Mennonite Deviance From Early Anabaptist Economic Ethics Over History 

The economic principles of the original Anabaptists that started the Radical Reformation in the sixteenth century - the ways they handled the practicalities of money, property, and wealth - were as much an expression of their faith as any other part of their lives. 

Their spirituality and interpretation of the Bible was central to who they were and how they lived their lives, which set them apart from others in society who called themselves Christian. Unlike the Catholics who believed grace was received solely through the partaking of sacraments or monastic perfection-seeking, or the Protestants who believed that internal faith alone allowed someone to be saved by the grace of Jesus, Anabaptists emphasized discipleship, believing that true faith manifests itself as practically living out the grace and love modelled and provided by Jesus.[1]  

Although economic reform was not the initial intention, it went hand-in-hand with their spiritual reform. It was a universal understanding of the Anabaptists all across Europe at the time that if someone had made the decision to be baptized into the believer’s church, which implied that they had complete faith in one day being reunited , fulfilled, and restored by Jesus, and were filled with peace, hope, and self-sacrificial love of the Holy Spirit: “they would never cling to surplus goods or wealth when they saw a fellow member of the Body in need .”[2]   

Governed by this “distributive principle of sufficiency for all”[3] based on thorough, unapologetic study of the New Testament, applying literally Jesus’ teachings and the book of Acts, their churches had distinct, counter-cultural economic ethics. 

Although initially it was their intent that all of society would be reformed and would live in unity, as this “Body of Christ” or as the “kingdom of heaven on earth,”[4] with the amount of backlash and persecution they faced for their radical beliefs and practices that challenged the authority of the ruling church-state, it soon became clear that their utopian, heavenly kingdom of devoted, regenerated believers and followers of Christ would have to be lived out in communities separate from the rest of society.[5]

There were two main ways Anabaptist communities lived out their economic ethics. One was the “community of goods” model, in which all property and economic production of the community is communal and has to be justified for the good of the community rather than the individual so that there are no poor people among them.[6]  

Although there is uncertainty among historians as to whether this interpretation was universal among the first Swiss Anabaptists and was later deviated from, it is well known that this model was implemented by the Hutterites who still live by it to this day.[7]  

Although often accused of it, historians have also found no clear evidence that any of these Anabaptist groups have ever had communistic intentions - intentions to force this model on all of society. It was meant only for believers whose approach to these economic matters was love and care for the other.[8]

The other model, although often also referred to as the “community of goods,” is more appropriately referred to as the “voluntary mutual aid” model, in which it was permitted for individuals to own private property but expected that those in the church would support each other willingly and generously in times of need.[9] 

Property ownership was not seen as wrong in these communities, but they recognized that everything on Earth is ultimately owned by God - in the Christian view a human is “nothing more than a steward” when it comes to property and possessions according to Heinrich Seiler, an Anabaptist martyred in 1535.[10] They wanted to follow Acts 2 to 4 to the tee and they thought they would be doing better at this if economic production and consumption was controlled by individual households with a common fund to prevent any household in the community from entering into poverty.[11]

Their main principle again was caring for each other out of love, but this group believed that to truly act out of love in the biblical way, they had to have choice, they had to voluntarily share their resources with each other, just as they believed they voluntarily had to choose to put faith in Christ to be baptized.[12] 

They sometimes appeared to be legalistic and exclusive because of other economic principles highly promoted by leaders such as Menno Simons, such as wariness of working in commerce or as a trader or merchant, and the rejection of charging interest when lending money[13] but really these weren’t supposed to be principles forced upon anyone but were more the results of a theological analysis of how believers, regenerated by the Spirit of God should naturally live.[14]

It wouldn’t be outrageous to assume that descendants of these followers, who claimed to be part of the church and part of the Anabaptist or Mennonite tradition, would carry on living by the biblically-grounded economic ethics of the founders of their tradition. 

Looking at various groups of Mennonites over history and in the present day though, the economic practices and principles of this tradition have not seemed to always have remained consistent.

The Mennonites who lived in Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had similar patterns and experiences of wealth and poverty as the Mennonites who lived in the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries of whom they descended from.[15] 

In general, the economic life of this group of Mennonites has been influenced by many things other than the Bible or the spirituality of the group.[16]

For one thing both the Dutch and Russian Mennonites experienced persecution or forced migration, which resulted in periods of poverty and made the financial well-being of themselves and their families their primary concern, ahead of any biblical concerns.[17] Their communities still made it a priority to take care of their own poor, but rather than doing so out of the goodness of their hearts as the early Anabaptists had preached was the only way to do it, the deacons imposed levies on the wealthiest members of the congregations.[18]

The Dutch Mennonites were also influenced by the dominant Calvinist views of their society, which had an effect on how they viewed and treated the poor people among them. 

The essence of the Calvinist philosophy is that if people have economic prosperity it is a sign that they are righteous people in God’s eyes.[19] Adopting this philosophy led to Dutch Mennonites viewing people as deserving of their socioeconomic status, and efforts were not made ultimately for the sake of helping the poor and needy but rather to try to turn them into useful members of society.[20] 

Eventually the pursuit of wealth and economic prosperity became the norm and expectation and indeed there were times of great prosperity during the years many Mennonites resided in the Dutch Republic and later in Russia.[21]

Probably the greatest symptom of how far these Mennonites had deviated from the ancestors of their faith tradition economically was the conflict that erupted in the Russian colony of Molotschna in the mid-nineteenth century because of the highly unequal distribution of land.

Because of Russian policies that prevented Mennonite colonies from splitting up land, which became a problem as they grew, many members of the community became poor and landless. Not only did the wealthy, landowning members of the community do nothing to support their fellow church members in need, they also exploited them as cheap sources of labour.[22] 

When these poor proletariat assembled and tried to push for a reform to the communities, the ministers sided with the landowners and opposed them.[23] Eventually the Russian government stepped in and sided with the landless, helping to establish tax structures and revising policies on land use.[24]

This solution had no resemblance to the way of voluntary mutual aid of the Anabaptists a few centuries earlier.

The persecution the Mennonites originating from the Swiss/South German region of Europe faced, which led them to immigrate to North America in the seventeenth century well before any of the Russian Mennonite groups arrived, also had an impact on the way they lived out their economics.[25]

Most of the people who started the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement were peasants or artisans living in cities, but then when they faced persecution and were forced out of the cities and towns, agriculture became their main way of life as it didn’t require much interaction with others.[26] These Mennonite communities in Switzerland and surrounding areas were very innovative with their farming practices and they soon became very successful, even famous for their agriculture.[27] 

When many of these Mennonites moved to Pennsylvania and later other parts of North America, agriculture continued to be their main economic activity as the other settlers who moved to that area had more urban occupations and there was plenty of land for them to farm on, but eventually by the end of the American Civil War and into the twentieth century Mennonites also started to get into urban industries and even merchantry.[28] 

As they got into this kind of economic activity, which eventually led to many Mennonites being involved in the large corporate sector, it became clear that they could no longer live by the utopian Anabaptist ethics of living and producing communally as a faith community.[29]

In Mennonite Entrepreneurs, Calvin Redekop, Stephen C. Ainlay, and Robert Siemens speculate that the main reason there has been a “general evasion of looking critically at the centrality of economic factors in social life” in the Swiss Mennonite community that moved to North America has been the criticism and persecution the community has faced by non-Mennonite authorities and scholars accusing them of being communistic.[30]

By the mid-20th century, the majority of Mennonites who descended from these Swiss and Russian Mennonite communities had settled in the United States or Canada, so the economic values of North American Mennonites today have largely been influenced by the most recent experiences and values of their predecessors as well as the values of mainstream North American society.

Redekop et. al argue that because the Anabaptist belief system was so countercultural and focused on minute aspects of everyday living when it started out it was actually easier to define themselves as a people and live out distinct values such as pacifism.[31] 

The matter of economics and material consumption was a lot less straightforward and, because it was intertwined with many aspects of everyday life, once Mennonite groups were tolerated and began to interact with the society around they were constantly pressured, not always in a conscious way, to conform to society economically.[32] 

With the freedom Mennonites had in North America and their tradition having long ago moved past the voluntary mutual aid or community of goods ways of the early Anabaptists, it was natural for them to conform to the capitalist, materialistic culture, and many twentieth-century North American Mennonites began participating in trade, commerce and industry.[33] 

There was often discussion about what types of business activities were legitimate and which weren’t in Mennonite churches, but either way this was again another move away from the biblical ways of the original Anabaptists.[34] Many Mennonites became more loyal to their involvement in business and some would argue that this caused the church to assimilate and be plagued with negative influences of society in other ways.[35] There was also a trend of many successful business people leaving the church because they didn’t feel welcome by those with more conservative beliefs about economics and they felt other non-Mennonite groups of people were more hospitable to their business pursuits and way of life.[36]

Although there haven’t been any widespread attempts to challenge North American Mennonites to return to original Anabaptist economic ethics, Mennonites have attempted in many ways to use business and the capitalist system for good. 

For example, Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), is an organization founded in 1953, whose mission is “creating business solutions to poverty.”[37]

The main purpose of this paper is not to make an argument on whether Mennonite participation in business and trade can ever be a good thing or not but rather it is simply to illustrate that the overall values of the North American Mennonite church in general have become very far removed or at least very relaxed in comparison to the economic ethics of the founders of the church, and this can be traced back all the way to Swiss and Russian Mennonites in the late-sixteenth century.

In my own view however, I believe our world would be a better place if people who call themselves Christians, made more of an effort to study and apply the words of Christ to the way they handle even the most basic economic matters of their individual lives as the early Anabaptists did. 

We need to recognize that since our economic values are so interrelated with our values in general these matters are in essence about the strength of our faith and our love and care for each other.

Although we live in a different society in a different era than the early Anabaptists, I think we need to start asking ourselves this question posed by Arnold Snyder: “In what measure and manner might Anabaptist spirituality provide guidelines for our economic practice today?”[38] 

[1] Arnold Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics” in Anabaptist/Mennonite Faith and Economics, ed. Calvin Wall, Victor A. Krahn, and Samuel J. Steiner (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 14-15.

[2] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 7.

[3]  Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 6-7.

[4] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 5.

[5] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 6.

[6] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 7.

[7] James M. Stayer, The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), 96.

[8] Stayer, The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 99-100.

[9] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 7.

[10] Laban Peachey, “1957 Article” in “Mutual Aid”, Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Mutual_Aid. (1989)

[11] Stayer, The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 98.

[12] Stayer, The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 105.

[13] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 8-9.

[14] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 17. 

[15] James Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 27 (2011), 15.

[16] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 12.

[17] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 17-18.

[18] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 18-19.

[19] Wayne E. Nafziger, “Economics”, Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Mutual_Aid. (1989)

[20] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 20.

[21] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 21-22.

[22] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 22.

[23] Nafziger, “Economics.”

[24] Urry, “Wealth and Poverty in the Mennonite Experience: Dilemmas and Challenges, 22. 

[25] Perry Bush, "'If God Were a Capitalist, the Mennonites Would Be His Favorite People’: Economics, Mennonites, and Reflections on the Recent Literature."  Journal of Mennonite Studies 23 (2005), 81.

[26] Calvin Redekop, Stephen C. Ainlay, and Robert Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 19-20.

[27] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 20.

[28] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 22-23.

[29] Nafziger, “Economics.”

[30] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 24. 

[31] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 25.

[32] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 25.

[33] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 25.

[34] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 29.

[35] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 29-30.

[36] Redekop, Ainlay and Siemens, Mennonite Entrepreneurs, 30.

[37]Calvin Redekop, “Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA)”, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Mennonite_Economic_Development_Associates_(ME

DA)&oldid=92744. (1990) 

[38] Snyder, “Anabaptist Spirituality and Economics”, 18.