In the previous posting, I emphasized how and why we as Mennonites have not told our stories. However, that is not entirely true, as I alluded to there. In fact, our early history from the 16th and 17th centuries is well and tragically recorded in the large volume known as The Martyrs Mirror. In fact, next to Fox's Book of Martyrs, which gruesomely recounts stories of martyrs for the Christian faith from earliest times onwards, this is probably one of the most prominent such collections. Somehow, and perhaps this speaks to the suppression of our storytelling, we had a volume of the latter at home, which I read in as a child, but not the former! I must confess that I still have not read the former. It can be an inspiration to others to see how people were willing to die for their faith, particularly as it documents many of their testimonies prior to and as they were dying. These were not just the educated or radical leaders either. They included very average people such as housewives and mothers.
However, as I indicated, that persecution led to the suppression of our storytelling. It was not until we began to move from the USSR to other parts of the world beginning in the late 19th century, but especially after the Russian Revolution and World War II, that we Mennonites found ourselves in environments where we were more free to tell our stories. The result has been a fairly large outpouring of stories of individuals, families, and our leaders. Their suffering in the USSR and elsewhere and how they saw God at work in leading them out of these situations are dominant themes in many of these books. Others, including a couple of my uncles, have written about how they saw God move in their own lives and their work in this country and elsewhere in this century and the last. There are also now books written by and about the spiritual leaders of our faith where we ethnic Swiss/German/Dutch-origin Mennonites mostly have found ourselves in North America. However, I do not think many of them are no one much beyond our own circle.
Of course, we must now always keep in mind that because of our missionary efforts around the world, telling us that our storytelling has not been suppressed as much in some parts of the world as it is where we come from, there are more non-ethnic Swiss/German/Dutch Mennonites in the world by far than in the former and original category. Yes, with some of the religious freedom given in Russia and subsequently in North America, missionaries began to go out in the 19th century. Others actually also went from the Netherlands, where the Mennonite church was still quite active prior to World War II. Sadly, since then, along with much of the church in Europe, as people questioned where God was through all of the horrors of 2 world wars, the Mennonite church in the Netherlands is very much on the wane. that has been a stronger presence maintained, although to a small degree, in Switzerland, where are movement began. In Germany, with the advent of many Mennonites moving there who escaped from Russia/the USSR, during and after World War II, there has been somewhat of a revival of Anabaptism, although some of it very conservative and not that true to some of the original teachings and values.
Another form of storytelling, if we can call it that, that has become very prominent in Mennonite circles is collecting family trees and genealogies. However, too often, the majority of these volumes are taken up by pages and pages of schematic diagrams of who descended from who and who married who etc. I always have to think of a scriptural quote from Titus 3:9 in connection with this: "But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain." (KJV) What the writer is referring to here is a point that we need to keep in mind. We can say all we want about the wonderful faith of our forefathers, but if we do not make it our own, it loses its value for ourselves. So, as much as I like to know my genealogy, and have even worked on it, I always have the thought at the back of my mind, that this interest is not something we should overdo. I have always wished that GE's genealogies contained much more of the space stories of the members whose names are on those many pages. That would have so much more meaning and hopefully impact on the descendants who even bother to look at those volumes nowadays. For too many of our Mennonite descendants, many of whom still like to call themselves Mennonite even though they openly say they are not members of a Mennonite church, these genealogies may pique their interest in determining their roots, but they don't really care about the faith stories either.
It is the faith stories that I am more interested in.
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