A Canadian Writer Responds To Sunday's Post

The Titanic, a symbol of luxury and wealth, sails into the sunset.

Peter Reimer, a retired teacher from Manitoba, sent me the following response to yesterday's blog (below) in which he laments the extent to which Mennonites have embraced the pursuit of Mammon.

I post it here with his permission:

I think our Anabaptist ancestors have long pursued a "prosperity gospel," long before Andrew Carnegie in the late 19th century--and subsequently Oral Roberts in the mid-twentieth century--attributed a large part of their financial wealth to it being God's will. 

The advent of mercantilism and global trade/shipping of the Dutch shortly after the Reformation and the 17th century Dutch Golden Age meant that Anabaptist Mennonites were in a great position to capitalize. Less than 150 years after Schleitheim (1527), Mennonites were positioned at the top of Dutch society as traders, merchants, even the natural sciences. Huge estates and wealth were seen as the result of living a blameless life, a theological understanding perfectly aligned with commercial pursuits. 

This gave rise to Theileman von Braght's Martyr's Mirror (1660) in which he provides a scathing indictment of the wealth accumulation of fellow Mennonites, imploring a return to the ethics of Acts 2 or at least the Schleitheim Confession of the early Anabaptists. 

It seems martyr's are readily forgotten, or if not forgotten, at least silenced and resigned to a coffee table prop in a Mennonite household. From the Netherlands, to Prussia, to Russia (1789), to Canada (1874) the goals and results have always been the same, land and wealth accumulation, a pursuit of prosperity supported by a theology which sanctions these pursuits. 

Upon observing colonial settlers (perhaps Mennonites too), the Lakota leader Sitting Bull (1831-1890) is quoted to have said, "their love of possessions is a disease ... if America had been twice the size it is there still would not have been enough" (Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches). 

Here in Manitoba, Canada, where I am a resident, Mennonite Church Canada is silent on the pursuit of wealth of its congregants. Wealth is accommodated and prized. The more the wealth the more tithing? Whatever the case, the dis"ease" of wealth has us in its grip. 

In the ancient culture of the Sioux, Lakota, the practice of the "giveaway" meant that one gave all ones wealth to the community. The community's poorest individual was then considered to be the richest. It seems that the Sioux must have met Jesus long before 1492. Seems like Christianity has much to learn from the indigenous peoples of North America.