Wrestling with peacemaking

The Mennonite peace position is an area where our church clashes with society around us in a very visible way. During World War II (WWII), two Mennonite churches in Vauxhall, Alberta, were burned and one in Leamington, Ontario, was ransacked due to anger against German-speaking, pacifist Mennonites.

This struggle over values also reaches inside the church.

Mennonite leaders were bitterly opposed to Canada’s WWII military conscription law. In a confrontation with officials in Ottawa, Jacob H. Janzen, a Russian immigrant living in Ontario, barked, “Listen, General, I want to tell you something. You can’t scare us like that. I’ve looked down too many rifle barrels in my time to be scared in that way. This thing is in our blood for 400 years and you can’t take it away from us like you’d crack a piece of kindling over your knee. I was before a firing squad twice. We believe in this.”

Some Mennonites heard a rumour that married men were less likely to be drafted. Numerous weddings followed!

Other Mennonites didn’t agree with their church’s position. In Canada, about 4,500 ethnic Mennonites either volunteered to fight or entered the military through the draft in WWII. That's about half the number that claimed conscientious objector (CO) status (7,543 claimed CO status according to T.D. Regehr's Mennonites in Canada: 1939-1970).

I wanted to hear something of the other side to the CO story, and went to speak with a Mennonite who volunteered.

Jim Cressman was attending the Blenheim Mennonite Church near New Dundee in Ontario when WWII started. He signed up to serve in the Air Force. With a copy of The Encyclopaedia of Aircraft on his coffee table and pictures of aircraft in his living room, Jim told me, “I just wanted to fly.”

Jim’s two brothers signed up too. When word got around, his bishop and pastor came to visit the family. “In plain English, they kicked us out of the Mennonite Church,” Cressman said. “What they were doing was what they more or less have to do. They are following the rules of the book.”

For Cressman, the example of other Mennonites sent him a message—both in their personal response to violence and in their observance of church teachings in other areas of life. He still remembers another Mennonite young man who punched him in the nose during an argument.

“Now a lady in the Mennonite Church can wear a wedding ring; they can dance. This is why we left,” he said. “We were more honest. We didn’t hide the fact we went to a show while these others, they were going to shows that no one knew anything about.”

What Jim did is contrary to the peace teachings of the Mennonite Church, but his experience says something important about how we need to keep working out what we believe in our daily lives. Article 22 of the Confession of Faith states, “As disciples of Christ, we do not prepare for war, or participate in war or military service.” However, it continues, “The same Spirit that empowered Jesus also empowers us to love enemies, to forgive rather than to seek revenge, to practice right relationships, to rely on the community of faith to settle disputes, and to resist evil without violence.” Both sentences equally apply to all of us, every day of our lives. I hope the teaching and the personal stories in this issue provide some light for your own grappling with what biblical peacemaking means for you.

Delayed issue: Our apologies for the late arrival of the Jan. 10 issue to about 200 subscribers. Our label company’s printer skipped some labels. We needed to re-label and reship those issues.—Timothy Dyck

Correction: The above article was updated on Feb. 22 to show the correct number of conscientious objectors.