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

ere not bom Mennonites) they, like the brethren from Mariopol and the Don, could not receive the Mennonite privileges of exemtpion from military §237 514 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH §238 service. Those, of these three areas, who remained have joined the Baptist Union as the churches of "Usti-Kubalinka” and “Strassburg” (in the provinces Saratov and Samara). At the present time there are at best very few Mennonite Brethren in the “homeland” of Brother Eckert and even before the 25th anniversary in 1885 the Volga M.B. congregations had ceased to exist. XXX. THE ACTIVITY OF THE M B. GENERAL CONFERENCE AS A BODY 1872-1885 The Mennonite Brethren General Conference consisted of all the M.B. congregations as initiated at the first joint meeting on May 14th in Andreasfeld. This Conference met in annual meetings which took place in the month of May alternately in various churches. The most important item on the agenda was the project of itinerant ministry with its treasury, reports, etc. (Cf. 1/202.) A. 1) Annual meetings were of special significance because they dealt with important questions of principle. Thus in 1876 the question of fellowship with the Baptists, the emigration to America, the fellowship in communion with those who had not been baptized according to the biblical teaching of the M.B. Church were considered. In 1882 discussions centered on whether, for internal and external reasons, a working relation- ship with those of the Russian evangelical Baptist persuasion was possible, a question, which, in spite of the fact that Br. Johann Wieler had indepen- dently invited them to the meeting of 1882 at Rueckenau and had stormily requested the same at the meeting in Friedensfeld, 1883, was decided negatively after being energetically opposed by elders of the church. (Cf. //141, “Answers," May 7, footnote, etc.) 2) The conference or the annual meeting did not have ( de jure) the character of a legislative authority, but was rather an advising, guiding, admonishing, and supporting institution. The total decisions of this conference came into effect for individual congregations only by approval at their regular brotherhood meetings. (See further 1/241 (2) and Confession of Faith 1902, p. 33). In fact, however, the decisions of the conference were accepted almost without exception by every church, and the confidence of the churches in the annual conference was almost limitless, something that was natural since every congregation sent its most trusted men to the annual meeting— its elders, ministers and other proven brethren; through these repre- sentatives such a close bond of fellowship 311 was created between all the districts of various elders and other divisions that all the congregations of the M.B. Conference became conscious of such a solid unity as was not the case with the congregations of the Mennonite Church in Russia. The The General Conference 515 peculiarities