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

d not belong to any church. Should they be referred to the Mennonite Church” or should M.B. ministers be allowed to perform the 478 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH §213 marriage vows? Many brethren felt these questions were too difficult to resolve. “Why should we be concerned about outsiders,” some asked. “But they are our children and we must seek what is best for them!” “Let them go to the Mennonite Church.” “But if they feel it is wrong, and they cannot join our church if they have not become Christians, what then?” Brother Abraham Unger now made a recommendation which then was accepted. The children of church members, who were not yet baptized and did not belong to any church, but who desired to be married, were to appear personally before the church and to sign a written statement promising to continue attending church and to live a quiet, morally upright, life. N.B.! Such persons thereby acknowledge that they are associated with a church whose teaching and practice they recognize to be truly Christian, but that they are not ‘members’ of the same until by faith and baptism they too become ‘members’ of the church. By this means many were prevented from a hypocritical acceptance of baptism in the Mennonite congregations of our general Mennonite brotherhood and, in most cases, a second baptism in their mother church, the M.B. Church. It is one thing if children of the Mennonite Church, who may not be true believers (although many are), come to church in simple pious reverence according to the manner of their parents ; but it is quite another when persons who are definitely not eligible and who do not profess to be ready for baptism, still take the step of baptism with a guilty conscience and with dishonesty on their lips and ceremoniously make their confession on their knees before God and men! And this is what some M.B. members are pleading for today? As soon as baptism ceases to be a prerequisite for marriage in the Mennonite Church of our common confession, the believers and the leaders of that church will be absolved of their responsibility in marrying young men and women who are baptized without genuine faith, contrary to our common old-evangelical Anabaptist teaching, but whose life is outwardly pious and whose testimony appears trustworthy, even though no thorough investigation has been made. 270 But as long as baptism opens the door to marriage, the responsibility is cast on the leaders of the church and especially on the believers 271 in the church (see above #237 and 241). 6. Confession of Faith of 1873/76 Early in 1873 an official from the Ministry (Colonel Bartholome) came to the Mennonites of South Russia. He had come to deal with a matter affecting the Mennonites as a whole, an issue relating to the new military law which was to be imposed in 1874. This official also visited the E ini age M.B. Church and desired to know what their relationship to the Baptists was. Therefore t