Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Letters
Editor’s note: The 2005 issue of Preservings
#25 carried an article by Delbert Plett (p.12)
written shortly before his death, in which he
responded critically to a letter written by Harold
Janz about him. Janz had distributed the letter
to a select number of people. The following
letter is the one written by Janz to which Plett
responded.
Despite its strengths, local lawyer has produced
a very troubling history
By Harold Jantz
Steinbach writer, historian and sometime
lawyer, Delbert Plett, has established a reputation
for an immense output. Over the course
of several decades he has produced a range
of books and more recently twice annual periodicals
which have unearthed a vast amount
of history of a portion of the Mennonite family
that has been neglected by too many of Mennonite
historians.
When I read the last of the Mennonites in
Canada series, volume three by Ted Regehr, A
People Transformed, I asked myself where the
conservative groups had disappeared to. They
were virtually invisible in this volume.
That’s not a criticism that can be put to
Plett’s writing, since he has made it his mission
to unearth the story of the Old Colony Mennonites
(Reinlander, Somerfelder (sic.), Chortitzer,
Bergthaler) and in particular the Kleine
Gemeinde churches and their people.
His most recent project is a 691-page
volume, Diese Steine, the story of the Russian
Mennonites, written and edited together with
Adina Reger of Germany, a 1987 emigrant
from the Soviet Union. Reger acts as a court
translator and interpreter in Germany and
has published earlier works before becoming
involved in this project with Plett.
Though Diese Steine may be inaccessible to
some readers because it’s in German, those who
read it will find a great deal to enrich and enjoy.
But they will also encounter stark prejudices
that will be hard to digest.
A great deal of good
First, the strengths. Diese Steine attempts
to tell the story of Russian Mennonites by recalling
the history of their migration into what
was known as New Russia, the beginnings of
these settlements, the growth of the colonies,
their emergence of daughter colonies, stories
of civic and church leaders, growth of enterprises
for which Mennonites in Russia became
renowned, church struggles, the movements that
emerged among them, the migration of a large
segment to America in the 1870s and on, and
eventually the further migration of a segment
to Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America,
beginning in 1922.
In fact Plett goes even further. He not only
has an account of the Anabaptist beginnings, he
also attempts an overview of the entire history
of the church, going back to the New Testament
church. More about that later.
The Russian part of the story is told by
colonies and often by villages. That has allowed
Plett and Reger to do well what they do best--
tell the story of people, their experiences, their
enterprises, and the special contributions they
have made and institutions they created. Scores
of pictures accompany the text. A whole section
recalls the terrible years of suffering and exile
through which many went, and which a large
number didn’t survive.
A large segment of the Russian Mennonite
colonies, troubled by the changing political climate,
chose to leave for America in the 1870s.
The book follows the reasons for their move,
and the new tensions which grew to such proportions
in Canada 50 years later that they again
began looking for a new homeland, this time in
Latin America. The stories of leaders and experiences
during these years provide insight into
the courage and conviction that led thousands
to embark on a road of great sacrifice.
The book ends with a section of reflections
on the history of the church, about conversion
and the new birth, about assurance of salvation,
about the relationship of conservative and
progressive Mennonites and about the kingdom
of God.
The concept of Diese Steine is an admirable
one and a great deal of what it contains is genuinely
valuable reading. Not just that, it’s highly
interesting and by bringing together a large
amount that might have been originally printed
in obscure places or long out of print sources,
Plett and Reger have done us a great service.
Not merely frustrating
However--and this is not a minor however-
-what is not merely frustrating but genuinely
offensive is Plett’s use of venues such as this
to ride a hobby horse against what he terms the
“separatist-pietists” or often merely the “pietists”
among the Mennonites. This bias colours
his interpretations of others everywhere. The
number of instances of this in Diese Steine are
so numerous and their implications so serious,
they deserve some reply.
Plett believes that the Pietist movement--
which largely birthed the modern evangelical
movement--is the source of all manner of ill and
has brought virtually only harm to Mennonites,
while what we now know as the Old Colony
Mennonites and the Kleine Gemeinde represent
true “evangelical Christianity” and virtually all
that is good in Mennonite Christianity. He uses
every writing for which he is responsible to
drive home this idea, no matter what violence
he does to reason or truth.
A brief explanation: Pietism was a movement
in European Protestant Christianity which
attempted to bring renewal to traditional,
formalistic Christianity by placing emphasis
on devotion to God, the experience of the
encounter with God, and on a sense of release
from the guilt of sin. It placed great emphasis
on the inner life and a sense of the presence of
God. It also greatly stimulated the missionary
impulse and accelerated the breakdown of barriers
between Christians of different traditions.
It had aberrations, as any student of its history
will acknowledge, but it also brought genuine
renewal. A great deal of millennialist speculation
was fostered by some branches of Pietism.
Yet it is quite unlikely that renewal would have
come to Russian Mennonites without the influence
of Pietism. The Mennonite Brethren were
the largest group to emerge because of this influence
in the mid-1800s in Russia, though one
could also say that the Evangelical Mennonite
Conference represents a later result of similar
influences. Much of the so-called “kirchliche”
Mennonite church in Russia was also influenced
by Pietism and experienced spiritual awakening
through it. A part, like the Kleine Gemeinde,
steadfastly resisted the most visible Pietistic
influences in Russia, as did also for the most
part the Old Colony groups who migrated to
Canada in the 1870s and then on to Mexico and
Paraguay in the 1920s and on.
Even though in some of his writings (e.g.
The Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde
in Russia 1812-1849) Plett recognizes
different forms of Pietism, in Diese Steine, he
acknowledges virtually no differences. The
illustration that Plett uses most frequently
concerns the writings of a German Pietist
Jung-Stilling who popularized the idea that
Christ was coming soon to create his millennial
kingdom and that a safe place for believers who
wanted to escape the catastrophe coming upon
this world would be somewhere in the east in
Central Asia. A group of Mennonites, led by
a certain Claas Epp Jr., caught up this notion
and actually trekked to Turkestan to what they
thought would be a safe place. Even though
others in the movement had already repudiated
him, Epp came to believe that he would
be one of two special witnesses to Christ’s
return and would be resurrected bodily on a
day he predicted. It didn’t happen and Epp died
many years later a sadder and wiser man. Even
though a moderately prosperous colony eventually
emerged, the movement must be judged
a failure. Many people died of hardships and
epidemics in the early years and a large number
soon left for America.
Plett ranks the Epp episode alongside the
violent Muenster uprising of early Anabaptism
as an illustration of the terrible consequences
which can flow from error. It is not hard to
agree that these people were in error. But what
does Plett have to say about the people who left
Canada for safety from an evil world in Mexico
98 - Preservings No. 26, 2006