The Vilisar Times

Sunday, September 25, 2005

A CAR TRIP TO CHIHUAHUA; A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE MENNONITES

I’m writing today from the Westin Hotel on the outskirts of Chihuahua, the 1-million-inhabitant capital of Chihuahua State. Bob, the ranchero, had to drive in from the ranch yesterday for an important meeting and I decided to make it an outing and drive with him.

The whole trip takes about seven or eight hours of which about one and one-half hours is just getting out to #16 Highway at Yepachic. The continued rains have not made either the ranch road or the remainder out to the paved highway any better. The ranch road is heavy gullies and pitted and desperately needs grading. The big rubber-wheeled Michigan dozer cum front-end loader sitting near the corral out at Rancho el Nogal might be just the thing. But at the moment the starter is kaputt. Even when it is repaired, Bob will have to get some experience operating it. It would be easy to fall off the side of a hill into an arroyo and meet and untimely end.

The rough road is extracting a heavy toll on the ranch’s various road vehicles. We take the Toyota 4WD pickup to town with the object of getting the steering repaired and stop for this purpose at a wheel-alignment and repair place in Cuauhtémoc. Bobbie, the Mexican-American guy there confirmed that the steering joint urgently needs replacing. Of course, he does not have the Toyota parts required and we will not be able now to get one in Chihuahua till Monday. So our one-day trip will now be three days.

The paved road, though, is spectacular. It is an extension of the highway that Kathleen and I took through the Tutuaca Mountains on the omnibus from Ciudad Obregon to Yepachic some three weeks ago now. The early morning sunshine is in our eyes at first but Bob has driven the route so often now that the Toyota can practically do it by itself. It is of course a little nerve-wracking to think that the right front tire might come off on some curve and drop us over the very steep side into the ravine hundreds of metres below. After several hours on the two-lane highway overtaking and meeting heavy logging trucks, 18-wheelers and a circus caravan (there is a fiesta in Yepachic or Tomachi next week) and discovering horses, mules, burros (including one dad and bloated burro at the immediate side of the road) or cattle grazing beside (or on) the road as we swing around a curve and after steady and steep climbing most of the time, we eventually come out of the mountains to look out, across and down on a huge plain with tabletop mountains in the far distance and various rivers and towns scattered around. At La Junta we debate stopping for a bite to eat at a roadside stand but decide to hurry on to Cuauhtémoc to catch the auto repair place before they close for the weekend.

It is like driving across the Dakotas. Wide grassland interspersed increasingly now with apple orchards. This is a major fruit growing region. Everything is irrigated by large sprinklers from underground aquifers. We notice however that many orchards have been left to wither and die and wonder if this has to do with the seven or eight-year drought that has been impacting northern Mexico and the south-western USA. The harvest is in full swing and we follow tractor-trailer rigs loaded with large boxes of yellow apples. There is a line-up of lorries outside an apple processing plant; since the trucks simply back up and tip their loads into the plant I assume that it must be a juicing operation.

As we approach Cuauhtémoc the orchards appear more systematic, more groomed, and are frequently completely shaded with awnings. Either these have forced the trees into a pyramid shape or the trees have been pruned to fit under the vertically zigzagging awnings. Whichever it is, the trees are pointed. This may help the sun to reach all the branches evenly and therefore for the fruit to come to ripeness at the same time (¨Ripeness is all¨). Instead of awnings on poles, sometimes trees are individually wrapped with a net so maybe the awnings and nets are to keep birds off the fruit or protect the fruit form hailstones and heavy rain. Coming as I do from the Niagara Peninsula, one of only tow or three large fruit-growing areas in Canada, I am curious. I notice there is no soft fruit here like peaches or apricots and I have yet to see any vineyards.

Besides the orchards there are large open grasslands. Bob points out the parts that have been overgrazed and those that still look pretty good. He might make a cattleman out of me yet! Mexican farmers and ranchers and Mexican agricultural agencies and departments are not very good at following through. They might have wonderful plans but they never seem to get into practice. Too much corruption along the way or somebody has too much clout. In the mountains the peoples, a high proportion of which are still Tarahumara or Pima or Apache Indians get a lot of goodies thrown at them so that there is no uprising as there was in the far south. The goodies include even house paint.

An interesting feature of the region are the two large Mennonite colonies. One is German and one is American. The latter are quite open to new communicants and are willing to speak Spanish (and have the prettier girls). The Germans still stick to German and are rather more exclusive (and the women are a little too plump). But both of them have brought a huge element of human capital to the region. It is hard to imagine that the natives or the Mexicans could have found the organisational skills or the technical know-how to install, for example, the huge irrigation systems that the Germans have put in. The latter have also introduced new foods including fruits, specialty cheeses, etc.

Being who they are, there are a lot of very good craftsmen and tradesmen amongst the Germans around Cuauhtémoc, their main town, which is now growing rapidly into an important regional centre or market town. Every Mennonite-farmer’s son has another ¨gelernte Handwerk¨ like sheet-metalworking, welding, equipment repair, plumbing, irrigation, etc. They have the reputation for quality work at reasonable rates. Certainly their industry and skills have attracted a lot of Mexicans and Indians to work, set up their own businesses, and settle down here. Mennonites and many others have all prospered. One Mennonite community, Bob thinks, is an offshoot of communities in Canada. They came down, researched sites and got an agreement with the Mexican government in the 1920s to waive military service for Mennonites.

We finally reach the outskirts of Chihuahua in mid-afternoon. We head for the food court of a huge shopping mall and I decide to stay at the internet café cum bookstore while bob looks for the truck part and visits a friend. I find a soft chair in the reading corner and continue reading my current book (Stiffed; The Betrayal of the American Male). When Bob returns we decide to really do it up brown by taking in a movie at the Cineplex inside the mall.

Finally, we head downtown to the San Juan Hotel only to find that the streets around there are full with Saturday-night partygoers, all the bars, restaurants and parking garages are full and the hotel is booked out. We cross the street to the Jardin Hotel (Garden Hotel) and find a room. It is the same hotel where Kathleen, Antonia, William and I stayed when we arrived here on the CHEPE (Chihuahua-Pacific Ferrocarril) from the Sea of Cortes last July on our way to Dallas for my Mum’s ninetieth birthday. The concierge even showed us to the same room until Bob said we wanted a cheaper one. We wound up in a rather shabby though clean room with three beds, a standing lamp with no lightbulb, overhead strip lighting, a separate shower and toilet, and towels so threadbare you could read the Sunday funnies through the holes. The hotel is marvellously quiet, though, so we were not disturbed by revellers.

This morning the city is empty. While Bob goes off to find a ranching-business contact at his house, I take a walk to the cathedral a few blocks away and stay for part of the service. The church is packed. Afterwards I sit for a while on a park bench and listen to a tour guide describing the history and architecture to a tour of quite elderly Americans. HI can hear him but I am sure, even at full hearing-aid-volume, most of the crowd were not getting much out of it. After being hit up five times to have my grungy hiking boots polished up at one of four shoeshine stands, I walk down the side streets to the Mercado district which is just coming to life. Maybe I can find a hot cup of coffee. I see handcart after handcart-loaded with onions, zuchinni, oranges, papayas, mangos, bananas (sometimes spelled ¨bananas¨ on the boxes) and all kinds of other produce being trundled into the fruit and vegetable market. One noisy trundleman directs me to Café Imperial, a very grand name for a hole-in-the-wall pastry bakery just across the street. The little pies and tarts are just coming out of the oven. I take one of the five stools at the counter and am served two hot popovers with pineapple filling without even being asked. Why else after all would I have come in just then? Delicious! Delicious!

Meeting Bob back at the hotel, we drive out to a big hotel-style brunch-restaurant at the mall. Bob is a breakfast kind of person; he can ignore meals the rest of the day, he says, if he can get a big breakfast. After thoroughly stuffing ourselves, we drive to the nearby Westin Hotel where I am currently sitting and using the internet access in the so-called Business Centre for free. (Bob sure knows his way around.) Amongst other topics on the way out from the ranch, we were talking about raising freshwater shrimp or prawns. Since Bob has a couple of warm springs on his spread, maybe it would be possible for him to raise them at least for his own use there. I research this a bit on the web, try for my own information to get some information about the cattle industry in North America, and look up the history of the Mennonites.

Mennonite History
by Daniel Kauffman
© Copyright, Mennonite Publishing House
(at www.anabaptists.org)

Three bodies of people.are in evidence as we study the history of the Reformation period. These are:

1. The Roman Catholics.--The Greek Catholics are not known in this struggle, as the conflict was waged outside their territory. At the beginning of the struggle the governments of western Europe were in control of the Catholics. The abuse of power was largely responsible for working the reaction and bringing the struggle known as the Reformation. The things about the Catholic Church which stirred the consciences of right thinking people were the corrupt practices and immorality of priests, the sale of indulgences, the ritualistic formalism of the Church and lack of spiritual life on the part of the masses; while the arbitrary power and grasping after wealth on the part of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were often displeasing to politicians many of whom welcomed the uprising in the days of Luther and Calvin.

2. The Protestants.--This name comes from a manifesto to Emperor Charles V of Germany, drawn up in 1529 by a number of princes who had espoused the struggle of Luther, in the form of a protest against what they considered unjust measures by the Emperor and by the Pope. From this time forward the word "Protest-ants" applied to those opposed to the Pope and his party. These princes supported their claims by force of arms. The conflict between Catholics and Protestants was so severe that it finally settled into a Thirty Years' War that came to a close by the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This treaty, among other things, stipulated a guarantee of religious toleration for Catholics and Protestants, but not for Anabaptists of Mennonites. The close of the War of the Reformation found the following Protestant bodies: Lutherans, Reformed, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians.

3. The Anabaptists.--Possibly we should have said "Mennonites;" for the original Anabaptists were the Swiss brethren who organized at Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525, which was the beginning of the organization of the Church which afterwards bore the name "Mennonite." The word Anabaptist comes from the doctrine held by Mennonites and others that baptism to be valid must be upon confession faith and that people who have not been thus baptized, though they may belong to some church, must be baptized according to Scripture before they can be scripturally received into fellowship. All people holding this belief were known as Anabaptists. Of this class were a number of bodies, some of which had no connection with Mennonites whatever. The class of Anabaptists to which the Swiss brethren, Menno Simons, Dirck Philips, and their brethren belonged stood for a complete separation of Church and State, baptism only upon confession of faith, nonresistance, nonconformity to the world, a holy life, and other tenets of Christian faith and life which were afterwards embodied in what is now known as the "Mennonite Confession of Faith." The sufferings of Anabaptists during Reformation times were most severe, for being nonresistant they refused to fight for any purpose, against either Catholics or Protestants, and were therefore marks for malice and persecution from both these warring parties. Thousands were put to death, and the rest driven about from place to place, finding refuge wherever they could.

At the close of the Reformation the dominant religions in the nations of central and western Europe were as follows:

The Roman Catholics retained control of Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, although there were large bodies of Protestants in several of these countries, most notably the Huguenots of France. A |portion of southeastern Europe was under control of the Greek Catholic Church and of the Turks.

Of the Protestant countries the Lutherans had control of a number of states in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, the Reformed were in control of Switzerland and Holland, the Presbyterians in Scotland, and the Episcopalians in England.

Among the churches that have grown out of the Anabaptist movement are the Mennonites, Hutterites, Baptists, Quakers and Dunkards. The Mennonites and Hutterites were contemporary with Luther and other Protestant reformers of his day, the rest appeared on the scene later. These never attempted to control the governments in any country, as they opposed the idea of union between Church and State and were against mixing religion with politics.

To what extent the Mennonites and other Anabaptists are descendants from or successors to the Waldenses is an open question. The similarity in faith and in family names furnishes some ground for the claims of certain historians that there is a connection between the two. But as for the first organized congregation of Swiss brethren or Mennonites (that at Zurich in 1525) it is known that the leaders and at least some of the members had formerly been Catholics. The same is true also of Menno Simons and some of his co-workers in Holland. As to their leading tenets of faith, they were similar to the faith of the Novatians, Waldenses, and other evangelical bodies which had existed before them. Among the more prominent issues which brought upon them the wrath and persecution of the state churches, both Catholics and Protestants, were their rejection of infant baptism, their insistence upon a freedom of conscience, their refusal to have any part in carnal warfare, their discipline requiring faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance for sin as requisites for baptism and a holy life as a requisite for continued fellowship, their zeal in not only contending for the tenets of faith which they espoused but also in turning the light of truth upon the shortcomings of their opponents, and their contending for a complete separation of Church and State.

Distinction between Mennonitism and Protestantism

When we say "Mennonitism" we mean the same as Anabaptism, for the Mennonites (though not known by that name until later) were the pioneer Anabaptists. The distinction between this movement and that of Protestantism consists in this: While the Protestant movement was a political as well as a spiritual reformation, the Anabaptist movement was wholly a spiritual one. Grebel, Blaurock, Manz, Menno, Philips, and their brethren believed in a complete separation of Church and State, held to the doctrine that religion is an individual heart experience and that therefore each individual is personally responsible to God alone for his spiritual standing and that the Bible alone should be taken as his rule of life, to be accepted without question and faithfully obeyed regardless of what may be the attitude or requirement of the State. Logically this made them nonresistant in life, and scripturally orthodox in fundamentalism. On the other hand, the Protestant movement (besides the various doctrinal standards of different Protestant leaders) was a united effort on the part of ecclesiastical and political leaders to correct the abuse of Romanism, and to support this contention, if need be, by force of arms. This committed them to a policy of State-Churchism, and logically made Protestants as well as Catholics the persecutors of nonresistant people who could not subscribe to their program. The issue involved in this distinction between the two movements was twofold: (1) State-Churchism Vs. individual conscience and choice; (2) the sword, and what is behind it. While times have changed, circumstances now are different from what they were then, and issues have shifted somewhat, yet the fundamental difference between these two schools of thought and classes of people remains substantially the same.

Trials and Persecutions

It cost something to be a Mennonite in those days. Many were burned at the stake, and the times were rare when they were entirely free from persecution. Menno himself was pursued with murderous fury, but the Lord preserved him in a remarkable way. His writings were spared and he was permitted to die a natural death. Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Germany, and other European countries were the scenes of many outrages against this defenceless people. As the persecutions became too severe in one country, they would flee to some other country where they might enjoy a greater degree of freedom. It was not until many of them had found in America an asylum where they might have the privilege of worshiping God unmolested that the rigors of persecution began to relax to any great extent in Europe. Holland was the first to extend toleration, and later on Russia extended an invitation for the Mennonites to settle in that country. While Holland and several other countries extended toleration to Mennonites--at times--before there were any permanent settlements of Mennonites in America (persecution ceased permanently during the latter part of the 16th century), it was not until after this time that persecutions were discontinued in a general way in Europe.

But in the face of severest persecutions the Church prospered in many places. The Taufgezinnten in Switzerland, the Doopsgezinden in Holland, the Hutterites in Moravia (different names by which these people were known in different countries), and Mennonites in other countries, all were faithful in their labors and exerted a wholesome influence.

posted by rjb,
4:07 pm

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		News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
For more pictures of Ron and Kathy Bird and the Vilisar, see these beautiful photos by Albert Pang Click here to e-mail Ron Click here to e-mail Kathy Archives January 2004 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 Vilisar Translation Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty. SachverstÃ¤ndige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; GeschÃ¤ft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.	Sunday, September 25, 2005 Sunday, September 25, 2005 A CAR TRIP TO CHIHUAHUA; A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE MENNONITES I’m writing today from the Westin Hotel on the outskirts of Chihuahua, the 1-million-inhabitant capital of Chihuahua State. Bob, the ranchero, had to drive in from the ranch yesterday for an important meeting and I decided to make it an outing and drive with him. The whole trip takes about seven or eight hours of which about one and one-half hours is just getting out to #16 Highway at Yepachic. The continued rains have not made either the ranch road or the remainder out to the paved highway any better. The ranch road is heavy gullies and pitted and desperately needs grading. The big rubber-wheeled Michigan dozer cum front-end loader sitting near the corral out at Rancho el Nogal might be just the thing. But at the moment the starter is kaputt. Even when it is repaired, Bob will have to get some experience operating it. It would be easy to fall off the side of a hill into an arroyo and meet and untimely end. The rough road is extracting a heavy toll on the ranch’s various road vehicles. We take the Toyota 4WD pickup to town with the object of getting the steering repaired and stop for this purpose at a wheel-alignment and repair place in Cuauhtémoc. Bobbie, the Mexican-American guy there confirmed that the steering joint urgently needs replacing. Of course, he does not have the Toyota parts required and we will not be able now to get one in Chihuahua till Monday. So our one-day trip will now be three days. The paved road, though, is spectacular. It is an extension of the highway that Kathleen and I took through the Tutuaca Mountains on the omnibus from Ciudad Obregon to Yepachic some three weeks ago now. The early morning sunshine is in our eyes at first but Bob has driven the route so often now that the Toyota can practically do it by itself. It is of course a little nerve-wracking to think that the right front tire might come off on some curve and drop us over the very steep side into the ravine hundreds of metres below. After several hours on the two-lane highway overtaking and meeting heavy logging trucks, 18-wheelers and a circus caravan (there is a fiesta in Yepachic or Tomachi next week) and discovering horses, mules, burros (including one dad and bloated burro at the immediate side of the road) or cattle grazing beside (or on) the road as we swing around a curve and after steady and steep climbing most of the time, we eventually come out of the mountains to look out, across and down on a huge plain with tabletop mountains in the far distance and various rivers and towns scattered around. At La Junta we debate stopping for a bite to eat at a roadside stand but decide to hurry on to Cuauhtémoc to catch the auto repair place before they close for the weekend. It is like driving across the Dakotas. Wide grassland interspersed increasingly now with apple orchards. This is a major fruit growing region. Everything is irrigated by large sprinklers from underground aquifers. We notice however that many orchards have been left to wither and die and wonder if this has to do with the seven or eight-year drought that has been impacting northern Mexico and the south-western USA. The harvest is in full swing and we follow tractor-trailer rigs loaded with large boxes of yellow apples. There is a line-up of lorries outside an apple processing plant; since the trucks simply back up and tip their loads into the plant I assume that it must be a juicing operation. As we approach Cuauhtémoc the orchards appear more systematic, more groomed, and are frequently completely shaded with awnings. Either these have forced the trees into a pyramid shape or the trees have been pruned to fit under the vertically zigzagging awnings. Whichever it is, the trees are pointed. This may help the sun to reach all the branches evenly and therefore for the fruit to come to ripeness at the same time (¨Ripeness is all¨). Instead of awnings on poles, sometimes trees are individually wrapped with a net so maybe the awnings and nets are to keep birds off the fruit or protect the fruit form hailstones and heavy rain. Coming as I do from the Niagara Peninsula, one of only tow or three large fruit-growing areas in Canada, I am curious. I notice there is no soft fruit here like peaches or apricots and I have yet to see any vineyards. Besides the orchards there are large open grasslands. Bob points out the parts that have been overgrazed and those that still look pretty good. He might make a cattleman out of me yet! Mexican farmers and ranchers and Mexican agricultural agencies and departments are not very good at following through. They might have wonderful plans but they never seem to get into practice. Too much corruption along the way or somebody has too much clout. In the mountains the peoples, a high proportion of which are still Tarahumara or Pima or Apache Indians get a lot of goodies thrown at them so that there is no uprising as there was in the far south. The goodies include even house paint. An interesting feature of the region are the two large Mennonite colonies. One is German and one is American. The latter are quite open to new communicants and are willing to speak Spanish (and have the prettier girls). The Germans still stick to German and are rather more exclusive (and the women are a little too plump). But both of them have brought a huge element of human capital to the region. It is hard to imagine that the natives or the Mexicans could have found the organisational skills or the technical know-how to install, for example, the huge irrigation systems that the Germans have put in. The latter have also introduced new foods including fruits, specialty cheeses, etc. Being who they are, there are a lot of very good craftsmen and tradesmen amongst the Germans around Cuauhtémoc, their main town, which is now growing rapidly into an important regional centre or market town. Every Mennonite-farmer’s son has another ¨gelernte Handwerk¨ like sheet-metalworking, welding, equipment repair, plumbing, irrigation, etc. They have the reputation for quality work at reasonable rates. Certainly their industry and skills have attracted a lot of Mexicans and Indians to work, set up their own businesses, and settle down here. Mennonites and many others have all prospered. One Mennonite community, Bob thinks, is an offshoot of communities in Canada. They came down, researched sites and got an agreement with the Mexican government in the 1920s to waive military service for Mennonites. We finally reach the outskirts of Chihuahua in mid-afternoon. We head for the food court of a huge shopping mall and I decide to stay at the internet café cum bookstore while bob looks for the truck part and visits a friend. I find a soft chair in the reading corner and continue reading my current book (Stiffed; The Betrayal of the American Male). When Bob returns we decide to really do it up brown by taking in a movie at the Cineplex inside the mall. Finally, we head downtown to the San Juan Hotel only to find that the streets around there are full with Saturday-night partygoers, all the bars, restaurants and parking garages are full and the hotel is booked out. We cross the street to the Jardin Hotel (Garden Hotel) and find a room. It is the same hotel where Kathleen, Antonia, William and I stayed when we arrived here on the CHEPE (Chihuahua-Pacific Ferrocarril) from the Sea of Cortes last July on our way to Dallas for my Mum’s ninetieth birthday. The concierge even showed us to the same room until Bob said we wanted a cheaper one. We wound up in a rather shabby though clean room with three beds, a standing lamp with no lightbulb, overhead strip lighting, a separate shower and toilet, and towels so threadbare you could read the Sunday funnies through the holes. The hotel is marvellously quiet, though, so we were not disturbed by revellers. This morning the city is empty. While Bob goes off to find a ranching-business contact at his house, I take a walk to the cathedral a few blocks away and stay for part of the service. The church is packed. Afterwards I sit for a while on a park bench and listen to a tour guide describing the history and architecture to a tour of quite elderly Americans. HI can hear him but I am sure, even at full hearing-aid-volume, most of the crowd were not getting much out of it. After being hit up five times to have my grungy hiking boots polished up at one of four shoeshine stands, I walk down the side streets to the Mercado district which is just coming to life. Maybe I can find a hot cup of coffee. I see handcart after handcart-loaded with onions, zuchinni, oranges, papayas, mangos, bananas (sometimes spelled ¨bananas¨ on the boxes) and all kinds of other produce being trundled into the fruit and vegetable market. One noisy trundleman directs me to Café Imperial, a very grand name for a hole-in-the-wall pastry bakery just across the street. The little pies and tarts are just coming out of the oven. I take one of the five stools at the counter and am served two hot popovers with pineapple filling without even being asked. Why else after all would I have come in just then? Delicious! Delicious! Meeting Bob back at the hotel, we drive out to a big hotel-style brunch-restaurant at the mall. Bob is a breakfast kind of person; he can ignore meals the rest of the day, he says, if he can get a big breakfast. After thoroughly stuffing ourselves, we drive to the nearby Westin Hotel where I am currently sitting and using the internet access in the so-called Business Centre for free. (Bob sure knows his way around.) Amongst other topics on the way out from the ranch, we were talking about raising freshwater shrimp or prawns. Since Bob has a couple of warm springs on his spread, maybe it would be possible for him to raise them at least for his own use there. I research this a bit on the web, try for my own information to get some information about the cattle industry in North America, and look up the history of the Mennonites. Mennonite History by Daniel Kauffman © Copyright, Mennonite Publishing House (at www.anabaptists.org) Three bodies of people.are in evidence as we study the history of the Reformation period. These are: 1. The Roman Catholics.--The Greek Catholics are not known in this struggle, as the conflict was waged outside their territory. At the beginning of the struggle the governments of western Europe were in control of the Catholics. The abuse of power was largely responsible for working the reaction and bringing the struggle known as the Reformation. The things about the Catholic Church which stirred the consciences of right thinking people were the corrupt practices and immorality of priests, the sale of indulgences, the ritualistic formalism of the Church and lack of spiritual life on the part of the masses; while the arbitrary power and grasping after wealth on the part of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were often displeasing to politicians many of whom welcomed the uprising in the days of Luther and Calvin. 2. The Protestants.--This name comes from a manifesto to Emperor Charles V of Germany, drawn up in 1529 by a number of princes who had espoused the struggle of Luther, in the form of a protest against what they considered unjust measures by the Emperor and by the Pope. From this time forward the word "Protest-ants" applied to those opposed to the Pope and his party. These princes supported their claims by force of arms. The conflict between Catholics and Protestants was so severe that it finally settled into a Thirty Years' War that came to a close by the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This treaty, among other things, stipulated a guarantee of religious toleration for Catholics and Protestants, but not for Anabaptists of Mennonites. The close of the War of the Reformation found the following Protestant bodies: Lutherans, Reformed, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. 3. The Anabaptists.--Possibly we should have said "Mennonites;" for the original Anabaptists were the Swiss brethren who organized at Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525, which was the beginning of the organization of the Church which afterwards bore the name "Mennonite." The word Anabaptist comes from the doctrine held by Mennonites and others that baptism to be valid must be upon confession faith and that people who have not been thus baptized, though they may belong to some church, must be baptized according to Scripture before they can be scripturally received into fellowship. All people holding this belief were known as Anabaptists. Of this class were a number of bodies, some of which had no connection with Mennonites whatever. The class of Anabaptists to which the Swiss brethren, Menno Simons, Dirck Philips, and their brethren belonged stood for a complete separation of Church and State, baptism only upon confession of faith, nonresistance, nonconformity to the world, a holy life, and other tenets of Christian faith and life which were afterwards embodied in what is now known as the "Mennonite Confession of Faith." The sufferings of Anabaptists during Reformation times were most severe, for being nonresistant they refused to fight for any purpose, against either Catholics or Protestants, and were therefore marks for malice and persecution from both these warring parties. Thousands were put to death, and the rest driven about from place to place, finding refuge wherever they could. At the close of the Reformation the dominant religions in the nations of central and western Europe were as follows: The Roman Catholics retained control of Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, although there were large bodies of Protestants in several of these countries, most notably the Huguenots of France. A \|portion of southeastern Europe was under control of the Greek Catholic Church and of the Turks. Of the Protestant countries the Lutherans had control of a number of states in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, the Reformed were in control of Switzerland and Holland, the Presbyterians in Scotland, and the Episcopalians in England. Among the churches that have grown out of the Anabaptist movement are the Mennonites, Hutterites, Baptists, Quakers and Dunkards. The Mennonites and Hutterites were contemporary with Luther and other Protestant reformers of his day, the rest appeared on the scene later. These never attempted to control the governments in any country, as they opposed the idea of union between Church and State and were against mixing religion with politics. To what extent the Mennonites and other Anabaptists are descendants from or successors to the Waldenses is an open question. The similarity in faith and in family names furnishes some ground for the claims of certain historians that there is a connection between the two. But as for the first organized congregation of Swiss brethren or Mennonites (that at Zurich in 1525) it is known that the leaders and at least some of the members had formerly been Catholics. The same is true also of Menno Simons and some of his co-workers in Holland. As to their leading tenets of faith, they were similar to the faith of the Novatians, Waldenses, and other evangelical bodies which had existed before them. Among the more prominent issues which brought upon them the wrath and persecution of the state churches, both Catholics and Protestants, were their rejection of infant baptism, their insistence upon a freedom of conscience, their refusal to have any part in carnal warfare, their discipline requiring faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance for sin as requisites for baptism and a holy life as a requisite for continued fellowship, their zeal in not only contending for the tenets of faith which they espoused but also in turning the light of truth upon the shortcomings of their opponents, and their contending for a complete separation of Church and State. Distinction between Mennonitism and Protestantism When we say "Mennonitism" we mean the same as Anabaptism, for the Mennonites (though not known by that name until later) were the pioneer Anabaptists. The distinction between this movement and that of Protestantism consists in this: While the Protestant movement was a political as well as a spiritual reformation, the Anabaptist movement was wholly a spiritual one. Grebel, Blaurock, Manz, Menno, Philips, and their brethren believed in a complete separation of Church and State, held to the doctrine that religion is an individual heart experience and that therefore each individual is personally responsible to God alone for his spiritual standing and that the Bible alone should be taken as his rule of life, to be accepted without question and faithfully obeyed regardless of what may be the attitude or requirement of the State. Logically this made them nonresistant in life, and scripturally orthodox in fundamentalism. On the other hand, the Protestant movement (besides the various doctrinal standards of different Protestant leaders) was a united effort on the part of ecclesiastical and political leaders to correct the abuse of Romanism, and to support this contention, if need be, by force of arms. This committed them to a policy of State-Churchism, and logically made Protestants as well as Catholics the persecutors of nonresistant people who could not subscribe to their program. The issue involved in this distinction between the two movements was twofold: (1) State-Churchism Vs. individual conscience and choice; (2) the sword, and what is behind it. While times have changed, circumstances now are different from what they were then, and issues have shifted somewhat, yet the fundamental difference between these two schools of thought and classes of people remains substantially the same. Trials and Persecutions It cost something to be a Mennonite in those days. Many were burned at the stake, and the times were rare when they were entirely free from persecution. Menno himself was pursued with murderous fury, but the Lord preserved him in a remarkable way. His writings were spared and he was permitted to die a natural death. Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Germany, and other European countries were the scenes of many outrages against this defenceless people. As the persecutions became too severe in one country, they would flee to some other country where they might enjoy a greater degree of freedom. It was not until many of them had found in America an asylum where they might have the privilege of worshiping God unmolested that the rigors of persecution began to relax to any great extent in Europe. Holland was the first to extend toleration, and later on Russia extended an invitation for the Mennonites to settle in that country. While Holland and several other countries extended toleration to Mennonites--at times--before there were any permanent settlements of Mennonites in America (persecution ceased permanently during the latter part of the 16th century), it was not until after this time that persecutions were discontinued in a general way in Europe. But in the face of severest persecutions the Church prospered in many places. The Taufgezinnten in Switzerland, the Doopsgezinden in Holland, the Hutterites in Moravia (different names by which these people were known in different countries), and Mennonites in other countries, all were faithful in their labors and exerted a wholesome influence. posted by *rjb,* *4:07 pm* Comments: Post a Comment
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