Author Archives: Guest Contributor

Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken

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Originally exhibited at the Regier Art Gallery, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, October 30 to December 4, 2015. Excerpted from an article of the same name in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 41 no.1 (January 2018): 10-29

by Rachel Epp Buller

Jan Luyken (also spelled Luiken) was born in Amsterdam into a middle-class family led by a school-teaching father who was devout in faith and committed to intellectual study. After his formal schooling, Luyken apprenticed in the workshop of a local painter, Martin Saeghmolen, and then learned etching and engraving from printmaker Coenraet Decker. He also met regularly with a group of friends, who called themselves De Wijngaardranken (The Vine Tendrils), to write poetry. In 1672, at the age of twenty-three, Luyken married Maria den Oudens. Of their five children, only their son Caspar survived childbirth. At the time of their marriage, Luyken joined the Anabaptist movement at his wife’s instigation, but he did not fully commit until having visions and experiencing a powerful religious conversion in 1673. Luyken remained committed to the Anabaptist church and to piety for the rest of his life.

Following Luyken’s death in 1712, fellow artist Pieter Sluiter etched Luyken’s portrait, shown at left, and published it together with a six-line poem by Adriaan Spinniker that encapsulates how his contemporaries viewed him:1

The desire for God and good deeds, which burns in LUIKEN’s heart
Shown in his behavior, and etchings, and poetry,
Spread thus its glow in the modest countenance,
Which gaze made each aspire to share his way of living.
Thou, who dost always view and read his work with pleasure,
Look frequently at this face, as incentive for thy spirit.

Professional Work

Although he is known predominantly in today’s Anabaptist communities for his iconic etchings in the Martyrs Mirror by Thieleman J. van Braght (1685), Jan Luyken produced over three thousand other works that included paintings (of which only a few survive), drawings, prints, and poems. Luyken published twelve books focused on piety and Scripture, for which he both created prints and wrote poetry. He also produced illustrations for nearly five hundred books by other authors in disciplines as varied as biology, chemistry, geography, shipbuilding, early Christian history, and Dutch history, among others. The books and prints in this exhibition offer a closer look into the breadth of Luyken’s work.

Many of Luyken’s prints fall into the category of emblem literature. Throughout sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, but particularly in the Low Countries, artists and writers favored the use of emblems, which combined images and verses for didactic ends. Emblems generally included a title or motto, an illustration, and an explanation in prose or poetic form. Taken together, these three pieces sought to impart a moral lesson to the viewer or reader. Luyken’s emblems offered meditations on living a godly life and on attaining the path to salvation, using a wide variety of symbolism that would have been easily understandable to his contemporaries.

De Onwaardige Wereld vertoond in Zinnebeelden (The Unworthy World, as told in Emblems), 1710

Dangerous-Stand

The Dangerous Stand, from The Unworthy World (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commonly depicted immoral or dangerous behavior, partly as an instructional device to their viewers. In this book of religious emblems, Luyken pictured “the unworthy world” as a warning to urge his readers onto the right path of Christian life. In the scene displayed here, a mortal hangs by a thread above the fires of hell while the specter of death waits to snip his life thread with scissors. If only the man will change his ways, he might be saved. The accompanying verse, Matthew 10:28, reminds us that a better fate awaits us beyond this life if we so choose it: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Dangerous Stand), from De Onwaardige Wereld (The Unworthy World), 1710. Reproduced in Het Werk Van Jan en Casper Luyken door P. Van Eeghen, vol. 2, 1905

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Preparatory drawing for The Dangerous Stand (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

A catalogue raisonné lists all of the works created by a particular artist. This compendium of the works of Jan and Caspar Luyken includes not only the finished prints but also the sketches and preparatory drawings made in advance of the completed works. Looking at this drawing in comparison to the eventual print (see page 15) shows how Luyken worked out the basic composition in the drawing but added a much higher level of detail and linework to the finished product. Notice also how the compositions are reversed since Luyken would have drawn this image onto the copper plate, only to have it printed as a mirror image.

Tafereelen der Eerst Christenen (Scenes of the First Christians). With prints by Jan Luyken and verses by Pieter Langendijk and Claas Bruin, 1722; reprinted 1740, “Bedieninge des Doops in een rivier” (Ministry of Baptism in the River)

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Ministry of Baptism in the River, from Scenes of the First Christians (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

Even posthumously, Jan Luyken’s work continued to garner much attention. Ten years after Luyken’s death, ninety-two of his engravings were published in this volume of early church history. Poems by Pieter Langendijk and six-line verses by Claas Bruin accompany each of Luyken’s images. Not surprisingly, given Luyken’s Anabaptist connections, one of the scenes he chose to include in his series of early Christians is a scene of adult baptism. Notice how Luyken’s compositional lines lead our eyes to the baptism in the center of the image, with small background figures building up to larger foreground figures and with circular ripples of water surrounding the key players.

De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het oude en nieuwe verbond [Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments], 1712

Genesis III: 1-7, from De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het oude en nieuwe verbond (Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments), 1712

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Genesis 3:1-7, from Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

In picturing the fall of humanity from the Garden of Eden, Luyken placed the blame squarely on the figure of Eve through both image and text. In the print, Eve occupies the center of the composition and points to the tree of knowledge while she hands the apple to Adam. The rhyming verse that accompanies the image, which Luyken titled “Man Seduced,” laments the bitter outcome of Eve’s temptation.

Jan Luyken, De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het nieuwe verbond (The Scriptural Stories and Parables of the New Testament), 1712

Luke-4-with-verse

Image for Luke 2:6-7, from The Scriptural Stories and Parables of the New Testament (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

In this visual retelling of the New Testament, Luyken highlighted both somewhat obscure and well-known stories. The scene depicted here illustrates the two most familiar verses of the nativity story in Luke’s gospel:

6 So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Notice how Luyken positioned the Christ Child at the center of the composition, surrounded by the parents, the shepherds, and the animals of the stable. Luyken’s rhyming poem on the theme of Christ’s birth accompanies the print.

Wreede moordt der Spanjaarden tot Naarden, den eersten December des jaars 1572 [Cruel Murder by the Spanish at Naarden, 1 December 1572], 1677-79, from Hugo de Groot, Nederlandtsche Jaerboeken en Historien (Netherlandish Yearbook and History), 1681

Naarden

Cruel Murder by the Spanish at Naarde, from Netherlandish Yearbook and History (Rijksmuseum photo)

In historical prints such as this, Luyken displayed a rare patriotic sentiment. The scene depicted here marks an episode in what came to be known as the Spanish Fury, a series of bloody confrontations in the sixteenth century when Spanish troops sacked and pillaged Dutch towns in an effort to maintain Catholic rule and allegiance to the Spanish Crown. Luyken pictured the chaos of the battle, and the closed-in setting suggests that the citizens of Naarden had no way to escape the villainous Spanish soldiers.

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller is a feminist art historian, print maker, book artist, and mother of three whose art and scholarship often speak to these intersections. She speaks and publishes widely on the maternal body in contemporary art, including her book Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate/Routledge). She privileges collaboration in her work, which has resulted in various outcomes, including the edited collection Mothering Mennonite, with Kerry Fast (Demeter Press); an exhibition and book, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Fotomonteurin und Malerin / Photomontage Artist and Painter, with Das Verborgene Museum in Berlin; and the exhibition “Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken,” with Bethel College student Alexandra Shoup, exhibit designer  David Kreider and archivist John Thiesen at the Mennonite Library and Archives. She is a Fulbright scholar, a board member of the National Women’s Caucus for Art, a regional coordinator for the international Feminist Art Project, and current associate professor of visual arts and design at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas.

  1. Josephine V. Brown, “Biography of Jan Luiken,” Digital Collections, Pitts Theology Library, http://www.pitts.emory.edu/collections/digitalcollections/luiken.cfm ↩

First Mennonite Church, Allentown, Pennsylvania,1958

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Members leaving worship at First Mennonite Church, Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1958. This photo was one of a series promoting expansion of the church building at that time. By the late twentieth century, demographics had changed and the First Mennonite Church declined in membership, with nearly all members living outside the city. In 2006, the congregation closed, and the building was taken up by the Eastern District Conference for a English-Spanish bilingual church plant called Christ Fellowship.

Forrest Moyer, Archivist, Mennonite Heritage Center

Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society Seeks Executive Director

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Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society seeks an executive director to lead a vibrant organization poised to build on current strengths and expand its historical, educational, and visitor programming.

The executive director oversees approximately twenty-two employees, a combined budget of $1.1 million, and programming at three sites on two campuses: the LMHS library, archives, and museum gallery at Millstream Road, Lancaster, PA; the Mennonite Information Center, also at Millstream Road; and the Hans Herr House Museum at Willow Street, PA.

The successful candidate will combine effective executive team leadership with business acumen, strategic planning and implementation, and resource development skills. Candidates must possess strong communication skills, an ability to engage a wide range of constituencies, and demonstrate Anabaptist faith commitment. Anabaptist candidates of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply. 

Applicants should provide a letter of intent that includes their vision for LMHS, a résumé, and three references. Submit materials and inquiries to Steve Nolt, search committee chair, at search@lmhs.org. The search committee welcomes inquiries and will review applications until the position is filled.

More information at: https://www.lmhs.org/about/employment/

La Rouviere Children’s Home, Marseilles, France, ca. 1941

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#2-La Rouviere Children's Home, ca 1941

(MCC Photo/Virgil Vogt)

During and after World War II, Mennonite Central Committee operated or supported numerous homes for orphaned children throughout Europe. Here MCC worker Edna Ramseyer, in front, holds the youngest member of the La Rouviere Children’s Home near Marseilles, France. Names of others pictured are unavailable.

Frank Peachey, Mennonite Central Committee Archives

Brick Mennonite Church, Richfield Pennsylvania

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Brick Church - east side
Brick Mennonite Church is located one mile west of Richfield, Pennsylvania. The building was constructed in 1868 and replaced an 1800 log meeting house. It has not been used for regular services since the 1930s and has been restored by the adjoining Juniata Mennonite Historical Center.
Beidler History Center Photos 022Interior of the restored Brick Mennonite Church located one mile west of Richfield. The restored building is used for an annual public hymn sing, the third Sunday in September, and other special events by appointment.
Beidler History Center Photos 013Brick Mennonite Church cemetery in foreground with south end of the church in view. Directly across the road is the former John Kurtz farm. This family lost five infants and toddlers before 1872.  When the diphtheria epidemic came through the Juniata Valley in 1872, they lost six of the seven surviving children in one week. The parents and eleven children are buried in this cemetery.
All photos courtesy of Beidler collection -Juniata Mennonite Historical Center

Mennonit to Gottgläubig

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2+3 panorama

Genealogy Chart of Manfred Quiring

Walter (né Jacob) Quiring (1893-1983) was a widely read writer of Russian Mennonite background, an outspoken Nazi apologist, and later the editor of the Canadian Mennonite newspaper Der Bote—a set of significantly clashing roles over his lifetime.

This genealogy chart is found in the Library of Congress German Captured Documents microfilms.1 It is filled out in the name of Quiring’s son Manfred, who, as I understand it, was killed in World War 2.

What is  most interesting is that Quiring filled in the space for religious affiliation for himself, his wife, and son as gottgläubig, a Nazi term for non-Christian religious affiliation which might be translated as “theistic.”2 However, all of the previous generations are labeled as Mennonit.

John D. Thiesen, Archivist, Co-director of Libraries, Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, KS

  1. German captured documents collection, 1766-1945, Library of Congress, Reel 286, shelf no. 18,806.4 (near the end of the reel). ↩
  2.  “Gottgläubig” Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottgl%C3%A4ubig (Accessed November 30). ↩

Rethinking 606, the “Mennonite National Anthem”

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Austin McCabe Juhnke

In 2015, Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” recorded a show on the campus of Goshen College in Indiana.1 As he often does, Keillor began the show with an introduction to the local area, describing the Mennonites who live there as “one of the most persecuted people in history.”  According to Keillor, these Mennonites developed a tradition of hymn singing “to keep up their spirits in the midst of all of this horrible cruelty and violence.”2 As if to prove his point, following this introduction, Keillor had the Goshen College choir lead the audience in singing “606,” a unique setting of Thomas Ken’s doxology (“Praise God from whom all blessings flow”) which many Mennonites know colloquially by its number in the 1969 Mennonite Hymnal. After recording the show, Keillor marveled at how his “Mennonite” audience “sang like angels. You just hummed a note and gave them the downbeat, and they sang in perfect four-part harmony.”3 Even though Keillor framed this performance of 606 as an expression of Mennonite-Anabaptist historical persecution, Mennonites have only been singing this hymn widely since its appearance in the 1969 Mennonite Hymnal. Since 1969, however, it has become commonplace for Mennonites to sing 606 not only in worship, but also as a celebration of Mennonite community in public places. The song has even sometimes been called “the Mennonite national anthem.”4 Though this nickname is used with somewhat jocular tone, it is perhaps more fitting than it appears, and it is worth considering the ways nationalist thinking has shaped Mennonite identity and musical practices.

Garrison Keillor and the Goshen College Choir record A Prairie Home Companion May 2, 2015 Photograph by Brian Yoder Schlabach. (https://www.goshen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2015/05/15_APrairieHomeCompanion_079_bys-1366×911.jpg)
The audience at Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion sing along. May 2, 2015. Photograph by Brian Yoder Schlabach. (https://www.goshen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2015/05/15_APrairieHomeCompanion_031_bys-1366×911.jpg)

Nationalists of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought of nations as naturally occurring, discrete groups of people. Within these groups one would expect to find essential similarities and between the groups one would find essential differences. Points of national comparison ranged from cultural practices to physical features to emotional temperaments. Today it is generally agreed that nations are constructed, rather than natural entities.5 Nevertheless this enticing idea has made for strong political solidarities that have been used both to resist and reinforce systems of oppression over the last centuries. Thus, at best, nationalism is used as a strategic simplification of the complexity of human social relationships. At worst, however, this ideology fuels a drive to maintain the “purity” of a supposedly natural identity.

One important way of legitimating national identities is history. If a group of people saw themselves in the same historical narrative, it helped create the sense of belonging to a national “we” that united people across space and time. “Praise God from whom” (606) was added to The Mennonite Hymnal during a period in which American Mennonites were more consciously looking to history to make sense of themselves in the modern world. Between the First and Second World Wars, Mennonites formalized a belief in nonviolent pacifism, identifying their tradition with the phrase “historic peace church.” In 1943 Harold Bender, founder of the Mennonite Historical Society and professor of history at Goshen College, penned his influential essay “The Anabaptist Vision.” In it he connects present-day Mennonites to an “authentic” Anabaptist lineage.

[W]e know enough today to draw a clear line of demarcation between original evangelical and constructive Anabaptism on the one hand, which was born in the bosom of Zwinglianism in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525, and established in the Low Countries in 1533, and the various mystical, spiritualistic, revolutionary, or even antinomian related and unrelated groups on the other hand. . . The former, Anabaptism proper, maintained an unbroken course in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Holland throughout the sixteenth century, and has continued until the present day in the Mennonite movement[.]6

In assuming that there is a definable “Anabaptism proper” and that it has an unbroken lineage to the present, Bender—consciously or not—was taking cues from nationalist models of identity. Later historians disputed the idea that it is possible to determine a single origin point for Anabaptism, but Bender’s “Vision” of a historical Anabaptist-Mennonite essence became an influential articulation of Mennonite identity in the mid-twentieth century and beyond.7

In this context, Mennonite hymnals became a powerful way of mediating ideas about Mennonite history, tradition, and identity. During the 1950s the (Old) Mennonite Church’s Music and Worship committee began to consider revising their 1927 Church Hymnal. There was a sense among many on the committee that the quality of Mennonite singing had been slipping. In 1959 committee member Chester K. Lehman gave a talk called “Congregational Singing – Our Losses and Gains” in which he criticized recent Mennonite hymnbooks for their heavy reliance on the “popular and emotional gospel songs,” which he viewed as a “retrogression” in Mennonite tastes.8 In 1960, another committee member and Goshen College music professor Walter E. Yoder spoke at a Music and Worship conference at Goshen. In his talk, “Raising Our Sights in Our Church Music” he bemoaned the loss of hymns from before Mennonites began speaking English and taking on Protestant- and evangelical-like church activities: “The unfortunate thing was, and we still have this problem with us today, that with the change of language and the taking on of many new activities, the church dropped its good german [sic] hymnody and sub[s]tituted for them the weaker texts and lighter tunes of the Gospel Hymns.”9 The years-long process of compiling and editing the 1969 Mennonite Hymnal formalized a Mennonite musical aesthetic that sought a return to the “solemn, sober, thoughtful and dignified” hymns of an imagined Mennonite past.10

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606 in the red Mennonite Hymnal (1969). Photograph by the author.

It was in this process of “recovering” the Mennonite musical past that “Praise God from whom” came into Mennonite institutional hymnbooks. The source for number 606 in The Mennonite Hymnal was a nineteenth-century song collection called Harmonia Sacra by Mennonite publisher Joseph Funk. Funk’s instructional songbooks were part of a broader “singing school” movement in the United States that influenced Mennonite and Protestant singing alike.11 The song had fallen into relative obscurity, before its inclusion in the 1969 Hymnal.12 By 1979, however, the song was described as “the favorite of Mennonites everywhere” in the Gospel Herald, and by the 1980s it was referred to as the “Mennonite national anthem.”13

In The Mennonite Hymnal, 606 was placed in the “Choral Hymns” section because the committee thought it was too difficult for general congregational use. Indeed, there are several musical features that make singing 606 especially difficult. Unlike most hymns, in which the voice parts move more or less in the same rhythm, in 606 the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices jump in and out unpredictably. One example of this is right at the beginning of the hymn. Here the soprano and tenor voices begin singing “Praise God from whom” in duet. Not until a measure later do the alto and bass voices join in, singing a compressed rhythm to catch up to the other voices by the end of the first musical phrase. Complicating the issue further, there are no verses in 606 and thus no “second chances” for learning one’s part. It is not a coincidence that the “Mennonite national anthem” has these difficult elements. In fact, it is precisely because it is difficult for outsiders to join in that the hymn works as a musical identity marker. For those who are able to sing along, 606 is a powerful auditory and embodied experience of Mennonite community, yet this insider experience is predicated on musical stumbling blocks that produce outsiders in the act of performance.

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“Project 606” on the banner of the webpage for MennoMedia’s new hymnal project. Screen capture November 7, 2017. (http://hymnalproject606.com)

In the most recent Mennonite hymnal (Hymnal: A Worship Book, 1992), 606 became number 118. Nevertheless, “606” continues to resonate as a favorite hymn and a Mennonite cultural symbol. At the 2011 Mennonite Church USA convention in Pittsburgh, a tally from the delegates put the “Mennonite national anthem” at the top of a list of “heart songs.”14 More recently, 606—or the idea of 606—has become a fundraising and publicity tool for Mennonite Church USA and Canada’s work on a new hymnal. According MennoMedia, the forthcoming hymnal’s publisher, the project aims to “take into account the breadth of the Mennonite Church [USA and Canada], the diverse ways Mennonites sing and worship, and new digital technologies.”15 Still, in an effort to raise money for the hymnal ($606,000), the work on the new hymnal was until recently nicknamed “Project 606.”16 This nickname highlights the tension between the desire to preserve and propagate a practice understood as “traditionally Mennonite” and the hope of making space for diversity within the Mennonite church.

In singing, do Mennonites, as Keillor, imagine connecting to a history of European-Anabaptist persecution? If so, will the church be able to embrace the new songs and joyful noises of a vibrant church community? I do not wish to propose here that Mennonites need a new “national anthem,” or that new musical styles will be inherently better or more inclusive. Nor do I mean to suggest that Mennonites must stop singing “Praise God from whom.” More important for Mennonites—particularly those who trace their heritage to European Anabaptists—is to confront the exclusive, ethnocentric mythologies that often inform the ways hymn singing is valued. In so doing, it would make possible a practice of singing that works not to undergird narrow formulations of Mennonite identity, but rather to reveal resonant experiences of the divine in community that transcend the logics of the world.
Austin McCabe Juhnke is a PhD candidate in Musicology at Ohio State University studying music in the Mennonite Church during the twentieth century.

  1. As of November 28, 2017, the show can be heard in its entirety here: https://www.prairiehome.org/shows/48522. ↩
  2.  Garrison Keillor, “Good Enough is Enough,” A Prairie Home Companion, American Public Media, May 2, 2015. ↩
  3.  Michela Tindera, “Quick Q&A: Garrison Keilor” Indianapolis Monthly,  August 6, 2015, http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/arts-culture/quick-qa-garrison-keillor/ (accessed November 28, 2017). ↩
  4.  See Anna Groff, “606: When, Why and How Do Mennonites Use the Anthem,” The Mennonite, March 18, 2008. ↩
  5.  See, e.g., Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (New York: Verso, 2006). ↩
  6.  Harold S. Bender, “The Anabaptist Vision,” Church History 13, no. 1 (March 1, 1944): 8. ↩
  7.  James M. Stayer, Werner O. Packull, and Klaus Deppermann, “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 49, no. 2 (April 1975): 83–121. ↩
  8. Chester K. Lehman, “Congregational Singing – Our losses and gains,” (1959). Box 6, Folder 2. Mennonite Church, Music and Worship Committee, 1909-1992.  I-3-1. Mennonite Church USA Archives – Elkhart. Elkhart, Indiana. ↩
  9.  Walter E. Yoder, “Raising Our Sights in Our Church Music” (1960). Box 6, Folder 6. Mennonite Church, Music and Worship Committee, 1909-1992.  I-3-1. Mennonite Church USA Archives – Elkhart. Elkhart, Indiana. ↩
  10.  Yoder, “The New Church Hymnal and its Implications for Worship” (ca. 1962). Box 6, Folder 4. Mennonite Church, Music and Worship Committee, 1909-1992.  I-3-1. Mennonite Church USA Archives – Elkhart. Elkhart, Indiana. ↩
  11.  See, e.g., Walter E. Yoder, “Singing Schools,” in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, 1958, http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Singing_Schools&oldid=113641. ↩
  12. “Praise God from Whom” Also appeared in the Songs of the Church, ed. Walter E. Yoder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1953), 10. ↩
  13.  “World’s Attic Goes to Kitchen for Help,” Gospel Herald, March, 13 1979. For a use of “Mennonite national anthem,” see, e.g., James C. Juhnke, Dialogue with a Heritage: Cornelius H. Wedel and the Beginnings of Bethel College (North Newton, KS: Super Speed Printing, 1987), 75. ↩
  14. “What Songs Will Mennonites Sing?” Canadian Mennonite, http://www.canadianmennonite.org/articles/what-songs-will-mennonites-sing ↩
  15.  “‘Project 606’: Mennonite Song Collection Project Aims for 2020 Release,” The Mennonite, January 4, 2016, https://themennonite.org/daily-news/project-606-mennonite-song-collection-project-aims-for-2020-release/. ↩
  16. MennoMedia, Project 606: A Gift for the Next Generation,  September 12, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20170912230138/http://hymnalproject606.com/ . The project has recently been rebranded as Resonate: Join the Everlasting Song, http://hymnalproject606.com (Accessed November 30, 2017), a change that was found after this post was initially published. ↩

Are you in this? Remembering Muted Voices: Conscience, Dissent, Resistance and Civil Liberties in World War I Through Today

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Laureen Harder-Gissing

4540“Are you in this?” asked a popular British propaganda poster from the First World War. A nattily dressed young man, hands in pockets, walks through a landscape in which other men and women are actively fighting, nursing, and manufacturing armaments. Their society is fully engaged in war. His non-participation is clearly shameful.

From October 19-22, 240 delegates gathered at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City to hear 70 presentations. Historians described forgotten voices of dissent and conscientious objection, while today’s defenders of conscience and civil liberties drew connections between the long-ago war and their current work. Music began the conference with a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem, and ended it with hymns and songs of peace sung by the Hutterian Baker and Silverwinds Youth Choirs from Manitoba. Their music accompanied the moving story of two American Hutterite conscientious objectors who died in prison.

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Inscribed brick to be added to the museum’s Walk of Honor (Photograph by Laureen Harder-Gissing)

The site of the conference added to the atmosphere. The museum sits at the base of a dramatic Egyptian Revival-style monument, the Liberty Memorial, which opened in 1926. The state-of-the-art museum, constructed in 2006, tells the story of the war to a modern audience. On Sunday morning, a memorial service for war dissenters was held at the entrance–a glass bridge spanning a field of poppies. The conference ended with a bus tour of Fort Leavenworth where 16 imprisoned conscientious objectors died.

Did the conference succeed in unmuting voices? While the traveling exhibit “Voices of Conscience” told stories of peace witness in the Great War, conference participants observed that voices of dissent are nearly absent from the museum’s permanent exhibits. During the memorial service, Hutterite delegates partially rectified this by unveiling a stone in memory of the Hofer brothers who died at Fort Leavenworth. The stone will join the “walk of honor” at the museum’s entrance.

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A base historian at Fort Leavenworth describes wartime conditions in the former prison hospital. (Photograph by Laureen Harder-Gissing)

Some religious voices were unmuted. In addition to papers about traditional peace church members, papers about Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and mainline church members uncovered additional stories of religious dissent.

While the conference predominantly focused on American and British history, papers on opposition to the war in Germany and African diaspora communities hinted at a broadening of diversity. While the role of women in leadership in the anti-war movement was explored, much ground in terms of gender was left untouched.

The conference did not succeed in unmuting all voices, but I believe it helped participants sharpen our hearing. Whether we are primarily engaged as historians or activists (or both), becoming attuned to muted voices of conscience and dissent is a valuable skill. After all, there are many ways in which we are “in this” still.

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Sunday’s memorial service took place on the museum’s glass bridge. The bridge floats over a simulated field of poppies. (Photograph by Laureen Harder-Gissing)

Some Clarity on an Old Mystery

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John D. Thiesen

Samuel S. Haury (1847-1929) was the first missionary sent out by a North American Mennonite denomination, working among Arapaho and Cheyenne people in what is now Oklahoma starting in 1880. His mission career lasted only seven years, however, ending in scandal in 1887. The end of Haury’s career has only been publicly known in vague generalities. The most specific explanation is found in Lois Barrett’s 1983 history of General Conference home missions, where she says Haury resigned because of “his sexual indiscretion with another missionary at Cantonment.”1

Darlington school children and teachers;

Darlington school children and teachers; left to right at top, Dian Luginbuel (m. Jacob Meschberger), Maria Lehrman (m. Jacob Warkentin), Susie Richert (m. C. H. Wedel), S. S. Haury, Barbara Baer Voth and baby Frieda, H. R. Voth (top of head cut off). Mennonite Library and Archives Photo Collection 2003-0081

The archival record does actually allow for a bit fuller explanation. Haury was located at Cantonment, Indian Territory, where the General Conference had a school for Cheyenne and Arapaho children. Haury was in charge of all of the Cheyenne-Arapaho mission activities. Another missionary, Heinrich R. Voth, was located at Darlington, where Haury had started the first Mennonite mission school several years earlier. In a letter on May 14, 1887, from Haury to Voth, Haury says, “C. Krehbiel [chair of the mission board] has already informed you of my approaching departure from the mission, and of the sad cause, brought about by my own conduct and fault. The consequences are terrible. My heart is shattered. Pray for a deeply fallen one.”2

A week later, May 21, there is another letter to Voth: “Our departure is not yet specified. I expected to get my dismissal in today’s mail but it did not come. I hope that it will come soon. It would be best under these circumstances to leave tomorrow. But we will hardly be able to get away by the first of June.”3

The timeline of events seems a little muddied, however, since a letter also dated May 21, 1887, from Haury to the mission board, says: “I write these lines in deep shame and humiliation. I have already given the president of the board verbally and the secretary in written form my confession of my deep fall. . . . My deep fall consists of marital infidelity with Christina Hirschler, sister of my dear wife, so that she is already about 6 months pregnant.”4 This letter circulated among the members of the mission board, scattered from Kansas to Pennsylvania, through at least June 10.

A week later we find the sole surviving voice from one of the women concerned, Susie Hirschler Haury writing to H. R. Voth on May 28, in English (most of the other correspondence is in German): “We will go away soon, & it will be no more than natural that everybody at the Agency & at the schools will want to know why we have. Please tell them that we felt we could not remain or something to that effect. I would not ask you to tell an untruth, Never, but there is no need of having it spread among outsiders. It is not on my or our account I ask this, but on account of the Mission work & Christianity’s sake. For such people as live in the Agency & in this country generally, hearing anything of that kind, would call ‘the whole thing a fraud.’ Having had no Christian experience, they cannot know of the hearts-anguish such a person that has fallen, has in his own chamber & in the silent nightwatches.”5 Voth reassured her the next day that he would comply with her wishes.6

Samuel Schmidt Haury (1847-1929) and Susanna Hirschler Haury (1861-1944)

Samuel Schmidt Haury (1847-1929) and Susanna Hirschler Haury (1861-1944). Mennonite Library and Archives Photo Collection 2006-0096

Susie Hirschler Haury gave birth to a son Paul on Jan. 28, 1887.7 This means that if her sister Christina was 6 months pregnant in mid-May, then that event must have occurred in mid- December 1886 when Susie was about 8 months pregnant. Presumably her sister Christina had come out to help with household tasks before and after the birth. Paul died on June 14, 1887. “This morning at about 5:00 the Lord took our little son Paul to himself, after several days of severe suffering and a 2 hour hard death struggle. The burial will be tomorrow afternoon about 2:00, Lord willing, and would like to ask you sincerely and urgently to lead this service. The service should be in English.”8

The Haurys must have finally left Indian Territory sometime around the end of June. A letter from G. D. Williams, the Indian agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, to J. D. C. Atkins, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC, on Aug. 12, 1887, gives a perspective from outside of Mennonite circles:

In accordance with instructions of Office letter of the 9th ult. [July 9] I have the honor to report that in the latter part of May last there were rumors about Cantonment, involving the moral character of Mr. Haury. As he had the entire confidence of this community as well as my own, and standing so high in his Church I gave them no credence. June 4th Mr. Haury advised me, by letter, of his resignation as Missionary among these Indians, without alleging any cause. On the 22nd day of June last, in company with Inspector Gardner, I visited Cantonment and learned beyond question that the charges were true.

During the second day of inspection of Indian houses, a number of the head men of the Cheyenne talked with Inspector Gardner about the matter, saying that they did not wish any more such men sent among then and that they desired Mr. Haury sent away. They were assured that he was about to depart, which he did in a few days thereafter.

These Indians do not entertain the highest sentiment regarding chastity, and while I do not believe the unfortunate act within itself would deter them from sending their children to the school, they will use it as an incontrovertible argument against a mission school under the same patronage and decline to support it. This applies more particularly to the Cheyennes who are largely in the majority at Cantonment and who have no earnest desire for the education of their children.

They grasp any excuse for withholding their children; for two years past they have given as a reason that the buildings were old, damp and unhealthful, but as soon as a new building was erected they would fill it.

In view of this I submit that they will use the late unfortunate occurrence with great effect among their people. I do not believe the scandal will in the least injure the mission school located at the Agency and in charge of the Rev. Mr. Voth, as for several years past Mr. Haury has not, in the Indian mind, been identified with it, and I am constrained to believe that the Cantonment Mission will not soon recover from the recent blow and that its success for the next year or two is in the gravest doubt.

The present “picket” structures at Cantonment will serve another year with some few repairs – but a new building is needed and I believe it should be conducted solely by the Government to insure [sic] its success.9

The leading historian of the Arapaho, Loretta Fowler, offers some further explanation of Williams’ comments.

When Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs directly challenged officials, they often did so by appropriating elements of the dominant ideology. For example, in the delegates’ attempt to counter Agent Woodson’s disparaging description of Cheyennes and Arapahos, they turned his own discourse against him: Woodson was lazy, neglected his work, was fiscally imprudent, and fell short of the ideals of monogamy and sobriety. He spent idle hours dancing while trying to prevent the Cheyennes and Arapahos from having dances. This same tactic was used in regard to local boarding school superintendents and even to missionary Haury, who was caught in an adulterous relationship.10

Fowler gives no sources for her comment about Haury’s “adulterous relationship.”

On Aug. 16, 1887, H. R. Voth wrote to a Captain J. M. Lee, who had apparently had some previous role in the Cheyenne-Arapaho area and remained friends with Voth.

Mr. H. has fallen very deeply. He had had unlawful intercourse with his sister in law, the sinful deed bearing bitter fruit. Mr. H. acknowledged his guilt voluntarily to the Mission Board, was of course promptly discharged, & had to leave. Although covered with shame & disgrace, yet accompanied by the deep sympathy & genuine regret of thousands of friends, his field of faithful labor and is now living in obscurity. The child was born a few weeks ago, but did not live long. That is, in a few words, the deplorable history which ended in such an extremely tragical manner, Mr. Haury’s evidently successful career as an Indian Educator and missionary.11

Haury moved to St. Louis to attend medical school.12 There is one major postscript to the 1887 scandal. At a meeting of the Kansas Conference (predecessor to today’s Western District area conference) at First Mennonite Church in Newton, Kansas, Nov. 5-6, 1889, there is this resolution:

  1. At the request of the brother, S. S. Haury, that the Conference use its influence in favor of his admission into the Mennonite denomination, the Conference resolves that as such it is ready to offer him the hand gladly and to let his reception take place in a public meeting to which all of the conference churches are herewith invited, on the 13t h inst. in the Alexanderwohl Church by Elder Chr. Krehbiel with the assistance of Elder Jak. Buller, as commissioners of the Conference.13

Two persons recorded the actual event at Alexanderwohl. Johann Jantzen, a Mennonite minister from Beatrice, Nebraska, who was attending a ministers’ meeting, noted the event in his diary:

In the Alexanderwohl church, the former missionary Haury, who had been separated from the church, was re-accepted. He seemed very repentant. Elder Balzer read Psalm 51 and had the opening prayer. Elder Gaeddert preached on John 10:12, a very nice exposition. Elder Christian Krehbiel carried out the acceptance and Elder Stucky closed with prayer. It was a large gathering and a very large church, recently built. On the way back [to Newton] we had very nice weather and better roads; we stopped at the Bethel College foundation [construction site], it is around 15 feet high now, with 3 feet in the ground.14

Then, H. R. Voth’s father Cornelius described the event in a letter to his son, mixed in with news about the farm and crops, in a Nov. 17, 1889, letter:

We still have 20 acres of corn to [cut?] and also so much work to prepare the cattle for winter. Now dear son, I must write to you a little about the acceptance of S. S. Haury into the community [Gemeinschaft] on the 13th last Wednesday in our church (it was a nice day), there were quite many people present, especially many elders and preachers because the day before in our school was the preachers’ conference, it was really a sad sight how deeply humiliated Haury was, an evil picture of how sin can bring a person down, it was too bad that you could not be present and also at the conference, since there is always something to learn for our life, I certainly believe Haury has genuine repentance, he cried many tears and was very broken down, there were also many tears from the assembly with him, it was a moving performance, to begin Elder Buller read Psalm 51, how we are kept, then Elder Gaeddert preached very seriously and Christian Krehbiel did the actual acceptance, Elders Buller, Gaeddert and Newton elder Toews stood around him and greeted him with hand and mouth [holy kiss?] and with moving words of encouragement, may the dear Lord protect everyone from such a heavy burden since one sees what serious sins bring about. They are again gathering potatoes which will be brought to Newton on Tuesday and sent to you.15

It is completely unclear what kind of reconciliation service took place on Nov. 13, 1889. It was not an Alexanderwohl congregational matter but something more general, Kansas/Western District conference or General Conference. There is no evidence that Haury was ever a member of Alexanderwohl church. He joined First Mennonite in Halstead on Mar. 30, 189016 and then transferred to First Mennonite in Newton on Nov. 21, 1897.17 These record books do not indicate where he was a member before 1890, but it was probably Summerfield, Illinois. The Summerfield membership records have been lost.

The Hirschler family was fairly prominent in General Conference Mennonite circles. The father of Christina and Susanna, Daniel A. Hirschler (1821-1888), was a minister at Summerfield, Illinois.  Their brother John S. Hirschler (1847-1915) was also a widely-known minister. A brother, Daniel B. Hirschler was an Oklahoma missionary. A niece (daughter of John S. Hirschler), Anna, married Gustav A. Linscheid and they were later Cheyenne missionaries. Another sister, Anna (1854-1896), was married to Peter S. Haury, brother of Samuel S.18

Two additional pieces of misinformation about the Haury incident deserve to be clarified. One rumor that apparently circulated in the Berne, Indiana, Mennonite community tied Haury to another sister-in-law, Elisabeth Welty Hirschler, wife of Daniel B. Hirschler. The rumor claims that Haury fathered the child Dorothea Hirschler born Nov. 20, 1885. Daniel and Elisabeth Hirschler were mission workers in Cantonment.19 But obviously this does not fit the chronology of Haury’s departure almost two years later nor the contents of the Haury and Voth correspondence. Presumably someone in the community knew, well after the event, that Haury had had a sexual relationship with his “sister-in-law” and extrapolated to the wrong sister-in-law.

The second piece of misinformation appears in Donald Berthrong’s 1976 The Cheyenne and Arapaho Ordeal. Berthrong stated that Haury “had been involved with school-girls at Cantonment.” But the only source he cites for this is the letter from Williams to Atkins of August 12, 1887, quoted above, which makes no mention of school girls.20 Obviously Berthrong had not seen Haury’s letter of resignation or the other mission-related correspondence, so he was reading into the Williams letter assumptions that were unsupported by his evidence.

Jim Juhnke also references this student-involvement rumor but footnotes Berthrong so apparently he did not have an independent source for it.21

Christina Hirschler (1865-1941) married Louis M. Ledig in 1891, and they moved from Summerfield to Upland, California, in 1895. They had one son. Samuel and Susie Haury also moved to Upland when he retired in 1913. 22

  1.  Lois Barrett, The Vision and the Reality: The Story of Home Missions in the General Conference Mennonite Church (Newton, Kans.: Faith and Life Press, 1983), 22. ↩
  2.  H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, folder 63, Mennonite Library and Archives, North Newton, Kans. ↩
  3.  H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, folder 63. ↩
  4.  General Conference Mennonite Church, Board of Missions records, I.A.1.a, folder 29 “Correspondence 1887 Jan-June.” ↩
  5.  H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, folder 63. ↩
  6.  H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, copy book 2, p. 675. ↩
  7.  GRANDMA database ↩
  8.  Haury to Voth, June 16, 1887, H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, folder 24. ↩
  9.  Oklahoma Historical Society, Cheyenne Arapaho Agency microfilms, reel 17, vol. 20, 236-239. ↩
  10.  Loretta Fowler, Tribal Sovereignty and the Historical Imagination: Cheyenne-Arapaho Politics (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 46. ↩
  11.  H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, copy book 2, p. 763-764. ↩
  12.  Haury to Voth, Sept. 13, 1887, H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, folder 63. ↩
  13.  Minutes of the Kansas Conference, Nov. 5-6, 1889, English translation. ↩
  14.     Jantzen, Johann (1823-1903) Collection, MS.549 ↩
  15.  H. R. Voth papers, MS.21, folder 2. ↩
  16.  Halstead Kirchenbuch, 90 (Mennonite Library and Archives). ↩
  17.  First Mennonite Stammbuch (Mennonite Library and Archives). ↩
  18.  See Melvin J. Voigt, From Whence We Came ([Del Mar, California: Voigt, 1989), esp. p. 12. Voigt is aware of the Samuel S. Haury scandal but seems to have no indication that it involved anyone else in the Hirschler family. ↩
  19.  Email from David Habegger to John D. Thiesen, 15 Sep 2006. Printed copy in S. S. Haury papers, MS.76, folder 1. ↩
  20.  Donald J. Berthrong, The Cheyenne and Arapaho Ordeal: Reservation and Agency Life in the Indian Territory, 1875-1907 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 144. ↩
  21.  James C. Juhnke, “General Conference Mennonite Missions to the American Indians in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 54 (April 1980): 126. ↩
  22.  Voigt, From Whence We Came. It seems like that would have been awkward situation. ↩