The Mennonite Congregational World

Mennonite relations with secular authority had always been both com­plex and contradictory. The Mennonite religious ideal was to live apart from the secular world in self-sufficient agricultural communities, self­administered in accordance with religious principles.

Traditions of insularity and pacifism meant that, before coming to Russia, Mennonites themselves had not taken up secular administrative positions. The requirement to abide by secular laws and pay secular taxes, however, meant that the internal Mennonite congregational ad­ministrative system had to cooperate at some level with the secular system. Congregational authorities thus walked a tightrope between secular and religious worlds, the smallest slip often plunging them into controversy.

The first Mennonite immigrants to Russia came from Prussia. The communities that they left were by then divided between two congrega­tions, the Flemish and Frisian. The Flemish congregation was more insular, conservative, and strict in its application of congregational dis­cipline than the Frisian congregation, which, for example, was more willing to accept outsiders and sanction Intercongregational marriages.³ The first Mennonite settlers in the Molochna region were almost exclu­sively drawn from the Flemish congregation.

In Danzig in 1808 the two congregations united. In the following years the new, united congregation became increasingly open to ideas drawn from non-Mennonite, particularly pietistic Christian, groups.⁴ When in 1818 the Russian state authorized a new immigration of sev­eral thousand Mennonites from Prussia, it opened the door to religious controversy by bringing into the conservative Molochna community a large group of Danzig Mennonites, who were regarded by Flemish con- gregationalists in Molochna as Frisians.⁵

The newcomers, most of whom settled in villages on the upper Iushanlee River, were led by elder Franz Gδrz and minister Heinrich Balzer. ElderJacob Fast, leader of the Molochna Flemish congregation, and Bernhard Fast who succeeded him as elder in 1820, tried to estab­lish good relations with the newcomers. In 1820 Bernhard Fast broke with tradition - and angered many members of his congregation - by being ordained by Gorz rather than by the senior Flemish clergyman from Khortitsa, as was customary.⁶ That same year Fast supported the creation of the Christian School Association, which in 1822 accom­plished its aim of opening a secondary school in Ohrloff.⁷ Mennonite villages already had primary schools to provide basic literacy and numeracy. However, while all Mennonites needed to be able to read the Bible, conservatives feared that any further education would en­courage children to question traditional beliefs, which could only lead to unwanted innovations. Moreover, religious education was the pre­rogative of ministers, and the creation of a Christian school seemed to challenge this prerogative. To make matters worse, the Christian School Association imported from Prussia Tobias Voth, who was known to hold controversial pietistic religious views, as the Ohrloff school-master.⁸

In 1821, when representatives of the Russian Bible Association visited the Molochna region, Fast and Flemish elder Peter Wedeljoined Gorz in forming a Molochna chapter of the association, dedicated to the distribution of Bibles among Mennonites and in the surrounding com­munities.

The final Strawfor the Flemish Congregationalists came in 1822 when, against all tradition, Fast permitted a visiting non-Mennonite mission­ary, Johann Moritz, to address a prayer meeting and take communion in OhrlofF. Although Fast quickly acknowledged his mistake and apolo­gized, conservative leaders could not be placated. In 1824 they formed a new congregation, the Large Flemish congregation, under the leader­ship of Altona minister Jacob Warkentin. Roughly three-quarters of the original Flemish congregation joined them.¹⁰ There were now three official Mennonite congregations in the Molochna, the Frisian, the Flem­ish (which now became known as the Old Flemish), and the Large Flemish, along with the conservative Small Congregation (Kleine Gemeinde) that had no official status.