The Kleine Gemeinde

Klaas Reimer was elected minister of the Flemish Mennonite church in the Danzig area in 1801. He began to study the Bible, the Martyrs Mirror, and other books and came to the conclusion that there was no future for the Mennonites in the Danzig area. In 1804 he and 30 members of his congregation moved to the Chortitza settlement in in south Russia (Ukraine).

Since the Chortitza colony had no more room for a group of this size, Klaas Reimer and his group proceeded to the Molotschna settlement in 1805. These were of the Frisian church and in Reimer’s judgment they were too lax in church discipline and low in moral standards. Reimer’s difficult relationship with the Elder Jakob Enns was another factor in a separation of some families from the main church. Reimer’s group began to hold meetings in private homes in 1812. By 1814 the group of some 18-20 members considered itself organized as a church.

This small group had very strong ideas on nonconformity, humility, and church discipline. Among the practices they condemned among the Frisians were card-playing, smoking, drinking, higher education, musical instruments, mission work, and marrying one’s sister-in-law. Any worldly act, or even an expressed worldly sentiment, was punished with excommunication followed by shunning. Children were taught to take life seriously and, therefore, laughing and joking was frowned on. Swearing or the use of vain words was not tolerated. Some of these things were carried to such an extreme that their whole conception of a religious life became narrow and cramped. For this reason the movement remained small for almost a century. It was not an attractive church to join and was called in derision the Kleine Gemeinde, German for Little Church. Persecution by the big church probably strengthened them in their convictions, but they were weakened by dissensions and rivalries among leading characters inside the group.

In 1866 internal dissensions split the Kleine Gemeinde in two. In the next few years there were more divisions and attempts at reconciliation. Several years ago I wrote a Sunday School lesson stating the Elder Peter Toews had been instrumental in reuniting three of the groups. When the lesson was published it had been edited to say “the three groups,” as though a full reconciliation had been achieved. This was an unfortunate error. Peter Toews, in his booklet By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them, stated that there had been four groups.

The reconciliation of 1869 left the Kleine Gemeinde split in two, a larger group led by Elder Peter Toews and a smaller group led by Abram Friesen. This lasted only a few months. Elder Jacob Wiebe of the Friesen group was part of a congregation living in Crimea. This congregation experienced a spiritual revival and decided the baptism they had received while unconverted was invalid. When Elder Friesen refused to rebaptize them, they chose one of the group to baptize elder Wiebe and he baptized the others. They chose baptism by immersion, in a river, three times (for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost). After this, they realized they could no longer call themselves Kleine Gemeinde and chose the name Krimmer (German for Crimean) Mennonite Brethren.

These three groups came to North America in 1874. The Peter Toews group, 60 families, settled in Manitoba. The Abram Friesen group, 36 families, settled in six villages around Janzen, Nebraska. The Jacob Wiebe group, 20 families, settled near Hillsboro, Kansas. In the following years the Abram Friesen group slowly disintegrated and the Jacob Wiebe group grew rapidly. The idea of baptism by immersion in a river seemed entirely logical in the warmth of Crimea. Kansas has winters when such a baptism isn’t possible. I suppose the clincher came when they established congregations west and northwest of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Trine immersion in the North Saskatchewan River could work for about four months of the year. In 1960 the Krimmer Mennonite Brethren decided indoor baptism was OK and merged with the Mennonite Brethren Church of North America.

That leaves us with the Manitoba Kleine Gemeinde led by Peter Toews. Here are quotes from church history books that point out the missing element in their understanding og the gospel.

The first is from page 93 of This is My Heritage, published in 1995 by Gospel Publishers and refers to the beginning of the Kleine Gemeinde: “Although they were rightly concerned about the lack of spiritual life in the churches of that area, they lacked clear Bible teaching on conversion and the assurance of salvation.”

The second is from pages 187-188 of The Enduring Church, by Ben Giesbrecht, published in 2009 by Gospel Publishers, and speaks of the condition of the Kleine Gemeide after they arrived in Manitoba: “Their bishop, Peter Toews, was greatly concerned about his own salvation and that of his flock. As he searched the Scriptures, the Martyrs Mirror, the writings of Menno Simons, and other writings, he was troubled in spirit. A spiritual conversion as a prerequisite for baptism into the church was lacking.”

In searching for the answer to his concerns, Peter Toews made contact with John Holdeman in Kansas. Holdeman came to Manitoba in 1879 and in 1881 Peter Toews went to visit the congrgations in Kansas of what is now known as the Church of God in Christ, Mennnite. Here are a few excerpts from the letter he wrote to his church in Manitoba:

After meeting one young man who had been separated from the church after giving a false testimony of being born again and who had then found peace with God and been added to the church: “I thought that if God, in that church, revealed such displeasure when only one man who had not experience conversion was baptized, what would become of our baptism? How many of us have received baptism on false testimony? There is something to be learned from divine severity thus displayed.”

“We are not baptized into one body, but are torn and divided, some walking in self-chosen humility and worshipping of angels (of whom we should not be beguiled, lest we lose our reward),”

“I fear to build with members of torn and divided groups which are not baptized into one body, the Church of Christ–to build a kingdom to which only a few of us belong. We all profess that we are baptized into the body of Christ, even though many of us are merely walking in voluntary humility.”

Peter Toews then resigned as elder of the Kleine Gemeinde and invited John Holdeman to come and preach to them in Manitoba. The result was that one third of the Kleine Gemeinde members were converted and baptized. This was the beginning of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite in Western Canada.

“Through the evangelistic labours of Elder John Holdeman in 1879 and 1881, assisted by minister Mark Seiler in 1881, a large group of these people were convinced of the need of a new birth. After experiencing this new birth, they were added to the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, through baptism.” This is speaking of the Greenland, Manitoba congregation. Histories of the Congregations, pages 96-97, published 1999 by Gospel Publishers.

The remaining members of the Kleine Gemeinde invited Elder Abram Friesen to come to Manitoba and ordain a new elder for them. This appears to be the last official contact between the two groups. Some of the Kleine Gemeinde emigrated to Mexico and Belize in the 1920s and those remaining in Canada reorganized as the Evangelical Mennonite Conference.

The point of this rather long article is that the spiritual lineage of members of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite does not coincide with their genealogical lineage. I will write more about the spiritual lineage in an upcoming post.

• The opening paragraphs of this article are based on the article on the Kleine Gemeinde in the Mennonte Encyclopedia, which also appears online on GAMEO (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.)
  *Quotations from the letter of Peter Toews to his church are from Writings and Experiences of our Fathers, published 1985 by Gospel Publishers. The letter is found on pages 150-157.