Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

terial for Western scholars are characterized by a deliberate mixture of fact and fiction as well as an inter- pretive scheme determined by Marxist ideology. According to that scheme, for example, the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, especially Thomas Miintzer and the Miinsterite rebellion led by Jan van Leyden,?’ are treated as a peasant movement in feudal Europe, which was a precurser of communism. But a Dutch priest named Menno Simons managed to convert the remnant into a quietist religious society, progressive in the sense that it affirmed bourgeois values in a feudal era but therefore also socially and politically backward in the communist era.?8 Space limitations permit no more than the assertion that the Russian Mennonites trace their historical origins to the Anabaptists in Holland and North Germany who with their fellows in Switzerland and South Germany formed the first modern so-called believers’ churches—that is, a church practicing adult baptism and church membership following a conscious voluntary commitment to Christ. Beginning in 1789, Mennonite settlers in Russia began emigrating to Russia in response to the privileged terms of set- tlement offered by Empress Catherine II and her successors. During the following century they managed to create a most remarkable self-governing commonwealth which became a model for the surrounding society in its ag- ricultural and educational achievements as well as for their highly developed charity program.” But this Mennonite commonwealth also fell prey to the temptation of becoming a “church” type rather than a volun- taristic “sect’’ type, to use Emst Troeltsch’s classic sociological formula- tions.2° A major renewal movement, due to the influence of the Moravian Brethren, Wiirttemburg Pietists, German Baptists, and the Bible Society crystallized in 1860 into a separately organized Mennonite denomination bearing the name Mennonite Brethren. The old church that initially resisted religious renewal through a most unchristian exercise of force buildings (Kirche) while the new Mennonites spoke about a “prayer house” and preferred the term “Brethren” to “Church.” Soviet writings still label them Church and Brethren Mennonites. Spiritual renewal soon be- came widespread in Mennonite circles as well and eventually, during the 1920s, these two major Mennonite bodies plus smaller, split-away groups continued to call itself the Mennonite Church, insisted on keeping the 280 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il met in a general conference and spoke with a united voice to the au- thorities,3! This is all very dim history for present-day Soviet Mennonites because during the past fifty years their church has experienced an upheaval which Prompts some to say that all that has remained is the name Mennonite, their characteristic Low German dialect, and traditional cooking. Between 1923 and 1929 approximat