A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

he special concern of one of his former students, Jacob Martens, a deeply pious minister of Tiegenhagen. Martens was actively involved in a "Christian Literature Crusade" until his death around 1870. The significance of Tobias Voth for the Mennonite colonies in general, and for the Mennonite Brethren Church in particular, is succinctly stated by Friesen as follows: Among us here in Russia Tobias Voth has given expression for the first time to something which we call 'brotherhood' (Brudertum) or intimate Christian fellowship; which today is found in the Mennonite Brethren Church as well as among all groups of true believers in the 'old' or 'churchly' congregations. 10 3. The Fellowship Center at Gnadenfeld In the forties and fifties the center of the "Brotherhood" movement shifted from Ohrloff to Gnadenfeld (Field of Grace). This congregation had a unique history dating back to approximately 1540, when a group of Dutch Anabaptists fled their homeland and eventually found a new home in the state of Brandenburg, Prussia. Here, a relatively large number of Lutheran Pietists joined them in the early years of the nineteeneth century." Because of continuing pressure from the Prussian government, mainly due to Mennonite opposition to military service, the congregation under elder Wilhelm Lange migrated to the southern Ukraine in 1835 and founded the village of Gnadenfeld in the Molotschna. From the very beginning Gnadenfeld became an important center of spiritual life. Their church calendar included two Sunday services, a midweek meeting, mission study hours and festivals, as well as meetings in private homes consisting of Bibelstunden (Bible study discussion hours) and prayer. The Gnadenfeld Church also championed the cause of temperance in the colony. In his memoirs Jacob Becker reports as follows: The Gnadenfeld Church Council ordered tracts that pointed out the evil and condemned the drinking of liquor, organized a union and gathered signatures of those who renounced drinking. Since they distributed many tracts and organized a Temperance Union, they came to be derisively called the Temperates [Maessigen) . 12 The contribution of the Gnadenfeld congregation to the larger Mennonite brotherhood during its first quarter century in the Russian environment was significant and lasting. 13 The Mennonite Brethren RENEWAL AND REORIENTATION 29 3. Bernhard Harder 4. Eduard Wuest 5. August Lenzmann Church is indebted to Gnadenfeld in a special way. Most of the early leaders among the "Brethren" 14 were either members or adherents of this church. 15 P. M. Friesen calls Gnadenfeld the "place of inception" (Empfaengnisstaette) of the Mennonite Brethren Church of 1860, and claims that the history of our church is "unthinkable without the history of the Gnadenfeld congregation." 16 Even after the moral lapse and deposition of its elder Friedrich Lange (1849), and the death of Pfarrer Eduard Wuest (1859)