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

favored liberal-minded administrators who were tolerant in national and religious matters. New people took charge. Obsequious or ignorant officials (or both) presented the matter regarding the church buildings to the authorities in an attempt to put things “in the proper light.’’ The Orthodox Consistory was approached, via the Archbishop of Kherson and Odessa. This took place at a time when a law which had been disregarded for a hundred years was being re-activated. It was a law having to do with applications for religious buildings submitted by Muslims, Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. What happened now was perhaps the grossest and most insulting chicanery which we Mennonites experienced in the nationalistic and reactionary period. (We do not want to call it persecution, because our Christianity had not reached a level where God would have honored us with that.) The local Orthodox provost (“Blagotschinny”), directed by the lesser leaders of the consistory, reported in documents that had been pushed under his pen for signature (though he was sincerely ashamed of them) that there would be grave danger for the Russian inhabitants of the village of Sagradovka (twelve versts distant) because they could be tempted by the “Stundism” if the Mennonites should conduct their (German!!) worship services in these church buildings. The Archbishop conveyed this concern to the governor, and several weeks prior to Pentecost in 1896, the police locked up both churches! Two church buildings for seventeen solidly Mennonite villages in a volost originally founded by Mennonites, consisting of 5,000 inhabitants whose religious rights had been clear and inviolable for a hundred years! And this because they had believed the verbal promise and advice of a provincial chief who had almost unlimited authority— a promise given as an official action and in the presence of his staff! The worship services of both chinches now were held simultaneously in various village school buildings, changing from one location to another. This freedom, which the Mennonites had always exercised, was also taken from them but was soon restored by action of the Ministry of the Interior. And now something no less lamentable The M.B. Church 1885-1910 549 occurred. Beginning with the first step in this matter, and long thereafter, according to the advice and direction of the former area administrator, Reimer, and the secretary, Fast, as well as the former Bergen, who was then the area administrator, the two church groups had made their presentations to the authorities as two Mennonite Church bodies, without indicating any difference between them. The leaders of both had signed the official documents together. The same practice was followed when, at the request of the M.B. Church of Sagradovka, P. M. Friesen came from Odessa in the s umm er of 1895 and found equally warm acceptance in both churches. The leadership of both churches immediately place