THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

itza District by their Mennonite brethren— and the reason for these persecutions. 320 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH f) “Already for several years, the Lord, through His Spirit, awakened many souls among the Mennonites of the Chortitza and Kronsweide Mennonite Church of the Chortitza District, which is located in the Province and District of Ekaterinoslav, to a better life and conduct. They were gradually, and finally, fully convinced of the religious decay of their respective Mennonite congregations, and had to see that the church elders were lenient toward open vices, which neither Christian nor Mennonite doctrine allows. Regretting these sad circumstances, the awakened souls felt compelled to live their lives in strict accordance with God’s Word and the teachings of Menno Simons, and to form a new, independent Mennonite Brethren Church. 118 They already had a precedent, set by the Mennonites at the Molotschna in the Province of Taurida, where a flourishing Chris- tian M.B. Church had been established somewhat earlier, amid severe persecution. Because every Mennonite has the liberty to leave a Mennonite Church that does not measure up to his convictions and to join another, or even to help establish a new church, to which the Russian state law makes no reference whatever, but which the Holy Scriptures and Menno Simons’ teachings make into a duty for every believing Christian under the present circumstances, a new church fellowship consisting of 91 members was now also formed in the Chortitza Mennonite District, which has since conducted worship services in private homes under the leadership of its two ministers, Heinrich Neufeld and Abraham Unger. But the church elders of the other two Mennonite churches, who looked upon this action as under mining their authority, with the support of a number of influential men in their church, began to arouse irreconcilable hatred in the hearts of the members against some of their own people, Mennonites who had seceded from them only in respect to religion. And after they had begun to excommunicate the secessionists, entirely contrary to God’s Word, severe persecutions by the Chortitza Area Administrative Office began, including imprisonment, hunger and beatings, as the following facts prove. All civilian business relationships with the new church were prohibited, including buying, selling and concluding agreements, whereby the complete ruin of their farms and businesses must be foreseen. g) “In the last [correction: ‘first’] half of March of this year, the Mennonite Wilhelm Janzen, of the colony of Kronsweide, was imprisoned for the sake of his faith by his village mayor. Thereupon he received ten lashes of the rod and was told to withdraw from the worship services of his congregation. Because, for conscience sake, he could not promise to do so, he was locked in a cold place where the earth was not yet thawed, after his fur coat had been taken so that he foun