Preservings $20 No. 25, December, 2005 - Plett Foundation

One could draw the reader’s attention to
other matters, but enough has been said. For
anyone interested in Paraguayan Mennonite history
(and this reviewer certainly was since his
grandparents and all of his mother’s family were
forced to migrate there), this book is indispensable.
As a first comprehensive history of those
Mennonites, this is a creditable job. And there
are many aspects to the study that are new and
warrant serious consideration. But, aside from
those things already alluded to, there is one
negative aspect that should be noted. For it is a
fault common to most Mennonite histories. If one
inspects the bibliography one will find that the
overwhelming number of books listed are written
by Mennonite authors. This points to a clear
“in-group” perspective as well as to the absence
of the larger context within which the history
of every people takes place. Just as the history
of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement
cannot be written without reference to the larger
history of the Reformation, Mennonite history
– whether Russian or Paraguayan – cannot be
written without reference to the greater history of
those countries. To do so anyway leaves everyone
with false perceptions of the truth.
As to the translation, having read the original
several years ago, I was disappointed with the
translation. Though it is workmanlike it lacks
any sense of good style. At times three or four
sentences begin with exactly the same words
or phrases; at other times the syntax is flawed.
The term “immigration” is nearly always used
for “emigration,” and one is told that there is a
“parliament building” in Winnipeg. The conclusion
one is forced to draw is that “MDs” do not
necessarily make good translators. Like so much
else in the world of letters, translation is an art that
must be assiduously honed and practiced over a
long period of time.
__________
Doreen Reimer Peters, One Who Dared, Altona:
Friesens, 2005, 307 pages.
Reviewed by Ralph Friesen, Nelson, B.C.
One Who Dared is a labour of love by an eldest
daughter for her father. Doreen Reimer Peters did
extensive research and interviewing for this book
and she has clearly tried her best to honour her
father, Ben D. Reimer, and what he stood for, in
writing it.
Which makes the book almost impossible to
review critically, since one does not take a labour of
love to task. Yet, in the spirit of her father, Doreen
Peters includes material that requires some kind
of critical response. It’s as if Ben D. Reimer had
come back to life and, in typical fashion, asked the
reader, “Are you sure you are saved?” Any answer
other than a resounding and joyful “yes!” would
of course be suspect, and would represent an opportunity
for Mr. Reimer to witness for Christ. Not
that he necessarily waited for opportunities in his
active days, preferring to create them.
Ben Reimer (1909-1994) was the eighth child
of school teacher Heinrich R. Reimer (1876-1959)
and Helena Dueck (1878-1950). His paternal
grandparents, Abram R. and Maria Reimer, settled
in Blumenort after the great migration of the
Kleine Gemeinde from South Russia in 1874. His
great-grandparents were the legendary Abraham F.
(“Stargazer”) and Elisabeth Reimer and his greatgreat
grandfather was Klaas Reimer, founder of the
Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde. Having come from
such a rich Kleine Gemeinde legacy, Ben Reimer
was a sort of spiritual pioneer himself, but in a different
direction; his passion for evangelizing and
work in developing mission-consciousness were
instrumental in moving the Gemeinde away from
its traditional roots and toward the mainstream of
evangelical Christianity.
From the point of view of his daughter, this was
only a good thing. Doreen Peters essentially opts
to sing a hymn of praise in honour of her father,
a controversial individual who did not shy from
confrontation. Peters presents this confrontational
style as a virtue, necessary for prophets and radicals
who are possessed of a truth to which others
are oblivious.
There is something to that. Reimer would
probably not have accomplished what he did, had
he been less forthright in his approach. Despite
church opposition, he, along with his brother-inlaw
Archie Penner, attended the Winnipeg Bible
Institute in the late 1930s. He battled some of
the church elders in initiating Christian youth
meetings in his home community of Prairie Rose
(Landmark), in breaking the conservative dress
code (he offended some by wearing a necktie when
preaching in the Blumenort church), in working
with non-Mennonite denominations in evangelizing
campaigns, and in establishing the Western
Gospel Mission in 1946. Always, his emphasis was
on the experience of personal salvation.
Reimer had a conversion experience at a revival
meeting in the Bruderthaler (EMB) Church
in 1929, led by the American evangelist George
Schultz. As Peters puts it: “He experienced something
he had never known: that a person could be
converted in one night.” He now had assurance of
salvation; he knew he was “a child of God on his
way to heaven.” This experience defined the battle
that Reimer was to fight with the conservative
members of the Kleine Gemeinde, and informed
his passion for evangelizing that he carried for the
rest of his life.
One Who Dared, through interviews with
Reimer’s contemporaries, memories of the writer
and her family, letters and other archival material,
documents the story that followed, of a brave soldier
for Christ who took the good news of salvation
to those who were perceived not to have it, whether
they were fellow Mennonites, Aboriginal people,
Greek Orthodox Ukrainians of south eastern
Manitoba, Catholics—Reimer believed that the
gospel applied to all regardless of denominational
or ethnic boundaries.
Peters provides many proofs of the power
of her father’s teachings—individuals were
converted, remote communities started churches,
alienated youth were brought into the fold. From
the perspective of those for whom the individual,
unique salvation experience is a core Christian
belief, it is a “good news” story, of the positive
impact of a passionate man.
But there are also “bad guys” in this story.
They are the unnamed conservatives among the
Kleine Gemeinde and, later, the Sommerfelder
churches who objected to Reimer’s approach.
Peters presents these traditionalists as benighted
(“the heavy-handed, dour legalistic element”)
and even capable of being rather vicious (Ben
Reimer’s father warned his son that he would be
“used as a floor-rag” by those who opposed his
mission efforts).
This polarized view—evangelicals good,
traditionalists bad—has been popular among
many Mennonite evangelicals for a long time. Ben
Reimer, it should be acknowledged, held some
conservative views himself, and did not have a
desire to break away from the Kleine Gemeinde;
he wanted to see it renewed from within. But in
celebrating her father, or perhaps in some cases
justifying him, Peters perpetuates the old polarizing
myth of enlightened evangelicals versus
benighted conservatives.
This seems, well. . .disrespectful. Peters
describes a visit by Ben Reimer to the small West
Reserve community of Neubergthal. Seeing a
young man on a tractor Reimer asks him for
directions. Upon receiving the answer, he follows
immediately with the question, “Are you a
Christian?” The man replies, “I’m supposed to be
one”—which told Reimer that “the person did not
know Jesus Christ.” This breath-takingly arrogant
presumption on the part of Ben Reimer (however
well-intentioned) is bad enough without the writer
reinforcing it 50 years after the fact. Surely we
can understand that answer differently today as
the humble reply of a person who recognizes
that it would be presumptuous to declare his own
salvation to others—who knows, instead, that
salvation does not happen in one night, but is a
life-long process, worked out in terms of one’s
relationship to God and to others, particularly to
one’s community.
My own father, Reverend Peter D. Friesen,
was one of Reimer’s contemporaries among the
ministerial of the Kleine Gemeinde/Evangelical
Mennonite Conference, and as far as I know, essentially
sympathetic to Reimer’s theology and
mission, though perhaps not capable of carrying it
out himself. He was not one of the “young Turks”
along with Ben Reimer and Archie Penner, but they
had his blessing. Whatever good came from this
evangelizing movement, there needs to be some
accounting for the fact that harm occurred, too. It
was not only traditionalists who were offended
by essentially impersonal, blunt interrogations
about the state of one’s soul; such questioning was
experienced by some young people as spiritually
invasive.
In reading One Who Dared I have the sense
of being challenged again, on two fronts: as an
amateur historian with an appreciation for the
traditional life, and as a former “rebel” whose
“soul” was targeted by many an evangelist. Doreen
Reimer Peters deserves credit for re-opening what
is really a core subject for us all, and a continuing
bone of contention in the differences between
traditionalists, “liberals,” and evangelicals—i.e.,
the nature of salvation. Who were the “dour”
traditionalists who opposed Ben Reimer in the
Kleine Gemeinde? What was their point of view,
specifically in response to his initiatives? That
would be a worthy subject of another book. Who
were the young hitchhikers Reimer picked up,
some of whom struggled to work out more complex
answers to his simple questions? That, too,
might be worth a book.
Preservings No. 25, December 2005 - 97