A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

members of the M.B. Church and those of other denominations. This has a tendency to weaken denominational loyalties. On the positive side of the ledger it should be recorded that Mennonite Brethren have assumed a leadership role in the promotion of evangelism as well as social action in both rural and urban communities as a result of changing to the national tongue in the communication of their message. II. From Farm to City What Leland Harder writes about the life-style of Mennonites in general at the beginning of the twentieth century is also applicable to Mennonite Brethren. "At the turn of the present century," Harder observes, "to have asked where the typical Mennonite lived or what he did for a living or where he went to church would have elicited simple and straightforward answers: The typical Mennonite lives in a rural community, he farms for a living, and he attends a country church."" Mennonite Brethren in North America prior to 1920 had two city missions (Minneapolis and Winnipeg) but no organized, self-supporting urban congregations. There has been a tendency in Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren circles to characterize the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement as essentially a rural movement. However, a historical study of Anabaptist origins shows the overwhelmingly urban background of the "radical reformers" of the sixteenth century. The cradle of Anabaptism was located in some of the major cultural and commercial centers of Europe — Zurich, Basel, Nuernberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, Cologne, Amsterdam, Emden, and others. Severe persecution resulted in large-scale extermination and in the withdrawal of the remaining groups to rural areas. If persecution drove the Anabaptists from the city to the country, one is inclined to agree with Harder "that the identi- fication of the 'Mennonite way of life' with agriculture was a historical accident." 19 The image of the Mennonites as an agrarian group emerged FACING CULTURAL CHANCE 331 in Prussia and found its classical expression in Russian and early American Mennonite history. The close association of the "Bible and the plow" is also a part of the Mennonite Brethren tradition. The depreciation of the city and the elevation of rural life were confirmed for the brethren by their study of the Scriptures. The historical record of cities (from Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis to Babylon in Revelation) is a gloomy one and for Mennonite Brethren, urban centers were at once the seat and symbol of worldliness and sin. Cities were places for establishing "missions," but not for planting Mennonite Brethren churches. That the last book of the Bible also presents the redeemed community as an urban community I New Jerusalem) was apparently overlooked. Much more research is needed on the urbanization process in the Mennonite Brethren Church." From the conference records and statistics it is clear that urbanization is a phenomenon of the last thirty years. Re