An On-Line Conversation re Baptists and Anabaptism

änlijch woare

Bruce Hiebert • My frustration with the term "Anabaptism" stems as much from its use as a political slogan in contemporary Mennonite institutional and social power struggles as it does from its ties to a specific historical movement that the Baptists can claim, violence and all, with as much integrity as the peace oriented Mennonites. In point of historical fact, we are descendents of Menno Simons' version of Anabaptism, not Anabaptism per se. We need to face up to and respond to that reality, not pretend that by sloganeering to the broader movement of which he was a part we have avoided the Mennonite history that comes afterward. Plus, Mennonite history, pitfalls and all, is who we are. It runs deep in our bones. If someone wants to be an Anabaptist, apocalypticism, violence, medieval anthropology and everything else that goes with it, then I welcome them to it. But let's not pretend that was a movement of peace or that it has more than the weakest connection to the contemporary Mennonite life.

Steven Wall • As I have said before, I do not understand this new Baptist claim to be connected with the Anabaptists. While there were a very few English Anabaptists, and significant interaction intellectually between English Quakers and Continental Mennonites, both the English and Scandinavian Baptists descend from completely different historical tracks than do Anabaptists. According to most authoritative church historians, the Anglo-American Baptists are actually Protestants.

Reserving the right to be wrong, especially in an area with scarce resources i.e. Minnesota, my understanding is that the Baptists were a "free church" movement that sprang from similar political and social concerns but with completely different spiritual foci. The Baptists fit in nicely with Troeltsch's historical Protestant church schematics... Anabaptists and Quakers do not, as he himself indicates.

Generally, I think we should celebrate common beliefs and learn to build bridges using those commonalities but saying that Baptists are Anabaptist because we share an adult baptism is no more pertinent than to claim that Anabaptists are Maronite Catholics because we encourage a married clergy.

Coming to Terms

Mennonitas learning Spanish, courtesy Excelsior News.

Ne Sproak School     

(from Excelsior News)

    It seems that Mexico’s Mennonites, many of whom left Canada due in part to language assimilation pressures in the public schools, have finally decided to come to terms with this past… coming terms in Spanish.

   

    At a time when speculations rests regarding the future of Mennonites in Mexico, Excelsior News reports that Chihuahua’s Mennonites are now enrolling in Mexico’s public school programs in order to learn Spanish.

    Excelsior indicates that over one hundred Mennonites have enrolled in primary and secondary school programming through Chihuahua Institute of Adult Education (ICHEA). 

    Mennonites are feeling the need to learn Spanish in order to obtain official identification papers for passports and to establish business and bank accounts. 

    But, it seems that Spanish is also being used increasingly to communicate with non-Mennonite employees, encouraging these employees also to learn formal Spanish and to complete their education in order to facilitate friendships, business connections and the ability to communicate.

    Excelsior indicates that Mennonites began attending ICHEA courses in 2012, beginning with a group of about 20 farmwives and shortly including several couples and Mennonite school teachers.  Though mostly Mennonite women are studying Spanish with fewer men.

    Daicy Mauricio Gallegos, a volunteer teacher, describes her students as follows, “Son muy metódicos, les gusta estudiar a conciencia libro por libro; saben leer y escribir, pero como no dominan el español, tienen dificultades para entender las preguntas de los exámenes, así que decidieron estudiar desde el nivel inicial (alfabetización).” (Excelsior, see link).

    “The Mennonite students are very methodical, and conscientiously study their books.  They can both read and write but are not as fluent when speaking Spanish and often have difficulty understanding the test questions.  For this reason, I start them at the basic level.”

    In reading this story, one can help but be amused at the turn of events whereby so many of us have volunteered to help teach Mexican immigrant families English and how test questions seem to be especially difficult to comprehend / translate.   Perhaps the world is not so large after all.

http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2013/04/30/896653  

Settling the Boundaries

ne Je'ren t(w)eschen twee Jrense

This essay is a purely brainstorming essay used to critic Seth Schwartz, Marilyn Montgomery and Ervin Briones’ The Role of Identity in Acculturation and Assimilation of Immigrant People.  As such, this is neither a scholarly essay nor submitted for classwork, discussion or publication, rather just some amateur theoretical doodling mosty intended to help process and develop other concepts for further development, review or rejection.  Danke. 

    As part of the assumptions set into their thesis, Schwartz, Montgomery and Briones (collecting ‘The Authors), review prominent Modern and Postmodern definitions of their key terms (excluding ‘immigrant’ which seems to be relatively accepted):  Acculturation, cultural identity, culture, Personal identity and Social identity.  They seemingly desire a more technocratic or applied theoretical tone rather than a theory building perspective and preference for stability and structure in these definitions, desiring that it be “possible to define acculturation and identity in terms precise enough to support specific theoretical propositions, calls for empirical research, and rationales for interventions to promote identity development in acculturating individuals.” (p 2). 

    A short criticism is apparent immediately in their assumptions that acculturating is a positive goal and that they, as members of the dominant recipient culture, are in a position to and morally empowered to intervene.  Postmodernists should be leaping up from chairs and rattling glasses in alarm.

    While they slough off liability to theoretical criticism against Postmodernism supplied by M. J. Chandler, and R. Brubaker and F. Cooper in a manner that would make an American Congressperson blush, they do have a point – but one that I think we can help mitigate.

Finally, a Definitive Word on Tatarstan and Mexico's Mennonites

Time to add a new decal?  Russian Mennonite - Tatarstan

The American press has finally discovered the story about Mexican Mennonites possibly returning to Tatarstan, Russia.

Please follow this link to Tim Johnson's excellent coverage of this story in the Kansas City Star:

Johnson, Tim, "To Some Mennonites in Mexico, Russia Looks Like Promised Land," 11 Nov 2012

Neu Bruderthaler's comments:

An excellent article.  Thank you Tim for taking the time to research this story properly.  It is very informative.

I do have some unease with Dr. Koth's remark which might indicate a clearer connection and gross oversimplification between the Russian Revolution and the immigration of the Mennonites out of Russia and Ukraine than is the case.   The primary immigration to North America, as most Kansans recall from their state history courses, immigrated in the 1870s when Alexander II's policies towards minorities became increasingly irrational and ambivalent and Mennonites were faced with the threat of losing their freedoms of religion, individual conscience and from mandatory military service.  Many Mennonites chose to immigrate to North America while many chose to stay during this time and negotiate further regarding these freedoms with the Czar.  The farms of those leaving were sold to either Mennonites who remained in Russia-Ukraine or to Russians and Ukrainians desiring new farmland.

Arguably, it was the unrest created by the Revolution and contact with invading German armies who promised stability and protection during WWI and WWII that caused the greatest impetus for further immigration amongst those who stayed.   But land appropriation was only one concern -- much more important was the general level of social and political violence encouraged by the early Soviet regime and Stalin's administration, natural and man-made famines, the imposed atheism of the Soviet state and the horrors of the Holodomar -- one of the darkest periods of Ukraine's history.

What's in a Name?

    This blog is mostly concerned with examining the construction, maintenance and viability of a specific ethnic religious identity.  While no one really bothers getting excited over such a project, it is none-the-less a bit controversial – not in its particular expression but in the perception of its aims.  Does this project contribute towards the preservation of a particular and valuable ethnic “particular’ experience or does it contribute towards further divisiveness and discrimination.

    It is important to reiterate that just because one identifies a particular ethnic experience as viable and worthy of study, that one does not necessarily denigrate or negate the viability and value of all other ethnic or ethnic-religious experiences.  Just as a single rose can be examined and cultivated along with many other roses in the garden, or just as the genus rosa is worthy of study but no more so, nor more to be preferred than is iris or syringe or paeonia…  each is worthy, necessary and valued both in and of itself and also for the contrast and complementary impact each unique group has on the others and on the inclusive group as a whole.

    Nor is this conundrum the sole propriety of the ethnic Mennonites, or even of ethnic-religions in general.  Similar questions and dilemmas have been grappled with in many other examinations or manifestations of “unique” identity – at various national or regional Jewish heritage institutions, at the Swedish-American Museum (SAMAC) in Chicago, or even in defining participation in and inclusion in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights now under construction in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Shunning Platforms

Stage Identities:  Creating a Platform or Space for Dialogue

ne Kaunsel

   Some people in the know have informed me that there is a whole other history for Diane Driedger’s collection of poems, The Mennonite Madonna, one of which I was not aware.

 Apparently, The Mennonite Madonna actually originated as a collection of performance poetry framing a 1997 Fringe Theatre performance by Driedger as the Mennonite Madonna and as her grandparents. 

    The greatest strength, in my opinion, of the art scene in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is that the scene is all about smashing boundaries – boundaries between the numerous historic and immigrant cultures that have together built the city, boundaries between tradition and new perspectives and boundaries between art forms.  Two of my favorite examples of the latter are the adaptation of Patrick Friesen’s poetry to both print and stage forms and Clive Holden’s multi-media Trains of Winnipeg.  (Though I am also tempted to include a phenomenal presentation of Carl Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) accompanied by acoustic and jazz performers on the level of the Wyrd Sisters.)

    The Mennonite Madonna is a stage persona Driedger developed in response to the lack of a female divine in Mennonite culture and worship.  Searching for options and solutions, Driedger apparently looked to the Roman Catholic image of Mary, Mother of Christ, and to Mary's iconoclastic double – the pop performer Madonna who became a dominant force in pop culture by challenging traditional values and perceptions – possibly one of the first great Postmodern performers.

Are We an Ethnicity or a Religion?

    Does the term Mennonite refer to a religion or to an ethnicity?  This question regarding religion versus culture assumes greater significance as those who self-identify as Mennonite increasingly move away from their traditional clusters of farms, congregations, and colonies.  People have coined many terms to deal with this question -- Patrick Friesen, the noted poet and teacher of Mennonite descent, refers to himself as a “Recovering Mennonite.”  Many of my fellow Mennonite students at Georgetown University, a well-known Jesuit university of the Catholic faith, referred to themselves not as Mennonites but as having Mennonite grandparents -- in the same manner that Philip Landis, the controversial “Mennonite” cyclist, would later identify himself not as Mennonite but as of Mennonite descent.  In a former Mennonite Brethren church in Minneapolis, Minnesota -- we all celebrated one communion and a single fellowship, but identified ourselves as Bruderthaler-Mennonite, Old Mennonite, General Conference Mennonite, Hutterite, and Mennonite Brethren -- all the same, but all different.  Obviously, we retained distinct cultural differences -- the proverbial alphabet soup of Mennonite identities, that had no affect whatsoever on our shared spiritual understanding.  In an informal conversation, Carolyn Fauth, a Mennonite journalist and historian from Lustre, Montana, shared in conversation that until the 1940s, you could tell the Mennonite groups of Lustre-Volt apart by the pattern of ribbons on the bonnets worn by the women -- the Bruderthaler, the Mennonite Brethren, and the General Conference women all ascribed to a distinct style.  Furthermore, you use the same criteria to distinguish between the Old Mennonite churches, the Amish Mennonites, and the Hutterites.  Yet, I am aware of no written understanding that any of the Mennonites ever believed that God preferred or mandated a specific pattern for bonnets in His Church (though I am aware of stories where certain hairstyles and clothing fasteners are mandated by formal church instruction).  Though originally grounded in a religious understanding, many of these practices would seem to have become cultural norms and traditions rather than religious dogma.