Perilous Journey: The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860-1910, John B. Toews, 1988

p. Then, too, Wuest arrived on the Russian steppes singing and his Mennonite disciples loved his melodies. Perhaps the situation was akin to periodic revival manifestations where music played a critical role in shaping the inner quality of religious experience. As the drums beat louder and increased in tempo some of the Brethren moved left of this Wuestian legacy. Tender spiritual insights associated with new beginnings and new songs were trampled or drowned out in the shouting and jumping which followed. 32 43 The diary of Jacob Epp reflects another dimension. On April 15, 1862 he was visited by a neighbor who informed him "that no one in [our] church would be saved if he did not leave it... Redekopp told me directly that I was not converted." 33 Some three years later he reported on a visit with an Aaron Lepp. "We discussed his exodus and that of his coreligionists. He still calls our church a whore and [affirms] that he and his consorts are on the right pathway." 34 In the course of the Neu-Kronsweide revival, according to Cornelius Hildebrand, the dissidents "called the church a brothel" 35 and "wanted nothing more to do with the unconverted as they called members of the Old Church." 36 Such a determined rejection of every facet of the established piety ensured the loss of traditional worship patterns, church polity and hymnody. Spiritual destabilization among the Chortitza and Molotschna dissidents only intensified after the break with the old order. The revolution moved too fast and too far to the left. By cutting all ties with what had been, the nonconformists found themselves in the wilderness. Before long a lunatic fringe burned the very materials which nurtured their initial quest for new life. In the words of Heinrich Epp: Gerhard Wieler stepped before the congregation, held the Bible high and shouted: "This book, the Bible, is the only book which shows us the way to salvation. All other books cannot help in this regard and must therefore be destroyed and burned according to Acts 19:19" Many were led astray and burned their books. 37 They had destroyed even their recent past. As a group devoid of any tradition or sense of history they became vulnerable to every excess. Soon arrogant and inexperienced leaders, given to rhetoric and narrow dogma, proclaimed the exclusiveness of the new faith and the total failure of the Old Church. Unfettered by religious tradition and practice some claimed the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit as they boldly proclaimed a new order. Despising all accumulated wisdom they engaged in Iiteralistic interpretation of Scripture, interpretations which frequently justified their excesses. Heinrich Janzen recalled the Bible studies in which he had participated. What both struck and angered me about the Bible studies was the caprice with which a number of participants 44 interpreted certain Scripture passages. For example, in the opinion of o