Mennonite Matters

The payout! Did your hand shake?

Many years ago we, quite naturally as young people, observed that certain persons, even in our Mennonite circles, earned more money than we ever expected to earn and, if we were in a position to hear about the payment being made, we used jokingly to ask; ‘do you think his hand shook when he took such a large amount for himself? ‘

Today, in the Calgary Herald, May 21, Victoria Day, it was revealed that Dale Fraser was given a severance payout of more than $310,000 after working 14 years as head of the Calgary Parking Authority at a salary of $160,000, and that large amount even though he had been fired.

Did Dale’s hand shake when he took it – that is, was there even one spasm of guilty conscience, and even more so when it was revealed he had charged ‘overtime’ to the tune of thousands of dollars? Thinking it right to charge overtime when you are already well paid seems beyond reason, beyond civic common sense? I know nothing of this man’s pursuit of a life style or advantages or thoughts of entitlement that keep him near the calculator.

I remember how a man came to my teaching university on a five-year contract as president. It was rumoured he used lawyers to ensure that every base was covered, possible severance, a teaching position in the department of his discipline if he so chose to stay at this university. Ah, he was only being prudent, right, well prepared for every eventuality, including a portable pension into the next job. All university presidents do it. All those winning government jobs are provided with a contract and no one is worried about the shaking hand, but rather with the ‘golden handshake. And no one, it seems, more so than in Alberta.

One of the first to question exorbitant payouts was Mayor Maheed Nenshi in the matter of severance for the chief of Enmax, a City-owned power company, when he was transitioning out for whatever reason. Another matter that caught voter attention and led to finger-pointing was the revelation there were people in Edmonton taking money for sitting on committees that never met! This was going to add up to thousands. If they should have a guilty conscience for such unheard largesse, how about those who felt the brunt of questions from opposition party leaders and also Danielle Smith, Wildrose leader, about the all too grandiose severance packages for those retiring from public life.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Alberta is the only province that pays severance. The Calgary Herald reported the twelve richest purses on March 23, 2012: Ken Kowalski: $1,189,000; Ed Stelmach: $991,000; Rob Renner: $872,000; Barry McFarland: $720,000; Iris Evans: $698,000; Janis Tarchuk: $645,000; Richard Marz: $544,000; three with $512,000; Hugh MacDonald: $491,000; and Kevin Taft, former leader of the Liberal Party, $405,000.

We will not even try to name bank presidents who earn, more legitimately, perhaps, we hope, than the J.P. Morgan executive responsible for losing billions yet who still walked away into his sunset with millions. The Enron story Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald showed how those who bilked their own company out of millions, or tried to do so, argued to the end, `we have done no wrong.“ If Jeff Skilling`s hand is shaking in prison, it is not from guilt.

My reading since New Year’s 2012

             What about Gandhi and Churchill, Abe Lincoln, Mission to Church among the Mennonite Brethren in Andhra Pradesh, India, Conspiracy of Fools (Enron), The Book of Books, Surpassing Wonder, The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, and the New Testament (NT, namely Luke`s Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles),. It was not exactly in that order, because some were read simultaneously as it were: one book at the bed lamp, the other in the bathroom, the NT in the car for any eventuality, any waiting time. Some are huge in length and taking a long time, piecemeal, thought-provoking, mind bending and changing. Good.

Surprised at the variety and order! Well, maybe, but most of them are gifts from Angie Parkes, my daughter in law, who seems to know better than me what I should buy for my mind. Of the Mission in India book I was sure I needed to get it  because I found Paul Wiebe`s Heirs and Joint Heirs covering the story I had researched in the 1990s and published as Russians, North Americans, and Telugus: the MB in Mission in India, 1885-1975. Naturally I wondered how revisionist he might be, so I was grateful that he had studied my book and accepted my interpretation of events at key places where I had made serious revision from an earlier view.

Three other books, Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age  by Arthur Herman, A. Lincoln by Ronald White, and  Kurt Eichenwald`s Conspiracy of Fools (A True Story) are all about power, the power of empire-building, the political will to end slavery (serfdom; cf Alexander II in Russia), and the power of greed  which is self-destructive. `He that would be the greatest among you must be your servant.` Jesus told his disciples. Many more texts could be cited.

I have less to say about these books in this post, but much more on the books about the Bible or the books in it. Conspiracy of Fools, a book I should have read several years ago, is a shocker. Enron-like activity is still going on: manipulation of company funds for personal gain, hugely fraudulent  activity, money-laundering, implicating some banks and making their executives complicit in this activity. Jeff Skilling is in jail where he should be, as are many others.

I have already written a Post about Melvyn Bragg’s The Book of Books, the Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611 – 2011 (Hodder and Stoughton, 2011), 370 pages. Here are a few additional comments: the 54 men who translated the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and the Greek of the New Testament, “let loose a deluge of knowledge unlike anything that had happened before in human history“. Bragg’s central claim is that the King James Bible has been a catalyst for “positive achievement”, spurring both political radicalism and epochal social changes. He identifies it as a “wellspring of democracy and … of the importance of women’s education, ts role in the movement to abolish slavery,“ and its worth as the greatest literature of all time.

For the making of the English Bible, I recommend an older book by Adam Nicolson, God`s Secretaries, The Making of the King James Bible (2005). This grandson of Sir Harold Nicolson, once PM of England, had a profound understanding of the King who authorized this new translation of the Bible into English when its prose could deliver a literary gem of Shakespearean proportions. King James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England saw a chance to use a new translation of the Bible to unify his kingdom. It has been said that `the dream of Jacobean peace lay behind a Bible of extraordinary grace and everlasting literary power.“
`           About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work, drawing on many previous versions, and created a text which, for all its failings, has never been equaled. According to one reviewer, the central question of this book, in light of widespread views about how the Bible came to us, is how such ordinary men could make such extraordinary prose? In God’s Secretaries, “Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king; of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible; of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book.”

If after reading Bragg and perhaps Nicolson and other fascinating volumes about the erstwhile influence of the King James Bible, , I offer you Donald Harmon Akenson’s Surpassing Wonder, The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds. He does not accord fundamentalists and dispensationalist much space except a footnote to say: ignore them! In a word, if you are a fundamentalist, fiercely and unconditionally attached to your religious tradition, skip this review: this book is not for you. I do not agree with this. If you are one who has been indoctrinated into believing in the inerrancy of those Scriptures, you should try this work. It gives you an amazing education in understanding and Bible literacy which no one of some education and with love of the Scriptures we have should deny him/herself.

Sometimes the reviews by ‘customers’ are more helpful than the professional’s. Here is one: Akenson’s book is easily the most comprehensive discussion of Hebrew and Christian scripture I have read. For example, in the middle section of the book he takes the reader through some of the more important religious literature being written during the second temple period and identifies it as the source of many themes that eventually find their way into the Christian gospels. Surpassing Wonder was valuable for me also because it adjusted my perspective. I am used to thinking of the religious literature after Jesus as that of the Christian Bible. Akenson, however, brings equally to the foreground an extensive discussion of the rabbinic literature being written during the same period as the church fathers are formulating and arguing out what will become of the traditional beliefs of Christianity. Thus, in Akenson’s book, we get an overview (skillfully handled, especially considering the vastness of the rabbinic texts) of the literature of both the major religions that emerged from the tumultuous period of Jesus’ life and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. I would strongly recommend this book as an essential introduction to the writing of both the Hebrew and Christian bible and their historical contexts.

Last but not least, I have alternated my reading in the recent past with the New Testament (NIV), at present in Luke`s Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles, heading right into Paul’s letter to the Romans, not his easiest letter. If you have not been reading in the Bible, especially the NT, it is amazing how certain passages open up thinking you did not have when you were younger. Try it.

‘The Road Between’ MB and GC

Many decades ago, both the GC and MB families were a church-going people and church attendance and Sunday afternoon visiting made up most of our social life. We brought that with us from ‘the old country.’ There were many social and cultural reasons to think twice before separating for doctrinal or ecclesial reasons. Yet this is what happened. The Mennonite church – the Kirchliche - in Russia experienced the secession of a small group in 1860. This was the beginning of the MB church. The secessionists pointed to general ‘decadence’ and indifference to standards of Christian living for church membership. They wanted to start over, as it were. Ultimately this forced many church adherents to choose up sides.

When we came to Vineland in 1931 we found a small GC congregation called, in English, the Vineland United Mennonite (die Vereinigte Mennoniten Gemeinde). And this is where I learned to know Elder Wichert and his group. When many of our people left the dry prairies to move west or east, most of the latter came to Vineland first before moving on to Virgil or the city of St. Catharines. There I was in Vineland, so to speak, to welcome the new arrivals as they came east throughout the ‘Thirties from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta locations. By 1937 they could be told that in Vineland there were, for their convenience, ready-made congregations to welcome them. Some joined on the west side of Victoria Avenue, the others on the east side, culturally speaking the same language, for them the colloquial Low German (Plautdietsch), singing the same songs, some even related by marriage.

What did I make of all that – that church division, those differences – the continued separation of our similarities in two modes – until GC and MB could join in a Canadian Mennonite University three quarters of a century later?

When the United Mennonite (Kirchlich) came to Vineland they fixed up an old abandoned sawmill and welcomed the first Mennonite Brethren to come to Vineland to worship with them. Many did, as did we. Johann Wichert was elected Aeltester  (Elder or Bishop) in 1927 and, as his membership grew by influx from the West, they built a new meetinghouse on the west side of Victoria Avenue, mostly by voluntary labour, completed by December 1935. In spite of the welcome received by Wichert’s group, some MB leaders began to gather up those who leaned toward the MB and by 1932 they had 27 members and their own church council. They started a SS, a monthly youth service in 1934, a church choir in 1935, and even a Saturday school of German language teaching. For a short time, the MB gathered in neighbouring Beamsville. The Brethren however purchased the old sawmill in 1937, renovated it and used it until 1959. Both groups built new church buildings about that time, but in different parts of town.

Meanwhile, our family continued to worship with John Wichert. After all, my father was his workmate at Chris Fretz farms. This was also natural since we were not MB then. My father had been baptized by sprinkling in Orlovo, Siberia, in 1915 and my mother in 1919 (both at about age 19-20). About 1936, however, this all changed. Influenced by a preacher who was a family friend, either Henry H. Janzen or Dietrich Klassen, or both, my grandparents Peter and Katharina Wiebe, and my parents were rebaptized by immersion in Lake Ontario. In 1937 we joined those who moved from the Beamsville location to Vineland.

By and large there were no ill feelings, but what did those ignorant of our history think, the passerby who stopped to ask questions? As said, on the one side of the road the GC had built a church sanctuary with room for all. Across the street the MB created their own church with different assumptions about membership and how to become one, and tried to make sure that all who knocked on the entrance door understood the reasons for the road between. There were unfortunately many MB who did not recognize the GC path into membership as a valid and effective conversion.

Some on both sides of the road may have known of the separation in the story that follows, but I could not fathom these things as a seven-year old and could not but wonder at the decisions my immediate family made at my age 11 in 1936.

Gerhard Lohrenz gave an example of the difference from Sagradowka, Province Kherson. In 1907 preacher Franz Martens became convinced he needed to come out of the general Mennonite church, the Kirchliche. Moving to Orloff, Sagradowka,  he founded an “Evangelical MB Church.” There he gathered people who could claim an experience of conversion, were willing to ‘come out and be ye separate,’ and were prepared to be baptized by immersion. Others like Elder Wilhelm Voth held to the principle that his church needed to serve all the youth, not separate them because they had not had Damascus Road-like experience of conversion.

In Vineland preachers like Dietrich Klassen followed the example of Franz Martens in Russia, while Bishop Wichert, our friend since1931, held to convictions similar to Elder Wilhelm Voth. Thus the lines continued to be drawn creating ‘the road between!’  I could not have known all the nuances at that time, nor could I have known what I would do in future on that road between these two groups.

The Book of Books

The Book of Books, the Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611 – 2011 (Hodder and Stoughton, 2011), 370 pages.

Melvyn Bragg, an English author who has advanced the arts and the mind by his numerous fiction and non-fiction works, has here focussed on the version of the Bible authorized to be published and read by James I of England (James VI of Scotland), and has presented a powerful array of arguments for and illustrations of the ‘radical impact’ of this Bible through its richness for every aspect of life in the English-speaking world: Christianity taken earnestly, English culture, the arts, the contradictory aspects of life in every age.

I received this book in the mail, belatedly, for Christmas. Not having used the KJV much since the appearance of the RSV in 1952 (not without controversy), I was not anticipating nearly as much convincing stuff as this volume actually offers to the reader. And yet I should have had higher expectations since, in the English world, and what other dominant world power was there in the 17^th and 18^th century? there was no other Bible in the works until our century. The English of every class and circumstance took this Bible with them around the world, and especially into America.

Just think of all the great English writers, dramatists, poets, scientists who read the Authorized Version because it and the Book of Common Prayer were the essential sources of Anglican doctrine and faith, and this Bible no less was the Bible of all the Non-Conformists, Dissenters, and all those who came to be known as PURITANS. Just think Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Wesley and Whitfield, and into the 19^th century, Wordsworth, Dickens, and on and on.

Wherever British and American missionaries went, they carried this Bible with them. Wherever British armies and navies were dispatched in order to reinforce or enlarge their spheres of interest, this Bible went with them. Not least, wherever UK businessmen went they took this Bible with them. The whole book is illustrative of how English became in the 20th century the lingua franca of the world.

By the time I was finished what in reality is a magnificent survey of the degree of radical impact on intellectual and cultural developments in 19^th century civil war  America and beyond, I wondered whether I should not begin to read in the KJV again, especially in the Psalms, Proverbs, and the writings of Solomon. We do have a copy of the King James Version within The New Analytical Bible and Dictionary of the Bible, copyrighted in the 1930s and 1940s, with a helpful comprehensive subject index and  concordance, 1950 edition; and we were given a huge family Bible for our 40th anniversary in 1989 by friends in Sackville, NB. So the KJV is resident with us!

I end with subjects treated in the last chapters: the Bible and Slavery, Education, Mission, Sex, Women, Christian Socialism and the Social Gospel, and Democracy.

Enjoy and think!

How about a Peter Penner Breakfast?

How about a  Peter Penner Breakfast?

There is nothing wrong with a “Traditional American breakfast” with ‘Bacon (or sausage links or patties), eggs, fried potatoes, toast. Sometimes grits.’ Many Americans have eaten that, especially on Saturdays or Sundays when they traditionally had more time. A variation of that is ‘Eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast and coffee and or orange juice, or, pancakes, sausage or bacon.’

Not much for dry cereals with milk, traditionally, I guess.

Each county in England has its own choice of accompaniments; it is up to the individual just how much they want on their plate and their preferences.  Breakfast may begin with orange juice, cereals, stewed or fresh fruits but the heart of the Full breakfast is bacon and eggs. They are variously accompanied by sausages, grilled tomato, mushrooms, tea, toast and marmalade.
Now this has to be experienced. When you have the leisure and the ambiance, ah, an English breakfast is great. Even the fried tomatoes, as long as you don’t know that they might have been grown in Egypt precisely for the English cavernous appetite for these red but humble vegetable/fruit. I once discovered that Canada’s own CIDA sent an agronomist friend over to Egypt to teach the fellahin how to grow tomatoes. But John, I said, the fellahin do not eat tomatoes. No stupid, they are for the English!

You have waited long enough. I don’t know where my fruit comes from unless I look and I don’t always do that because I know that several large agricore industries control the markets world-wide including supply to Safeway, Co-Op, and Sobey’s, and thanks to some underlords for making it all come in the reception unloading zones.

My breakfast, take note, when Justina is not home or is at home, which is most of the time! runs along like this: At one end of the counter I load a bit of brown sugar in a bowl of one of three sizes, then proceed to the frig, hauling out whatever fruit there is on hand, or left over, from top to bottom and of course washing what is necessary: stewed prunes, stewed raisins (think English), a bright colored apple, grapes, strawberries, blueberries. Consider a modest portion of each, up to four kinds at a time. If you have green grapes and they have that firm skin, take a sharp knife and slice each into 3-4 slices; if strawberries, cut them up, no more than two small ones or one larger one, if a colorful apple, oh boy, they are usually as hard as a baseball for my teeth, so cut a modest slice, no more than half an inch on the skin side,, and carefully cut that into thin slices, no more than another half inch of apple.

What have you got? The bowl is seemingly half full of fruit. So IN ROTATION hide all that with cold cereal, either cranberry almond crunch, cheerios – you  know the little crunchy donuts [does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy – remember that little ditty], or all-bran (with the raisins taken out).

I must digress. Justina extracts the promised two spoons of raisins out of those cereal boxes one by one because the raisins are usually all dried, hard to chew [and you can’t take them back to Safeway!], and stews them along with others from a raisin bin to give me a generous supply.

Now you will agree this has to be one of the reasons we have been married so long! The other significant reason is that I do not insist on having bacon in the house. That is the English thing.  Justina cannot stand the bacon smell in the morning! Eggs are a weekend thing.

Now wait a minute. I am not eating yet. I await the most important ingredient – one percent milk. Slowly pour milk into that bowl until it rises to the brim – or nearly so, and then carry it unsupported by a side- plate to the kitchen table. That is an exercise which proves you are not too shaky yet.

Then you stir the composition from the bottom up until you see a few raisins and a glimpse of brown sugar, only then savour the first heaping tablespoon of your healthy, appealing, crunchy, calorie-conscious, body-invigorating breakfast.

If you rotate these cereals and rotate the selected fruits, you have sufficient variety that you will never get tired of this Penner breakfst main course. Remember, I do all this for the MILK

Of course, after you have finished that and the newspaper editorials then have one slice of toast – multi-grain or rye bread – thinly smeared over with, as the English say, a marmalade, or honey (no butter for me and god forbid margarine) with a modest cup of strong coffee, black.

THIS TOOK ME 90 MINUTES TO WRITE! ALMOST AS LONG TO EAT! I’m retired.

GAMEO, a cemetery for the select?

 GAMEO, a Cemetery for the Select?

In the New Testament is Jesus’ parable of the person who received ten and another five talents and both did well with them. There was also a third who got discouraged and buried his one talent. In real life the first two are going to get recognition, at times proportionate to their successes. The one who buried his talent professed to know his master as ‘hard.’ “You reap where you do not sow.”This is the parable that came to mind when I thought of who gets written up in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) and who does not.

When I asked in early November 2011 whether the deceased Judith Rempel of Calgary fame could be written up in GAMEO, Sam Steiner, Associate Managing Editor, said in effect no, not in her own right based on her, as I think, ten-talent contribution. No, she was not a member of a Mennonite church, nor did her fame as a genealogist qualify her either. If however someone would write a history of the MHSA to which over a fifteen-year period Judith gave countless volunteer hours and unique contributions from her many talents, and these were mentioned in  such an article, that would be acceptable. Well, I encouraged Irene Klassen, Judith’s associate at MHSA for years, and who will get her due recognition, to write a brief history of MHSA, much of it made by Judith. She did, in short order, added a photo of herself with Judith, and the latter was among the select! [For my eulogy of Judith, see my Post in this Blog Plot!]

Gee whiz, I had to ask myself, would I qualify once ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’ has been pronounced over me? Once, when I was serving on the board of GAMEO, it was hinted that I was tolerated because I had done so much for Mennonites over the years.

As to Mennonite membership as qualification in the last forty years I can  boast only a mere ten years.^[1] But I have in that long span of time written two full-scale researched books on the Mennonite Brethren Church (1987 and 1997), and countless articles and reviews on various aspects of the Canadian Mennonite experience since the mid-‘fifties. I was a member of the board of GAMEO for six years, representing Alberta (2002-2008), a member of the board of Mennonite Reporter for nine years (1982-1991). Well, perhaps I gave five talents to the MB church and since 1964 five talents to the search for a new Weltanschauung in Anabaptist history and theology.

Since 1964 my Weltanschauung as expressed in my mission statement has been distinctly Anabaptist.  In 1982 I had the opportunity to state my position on Remembrance Day to the whole town of Sackville, New Brunswick, when I told my reasons for choosing Alternative Service as a conscientious objector to war.

Admittedly, not everyone can be included in GAMEO.

The Kleine Gemeinde of Northfield Settlement, NS

This Post is a follow-up to my experience of giving hospitalty to the Dyck family from Northfield Settlement

The Changed Portrait

About 1995, one year after our move to Calgary, a former executive with Mennonite Mutual Insurance, told me that his people from southern Alberta were not very welcome among La Crete Mennonites. Located near Fort Vermilion in northern Alberta, they liked the Mennonite and other teachers who stayed for a period of years and worked with them, but they wanted nothing to do with the approach that had been taken among them by ‘missionaries’ and uninvited evangelists, meaning GC and MB.

In 1999 Mennonite Central Committee, Alberta was able to move its annual meeting to La Crete. Its leadership allowed those who had been supportive to ride along if there was room on the bus. Justina and I decided that here was our opportunity to see that part of the province, twelve hours north, and to learn of the three different Mennonite groups there – Sommerfelder, Old Colony, and Evangelical Mennonite Church (the former KG who had stayed in Manitoba). They all worked together to make this MCC meeting a great success. Sharing the Anabaptist identity, sitting where they sit, listening, accepting what is good, allowing God to work in His own ways, were for us paths to insight and bridge‑building. Their success in building a viable farming, commercial, and industrial community was quite astonishing.

From other researches I know this to be true of the Osler/Hague area of Saskatchewan

Diverse yet Integrated

Back in New Brunswick, while the Kleingemeinde was not ready to participate in MAP, I had been at pains to make everyone aware of new additions to the Mennonite mix.  Martin Penner was the leader of the Kleinegemeindeat Northfield Settlement, near Kennetcook, NS, while Paul Bartel served the Holdeman at Tatamagouche. In 1985 Ewald Unruh had brought his young family from BC to Dartmouth; Sig and Teenie Wall had moved from Manitoba to Restigouche Valley Church in Campbellton; while Siegfried Janzen, of MB background, had been invited to become pastor of Petitcodiac MC.

While the first two groups who began to move into Nova Scotia in 1981 taught their children in their own church schools, sequestered from the world, I came to think they had been too much sequestered from the Mennonite fold. Their story needed to be told also. MB churches in the Maritimes were becoming part of the “MB Church Canada”, Petitcodiac church part of “MC Canada,” while ‘Mennonites in the Atlantic Provinces’ belonged in Canadian Mennonite history, and also Mennonite world history. When ten years earlier I had been given a mere 175 words for an article on MAP in Vol. V of the Mennonite Encyclopedia, I thought that was hardly the way to do it, though, demographically that put us into perspective. It was humbling to think we were a mere speck on the Mennonite horizon.

The Enhancement of the Kleinegemeinde (KG) Image

Our personal experience with the KG in Nova Scotia was fortified strongly by a piece written by Professor Al Reimer in Mennonite Mirror in 1986. It was a review of Delbert Plett’s The Golden Years: the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia, 1812-1849.[1] After reading this book, I came to change my views of the KG, realizing that we, from P.M. Friesen onwards, had been far too condescending regarding this group. Perhaps much greater recognition should be given them as the “true Anabaptist Mennonites in Russia”, as Reimer suggested.

After that I purchased all six of Plett’s volumes.[2] They are for many people a gold mine of information and alerted us all to the new champion of this underdog church in the person of Delbert Plett (1948-2004). Since then, especially at the time of the 125th anniversary of the coming of the so-called Kanadier Mennonites to Manitoba, Justina and I realized that we had stumbled onto a treasure of stimulating and sometimes controversial material. Perhaps we could not totally agree with all of Plett’s reverse denigrations, but we needed to look differently at his conservative/orthodox view of Anabaptism/Mennonitism.

Their Champion

Hardly anyone could have predicted that the KG would find a champion to recover their history and defend their integrity. And this came as news to them in the Maritimes.  When I told Martin Penner about Delbert Plett’s intentions, he said that they, the KG and the Holdeman, never asked for such a champion and at that point would not even read those books.

      But the rest of us needed them!

Delbert Plett, a Steinbach lawyer and GC Mennonite, and a founding member of the Hanover [later Flemish] Historical Society, claimed he was tired of the derision in which the KG had been held for so long and right up to the present. He began their restoration just about the time our KG from Belize were arriving and eventually settled at Northfield Settlement, as told above

As Kimberly Schmidt of CMU wrote:  “Plett, through the publication of his seven-volume “Kleine Gemeinde Historical Series,” has single-handedly lifted the Kleine Gemeinde from their previous obscurity and placed them into the mainstream of Russian Mennonite historical studies.”[3]

In seven volumes [the Blue Books of the KG ] Plett provided a vast resource of documents (historical and theological) and material to the delight of genealogists. With the enthusiastic help of others, Plett called attention to some fundamental and crucial differences that were there for all the mainline churches and the media to see. A bit crass, he wrote that by comparison with the individualism, general materialism, and fundamentalism, fed by Darbyite dispensationalism, which (in his opinion) represented the majority of evangelicals, the KG were the true Anabaptists. He kept plugging away at these themes in Preservings, a biennial of about 150 pages put out by the Hanover Historical Society.[4] Whatever some may think of Plett’s approach to their rehabilitation, we need to consider and applaud the best features of these more conservative people among us. Even though we may find some aspects of their colony strange to us who think of ourselves as more progressive, in some respects they come a lot closer to the faith and service community than many others who still call themselves Mennonite or are registered in a Mennonite conference.

The Conservatives ‑ the Kleinegemeinde

We cannot of course evade the wide-spread  negative image that has been brought into Canada by the many conservative groups leaving Bolivia and Mexico to return to Canada. Drug dealing, widespread depression among women, restrictions on youth development through education, are some of the continuing criticisms. Northfield has repeatedly sent ‘missionary families’ to help with the many so-called ‘Mexican Mennonites’ who have come to southern Alberta.

Despite some criticism arising from stories about some ‘bad eggs’ in various conservative groups, I hope that the story of the more conservative churches, as mentioned, the Kleinegemeinde at Northfield, NS,  and their sister congregations around North and South America, will be told. Many are sincerely counteracting the rampant individualism and religious consumerism which is hardly serving as mortar to hold us together. The majority are sincere. When all the sorting out is done among those who want to be Anabaptists in our one world today we will be applauding those Mennonites who persist in building communities of faith and mutuality rather than those who promise quick fixes, adding to the numbers, and build consumer‑like churches which appeal to individuality.

That was why I challenged that MAP gathering in the year 2000 to consider the KG at Northfield, as God’s gift to the Maritimes.

I became more than ever conscious that all of us were (are) part of the Global Mennonite Church when in 1995 it was my privilege to be part of a history consultation at Elkhart, Indiana. Paul Toews, Fresno, had asked me to represent the Historical Commission in Fresno. Present at this consultation were Mennonites and Brethren in Christ from the USA and Canada, Netherlands, a number of Latin American countries, India, Indonesia, Uganda, Zaire, and Zimbabwe, and others. That consultation produced a decision to write a Mennonite history that would include the stories of all Mennonite groups in the world. Their viewpoint was to be heard and written down. Until then most histories of our mission effort, like my own of India, have been written by North Americans without much consultation with the indigenous.

John Lapp, the former director of MCC Akron, then took this project to Mennonite World Conference, where he found ready support. The result was the initiation of this project by Mennonite World Conference at its thirteenth Assembly in Calcutta, India, January 1997. It gave a mandate for the preparation of a five-volume history series to “tell the story of Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches” and to promote “mutual understanding, and stimulate the renewal and extension of Anabaptist Christianity world-wide.”

Why I do not do cruises!

It is not in the first place because some stupid captain in January 2012 ran the hugest cruise ship over a jagged rock off the coast of Tuscany. He was supposed to be three miles away from there! Not in the first instance because the lives of 4,000 were jeopardized by this tragic event. However, this and many other accidents and incidents suggest that safety is an issue and this incident should give many people pause. A black eye for the cruise industry takes a while to disappear.

In the first place it is because I have never been a good sailor. Though assured that these modern vessels, especially passenger ships, have balancers to minimize side to side motion, I have stayed away from them even though my dear Justina always wanted to do a cruise to some exotic place, or at the very least to Alaska from Vancouver or Seattle. Gee, how many people have tried to persuade me….

Well, honestly, with us there has been and for various reasons will continue to be a financial factor to consider. Justina loves to travel to satisfy her own wanderlust and her relations in Germany especially, and feels she has to visit our daughter in Nevada several times a year. And I pay the credit card bill each month! There is seldom money for two in my situation.

So, when Justina found that Maureen our ‘daughter’ who travels a lot on her own was willing to accompany her, Justina finally got her cruise to the west side of Mexico with a luxury ship sailing out of San Diego, CA. They were fortunate in their choice of travelling companions and to be upgraded to first class! They had a terrific experience. But envy is not my thing.

All that aside, I am not one to want to do something because everyone else is doing it. I have never been that type. And yet so many people have gone on cruises to satisfy the demand to keep up with the Joneses! Peer pressure at that level? Yes. Have you been here, have you done that?

There are social and philosophical attitudes.  Built into the very structure of the modern cruise are the class divisions of our society. The super-rich do not do cruises. They do yachting and flying from one residence to exotic residences in their private jets! Even then, get on a cruise ship and you know who you are, where you stand in the social order, even if you have access to much the same food.

Worse, while the tourist-cruise business provides jobs for many persons on board and many on the shores where ships stop to let passengers experience another culture, ever so briefly, passengers never really see much of its people until they do an incursion into the country. In the case of Mexico this is becoming ever more risky because of the drug wars. Cruises merely circulate the countries, see the distant beauty of an area, but their passengers hardly ever learn of the poverty behind those scenes nor why there are so many poor everywhere. We do not become aware of them or the nature of their existence until an earthquake hits Haiti or a tsunami sweeps away everything before it in south east Asia.

Nibbling on the fringes of a country does little for one’s education. Comparing this with what one can experience in a scholarly resident situation such as India, England, Fresno, CA, Barnaul, Siberia, is eye-opening. Cruises represent the tourist interest that skirts the various beaches just out in ocean waters, while the same kind of interests have bought the sandy beaches, and own all the hotels and other accommodation, thus again hiding the inland reality . Tourists of every level of financial ability for whatever reason stream to the south to pursue a simple agenda: enhancement of personal well-being while contributing to the profits that actually flow eventually into the hands of the already wealthy.  The North-South (have, have-not) division about which we studied and worried in the 1980s is accentuated in this tourist industry, has come back in a new form. Do I want to contribute to that?

Rembrance at Mount Allison University

Dear Friends:
A little preamble might help. A building called Memorial Library at Mount Allison is being torn down to make room for another grandiose design of an Arts building. There was a strong division of opinion over this because the old building housed a memorial staircase for the fallen alumni of WWI and this was being disregarded by the new generation in Administration and Regents. Sent to some of us was a list of the Fallen alumni and a hymn penned in 1919 which glorified those who fell in WWI as assured of eternal salvation!

Here is my response to my continuation use of this hymn:

            There were many Remembrances observed in Calgary, one, an evening meeting, that I should have attended last night, the 10^th, but did not: all the Rotary Clubs of Calgary called a joint meeting of the 13 Clubs at the Ogden Legion. Presumably I will get a report of that as the Lt.Gov. of Alberta, Donald S. Ethell, was there as the chief speaker. His photo was featured in the daily paper but not as the speaker at this event, but as one of Alberta’s war heroes from times past, the Second War. The press here, as elsewhere, rarely loses a breath on the doings of Rotarians.
         Though I was raised pacifist, I became a historian of modern history, eventually immersed in British (including the Empire in India, plus), European (including Russian/Soviet), and Canadian. So I venture to assert that I probably know more about the history of their wars than most attendees at Remembrance Day services, excepting their personal stories, which remain vivid to them, still living, and to their families.
So, perhaps there is room for a broader perspective of this Great War.
        Just recently, 2005-2008, I wrote the history of Grace Presbyterian Church, Calgary, 1905-2005, really, in many ways, a history of Calgary (founded in 1883). So I had to cover the years of World War I, the same years covered by the Memorial Library. When we first attended there in 2000, I noted the two plaques in the recesses on either side of the pulpit, each recording about 250 names of those who had followed the call of the colors in a membership of about 900.
         What I and my helper with the War years found was that after the battles of the Somme, by 1917, the War was now more than a ‘just war’ (always questionable); it had become in the minds of people like Charles W. Gordon (alias the novelist from Winnipeg, Ralph Connor) a “holy war.” The clergy across the board came to identify the earthly victory of the Allies with the eternal triumph  of God, and they began to recruit from the pulpit, even advocating conscription. The provocation for the War was seen as entirely from the other side, and ‘the force which is arrayed against us, in ruthless and savage warfare, threatens the progress of Christianity and the very existence of  civilization.’
         This is where the hymns like “O Valiant Hearts” come in. J.A. Arkwright, English, wrote this and published in 1919. Given the enormous loss of life in  1916 and more lives in 1917 and 1918 to satisfy General Haig’s last PUSH to  victory [more than million all told], perhaps it seemed fitting to write such a hymn of comfort for bereaved families at that time. [here are two of seven stanzas]

….Still stands His Cross from that dread hour to this,
Like some bright star above the dark abyss;
Still, through the veil, the Victor’s pitying eyes
Look down to bless our lesser Calvaries.

These were His servants, in His steps they trod,
Following through death the martyred Son of God:
Victor, He rose; victorious too shall rise
They who have drunk His cup of sacrifice.
This hymn found its way into the UCC hymnal of 1930 and remained there until the Red Book of 1974. It was sung at every Remembrance Day service and three years ago at least was sung at the Service on Parliament Hill. I stopped going to those Sackville services because this is not New Testament theology and if you work through some of the literary remains of those who were prepared for and fought in trench warfare and went ‘over the top’ for Haig and his lieutenants,those horrors told them that only Jesus could save them. Salvation did not come by killing a foe who was being commanded to do the same.

Whereas soon there were sharp divisions about the competence of General Douglas
Haig, there was only one Calvary – one cross on a lonely hill.

****

Peter Penner, Emeritus Professor
Mount Allison, 1965-1992

20 Rundlelawn Close NE, Calgary, AB  T1Y 3A5

403-280-2177

justpen@shaw.ca

www.mennonitematters.com