The Experience of Mennonites in America

Mennonites arrived in America nearly 100 years before the 13 colonies united into states. Their reverence for human life disallowing their participation in warfare rankled the founding fathers. Their insistence on living in close community with each other irritated their neighbors. Maintaining the German culture and language of their motherland long after their immigrant neighbors had given theirs up caused suspicion during the World Wars. Mennonites have always remained somewhat aloof of the cultural, social and political practices of the countries they’ve inhabited.

While many Mennonites insist on living as outliers in society, they still take their citizenship seriously. They obey rather fastidiously the laws of the land. They build strong communities and stable family and social infrastructures. They express compassion for the dispossessed, giving significant time and resources to putting the property and lives of those affected by natural disasters back together. They have founded institutions to alleviate poverty, educate the masses, bring medical care to those without, train poor aspiring entrepreneurs in sound business practices, and in a myriad of ways offered assistance to those in need. Their agrarian roots give some a particular interest in promoting environmental well-being.

Objection to violent solutions to personal as well as geopolitical differences has been extended by a minority of Mennonites to refusal to pay taxes that go to support military operations. Always, Mennonites have assumed that certain jobs in the nation were simply off limits to them. Positions within political structures have often been seen as requiring too many compromises to their values. While some still refuse to vote in political elections, in recent years this prohibition has begun to break down as they have become influenced by the cultural wars being waged in American society. They live with the assumption that they will never be part of the mainstream, and they are OK with that. There is a realization that in a democracy that offers them space to express their own religious sentiments, there must also be space for others, whether religious or not, to express themselves.

How do these parts of the story - resisting change and remaining aloof from society while at the same time expressing compassion and spending considerable energy to promote the welfare of those on the margins - fit together here in the United States?