Ethnic Mennonite

The term Ethnic Mennonite refers to Mennonites of Central European ancestry and culture who are considered to be members of a Mennonite ethnic or ethno-religious group. The term is also used for aspects of their culture, such as ethnic Mennonite food like Pfeffernüsse, Borscht and Tweebak.

History

The most prominent ethnic Mennonite groups are Russian Mennonites (German: Russland-Mennoniten), who formed as an ethnic group in South Russia (now Ukraine), but who are of Dutch and German ancestry and speak Plautdietsch and Mennonites of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage who formed as an ethnic group in North America and who are of Swiss-German and German ancestry.

Because Mennonites for centuries almost only married inside their churches, they developed into ethnic groups in Russia since 1789 and in North America since the 1730s, where for a long time almost all of them kept their ethno-languages Pennsylvania German and Plautdietsch.

Until the middle of the 1950 the vast majority of Mennonites were of Central European ancestry and culture, all the same if they were conservative or modern and all the same if they lived in Europa, North America, Mexico, Paraguay or in Brazil. Since then, missionary activities of Mennonites led to so many converts in Africa, India, Indonesia and other places outside Europe and North America such that, in 2012, a majority of Mennonites are not of Central European heritage anymore.

Some conservative strains of Mennonites, like the Old Order Mennonites and the Old Colony Mennonites have kept their languages, traditional customs and the practice of endogamy until today, so that they are considered to be ethnic or ethno-religious groups. The same is true for the Hutterites and the Amish who are Anabaptists like the Mennonites, but have never engaged in mission activities on a larger scale.

In the last years some discussions have arisen around the term "ethnic Mennonite" and about the fact itself.

Literature

• E. K. Francis: The Russian Mennonites: From Religious to Ethnic Group in American Journal of Sociology Vol. 54, No. 2 (Sep., 1948), pp. 101–107.
• John H. Redekop: A People Apart: Ethnicity and the Mennonite Brethren, 1987.
• Royden Loewen: The Poetics of Peoplehood: Ethnoicity and Religion among Canada's Mennonites in Paul Bramadat, David Seljak: Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada, 2008.