The Waterloo Mennonites

J. Winfield Fretz

Description

The Waterloo Mennonites is truly a communal book: the substance treats the communal aspect of the Mennonite community in all its complexity, while the book itself came about through communal effort from the students and researchers assisting Fretz, the various organizations and individuals providing support, the larger community including the two universities and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and public funding agencies.

This book seeks to derive a clearer understanding of the sociological characteristics of a single Mennonite community, beginning with the historical and religious background of the Waterloo Mennonites, reviewing their European origins, their ethnic identification, and their immigration experience. It also examines their basic institutions: religion and church, marriage and the family, education and the school, economics and earning a living, government and how they relate to it, their use of leisure time and methods of recreation. It also looks at the way Mennonites interact with the larger society and how that society responds.

Sujets

• Religión
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554586868
• Langue: English

Extrait

The WATERLOO MENNONITES
A Community in Paradox
The WATERLOO MENNONITES
A Community in Paradox

J. Winfield Fretz

Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press for Conrad Grebel College
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Fretz, J. Winfield (Joseph Winfield), 1910- The Waterloo Mennonites
Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-88920-985 (bound) ISBN 0-88920-984 (pbk).
1. Mennonites - Ontario - Waterloo (County). 2. Mennonites - Ontario - Waterloo (County) - Social conditions. I. Title.
BX8118.6.057F73 1989 289.7 71344 C89-093352-9
Copyright 1989 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
89 90 91 92 4 3 2 1
Cover design by Vijen Vijendren

Printed in Canada
The Waterloo Mennonites: A Community in Paradox has been producedfrom a manuscript supplied in electronic form by the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means-graphic, electronic or mechanical-without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 379 Adelaide Street West, Suite Ml, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1S5.
Cover: Photograph of Amish man by David Hunsberger and photograph of teenage girl by James Hertel.
Contents
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Chapter
1. Meet the Mennonites of Waterloo
2. Pilgrimage and persecution in Europe
3. The coming of the Mennonites to Waterloo
4. Mennonites as community builders
5. Changing population patterns in Waterloo
6. Beyond the ethnic label
7. The element of faith in shaping community
8. Being the church and doing its work
9. Winning and losing church members
10. The family s response to change
11. As the school so goes the church
12. Farming-the sacred vocation
13. Occupations shape the church
14. Leisure shapes a way of life
15. Health and welfare in forms old and new
16. Finding in politics a way to serve
17. Credit, money, and mutual aid
18. Standing in the way of change
19. Mennonites as seen by their neighbours
20. Tomorrow turns on choices made today
Appendix
1. Identification of Mennonite groups in the Waterloo study
2. Waterloo County becomes the Regional Municipality of Waterloo
3. Occupational categories, gainfully employed Waterloo area Mennonites, 1972
4. Size of congregations in ten conferences
5. House of Friendship program, 1987-1988
6. Explanatory comments on Mennonite census taken by J. Winfield Fretz
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
List of Tables
Table
1-1. Speculators who bought Indian land
4-1. Waterloo County area Mennonites
5-1. Mennonite percentage of Waterloo County population, 1861-1971
5-2. Rural/urban population distributions, 1971
5-3. Mennonites as percentage of total county population
6-1. Ethnic classification of Waterloo County Amish and Mennonite groups
6-2. Waterloo County s English and German population, 1881-1971
6-3. Waterloo County ethnic composition, 1961 and 1971
6-4. Distribution of most common Mennonite surnames
6-5. Waterloo County Mennonite nicknames
6-6. Attitudes to future of Pennsylvania-German dialect
8-1. Mennonite groups in order of Waterloo County appearance
8-2. Conservative-progressive rating scale of eight Mennonite groups
8-3. Mennonites by country of origin and by cultural accommodation
8-4. Contrasting characteristics of ministerial roles
8-5. Two contrasting methods of church financing
9-1. Inter-Mennonite church and conference transfers 1950-1970
9-2. Mennonite gains from non-Mennonite denominations 1950-1970
9-3. Waterloo area church memberships 1911 and 1971
9-4. Mennonite church methods of accession, 1950-1970
9-5. Church membership compared with unbaptized children, 1972
9-6. Percentage of inactive members in progressive groups, 1972
9-7. Absentee-inactive church members, 1972
9-8. Reasons for termination of church memberships, 1950-1970
9-9. Transfers to non-Mennonite denominations, 1950-1970
10-1. Marital status among Waterloo Mennonites, 1972
11-1. Waterloo area Amish and Mennonite elementary schools
12-1. Farms and farm population by townships, 1971
12-2. Percentage of Mennonite farm ownership by conferences
12-3. Distribution of types of farming, 1969
12-4. Machinery inventory of progressive Mennonite farmer
12-5. Agricultural census data, 1971
12-6. Types and numbers of Mennonite farm industries
13-1. Jobs taken by former Old Order and Waterloo-Markham Mennonites when leaving the farm for the city
13-2. Waterloo Mennonites by major occupational categories
13-3. Members of one Waterloo area urban church, 1980
14-1. Types of leisure-time activity and percentage of rural-urban participation
17-1. Income categories by households, 1976
17-2. Mennonite household incomes by age groups, 1976
17-3. MCU summary data by five-year intervals
17-4. Mennonite Credit Union loan statistics, 1985-1986
20-1. What it means to be a Mennonite
List of Illustrations
Frontispiece: The Brubacher House
Map of Waterloo County and environs
Figure 8-1: Comparison of Waterloo County Mennonites with other prominent religious bodies
Photographs
An Old Order Amish man transporting a gasoline engine
Mutual aid in traditional form-a barnraising
Mutual aid in contemporary form. All Credit Union members are Mennonite or Brethren in Christ
The first of the Zehr s Market chain, opened in 1950
An Old Order Mennonite farm with many additions to the home
Old Order Mennonite school with children playing
A symbol of progressive Mennonite education: Conrad Grebel College
Presentation of a quilt, a traditional Mennonite art form, to Lieutenant Governor Lincoln Alexander
Sixtieth anniversary commemorating the arrival of Russian Mennonites in 1924
Interior of an Old Order Mennonite meetinghouse
The Waterloo United Mennonite Church in 1953: first pipe organ in a Waterloo region Mennonite church
Wedding photograph, progressive Mennonite couple of the 1890s
Old Order Amish boy, coat fastened with hooks and eyes
Recycling program, initiated by Mennonite Central Committee
Old Order Mennonite boys returning to the barn with a full load of hay
Progressive Mennonites at a youth convention
The Brubacher House (Sketch by Tim Mosher)
REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY OF WATERLOO
Foreword
Like Jews and Gypsies, Mennonites can see Canada from an extra vantage point, one denned by centuries of separate, nomadic, persecuted history. Distinct traditions give Mennonites a broader, critical perspective we in the mainstream can acquire only by getting to know minority cultures, working to understand them, and looking at ourselves through their eyes.
Thus did I contact Winfield Fretz in the winter of 1973, asking how I could arrange for some of my students from the University of Western Ontario to visit the Old Order community near Waterloo. Fretz was then president of Conrad Grebel College. As a junior professor who had met him but once, I hesitated to bother him for help, but I knew no one else to call.
Fretz not only set up our visit but took the afternoon to be our guide. He crowded us into the parlor of a minister s farmhouse and let us all sit spellbound by a family s gentleness, simplicity, and intimidating strength. What I remember most was Fretz himself. Information and detail flowed from him, and in their midst not just fascination but reverence for a people whose life is a witness that the best of the twentieth century is not good enough.
Fretz s gift to us that day, refined and enlarged by fifteen further years of research, is now offered in these pages to whoever cares to read. It is a useful gift. No Canadian minority can teach what the Mennonites can. Neither aboriginal nor French nor English, neither Catholic nor exactly Protestant, they have yet been here since the eighteenth century. For that long they have practised here the peacefulness, mutuality and equality to which the rest of us from time to time aspire. Their community has specialized, so Fretz writes, in producing good common people rather than a few heroes of the faith or one or two persons who by one means or another achieved worldly fame. What a noble specialty!
Sociologists will rank this book with E. C. Hughes s study of Drummondville and Horace Miner s of St-Denis, among the best community studies yet done in Canada. Like Hughes and many other community ethnographers, Fretz comes from the Chicago school of sociology, with its emphasis on fieldwork and a pluralism of techniques for uncovering and portraying life as people live it. But this book copies no previous one. Against the background of the scores of Canadian community studies already published, this work is remarkable not only for its subject matter but for five extraordinary qualities.
First, it rests on two full decades of research, as opposed to the usual two or three years. It is thus more thorough than the typical study, also more sensitive to processes of change.
Second, far from being a new Ph.D., Fretz was already a mature scholar when he began t