A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

he school and enabled FACING CULTURAL CHANGE 325 Harms to continue the educational effort at Lehigh, Kansas, for two more years. Shortly after the discontinuation of the school at Lehigh, a similar Vereinsschule (school of the association) was begun at Buhler, Kansas. J. F. Duerksen was the teacher and promoter of this new institution. Similar elementary schools were conducted in the German language in other communities. In 1898 there were forty-two private schools in the Kansas Mennonite settlements alone. 6 The acceptance by the conference of the German Department of McPherson College (Kansas) in 1899, and the establishment of the Corn Bible Academy (Oklahoma) in 1902, are further indications that the Mennonite Brethren were interested in the preservation of the German language in their churches and schools. The Anglo-Saxon cultural environment of the new world was much more attractive, however, than that of Russia had ever been for the Mennonite immigrants. Hence they did not develop the kind of psychological attachments to German culture and German national life as did their brethren in Russia during the last decades of the nineteenth century and later. Nevertheless, during the early years of World War I, there was considerable pro-German sentiment in Mennonite Brethren churches in the United States. Editor A. L. Schellenberg 7 in all probability was a spokesman for the brotherhood when in his editorials he criticized American entry into the war, and refuted the charges of German atrocities." Although the churches were trying to preserve the German language, by 1930 they were fighting a losing battle. On a conference level German was perhaps preserved a little longer than in some local congregations. Until 1939, for instance, all conference minutes, not only those of the General Conference, but also of the district conferences, were recorded and published in German. Transition from German to English Although the transition from German to English was begun in most M.B. congregations in the first quarter of this century, it was not completed until much later. The answers in the questionnaire (mentioned in chapter eighteen) indicate a bilingual transition period from ten to thirty years in a number of congregations. 3 Of the ten congregations in the Southern District still using the German in their worship services in 1940, none were left fifteen years later. AM the younger congregations in this district — seventeen out of twenty- seven — report that they have always used English in public worship. In the Central District six churches indicated that they had never gone through a language change. Between 1940 and 1955 all the others (ten) began to conduct their services exclusively in English. In the Pacific District again a large number (nineteen) have never had any 326 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH language problem. However, the Spanish-American M.B. churches of