Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

s provided information and counsel regarding public worship, local church and denominational organisation, and even believer’s baptism by immersion. 15 When Johann Classen returned in May 1860 to the Molotschna colony from St. Petersburg, where he defended Mennonite Brethren interests, he brought with him a tract on believer’s baptism by immersion, almost certainly from the circle founded by the German Baptist, Ch. Plonus. From reading the tract, Mennonite Brethren changed the mode of baptism from pouring to immersion, with the first immersion in September when Jakob Bekker baptized JJenry Bartel and then Bartel baptized Bekker. However, in Poland, Gottfried Alf was critical of some Mennonite Brethren who immersed candidates kneeling and then forward; for him there was only one proper way to immerse—once backward. 16 German Baptists and Mennonite Brethren regarded themselves as spiritual collaborators. The Brethren, however, continued to distinguish themselves by the practice of footwashing and nonresistance, gaining for the latter practice, as other Mennonites, exemption from military service. With evangelistic zeal, Mennonite Brethren began to immerse Lutherans who accepted spiritual rebirth. At Pentecost in May 1864, in the German colony of Neu-Danzig, Gerhard Wieler (accompanied by Jakob Bekker) immersed a number of candidates, thus forming a Baptist congregation. But this church brought immediate repression. Between 1864-1865, with the cooperation of Lutheran and government authorities, around ten families and some individuals suffered transportation, imprisonment, and then exile to Catalui, an area of German settlement in Dobruja, then under Turkish control. On their own volition, other families 14 For the beginnings and early development of the Mennonite Brethren Church, see John A. Toews, A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church (Fresno: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1974), pp. 26-77. In an article in Missionsblatt, June 1865, p. 93, the German Baptist missions publication, the author pointed out that around 1853 (notice again this fateful year) a revival broke out among rural colonists which eventually led to persecution of Mennonites and Baptists. 13 See Albert W. Wardin, Jr, ‘Baptist Influences on Mennonite Brethren with an Emphasis on the Practice of Immersion’, Direction 8.4 (October, 1979), pp. 33-38, and Wardin, ‘Mennonite Brethren and German Baptists in Russia: Affinities and Dissimilarities’, in Paul Toews, ed., Mennonites and Baptists: A Continuing Conversation (Winnipeg, MB and Hillsboro, KS: Kindred Press, 1993), pp. 97-112. 16 Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910), tr. from the German (Fresno: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1978), pp. 285, 288. 42 Journal of European Baptist Studies settled there, which became, as K. I. Veltistov, a Russian