Mennonite Weekly Review

The relationship between the Mennonite Brethren, who will celebrate their 150th anniversary in British Columbia in July, and other Mennonites has changed significantly during a century and a half.

So says John J. Friesen, professor emeritus at Canadian Mennonite University of Winnipeg, Man.

“From the early years — when Mennonite churches saw the MBs as a threat and the MBs saw the others as not truly spiritual — the two sides have moved to a relationship where, even though they are somewhat different, they can accept and learn from each other,” Friesen writes in Canadian Mennonite, published by Mennonite Church Canada.

Friesen told of an MB leader who recently said he felt that the MB contribution to the larger Mennonite community “was an insistence on a strong, clear, personal commitment to Christ,” while he thought the MB church could learn the importance of service and peace from other Mennonites.

The MB church began in the midst of significant change among Mennonites in Russia. Lutheran pietism had influenced Mennonite communities there and had provided a leaven for renewal. In 1860 some members in the Gnadenfeld Mennonite congregation in the Molotschna settlement petitioned their leaders to meet separately for communion. They did not want to celebrate communion with those who had not experienced personal pietist renewal and conversion.

When the leaders refused their request, these members met separately, celebrated their own communion and founded the Mennonite Brethren church. A similar group formed in the Chortitza settlement, under the influence of German Baptists. These two groups soon merged as the MB church.

Those who formed the MB church wanted to include only like-minded people. The MBs separatist stance and its active proselytizing among Mennonite churches created tensions.

These tensions followed MBs to North America in the 1870s Mennonite migration. Other Mennonite immigrants who came from various churches in Russia joined the General Conference Mennonite Church, and thus the tensions transferred to the relationships between GCs and MBs.

But the 1920s migrations brought change as Mennonite groups needed to cooperate for the emigration and supported organizations like Mennonite Central Committee. During World War II the various Mennonite groups cooperated to help organize alternative service.

The change in worship language from German to English in the 1950s and ’60s allowed MB evangelism to expand. This made inter-Mennonite cooperation easier as the Mennonite community was no longer the primary base for MB outreach.