I Wish I'd Been There . . .

The consulting editors of the Mennonite Historical Bulletin respond to the question: What is the one event in Anabaptist-Mennonite history you wish you could have witnessed -- and Why?

Menno "Doing Church"

by Leonard Gross

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The human dimension of "doing church" can take on utmost significance when differing opinions come into conflict -- at times, clashing through to schism; at other times, finding resolution through a deeper "meeting of the minds." In the 16th century, the Concept of Cologne (1591) was a rare example of the latter, with the meeting of the minds and wills resulting in reconciliation and church unity among several Swiss and Dutch Mennonite groups.

One of the many examples of the former was when Menno Simons, in the latter 1550s, banned "all the 'High Germans' [i.e., the Swiss Brethren] and their followers." If we could only capture the human dynamics behind this drastic measure! Menno Simons and cohorts, to be sure, differed from the Swiss Brethren on a number of issues, including the nature of Christ's incarnation, and the use of the ban and excommunication.

I would like to have been with the two Swiss Brethren leaders, Zelis and Lemke, in 1556 through 1559 -- looking over their shoulders as they penned their communications to Menno Simons, to see from their perspective the nature of the conflict. I would like to have been at the Strasbourg Anabaptist Conference of 1557, where some of these same ideas were discussed. I would like to have been there when Menno met with Zelis and Lemke during this time. And I would most of all like to have been privy to Menno's mind, to see exactly how he could justify his written response and formal banning, which Dirk Philips and Leenaert Bouwens then delivered in person to the Swiss Brethren in 1559.

What possessed Menno Simons to have even dared to assume the authority of pronouncing the ban on an older Anabaptist group, the Swiss Brethren? The Swiss Brethren on their side would never have dared to pronounce such on the Dutch Mennonites; such a reaction did not lie in their character! Why, then, the Dutch reaction, and why, the seeming Swiss response of life as usual, such a ban notwithstanding? Equally important, could it be that both sides were somehow "right"? That Menno was attempting to resolve conflict in his Low Country setting, just as the Swiss Brethren were attempting to take care of their Upper German situation, each with its own unique cultural context and tradition?
To have experienced Anabaptism in the 1550s would have been most instructive, providing insights into knowing how best to respond to those many parallel clashes of minds and wills that have inundated the Anabaptist-Mennonite scene ever since.

--Leonard Gross is consulting archivist at the Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, IN.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, July, 1996