Book Review:  James Urry: Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood
(Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2006)
reviewed by Robert Martens
 

For centuries, Mennonites have wrestled with Jesus' cryptic comment, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's": that is, to what extent should a Christian be involved in political affairs? Nevertheless, argues James Urry in Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood, Mennonite scholars have generally ignored the political aspects of their own history. Urry's book is an attempt to correct this imbalance. Politics pervades our lives; an analysis based on pure ethnicity is clearly not enough.

In the Schleitheim Articles, the Anabaptists rejected participation in the structures of power, and regarded government as merely "custodial," as an institution founded on violence and therefore better left to its own devices. In time this position softened – Menno Simons, for example, was equivocal on this issue – but many Mennonites remained a separatist people. A second stream developed, however, as some Mennonites engaged with political structures and attempted to develop their ideas within the institutions of the "world." These two polarities, separatism and involvement, would incite a furious debate that has lasted in the Mennonite world until the present day and often resulted in acrimony and schism.

In 1944 Harold Bender contended that the "Anabaptist vision" was among the first historical declarations of separation of church and state. Urry questions this. Anabaptists / Mennonites never intended anything so secular, he argues. Rather, they generally took a more passive approach, rejecting involvement in all the "things of this world." This may be, in fact, the central thesis of Urry's book. The bureaucratic state has been historically perceived by Mennonites as the real threat to their church and community. Consequently they sought special protection through "privilegia," legal agreements established with lords, kings, czars, and eventually political authorities in North and South America. The Mennonites' passive sectarian approach was primarily imperiled not by a religious inquisition, but by the rise of the nation state, with its constitution and equal rights for all individuals, and its consequent rationalism, disconnection from the social, and its definition of religion as something private and emotional.

The Mennonite emigration to Russia in and after 1789 was an attempt to delay history. Europe was rapidly transforming itself into the modern nation state, and Mennonites hoped to avoid these developments by moving into the backward east. The Manifesto of Catherine the Great issued in 1763 had guaranteed freedom of religion and exemption from military duty for new immigrant groups, but the special Privilegium granted by Czar Paul to the Mennonites in 1800 was even more explicit on issues such as the military and taking of oaths. The Privilegium was regarded with such veneration by Mennonites that it was kept on permanent display in Chortitza.

But the inevitable could not be delayed. Even as the Mennonite "Völklein" took governmental regulations and made them their own, the bureaucracy of the Russian state was becoming increasingly powerful. The work of Johann Cornies, the gifted and often despised Mennonite organizer, was an attempt to solidify the status of the colonies within the bureaucratic structure. And the Great Reforms (1861 – 1881) of Czar Alexander II made it quite clear that law was for everyone, and that the special status of privilegia was a thing of the past. The Mennonite response was usually one of turmoil. The most traditionalist left for Canada in the 1870s. The Mennonite Brethren attempted, among other things, to integrate more fully into the mainstream Russian culture, and in so doing frequently quarreled virulently with the "kirchlichen" from whom they had separated. Mennonites in Russia finally met to draw up a common constitution in 1917, but by that time it was too late. The nightmare of the Soviet Union was about to begin.

The Mennonite emigrants to North America in the 1870s, suspicious of the republican politics of the United States, generally chose Canada as their destination under the naive misconception that Queen Victoria would grant them a privilegium there. The most traditional, such as the Kleine Gemeinde, refused even to vote in their new land, but other Mennonites, particularly in the West Reserve of Manitoba, were soon involved in politics. Urry describes in fascinating detail the machinations of Conservative and Liberal politicians in their attempts to corner the Mennonite vote in Manitoba. During World War I, however, Mennonites were briefly disenfranchised in Canada. They soon became the "quiet in the land," and many again moved on in the 1920s when legislation focused on educational issues threatened their way of life.

The Russländer refugees of the 1920s brought with them a sophistication and level of education quite foreign to the Kanadier immigrants of the 1870s. After their devastating experiences in the USSR, the Russländer also bore a hatred of all things socialist, and some embraced a concept of universal "Germanness" often characterized by anti-Semitism.

 The Mennonitische Rundschau in fact published articles in the 1930s in support of Hitler. The grinding   poverty Mennonites experienced in Canada, their nostalgia for their Russian homeland, the failure to
establish traditional colonies in Canada, and a chronic distrust of democracy all helped account for the excesses of the "Germanness" movement, but this period remains a black mark in Mennonite history.
Urry does not spare the rod. The "Golden Age" of Russia, he asserts, was a fantasy created in retrospect that cloaked the deep divisions experienced in the "Mennonite Commonwealth." The "organizational
genius" attributed to Russländer was sometimes scarred by inflated claims to power and support of Nazism. Mennonites, Urry maintains, often demanded privilege while neglecting concomitant
responsibilities, and at these times might better be called "the loud in the land."

James Urry's Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood is written in a rather dense academic style and sometimes lacks a passion that would galvanize his story. His concentration in the last third of the book on politics in Manitoba and Winnipeg may make the book less interesting for readers in other parts of the world. But Urry brings his readers the gift of bringing the raw and seamy currents of politics to light. Mennonites have often abandoned realism and interpreted their story too piously. Urry's difficult but fascinating book does much to rectify the whitewashing of their turbulent history.

Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood is available at the MHS Archives.