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

or these intinerant evangelists usually came from a few missionary-minded local churches or individuals. Brother H.P. Sukkau was not appointed or supported by any church. Faithful children of God sustained him with prayer and with offerings for his family. 29 Most lived under very marginal circumstances. Perhaps their common zeal was best characterized by Riediger's refreshing observation that Whenever there were Mennonites — in the south, in the east, in the north — there were those who had no peace or quiet in their heart when they saw the ignorant and the misled. The love of Jesus Christ drove them. ..to speak to this people. 30 62 The lack of constituency support usually meant that the individual evangelists connected with those who shared their vision. An H.P. Sukkau first began to preach in Russian in a small Baptist Church and later carried out some of his ministry under Baptist auspices. Riediger prosaically concludes his report of evangelism in the Poltava region with the sentence: "Thus Russian Baptist churches were founded there." 31 Jacob Wiens worked with a Molokan and a Russian officer in the city of Samara and founded an evangelical church there. A Cornelius Janzen came to the same city to evangelize. He contacted typhus and after a brief illness died, "surrounded by dear, sympathetic Russian brothers and sisters." 32 After Peter Riediger's ministry brought revival to a Russian village, over 60 "newly converted souls were examined, baptized and accepted into the church at Novo Petrofka." 33 It was a Baptist congregation. During the 1860s adverse pressures had forced the Brethren to look for new friends. The Baptists with their established constituency and similar theology offered interim security. Ongoing contacts throughout the later nineteenth century allowed both groups to clarify their association. The relationship did not threaten the Brethren for by then they had forged a separate peoplehood within Russian Mennonitism. The Blankenburg relationship was more complex. As in the case of the Baptists there were the familiar beliefs, the German cultural roots and the substantial spiritual nurture. Blankenburg's insistence on fellowship and unity amidst denominational dis- tinctions nevertheless threatened Brethren identity. The majority were not ready to become something else. This tension coincided with another kind of intellectual-spiritual expan- siveness. By the early twentieth century the Brethren, whether living in frontier villages or in the older established settlements, participated fully in the changing Mennonite world. Many of their young men and women, like those of the Old Church, completed high school as well as teachers or nurses training. Some went on to German or Russian universities to study theology, law or medicine. Added to this were the voices of dedicated and sincere persons who were preaching the Gospel to Russians. These demanded that the Brethren