A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

treated here. I. From German to English That the High German language achieved the status of a "church-Latin" among Mennonites and Mennonite Brethren in the past 323 324 HISTORY OF THE MENNON1TE BRETHREN CHURCH can be described partly as an accident of history. The Mennonites who fled from the Netherlands in the sixteenth century and settled in the Vistula Delta (East Prussia) remained a pure Dutch community for over two centuries. It was with great reluctance that the Mennonites of Prussia gave up the Dutch language in their worship services in the second half of the eighteenth century. 2 By the time the Mennonites emigrated to Russia, however, the German language was in general use among them. (Had they emigrated fifty years earlier, their descendants in Russia and later in America in all probability would have continued to speak Dutch.) In Russia, two factors tended to promote the close association, if not identification, of German culture and Mennonite faith: the geographic and social isolation from the Russian people, and the aversion to identify with an inferior Slavic culture. The availability of German devotional and educational literature, moreover, helped to strengthen the link between German and Religion (Deutsch und Religion). According to several Mennonite historians, the Mennonites of Russia were linguistically and culturally German, and their literature had strong overtones of German culture and German national life with which the Mennonites had acquired a strong feeling of kinship. 3 This identity with German culture was threatened by the "russification" policy of the Imperial government which began in 1870. The desire to preserve the German language was, among others, a motivating force that brought the Mennonites, including the Mennonite Brethren, to America in the 1870's. This is sometimes overlooked in the analysis of motivation for emigration. A brief survey of the "language question" in the M.B. churches of the United States and Canada may be helpful in understanding this historic problem in the brotherhood. The Language Problem in the United States The preservation of the German language was a matter of deep concern among early Mennonite Brethren in America. At the third convention held in 1881 in Nebraska the brethren passed a resolution that "every congregation elect a man to plan and promote week-day schools ( Wochenschulen)."* Two years later Bernard Pauls urged the delegates to do more to "preserve and promote the German language." Consequently it was recommended that teachers who have a command of both the German and the English languages be appointed for the district schools in order that "one hour every morning and one hour every evening can be devoted to instruction in German. In 1884 J. F. Harms began a private school at Canada, Kansas, which provided elementary instruction in German, English and Bible. After two years a school association took over t