A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

from high government officials that their petitions would be given a favorable hearing and response, it was only on May 30, 1866, that Claassen received official confirmation of full religious and civil privileges for Mennonite Brethren. The wheels of the official bureaucracy moved very slowly in Russia. Two years earlier, on March 4, 1864, "Heinrich Huebert and Associates" had received permission to establish a settlement on the Kuban. This permission was given by the Land Office upon the presentation of a written petition on December 30, 1863. The granting of these petitions paved the way for recognition and resettlement of the Mennonite Brethren in the two oldest Mennonite Colonies. When numerous "daughter colonies" were established in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Mennonite Brethren who settled there were given all the rights and privileges of the other colonists. Recognition from the Churches Claassen's return inspired the Brethren with new confidence, but it also aroused new opposition on the part of local authorities. In a special letter on October 11, 1862, David Friesen, Colony Administrator in the Molotschna, asked all elders to choose between two options for the new group: expulsion from the colony, or recognition of their rights. In all probability he hoped to achieve the former objective by this drastic proposal. A break in this tense situation came with the response of the Ohrloff Church through its elder Johann Harder. In a letter of November 12, 1862, he wrote: Following the general conference held on the 11th of October, 1862, in the colony administration building, in which the administrator proposed that the Mennonites who had left the corrupt churches be either banished from the colony or recognized as congregations with equal rights, our congregation, having the matter presented to them, declared that since the former is not scriptural, it is willing to accept the latter on the condition that their confession of faith, should they be asked for the same, be in accordance, essentially, with ours. As a result of our request the seceders have declared in writing that the Confession of Faith of the So-Called United Flemish, Frisian, and High German Anabaptist Mennonite Church, published by the congregation of Rudnerweide, South Russia, was their own. Consequently, nothing hinders the Ohrloff-Halb- stadt congregation from recognizing the Mennonites in question as an independent congregation of which I now, according to our verbal agreement, wish to inform the colony administration. 3 " This formal recognition of the Mennonite Brethren Church by the elder of the mother church (Stammgemeinde) in the Molotschna marked the turning point in the troubled history of the early Brethren. It fore- stalled any attempt on the part of the Colony Administrative Office (Gebietsamt) to send the group into Siberian exile. Senator von Harm was no doubt accurate in his appraisal of the si