the 1920s those Mennonites in Manitoba who could not accept this new method of relating to government began the process of relocating to Central and South America. Those who remained in Manitoba, together with those who joined them in the subsequent migrations from Russia, became rather active politically in the decades that followed.

With its truly impressive but never-ending procession of dates and facts this book is both a tedious and fascinating read. It raises some significant questions.

Besides praying for those in authority (1 Timothy 2) and voting, is it also our duty as believers and as citizens in a democratic state to participate in the political process by identifying publicly with political parties? How can the ill will that sometimes accompanies church situations in which members openly identify with political parties be prevented?

In the democratic process, might those who are able to secure access to those in power, whether directly or through lobbyists, be at an unfair advantage? Should believers identify publicly with a political party when they disagree with part of its platform on religious grounds? Is there a lesson in the fact that some Canadian Mennonites expressed support for Nazi Germany in the 1930s? And finally, to what extent was one Mennonite leader correct when he claimed, in 1963, “the sphere of effective Christian action in the political arena is much more limited than many of us are inclined to believe.”

Ed Lenzmann is a retired Winnipeg teacher. He has a keen interest in history and volunteers at the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies.