A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

hools (Zentratschuleri) elevated Mennonite culture and produced a class of intelligentsia. Many of their young people went to Russian universities for professional training; others went to Germany and Switzerland for advanced academic pursuits. The list of church leaders who studied in St, Crischona, Switzerland, and the Baptist sem- inary in Hamburg was substantial. After 1897, when the Russ- ian language entered the village schools, the younger genera- tion gradually absorbed Russian ideas and culture. By 1914, according to Emerick K. Francis, the Russian Mennonites had become an integral part of a highly differentiated, het- erogeneous . , , and to some extent, urbanized, industrial- ized, and capitalistic society with developed institutions of higher learning and a flourishing national literature, whose achievements in the sciences, fine arts, music, dra- ma, ballet, and so on were considerable,9 The Mennonite Brethren who came to North America in the 1920s, therefore, were somewhat culturally removed from their kin already in Canada-known as "Kanadier"-who had come in the 1870s. These newcomers-called "Russlander"- were more sophisticated, better educated, had a broader world view, a progressive outlook and a more aggressive style. In the words of Francis: The two Mennonite groups were divided by cultural and class differences. In the eyes of the native Mennonites the newcomers appeared worldly, overbearing, and unwilling to do manual labor The Russlander people, on the other hand, found their benefactors, on whose good will they were dependent, uncouth, backward, miserly and, above 157 A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH all, ignorant and uneducated.10 Many of the Kanadier regarded the newcomers as proud and arrogant.11 Yet the graciousness with which they extended hospitality to them was a model of humility and kindness.12 Despite a common origin and a common faith, adjustment of the Russlander immigrants to the Kanadier group was in many ways as difficult as the adjustment to the society at laige.1* The expansion of the Canadian Mennonite Brethren Con- ference from twenty congregations in 1923 with a member- ship of 1,778 to sixty-two congregations and 7,882 members in 1941 introduced new dynamics.14 The voices of Abraham H. Unruh, Benjamin B. Janz, Cornelius A. DeFehr, Franz C Thiessen, Cornelius F. Klassen, Heinrich Regier, Johann Wiens, David D. Derksen, Heinrich Toews, Jakob Thiessen and other Russlander became prominent in conference delib- erations during those years. The leadership of the Canadian Conference, however, re- mained in the hands of the Kanadie