Thank you, brother. All right, come on in, Steve. Yeah, the point—and even your prayer brought in something I wanted to say at the beginning. The point that I would like you to be able to do—and you don't have to, but this is the way I look at it. When I look at all these families that have stood for the faith, have tried to put it in practice in a sense of a people, a brotherhood, communities, mission, and purpose. And now I hope my dream is that somehow this world of these Anabaptist people has come alive to you.
You know, from everything from Switzerland to the Moravians, up to the Strasbourg, and up to the Holland, and over to Russia, and then from Russia with all the different mission things, the Hutterites with all their mission things, a Swiss brethren coming up. And now all of these people, for the most part, all of these people—well, a lot of—most of these people now start their immigration to America.
And in that, each of them bring their strengths, each of them bring some of their weaknesses that they developed, and they come—and now here we are today, a bit of a child of different parts of each of these people. And as all of them have come to America, they found that a bit—there's a lot of different challenges. What's your sense of a peoplehood? What's your sense of a community? What's your sense of brotherhood? And how is that going to face itself into the world of America and those sorts of things?
And my hope is this: when I look at all these people and all these different groups, I take them their successes and their failures, and I call them my own. You know what I mean? When I look at some of the things that the Dutch splitting in Holland, I look at my own life and my own churches. When I look at some of the involvement that they got into politics there at the end and the Russian Mennonites, I think, okay, well, I see our people get challenged with getting involved in politics.
When I see the difficult way of being able to maintain community and mission, I think, well, we stressed with that all today. And so I look at their successes, but I also accept their failures. Somebody once said in our church once—I was talking to a brother—he said, I think it was Ed Landis, I think. He said, "Only those churches that have no history have no mistakes." You know what I mean? But you also don't have anything to lean on to learn from.
And so I think it's good for us to, instead of seeing ourselves today always continually reinventing the wheel—and I see that as much from a lot of times from your communities as well as from mine—that I think if we can realize now that we have an incredible heritage to draw from, we can learn from both the successes and the failures. So let's come to America. All right, the first Mennonites come to America. If you look at your sheet, I do have a few extras here for y'all. I'll see how far I'm going to go.
Come to America. Oh, real quick about how I'm going to plan on doing the week. Do you have one yet? You have one. I was trying to think, how do I touch the week? This is what my—I'm going to try to do. I'm going to emphasize the word try. I'm going to try to bring—talk about the different groups in America today.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk about the revivals in the Mennonite world, in the Anabaptist world, particularly in America and Canada, and the influence of the revivals and some of the things that happened in result of the revivals. I'm going to hope to do that tomorrow. So tomorrow will be the history of Anabaptist revivals in America.
Wednesday, I'm hoping to do missions in particular, the thrust of American missions with the Mennonites and the Amish, and particularly the Beachy Amish, and then go from there to talk about some of the stresses that also that has put on the church and challenges of today too. And then on Thursday, I hope to give some kind of a summary, and then like Melvin Layman said, I guess then I'll have the altar call. So we'll see how it goes. So it goes with that.
All right, so let's start with today with the Mennonites come to America. The first Mennonites come to America in Pennsylvania. As we, I think of us know, the William Penn had got an agreement to be able to form this land in Pennsylvania. And really, I don't have time to give all that should be given to that, but it really was an incredible thing that really hadn't happened in history a lot of times before, where you had an area that was able to be purposely there for religious toleration and those sorts of things.
And William Penn gave a tremendous opportunity, kind of like, well, I guess if there's anything before, it would have been closer to Moravia in earlier centuries. But Pennsylvania was an incredible opportunity for the Anabaptists, and so they came, and they came indeed. Early on, the 13 Dutch Mennonite families led the way on—this is a good date to remember—October 6, 1683. And they arrived in Pennsylvania on the ship Concord. And I think that'd be good. You know, we all know the Mayflower.
We all know the Nina and the Pint and the Santa Maria. I think we should know the Concord. It's what brought the first Mennonites to here in America. So they came to Concord and settled and became known as Germantown, a small settlement about seven miles northwest of Seaport of Philadelphia. Any of y'all been to Germantown? They've got some of the oldest Mennonite church there still, and some of those things is some probably a good place to visit.
At first, these families met in private homes, and they worshiped with Quaker families. By 1690, the Mennonite families began worshiping separately, and Dutch Mennonites continued arriving. And then in 1707, the Palatine Mennonite Swiss German families followed, making the whole full of what Germantown is today. And then we get to the first ordination. There was in northern Germany—and okay, these people were from northern Germany and Holland. And here's how the name Mennonite stuck.
You remember how everybody got kicked out of Bern, and then everybody ended up up in Holland. And from Holland, the Dutch Mennonites were very generous in helping them either find a place there, or many times they paid for their passage to America. It was very nice that they did that. And because they were known to come from Holland, so to speak, they were given the name Mennonites, and they kept that name, and so that name stuck with them here in America.
And even some early documents, you hear them being referred to that way. And that's how it is. The Swiss brethren didn't really use that term until now. The titles were either Swiss brethren and Hutterite, and those names got used down in the Switzerland area, in the Moravian area, but not so much this way. And so the name Mennonite tended to stick then, just that's what people called them. In 1698, they chose a papermaker by the name of William Rittenhouse as the first minister.
I don't know if you need to know that, but it's just interesting. That's his house still. It's either there or it was recently, not too long ago, knocked away by some flood or severely damaged, if I think I remember reading it somewhere. I haven't seen the house, but there's a picture of the house until recently still standing. It may be, I'm not sure. In 1708, four Kolb brothers from the Palatinate arrived in Germantown. These men were Swiss brethren around 1700.
A new ruler in Palatinate began persecuting the brethren again. There are some of the ones that didn't make it all the way up to Holland. As they left Switzerland up the Rhine, some of them came out to the Palatinate, some different places all through Germany, forming little communities and areas. And then when persecution would come again, again, they found their way over to America as well. And these were some of the ones that started building this. Many decided to go to Pennsylvania.
Their fellow Anabaptists, the Dutch Mennonites, helped them with the passage money. The English associated the Swiss with their Dutch brethren, and therefore they were called Mennonites. I mentioned that. That's where the name got stuck. Inspired by the fertile land, they sent a man by the name of Martin Kindig back to the Palatinate to urge the brothers to come. They said, "Hey, this is great. We got religious freedom.
The land is cheap, and it's incredibly fertile." And the fact that they came into the Lancaster County area and all that surrounding area and the Germantown area, they did pick one of the most fertile areas in America, and it became very successful to them early on. One of the early names we hear, particularly in Lancaster County, is Hans Herr. How many of you have been to the Hans Herr house? I think, no, I haven't. Oh, you should go. It's right there. It's an old house. It's still there to the day, a museum.
And he was one of the early Mennonites that came. At 72 years old, he brought his family over, and his son was named Christian, who actually is the man who built Hans Herr house. So it should be actually probably called Christian Herr's house, but nevertheless, it's a nice little place to visit out there. And that also showed one of the original homes and the original settlements of the Mennonites that came to America.
It says here, it had been estimated that at least 3,000 Mennonites settled for the New World between the years 1707 and 1756 alone. I mean, this was a mass migration. Once the word got out, once people started finding out about these things, it became more and more. It expanded, as you saw I have down there, in the 1720s. Virginia in the 1720s. Maryland's by the 1750. Mifflin County and other parts of Pennsylvania in the 1790s. And so this was a quick immigration when they found out how good things were here.
All right. But here's something I wanted to bring out. This wasn't an organized mass effort like perhaps it would have been amongst the Russian Mennonites and the Hutterites. It was a little bit more this family, that family, they go, this group goes, that group goes. And so when they got here to America, the sense of a people, a community was instantly stressed. They came for different reasons.
They came for religious freedom for the most part, but nevertheless, it didn't have a sense of, okay, we're going to go plant a group in Lancaster County. You know what I'm saying? So they had some stresses right from the beginning. As early as 1663, there were Mennonites that attempted to gather 25 families to live in a community along the Delaware Bay. They actually wanted to live in community along the Delaware Bay, but that had quickly fallen apart and didn't last. This was an exception to the rule.
In general, Mennonites immigrated and settled in isolated homesteads apart from the ties of community. And as John D. Roth in his book, The Stories of Mennonites, wrote, he said, "This tended to lose their distinctive religious identity rather quickly." And this had it affected the Mennonites in the East for years. And so just kind of have that thought in your mind. You're now a settler.
You're a frontiersman with a strong faith, a strong Anabaptist faith, but not so much was it so clearly defined with the Swiss brethren that they were a people here on a mission. But on October 19, 1745, pretty soon though, they started to realize we need to do something. And six Mennonite ministers from that Germantown area in eastern Pennsylvania composed a letter writing to the Dutch Mennonites. And I think this was a brilliant move.
And I wonder if this move did not have a reason why conservative Mennonites are still alive in America. Things like this was done. And these brothers wrote a letter to the ministers, quote, "To the ministers and elders of the non-resistant Mennonites congregations of God in Amsterdam and Haarlem." And they were asking their Dutch cousins for assistance in translating the Martyrs' Mirror into German. John D. Roth in his book Against Stories says that at first glance, this request seems rather odd.
Why would a frontier congregation meeting in log cabins at the edge of the wilderness go to the Herculean effort and expense of translating and printing a 1,400-page tomb? And why choose a book focused so narrowly on the themes of persecution, suffering, and martyrdom? After all, such topics were hardly relevant for Mennonites in the New World who, as the authors of these letters acknowledged, were permitted to live unhampered in freedom of conscience and in peace and liberty. Why did they do that is the question.
What language was it in? What's that? What language was it in originally? Well, what they were translating in here was German. They did have, I think they had a German translation at this time already, and I do believe in Europe. And now what they wanted to translate here was a German translation. But what they were sensing was a, we've got to get a hold of us as a people.
And they're getting all kinds of people were coming to America, not just the Mennonites and the Amish and such, but all kinds of people were coming. And so they realized we have to identify ourselves as a people. And do you remember the whole do you remember when Thieleman Van Braght wrote the Martyrs' Mirror? And I don't know if I even specifically mentioned that. I shouldn't just leave some things assumed.
At the end of the lecture or the middle of the lecture, yes, Friday, we talked about that when all that Dutch liberalism and growing into materialism and all that began to happen to Holland, it was Thieleman Van Braght who then produced the Martyrs' Mirror. And remember he was saying these times are much harder than the times of the martyr because these times are so easy and fat.
And if he wouldn't have produced the Martyrs' Mirror, just even to you today, what would your thought of Dutch Mennonites be in all of this era and a lot of times if you didn't have the Martyrs' Mirror? The producing of literature like that is significant. And I just want to make a point of that. Do you remember even the Hutterite story that if they wouldn't have produced their literature, that later revival wouldn't have happened?
And I think the importance of ministers being able to see the importance of literature like this, I think shouldn't be overlooked. All right. So they wanted to produce this Martyrs' Mirror, and they actually did it at the Ephrata Cloister. They had it printed at the Ephrata Cloister, right down the street from where I live. And so the ministers, though, went on to explain the reason to these Dutch ministers in Holland.
Their ambitious project was exactly the same put forth in the foreword of the preface of the Martyrs' Mirror by the book's compiler, Thieleman Van Braght. And they quoted, "These times are certainly more dangerous than the times of our fathers." In particular, they wrote, now note this, in particular, they wrote, quote, "The flames of war seem to be mounting higher and higher.
The ministers worried, quote, it therefore behooves us to make every preparation for steadfast endurance in our faith." And I think that shows some great insight from the Swiss brethren ministers of realizing the threat that they were going to be under. Perfect example is the Moravians. The Moravians were solid on the Zinzendorf Moravians were solid on non-resistance in the time of Count Zinzendorf and the forming of Bethlehem, Herrnhut, and all the early missions.
But the reproach that the Moravians felt during the Revolutionary War had such an effect on them that by the 1800s, many of the Moravians were already giving up non-resistance. Now, they didn't have the heritage that the Anabaptists had to hold on to, but nonetheless, it just kind of shows you the stresses of the community and of the faith that was happening to them and how these early brothers were already recognizing some of the need for that. The early struggle with group identity. What did it mean?
What did it mean to be this new Mennonite in this free land, this new Swiss brethren in the free land? And those things had its own stresses. Roth has a good, again, statement on here. I quote again. He says, "The Mennonites who migrated to America hoped to escape the religious intolerance, the political restrictions, and the economic burdens of old world feudal Europe. And they largely succeeded, yet they found that they could not finally escape the snares of, quote, the world.
As in Russia, the Mennonites who immigrated to America were confronted with a beguiling paradox." Here it was. "The very features of American life that most attracted them to the New World also pose a threat to their faith and identity, often in subtle ways. How, for example, was the American celebration of rugged individualism to coexist with Mennonite virtues of humility and communal accountability?
How could America's new materialism and corporate nature of market-oriented capitalism be integrated with the Mennonite values of simplicity and mutual aid?" And so these type of things that they conflicted now, how could there even be in this world that they're used to feudal lords and kings and things now being in an area of democracy? And so the idea then is, and this is a theme that's going to carry all through to today, and I think it's a theme that we suffer greatly. Who are we? What does that mean?
And when everybody was against you, killing you, shooting you, making laws against you, it kind of, for whatever reason, helps that understanding of that. But now in America, the what is the mission of the church? What is the purpose of our community? What are we doing? What are we accomplishing in this new world was something that the church had to early have to deal with. And this is something I think we still to this day very much have to answer this question. What is the community? What is the brotherhood?
What is the church doing in this world in propagating and placing the kingdom of God here? So the immigration goes on as now America happens, the Western, it goes further west and further west, and the Mennonites continue to grow in that area towards the west, further and further as more lands are made, the further the Mennonites, you'll see them going through there with the common going west that happens there. There's different letters that were written back.
They talked about the religious freedom, and they also talked about, quote, "The freedom to serve God according to our considerations of their conscience." They said that the land is fruitful to overflowing for those who are willing to work. He continued in one letter written back to the Palatinate, "We have no want of food or raiment, and there are among us even people who are rich," interestingly enough. So you begin to see already the conflicts of, all right, well, what does it mean today to be us?
What are we saying here? And so that was a stress. I think it still is a bit of a stress for us today. There were some interesting exceptions of the community-based immigration. I'm giving this to you particularly because one happened in Berne, Indiana, Lucas. There was a couple of groups that left as an entire group, a church. And one in particular was a group that left from the Jura region of Switzerland.
That was, if you look at Switzerland, the mountains on the northwest region or the Jura mountains, and a community here in total left and came to America. And it's interesting to watch how they continued their sense of mission better than the different scattered ways that the church came. Another group was a Russian Mennonite group, Alexanderwohl Congregation in Molotschna, came entire community.
This was a huge task, came over and came as a community and also was one of the better communities of maintaining their identity. The one, interestingly enough, that ended up in Berne, Indiana, that the Mennonite Encyclopedia says that as late as 1950, this Mennonite church, the first Mennonite church in Berne, Indiana, were still speaking Plattdeutsch, and German and had three Sunday schools in German, even though they were speaking English in the congregation.
They never practiced foot washing, just to show you how the Swiss brethren difference didn't usually do that. And they even had, in the 1950s, when the article was written, were disciplined people if they didn't live according to the standards of the church and such. And that was in Berne, Indiana, and just shows you a difference of a people that came connected versus a people that came more scattered. So I'm going to continue to develop the Mennonites as we go through.
As they begin to come further and further into America, they then come into different stresses. And we're going to talk about throughout the week what happens now with revivalism and the thrust for missions and the different things and how the Mennonite church affected that. And so I'll be continuing to carry that Mennonite progress through the rest of this week. Let's talk about the Amish. Now, again, how many of you, I'm just curious, in this room come from an Amish heritage? Okay. Okay.
Everybody but me and Jake. Jacob comes from Russian Mennonite. Oh, your wife does too. Okay. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So I tried to focus a little bit more on that. So let's talk about a little bit of the Amish here. After several years of continued harassment and persecution, the Amish family started to come to America. Some came by way of Holland, others straight from the Palatinate or the Alsace. And these were sad times for most, but they felt that best for the preservation of their faith.
Again, you remember Bern, one of the biggest scenes again is the 1710 purge where they were kicked out of Bern. But also before that and even during that and after that, you still would find scattered here in the Waldhut. There's still a castle today that I stayed at once as a hotel where the Amish worked around here. There's different places in Kaiserslautern and Tripstadt around the Palatinate that the Amish were settling.
And these communities tried to make it until so much pressure would be on the feudal lords that they said, "Get them out." Some managed to stay in that Jura region in the Alsace all the way up to the time of Napoleon and had some restrictions of that. But that continually made the flow of the Amish start to come to America. To this day, for all practical purposes, there's no one left in Switzerland who would be considered of an Amish faith. I was just over there in Liribichi.
He said there's a few scattered communities that would have some kind of heritage to that, but most anyone has joined with the different Mennonite churches that are there. And this was hard. I mean, when they made the choices to leave, it was difficult, very difficult. And just for beauty alone, I mean, it is an absolutely gorgeous spot to live. I mean, the farming was beautiful. It was beautiful.
And I have this poem that was written by an Amishman, and it gives a little insight of both their faith and what they gave up to come to America. And since this is probably affecting most every one of you and your heritage of your forefathers that came here, I'm going to read you this poem. It's beautiful. The Amishman writes, "Farewell, you Alps, you beloved regions, my native village in the quiet valley. You beloved fields, another will tell you. O house of my youth, no more will I see you. God keep you.
Farewell for the last time. Behold the snow-covered Oshtue Rocky Giants bathe in the sun's first light. How friendly they send their greetings. The lofty Jungfrau, Eiger, Mönch." Those are the different peaks. Actually, those are right there. The different peaks he's talking about. "The great they greet me for the last, last time. Farewell, you valley with your walls of stone who reach for the heavens, severe and bleak, sending their streams down from on high that they land in the depth in a spray of mist.
Also, you I have seen for the last, last time. Not few are my tears for you today. You forest in reefed lakes and shiniest steel where with songs of joy we sent ripples over its surface. In light canoes like the swans, I rode on you for the last, last time. On the high meadows, I saw springing with glee a great herd of well-fed cattle. Do you hear the alphorns ringing echoes? Do you hear the cow herds lustily yodeling? I heard them too for the last, last time.
O house of my youth, my dearly beloved rooms where I experienced life's joys and sorrows. Farewell. Farewell in the shadow of your trees. My heart will break if I tarry any longer. O farewell for the last, last time. One more glimpse of my parents' graves under the freshly bedecked death marker where I persecuted so often came to pray. Sorrowfully, I now grasp the pilgrim staff and greet you for the last, last time. And you who persecuted me with fury and rage, and this I commend you unto the grace of God.
Do you think I would allow myself to be robbed of my precious faith in my Lord and Savior? Also, you all, farewell for the last, last time. Take all away. Only leave me my Savior. The earthly things are all empty in vain. In destitution, I am more blessed than before. And if their floods roar, I am on a secure island. So blessed I feel for the last, so blessed I feel for the first time. So farewell, you all. I must now depart. Farewell. I have no other choice.
The Lord is my shepherd, and green pastures he will feed me. He brings me at last through suffering into his feast." Amen. It's beautiful, isn't it? And so with that kind of concept, it was a hard tug to leave this area, but it was necessary, and they felt that coming to America would give their heritage a better chance at serving God than what they had there. So I thought that was a touching poem. That ship, what do you think it was like?
So you finally decide you either made it up to Bern, or I mean, you made it up to Holland from Bern, and the Dutch helped you out, or there were some stories where the one brother would go and work there and send money back to the rest of the family so that he could go, and a lot of sacrifice was given to get the whole family over to America. But what do you think it was like? What was a boat ride like? Was it hard? Was it easy? I mean, even the stories you hear about Columbus, you don't hear a terrible tragedies.
I mean, you do hear some tragedies, but what was it like? What was it like? And here's a letter written or a diary written on the boat ride about one of the sad journeys coming over. Here it is. Just listen to how they explain the events throughout the month or months or so it took them to get over. "The 28th of June, while in Rotterdam getting ready to start, my Baribli died and was buried in Rotterdam, a child, I assume. The 29th, we got under the sail and enjoyed only one half a day's days of favorable wind.
The 7th of July, early in the morning, died Hans Zimmerman's son-in-law." These are just little words in the diary. "We landed in England on the 8th of July, remaining nine days in port, during which five children died. Went under sail on the 17th of July. The 21st of July, my own Lisbethli died. Several years before, Michael, several, excuse me, several days before, Michael Georgelys had died. On the 29th of July, three children died. On the 1st of August, my Hansley died, and Tuesday, previous five children died.
On the 3rd of August, contrary winds beset the vessel, and from the 1st to the 7th of the month, three more children died. On the 19th, Christian Berkley's child died. Passed a ship on the 21st," he just mentions. "A favorable wind sprang up. On the 28th, Hans Gold's wife died. Passed a ship 13th of September. Landed in Philadelphia on the 18th, and my wife and I left the ship on the 19th. A child was born to us on the 20th, but it died, and my wife recovered. The voyage was 83 days." Wow.
You see how barely you're even here? I mean, seriously. I mean, wow. I mean, those were impressive hardships. Now, one of the things that were a problem was with all these immigrants going, a lot of the captains made hay day, pardon the expression, out of bringing these people into their ships and overpacking them in actually an illegal way.
Here it says, "The immigrants' anxiety about getting on their way and the opportunity this offered the greedy captains to increase their profits led to a serious overcrowding of the passenger ships that had sailed in 1738, with the result that an estimated 1,600 to 2,000 passengers were in the many already sick before they had left en route." And here's particularly some of the worst.
"Among the most seriously overcrowded ships was a ship by the name of Charming Nancy." Some of you may have come over your heritage on the Charming Nancy. A lot of them who came up to north ended up in North Kill did come from the Charming Nancy. And they had 312 freights. So not only would they put the people in there, of course, these captains would make money by how much shipping freights you would get on there. So they would cram this stuff as much as they could.
And on this particular journey, at least 33 more than the captain's tenement had packed in the ship the previous year, he crammed people in and the crates in. "Arriving in Philadelphia on the 9th of November, only 65 males, 16 over, were left to register." Sorry about the picture messed up there.
"Allowing the normal ratio of women to men, it's estimated that half of the entire crew died." And it was also mentioned that they had some sort of sickness on that ship the year before, and they're wondering if just some of the diseases of that were still there. And so, I mean, the carnage of that, the year before, he lost one in nine on that same ship. And so coming to America was no light. Hey, let's go to America and start a new life. Just the journey itself was a huge risk as you went there.
I'll travel just a little bit more, and then we'll take a break. Faith during these trials. In the earlier attempt to migrate, an impressive event. How many of you have ever heard the story of the Zinzendorf Moravians when they were traveling to America and John Wesley was on the boat? Maybe we all heard that story. Yeah. If you haven't, it's a good story. Well, the Amish have a story that's similar to that. It's interesting.
In 1710, a Swiss official traveling to the Carolinas with several Amish families to start a colony. He gathered them up to try to start a colony. On the trip, however, they discovered that they were being followed by a pirate ship. Now, this was just a cargo ship, and so everybody got quickly very upset. We don't have cannons. We don't have a bunch of things. We're all going to die. And so they ended up getting into a panic, and people were starting to get scared.
But then as everybody started to get anxious, they realized on the deck of the ship gathered a little group of Amish families, and they began to sing. And they were singing from the Ausbund, which the Ausbund, I'll say it here, of course, is the y'all probably know this. It's the first it was a Swiss brethren's songbook. I wish I had a whole day to spend on the Ausbund.
And it's filled with the stories of the martyrs, and a lot of the histories that we have were letters that were taken from the castles and martyrs and turned into song and put into the Ausbund. And they were singing from the Ausbund, and they were singing this song. "In deep distress, I call on you. O God, hear my cry." Do any of y'all recognize that from the German in the Osbund? Which one is that? Oh, it's T for New York. Yeah. Oh, T for New York. Yeah. Maybe you can sing it for us, Lucas. Okay.
"Oh God, hear my cry." And it was very pertinent to their situation. "Your Holy Spirit send to me, help us in our deep need. As you have done to other Christians, we trust in your intercession the heathen are out to kill us." And they were singing that song, and it was true. The pirates were coming. Somebody, it's recorded, said, "Who are they? Who are these people? What manner of men are these?" was the quote.
Another answered, "These are Anabaptists from the Bern area, which had migrated into the Palatinate, and because they were persecuted there as well, had gone on to England." And that was the journey from Bern, Palatinate, Holland, England, America for many of them. That was the case with these people. And so they were impressed with the piety, the holiness of these Amish singing on the deck there. Interestingly, the captain then tried a little trick.
He was an English ship, and someone said, "Hey, why don't you lower the English flag and raise a French flag?" He said, "You can't do that. I mean, that's like I mean, it's against all naval honors, and I mean, it'd just be terrible to do that. He'd be shot if he got back and somebody found out. I mean, it'd be terrible." But finally, he said, "Okay." And he took it down, put the French flag up, and the story goes that the pirate ship sailed away and left.
Was it because of the flag, or was it because of the intercession of the Amish? You be the judge. But it's an interesting story. That colony, actually, unfortunately, as they came to America, were later wiped out by Indian raids. You can find that story in Unser Leit by Leroy Beachy. Okay. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and start talking about the settlements and the Amish when they came to Pennsylvania and the North Kill and that type of thing. We'll take a quick break. Okay. Welcome back.
So interesting looking at some of the challenges. Challenges are not over. Some of the Amish, after they survived through the boat, the Charming Nancy, a lot of them settled around the North Kill area, which is north of Lancaster County a bit, and they started a little community there. Now, interestingly enough, it is I see within the Amish, and I just wonder this.
I don't want to make too big of a statement on this, but it seems that you see them a little bit more in a more clearly defined community area like the North Kill sections or the Ohio sections and that type of thing. Even this is before an even Old Order/New Order, that kind of a thing. What they brought from Switzerland seemed to have a little bit more clear understanding of a peoplehood than you see in some of the other groups that came. And so just a thought there.
But as they came into the North Kill area, they immediately came up with some serious problems. And one of the biggest problems they had was with the Indian raids. And I didn't have this one on the paper, but I'll mention it for Anna's purpose. One of the early ones was the Glick family. A Glick family was an Amish family there, and as they were working in their field or something, an Indian massacre came in and killed them.
But a day before, the one little boy was in Unser Leit, Leroy Beachy talks about one little boy was given to the neighbors because they were about to have a move out west, and the neighbors took care of this one little boy, and he was the only survivor. There's another story that said the boy actually was hiding in a log. Steve was just telling me.
And so it's an interesting case, but all the Glicks come down to this one boy because the entire Glick family was killed, and the only survivor was the one little orphan boy, the Glicks. His name was Johnny Glick. And his name was Johnny Glick. Okay. Which is obviously a descendant to Anna there. So that all came down to that. So you can see how some of these things came in this way. It's amazing. The other probably the most famous attack was the Hostetler Massacre. Have any of y'all heard of that?
In the North Kill Amish area, there was an area over there, and the Hostetler family was there. And Jacob Hostetler was a good man of God. And this is one of the most incredible examples, I think, of showing their burden for having the faith there in their area and what that meant. Well, during this time, the French and Indian War is getting around. This is 1757. And as they're there, the stresses of Indian life, French and Indian War life, it all was again having its play on the community.
And apparently, one night, they noticed a French soldier and some Indians were there, and they began to come against this family of the Hostetlers. And it was a terrible scene. They had a schnitzing, an apple schnitzing the night before where all the community was there, and they were all making their apple cider sauce and all that. And they were in there. And that night, one of the boys saw that or he was sleeping, and he heard the dog barking. And he went out, he opened the door, and he was shot right in the leg.
And so he realized, "Okay, this is serious. We're under attack." So he quickly woke up his dad, his brother, and they said, "Grab the muskets. We're going to defend ourselves. We're going to shoot." Jacob Hostetler stopped him and said, "No. The Bible tells us that we should not resist the evil that God would defend us. And so we're going to trust God no matter what happens." They had the ammunition. They had the guns, but they decided not to use them.
The Indians then started to surround the place, and when they hid in the basement, when they hid in the basement, the Indians still wanting to get after them caught the place on fire. And one of the ways they kept alive for a while, they took the apple juice that they had from the apple schnitzing, and they were throwing it on the roof of the basement to keep themselves from being burned. And eventually, they thought things were clear. So they opened up a little window in the basement and started climbing out.
Unfortunately, the mother got stuck in the window, and then all the noise of the people getting out, one of the young Indian braves saw that, came back and killed the woman and scalped her. The rest of them ran and escaped. One daughter was actually then shot too. And then apparently, Jacob then ran different ways, and the boys ended up eventually getting captured, and they were taken. And they were taken all through the woods, all the way from Lancaster County area, a little North Kill area.
And guess where they ended up? In the camp. Right here. Actually, they came all the way here, almost to the camp here in Erie. And if it took me five and a half hours to drive here in my car last night in the snow, I could imagine what would have been like on an Indian trail to go all the way from there to actually right here is where they or in this area is where they ended up. Later, Jacob Hostetler was able to secure an escape, and he got away.
And he was separated early on when they were encamped here, and he told the boys, "Okay. There's two accounts." He told the boys, "Either never forget your name or the Lord's Prayer." And so he told them that, "Never forget your name and the Lord's Prayer." Well, years go by. Jacob escaped. And years later, they began to have some treaties and things with the Indians, and he starts hearing reports, and he tries to do what he can to rescue his children.
So the story goes, there's different accounts, slightly different, but one day, Jacob Hostetler was in his house, and he was eating something, and an Indian boy, a young man, was out there and gave him some food. And then he came back in. He didn't even recognize him. And finally, the boy said, "Ich bin Jacob Jr. It's Jacob Hostetler. I am Jacob Hostetler." Another account said is that he said the Lord's Prayer in German. And with that, Jacob was reunited with his sons.
There's different stories of how these boys then found their way back into society. It's interesting, even on this account that I left here on your paper, it was from the family's website mentioning this history. They mentioned that these people she almost gives the impression there that these people were resentful for their Anabaptist faith. It's not true at all. Both the boys, after they came back in, they did have some struggle.
They'd go out hunting with the Indians and this type of thing and learned the Indian life. But both of them joined non-resistant groups. One joined the Dunkard brethren, and one joined the Amish, and they lived back in the faith. And then the whole Hostetler, of course, genealogy comes from this as well. And so it's an incredible story of faithfulness, even to the point of death.
And the question they usually ask us commonly, "Well, what would you do if somebody came into your house?" And there's a part of Anabaptism, especially when it comes to non-resistance, that you cannot lose or none of it's going to make sense. And I think Jacob Hostetler was a wonderful example of keeping this point. And the point is this: it is a theology of martyrdom. The point is you die. And the irony is, in warfare, other people die.
I mean, it's not like one dies and the other one doesn't die, but we die a defenseless death while the others die in the midst of killing someone else. And it's an important point. Without the concept that sometimes you die for your faith, even in terrible situations like this, non-resistance sometimes in the debates gets a little bit gray. And, "Well, what happens in this?" And you get into kind of pragmatic, practical arguments and this type of thing.
But if the bottom line is you're willing to die for your faith, it becomes something very substantial. And that is the example that the Hostetlers gave. And I think it's an example that has remained within the Amish people even to this day. What happened in 2007? Around the world, the newspapers were replying to the response of the Amish at the Nickel Mines Massacre.
In Australia, in Switzerland, in Japan, people were saying when they heard that the Amish forgave the person that came into the Nickel Mines Massacre and killed all those children, but the response of the Amish was that they forgave them, it was very impressive. So I think that this legacy of being able to trust in God's will, even in the most incredible tragedies, is part of a heritage that we have in the Anabaptist, and it's something that we need to maintain and keep. It's part of who we are as a people.
And I think Jacob Hostetler and people like that left that example. There were lots of Indian massacres. Lots of them. Not a lot of them have roadside markers like his does. Still, when we die for our faith, the world does take a look and takes a look to see what's really inside of us. I got to press on. I got a lot more to cover. All right. During the Revolutionary War, again, things began to stress the community. What are you going to do now? Are you supporting the British, or are you with us?
You with us that are kind of the rebellion against the crown? And so that kind of stress came upon the Amish like it did all the other non-resistant groups like the Moravians and the Mennonites. And it was impressive. There were actually some scenes. There were some Amish boys that were taken into jail in Reading, Pennsylvania. And apparently, there's a story that Leroy Beachy puts in his book that they were sentenced for execution.
And the bishop came in on one of their last times to be able to offer them communion. And apparently, a German Lutheran, a minister of some sort or a lay minister of some kind, was touched. He was there running the prison. And when he saw the faith of the bishop and these boys willing to die for their faith, he let them go. And that became an impressive part of what they were.
A lot of the reason why they left, the Amish started going to Ohio and started going toward the fight with the Indians and then the fight with the Americans. All this war stuff became such a challenge to them when they found out they could go to Ohio that made them want to leave and started going more and more to Ohio. The different wars cause different stress. If I could just now follow this a little bit, and I'll throw in a little bit of the Mennonites as well.
During the Revolutionary War also, the Mennonites struggled with the different balances of finding their way. And there's some also impressive stories of how they stood for their faith during that time. During World War I, there's an interesting story of five young Amish conscience objectors. Now, for some reason in America, World War I was one of the hardest times for conscience objectors. America was very upset, particularly with German-speaking people who didn't want to fight. And so that's what happened.
There's a story here, and I'm going to repeat it. It's been passed down, and Leroy Beachy puts it in his book there. He says, "In World War I, the story tells of five young Amish conscience objectors who refused to wear uniforms when inducted at an army training camp. After the five fellows had each followed an order to dig his own grave, they were ordered into a building where they were given, 'One last chance to wear the uniform and avoid execution.' But all stood firm.
When one was taken away and shot was heard by the others, when one was taken away, a shot was heard by the others. When the third was taken, two were " I'm sorry. I'm messing that up. When they would take the boys in and say, "I'll give you one last chance," and they would take them over there. When the second one was gone and they would hear the shot and then they were there, one of the graves were filled. And to the last one, two graves were filled.
And then finally, they were testing them right to the last points. And when they got to the other end of it, they realized all their brothers were alive. And it was just a test that the military was given to them, whether they were going to be faithful to their convictions as conscience objectors. It's an impressive story. Again, it's been passed down. Also, the beginning of those internal stresses.
In 1770, Amish bishops began circulating a letter that claimed to be a statement of the faith of an ancient Thessalonians. I'm going to leave this portion now of talking about the wars and things, and I'm going to start to get into some of the things that are going to pertain to us of the stresses of the Amish life, the Beachy life, and that type of thing of some of the more of the way that we have inherited this today.
In 1770, they started already there was a document that was claiming to be from the ancient Thessalonian church that talked about when you baptize, you have to be standing in water. And so a lot of these people got upset about the way that the mode of not pouring or immersion, but just standing in water when you're getting poured on. And so it started a group of people already beginning to say, "Well, you got to baptize this way.
You can't baptize that way." Also, during this time, the Dunkard brethrens, of course, were getting very popular, and they're evangelizing the Amish and getting them into their camp over the mode of baptism as well. But this began to be starting of a conference where the Amish got together to discuss things. And by 1809, this and other problems led them to have a statewide conference. One of the hot topics that was to do with what do you do with the people that left the church? People were joining the Dunkards.
What do you do with them? "That all those who leave us " and they made this decision then. Article 1 of that conference in 1809 states, "That all those who leave us and unite with other churches are to be regarded as apostate persons and shall, according to the Lord's word and ordinance, be excommunicated and are to be regarded as subject to the ban." Leroy Beachy says, "Interesting tobacco was allowed at that conference." But this is an interesting point.
So that was Article 1 in 1809 of a conference that was said, "What do you do with this?" I'm bringing this detail here because I think it does affect us still to this day of how we go back and forth to the different churches and how we relate to the Amish today. That was mainly from Lancaster County bishops. What was the Ohio's response to that? It was interesting. It was a bit different.
In Leroy Beachy's Volume 2, page 331, he mentions some of the letters that were back and forth of the response of the Ohio bishops to this. What pressed the issue was before I give you this quote, what pressed the issue then was this: people started to follow it logically. Okay. Well, if we're going to shun everyone that leaves our church, then what we're saying then is their baptisms aren't valid. They're not real Christians.
So what happens if somebody joins our church from a Mennonite or a Dunkard or something like that? Well, then what do we do? Well, sure enough, it happened. A young man wanted to join the church and to marry a girl, and he was baptized as a Mennonite. Now, do we baptize them or not?
The hardline Lancaster Amish were saying, "You have to rebaptize them." And this was pushing this point to the edge, and the Ohio bishops were saying, "I think we're taking this whole thing too far." And this is the reason why still to this day, there's a difference between the Amish in Ohio and in Lancaster County over these issues. And here's some of the quotes from the this is page 331, Volume 2 of Unser Leit. "Apparently decided the Amish in Ohio were not taking more seriously the rebaptism issue.
Schweitzer Christ, who was the bishop here, Yoder, at 68 years of age, took a trip to Ohio in 1826 to discuss the issue with them. Since the Ohioans had developed friendly associations with their Mennonites and Dunkard neighbors on the frontier, he found that they were slow to share some of his views. Concerning Article 1 of the 1809 document, some of the Ohio ministers proposed that if a member who has been placed in the ban is then taken in by the Mennonites or Dunkards, the ban should be lifted.
No action was then to change the 1809 decision, but that became to be the attitude of the Ohio people." And this is where I said that I've even still to this day, and I wanted to find this out when I went to talk to Amish bishops and ministers in Lancaster County about why they were having to shun people that were joining our churches. And I challenged them. I said, "I didn't think this was Christian. I didn't think this was Anabaptist.
I didn't think it was even Amish." And the man answered to me, "But it's Lancaster County." And I didn't know what he was talking about, but now that I see this record, I realized they did sort of put themselves under some of these restrictions. Another word on this, and I'm just going into detail because I do think it influences us. In 333, on page 333 of the same volume, they talk about this now, and it's one of those times where I think is a good moment of conferences. The conference had decided this, "Okay.
Do we rebaptize a person?" And they were getting mad because they were accepting people in Ohio that weren't accepted in Lancaster, and all these sort of things were going on. And it says in page 333 about the rebaptism issue, it says, "If freedom would be granted us not to be compelled in case we should have a burden of conscience about baptizing them, and that we may leave that to those who can baptize them without burden of conscience.
And since we will not burden your conscience in the matter, we would also refrain from receiving members without baptism and will burden no one's conscience by insisting on receiving members without baptism." In other words, they didn't feel a need to rebaptize the people that were coming from the Mennonites or the Dunkards. And it became a difference that still is felt today, a difference between Ohio and Pennsylvania with the Amish.
And I just thought I'd give that detail because I think it matters to us still to this day. And it's something to be quite frank with you. I'm a man I appreciate churches with conviction. I do. I met a man once in the Amish, and I was talking to him, and he's actually since left. But while he was still Amish, he was apologizing to me for his buggy and his things like this. And I stopped him, and I said, "You know what? If you're going to be Amish, believe in what you're doing. Rebuke me.
Give me a tract." I mean, we certainly have some reason to come against all our worldliness with our cars and things. And if you have a sense of believing in what you do, then believe it. And so I don't mind a group that wants to do something on purpose and want to go somewhere with it. But one of the things I do regret is the Lancaster's response of being actually shunning people who go just from one particular group to another within a general flavor of the same faith. And I think that that's unfortunate.
And so I think that it's something that I would like to see changed in Lancaster County. And I can pray to that end, brother. Okay. As the different growths and different things were progressing, how do you then deal with the different stresses in their society? And as different modern things began to happen, how was the church to respond? How were the Amish to respond in dealing with the different things? And I'll go into more detail with the Mennonites dealing with revival and missions.
And so I'm focusing right now more on the Amish. The Old Order Amish Movement in the summer of 1862, in the summer of 1862, a group of Amish ministers gathered in the barn in Wayne County, Ohio, for a series of meetings about church practices. The specific question up for debate had to do with baptism and whether it was permissible to baptize in a stream or pond. That's still going on. Inside the house or not, or was it traditionally as it was traditionally the case to do it in the house?
Soon, the agenda opened up to other kinds of questions, especially those related to the rapidly changing nature of American culture. For example, that things were discussed were, "What do you do about voting? What do you do about lotteries?" It was actually asked and determined, "You cannot have. What do you do about lightning rods? What do you do about photographs? What do you do about marriage outside the church?" How are we going to respond to these questions that are stressing our community?
And I don't think we should just look so flippantly or they were seeing themselves as a people who wanted to hold on to the convictions of what God has given them, and now they're stressed with the world around them. I think we're still experiencing these kind of things, and we need to be able to, in a spiritual way, answer these questions as they come up. But at these conferences is where we had the concept of starting of what's called the Old Order Amish.
It was during these conferences that the name was coined for the first time. Some of them in 1878 wanted change, particularly by the men by the name of John Funk and Oberholtzer. We'll hear about them more tomorrow with revivalism and missions. And they were people that wanted to take this a little further. And some of them have actually been to revivals with D.L. Moody and different things, and now they were beginning to challenge some of the ways things were being held.
And so at that time then, it began to be a division of the people that started to continue to meet in conferences and the Old Order who then pulled away from that. And there was an early letter written. It's in the Unser Leit there. I have the page number where the document was called Keeping to the "Old Order." And I think that's where the whole name was coined.
Unfortunately, it's found that some of those newer Amish, if you would, when the Civil War then comes wrapping up, some of them actually joined with the Civil War. And although even there, some of them, it seems to be they were there, but still had to stress, "What do you do with their convictions? What do you do when you're called in?" I mean, it's not like today where it was so institutional. In those days, I'd get the impression a proclamation would be made, "Everybody 18 years to 40 has to appear here.
And if you're not, then " so you end up there. Next thing you know, you're hauled off, and you're in the army now. And that kind of happened to him. But there's an interesting quote. Leroy Beachy gives it in page 352 in Volume 2 of Stonewall Jackson writing about these early Amish people that he was finding in his military. Stonewall Jackson was a Confederate general, and he says this in a letter.
He says, "There lives a people in the Valley of Virginia who are not hard to bring into the army, and while they are there, they are obedient to the officers. Nor is it difficult to have them take aim, but it is impossible to get them to take correct aim. I therefore think it is better to leave them at their homes that they may produce supplies for the army." Interesting. Interesting. So apparently, aim, fire.
There was muskets found on the battlefield at Gettysburg that had been reloaded, I forgot, some five, six times. See, the whole way in those days when you would fire, they had this whole way, "Port arms," and they would have this whole thing of loading your rifle and then fire. And the whole thing is a big procedure that you go through as a soldier. It's kind of hard to fake it. So in Gettysburg, it's interesting.
They found rifles that apparently somebody went through the whole thing, reloaded their wad, and then didn't fire, reloaded, and didn't fire. And apparently, these were people that were willing to go through all of that to be drafted, put into there, be willing to be shot at, but when it came time, they're not going to kill somebody. And I think it's notable. I, of course, would maybe wish they didn't even get that far, but nevertheless, hey, that's pretty honorable that they made it that far.
That kind of thing wasn't necessarily just Amish or Mennonites that were not. Very good point. It's hard to actually train some people to go out and kill others. That's right. I mean, we didn't have scruples against being in the army, but they didn't want to. Yeah. Andrew said he's right. Those rifles found in Gettysburg aren't necessarily Amish or Mennonites, but there's other people who don't like killing people.
In fact, I forget the percentages of people who would actually shoot to kill, but it was a fairly high percentage who wouldn't shoot to kill in the Civil War and some of those other wars, but nowadays, they have the percentage up there almost to 100%. You're very right, Andrew. It's partly through training. You're right. I read a book once written by an ex-colonel in the Special Forces, and it was something to the effect of something of the warrior, training of the warrior or something.
And he mentions that's where I got the fact about Gettysburg. And he mentions, and he goes through wars about how many of the times the officers had to keep their rifles down so that the people would be able to shoot other people. But today, and he mentioned this. This is a retired colonel of the Special Forces, mentions that today, the desensitizing effect on American children with the video games and such that we have been trained to kill as a society.
And he himself admits that the same type of training that you use in a military environment, like when I was stabbing figures that look like people with bayonets, and it breaks down barriers in your mind that when you're there to be able to do those things. And it is terrible. It's hardly Christian, but you're right, Andrew. It's a good point you're bringing up. And also with the Civil War, they were fighting against their own relatives. I mean, so there would be a little bit of that too. Absolutely.
I don't see people that they were related to or. Imagine this. I mean, the guys are Christians, so-called. They're speaking the same language. And I mean, to go there and brutally kill each other in the Civil War would have been, I mean, just terrible. You're right. That would have been very, very disappointing. So as they went through that, that was a big stress on them. Okay. I wrote in there about the whole concept of shunning and leaving.
That's where I have that quoted for you if you want that later for a group, I mean, to look at that happen. So the idea then of defining the community then as they went through and as the group grew and grew, how do you do those things? And still to this day. All right. What is the most distinguishable thing about the Old Order Amish today? I mean, not a just from the outside, someone from my background, "Oh, the Amish." Horse and buggy. Horse and buggy. Right.
I mean, you go there, you start noticing there's certain things, but and I granted that some of this seems very inconsistent. As someone from my background will come in there and say, "Okay. Why does she have roller skates? Why do they have a scooter but not a bike? Why metal wheels but not this wheels?" And on one hand, of course, especially all of us that are not part of that anymore and some of you who have broken off from that or whatever.
But the question that I want to bring in to you though is, what is underneath all of that that they're trying to preserve? And I'd like to argue that one of the things that I think is the same difficulty that we have in trying to preserve is a sense of community. I mean, why can an Amishman ride a scooter but not a bike? Well, it keeps you closer. Why can you ride a buggy but not a car? I mean, there's something within them that has been able to then maintain their sense of a peoplehood.
And whether you think it's right or wrong, it's something that they've been able to maintain, an identity that they are this people, okay? And when you look at these types of things, their language, the stresses, the feeling that they have when they're being challenged by different people, it's a sense of maintaining this sense of community as a people. I see us in all of our churches, our churches, your churches, struggling with this sense of identity of who we are as a people.
And a lot of times, unfortunately, it all becomes who we're not. And I don't think who we're not is a good enough reason to be. A church needs a purpose and a vision. And if we're not going to have the buggies and this types of thing, then I would like it to be more saintly reasons and visions and purpose of what we're trying to accomplish the kingdom of God on earth.
But nevertheless, I would like you to see and consider as we've pondered all those communities in Switzerland, let your mind think of the Russian communities, think of the Hutterites and the Moravians, and all as a people now coming into America. You can't isolate all those years of centuries of a people now coming in stress with things like automobiles and all those sorts of things. I was even at the how many of you have ever been to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC? Anybody been there?
If you're ever going there, interesting, check out the Transportation Museum. And when you're in the Transportation Museum, it's an interesting thing they have. They talk about the birth of the automobile and its effect on America. And they say a statement there, completely secular, that they say that the automobile was one of the biggest things that changed or as they even say, destroyed, in other words, totally changed the landscape of American communities.
That no longer did you live in a town, work in a town, marry in a town, go to church in a town. That was America pre-car. After the car, you worked in Philly, lived over here, and all this. And the car created a the Smithsonian Institute even admits the car drastically destroyed the American sense of community that we had.
And so maybe intrinsically, I will suggest that some of these things that the Amish have tried to preserve is the sense of being able to maintain the sense of community and a peoplehood that is difficult in our modern world. Yeah. I've heard Amish people talk about this, and that's part of the rationale, but they look back and say, "Well, 100 years ago when people rejected electricity and cars, they didn't do it for that reason. They didn't talk about that.
They just didn't want anything new." So they're wondering, how did they know or how did it happen that they maintained community when they maybe they did have that in mind, but maybe it seems more like they were just resisting change. No, I agree with you. And it is interesting. Even if you talk to an Amishman today, and I have asked him these questions, you don't get this answer.
You get, "It's worldly." As I look at it from the outside and I think of it in the sense of communities, I see that they may be intrinsically something that's built within the soul of the Anabaptist, that a sense of peoplehoodness, a sense of their concept of being cities in the kingdom of God, as the kingdom of God is supposed to be coming through, there's something within Anabaptist identity that needs to express ourself in a community.
And I see that coming out almost intrinsically in all of us expressed in one way or the other. But you're right. That's not the example they give. And I find it interesting that they don't, but you're right. Yeah. So as we go through with different things, I have the different conferences there. Obviously, I don't have time to go through any of those. But then eventually, you get to the point of the car itself becoming something that led then to the bringing up of the Beachy Amish.
And the Beachy Amish in 1927, division of the Old Order Amish congregation at the Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and Bishop Moses Beachy led the congregation during that time, and his name became associated with the faction, so-called. This is from the Mennonite Encyclopedia. The Beachy favored a milder discipline for members whose only offense was transferring membership of one Anabaptist church, specifically the conservative Amish Mennonite congregation that broke from Moses Beachy's congregation to another.
One of the main issues that actually led to the actual break, again, was over this issue of excommunicating people that go to another Anabaptist church versus another. And then, of course, the car issues and things like that. As the Beachys now have grown, they've had to ask this question. I'm getting personal now, aren't I? They've had to ask the question, "Who are we?" Okay.
And I think it's a beautiful example of an expression of a people as you go about now expressing this huge heritage of everything you've had before you. Now coming down to your time, what are you going to say to this world today? And this has caused several different difficulties as now that expression has to be defined, "Who are we as a people?" I have a graph here. In a recent Mennonite Quarterly Review, Cory Anderson wrote do you all know Cory Anderson? Is that a common name in your circles?
Cory Anderson wrote an article on the Beachy Amish which just discusses the different difficulties and crises that the generations have gone through. And he asked these questions in that of what was it that led to these things. And he brings out some of these same ideas that I was discussing of what was it that keeps the Amish together as a clear identified people and why is it that his people, he's asking, are continually to each generation break up in increasingly more ways.
From here, the next generation set of crisis here. Again, the things were tobacco or non-tobacco, English revivalism. We'll talk about that tomorrow. And the different mission movements, they're accepting of that. As I go through those, I can understand them. You know what I mean? But each generation then brings another set of stresses. And here we are now coming in 2010 with the different ways of expressing themselves as a people. I'm just giving it to you there.
As a very young church, coming from a very young church with a charity people, I see a mirror to this, but even perhaps even a more rapid thing. The holding on to having an Amish background has been somewhat holding back the tide of this. But if this begins to become too carried away, obviously, it's just going to keep dividing. It's going to keep dividing. So I know that's personal. What are your thoughts? Any quick thoughts? But the question that he asked here, and I have a quote from him.
This is the Mennonite Quarterly Review, July 2011, catalogs of splits of Beachy Amish and the groups he suggests. A possible reason for the absence of informal symbols of Amish Mennonite membership is a lack of intergenerational continuity. Each generation of Amish Mennonites have gone through a series of conflicts that have further defined the splintered and splintered the movement. But here's the thing that I'm impressed with though.
In each of these things, there is a sense still within the Beachy churches here of this idea of who are we. And I think a lack of that is going to end up in an invisible church situation that I personally think is dangerous. And then here's some of the things that I'm going to give you a blessing from. The ability of you as a people to be able to express your we-ness and express what's your sense of community in has done some, I think, one of the more impressive things that are in the Anabaptist world to this day.
You're able to bring the Dordrecht Confession to this country and make that a line for both the Mennonites and the Amish to join. There's also the mission outreach programs and the revivalism that has brought lots of things into this area has been some impressive.
And also just even the recent history, I personally am impressed with the mission activity of the Beachys as I see in Kenya and some of those things and being able to cross the line of bringing a clear identity of who you are as a people and community to Kenya and some of those things.
I've talked to some of the missionaries that have been over there and seen some of the pictures, and I'm impressed with what I see of being able to have an identity there that tries to embrace Africanism, if you would, but also be able to be true to the values of what they're bringing there. I also think even though this wasn't an actual Beachy design thing, I think Christian Aid Missions is one of the most impressive things in the Anabaptist history that I've heard and the things that it accomplishes.
And when you get back to my target, Jesus, if we're not feeding the poor, helping the naked, and those sorts of things, we're not expressing Jesus' Christianity. And so I'm impressed with what the Beachy churches have been able to produce. So I'll just give you that, that I think it's impressive. I think the thing that I'm hoping that the whole history class will give, and maybe I'll bring this into my altar call on Thursday, is that I want you to see all of the history.
I want you to take on the successes and the failures and to be able to say, "Well, who are we? How are we? And it's our turn now." And to be able to say, "We're going to represent ourselves." Because a lot of times the danger with youth is there's a tendency always to keep repeating the wheel all by yourself again, reinventing the wheel. And there's no integrity to what's come on before you, and you end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater really quick. And so I think you have a beautiful heritage.
And now give some fire to it and show the world the kingdom of God is my word to you. I have a word here on a charity Christian fellowship. Since I come from that background here, it's interesting. It always hurts to read someone's word from somebody else. I found a book, Mennonite, Anabaptist World USA. And this gives a summary of the charity Christian fellowships. And it's interesting when you read it from somebody else.
Other than just the Beachy, of course, there have been other people who have broken off or found reasons they needed to do things and still would consider themselves Anabaptists and things like that. I would say that charity would be one of those. It says here, "This network of churches formed in 1982 in Eastern Pennsylvania, coming from various plain Anabaptist groups, members in congregations, resemble conservative Mennonite groups in many ways.
Rather fundamentalist in doctrine and charismatic in expression." I thought that was interesting. "They practice foot washing and the holy kiss. They wear a modest dress and women wear the prayer covering. They support an aggressive program of evangelism and win converts from other Anabaptist groups and from outside groups. Much emphasis on mission and revival." And so it's interesting. I think one of our greatest challenges is, again, this is a serious question.
As any group leads from first generation, particularly a first generation that has strong charismatic leaders, and then going into the next generation, who is we? And what are the lines of who we are? And that's the serious test, I think, for the charity churches as they enter their second generation now. All right.
One thing with some of these, like the Beachys and even the charities space, there's a lot of people discontented Amish and stuff that they think this is the chance for something new, a chance to do it right. Well, then the church they join has to deal with some of their ways of thinking. Yeah. Bingo. Yeah. Because they all kind of want to reinvent the wheel. This is our chance to do it right. It's a young church. Let's do this right. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly, Andrew.
When you're a mid-range group like us, okay, the Beachys and us, okay, you do begin and several of the different mid-range Mennonite churches. And I'd call mid-range, oh, let's say this. Here's a broad classification. No horses, but no TVs. Okay. And put everybody between no horses and no TVs in this mid-range. Okay. All of us in that mid-range have people flowing in from both directions, and that causes stresses to our communities.
And we can use these clashes of people coming to our advantages, but like Andrew mentioned, they can also hurt us. Because a lot of times you get, especially, and I'll go ahead since I'm coming from this side, I get so disappointed at some of the perspectives I hear of people from your backgrounds giving up your heritage. And while I'm coming in the front door, there's so many people going out the back door that it makes me cry.
And I say over and over again, "You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater." And over and over, we read through history. I'm going to hope to give this through next week and such. The cry of no standards or what kind of standards, the doctrines of men, the revivalism, what's really important, all these types of things are repeated over and over again.
We're not the first ones to be saying, "Not your churches, not my churches." And so these are things we have to identify as what is God saying to the local community of how we're going to show the world the kingdom of God. But throwing out the baby with the bathwater would be a big mistake. A big mistake. I'm hoping to give you some of that to hold on to and to revive. So anyway, that's obviously I don't have enough for the next 10 pages that I was wanting to bring into here. Just a quick word.
The Hutterites, as they came to America, they were helped by John Funk. It was very interesting. The Mennonite leader who we read about earlier, we're going to hear about tomorrow with revivalism and missions. And John Funk helped them to get land and everything like that. There's some humorous documents. I have the page numbers if you ever wanted to look them up of a diary written by the Tschetters who came to America.
They also came with Russian Mennonites, but two of them were Hutterites the rest were Russian Mennonites. They came to America looking for land. They had a meeting with President Grant, who they were asking for not having to go to war. Grant couldn't give that to him, but they still thought they'd take their chances and come. There's some humorous things in their diary of when they showed up at John Funk's house and the different Amish ministers' house, and they were very surprised at their hunting.
There's comment about them not having mustaches. There's comments about their attitude. There's even comments about one time the Hutterite was preaching, and he said, "There was a few people in the church when I was preaching. There was even less when I finished." So I had to laugh at that. But there's lots of interesting, funny things in there. Another group was called the Bruderhof that started during World War II. Eberhard Arnold, who started some of the Anabaptist discovery.
He was a Salvation Army preacher, started to discover Anabaptist doctrines. He ended up starting a community and was ended up persecuted by the Nazis and ended up getting kicked out of there. And he ended up being ordained later by the Hutterites. And still there's Bruderhof till today. They come from a different flavor than the main Hutterites.
They were helped by the Mennonite Central Committee to help in Paraguay when no other countries would receive them, including America, when they were getting kicked out of Nazi Germany. Interesting group. The Russian Mennonites also, oh, I wish I had time to tell you this story. If you could read that, it is one of my most impressive stories.
If I can fit it in maybe when I talk about politics, one of the impressive stories I have is when the Russian Mennonites' tenacity, that as soon as they got to Canada and as soon as they got there and they were challenged on having to have public school teachers for their children and teach their children by governmental people, all the other groups bluffed and accepted them. But the Russian Mennonites said, "We're not doing it." They said, "Well, you have to leave." Okay.
In the thousands, the Russian Mennonites immigrated into the most terrible conditions of Paraguay and Mexico. And there's newspaper reports that I gave here on your papers and where the newspaper in Canada were just absolutely flabbergasted that the Russian Mennonites actually did it. And they left and how embarrassed they were that they've lost all these peace-loving people.
And their letters back and forth are extremely spiritual and talk about the tenacity that they will not let their children be raised by this world. It's an impressive story for the Russian Mennonites. The Hutterites during World War I, I know we're done, and I'll finish up here. They had actually martyrs, World War I martyrs. There were two boys that refused to wear the uniforms, were taken to Alcatraz.
In Alcatraz, they were stripped of their clothes all the way to their underwear and pulled by their hair, trashed around, chased by motorcycles, and finally held in Alcatraz in a deep cell. And they laid their uniforms next to them and said, "Here's what you can wear if you get cold." The young boy said, "I'm not wearing it." They just sat there freezing to death in their underwear. And they finally were taken there and they realized, "Oh, these guys are serious.
They're not giving up." The military started to get scared, moved them to Fort Leavenworth. When they got to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, I think it is, isn't it? They were there abused more, and eventually the boys died from the abuses they received. There's an interesting account. You can find it. I could give it to you if you're interested of a letter of a doctor who's interviewing them and getting it straight from their mouth of all the abuses that happened.
They're considered martyrs in our common age here, martyrs from the hands of America. And so that was interesting there as well. So as we see this now, all these families are here now. There's different renewal groups within the Beachy circles. We see different groups that are trying to put these things into practice. When the Hutterites, there's different groups. We have the different Bruderhof.
There's other groups even through the revivalism of different groups, Elmendorf, Fort Pitt, different people are trying to do different things today. There's even Hutterite missions now in Tasmania. Again, Beachy has done impressive things all over the globe with their relief funds, and the Mennonites have done amazing things we're going to talk about with their services and with their mutual aid. So okay. Well, tomorrow we're going to hopefully hit revivals, and then we'll see. We'll go from there. Let's pray.