Molotschna Women's Meeting of June 6–7, 2009

The Molotschna Women's Meeting of June 6–7, 2009, is a hastily organized gathering in which women of the Molotschna Colony consider how to respond to years of assaults and to the community’s demand that they forgive the accused men. Recorded by August Epp, the meetings turn a crisis imposed on the women into a collective deliberation: whether staying can be reconciled with their faith, and whether leaving can protect their children without surrendering their religious commitments.

Background and the meeting’s record

The meetings are organized by Agata Friesen and Greta Loewen after eight men from the colony are identified as responsible for assaults that had been attributed to supernatural forces. Since 2005, nearly every girl and woman in the colony has been affected. The attacks took place at night, and the women often awoke without understanding what had happened. The revelation that the perpetrators were real men, many related to their victims, changes the terms of the crisis: the danger is not an outside specter but a violence embedded within the community.

The accused men are taken to the city and imprisoned after their safety becomes a concern. Peters and the elders expect the women to forgive them when they return, presenting forgiveness as necessary for the women to remain in the colony and attain heaven. The women have only two days to organize their response. The meeting’s record identifies June 6 as a day of discussion and places August Epp in the hayloft where the women have gathered, waiting to do as Ona Friesen has asked. The minutes thus preserve a conversation among women who have little time and are making decisions under pressure from both immediate danger and religious authority.

Not every woman attends. Some, including Mariche Loewen and Greta Loewen, have marked themselves as content not to participate, while others continue the colony’s necessary work: with the men away, even a day without milking and feeding the animals could bring serious disruption. Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen agree to carry oral reports to women who remain at home. The meeting’s reach therefore depends on both deliberation in the loft and the practical labor that continues beyond it.

Safety, forgiveness, and the meaning of leaving

The central dispute is not simply whether to remain or go, but what each choice would demand of the women. Mariche Loewen argues that staying to fight would fail: the women would lose to the men, be treated as rebels, and be required to forgive the accused anyway if they hoped for divine forgiveness. Ona Friesen challenges the premise that coerced forgiveness is genuine. She considers whether forgiveness for violence against a child might be left to God, rather than demanded from a parent who cannot sincerely offer it.

The debate keeps religious obligation at its center. Agata Friesen argues that pacifism is a defining Mennonite commitment and that staying would risk drawing the women into a state of war, whether through violence against them or violence they might themselves commit. Leaving, in this reasoning, is not a rejection of faith but a means of living by it. Ona Friesen likewise argues that a person’s soul and peace are bound up with the presence of God, and that compassion may become possible at a distance. Agata Friesen develops that point into a collective case for leaving: distance could give the women perspective and allow forgiveness, love, and peace to be chosen rather than imposed.

Greta Loewen makes the argument through her experience driving Ruth and Cheryl along the narrow road between the Molotschna Colony and the Chortiza Colony. She had been frightened by the deep gullies beside the road until she learned to look farther ahead; when she focused only on the ground immediately before her, her buggy lurched from side to side. She uses that change in perspective to explain how leaving might make it possible to forgive and keep the peace. Mariche Loewen presses the cost of this choice: departure would separate children from their fathers and break up families. Agata Friesen answers that the women’s duty is to protect themselves and their children and to teach them pacifism, love, and forgiveness, even when those values conflict with their fathers’ expectations.

A collective case for departure

The women return to three reasons for leaving: they want their children to be safe, they want to keep their faith, and they want to think. That last aim leads the discussion beyond the assaults themselves. Salome Friesen points out that the women cannot independently verify what the Bible says because they have been unable to read it; their obligation to submit to husbands, she argues, has been conveyed to them by those same husbands. Her challenge exposes how restricted access to scripture can make a male interpretation appear to be the only religious one available.

Agata Friesen describes the women’s decision to guide their sons as an expression of motherhood rather than a rebellion against their community. She brings their instincts, intellects, and souls together as grounds for deciding what is best for the children. The practical consequences are also considered: boys who refuse to leave will be left in the care of the Do Nothing women and their fathers. The plan does not presume that every family will make the same choice, even as the meeting tries to establish a shared course.

The discussion also has moments of levity amid its serious work. Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen secretly place a flatbed wagon stacked with bales beneath a hayloft window. Autje stages a comic leap onto the bales, startling the women before they discover she is safe; Ona Friesen laughs, while the others try to conceal their approval. Later, Salome Friesen holds Miep and rejects the request to list disadvantages of leaving, seeing none. The contrast between the staged leap and the actual decision to depart makes the women’s humor part of the meeting’s texture without confusing play with the risks they are weighing.

Decision and preparation

As the discussion moves toward action, Agata Friesen says the women will leave after dark, so they will not be seen passing the Chortiza and Hiakjeke colonies. The women nod in agreement. Their departure is therefore planned as a deliberate movement, not merely a response in the heat of debate. The route beyond those colonies remains an open question, emphasizing how much of the outside world is unfamiliar to them.

The preparations have material as well as moral dimensions. August Epp wraps a map around a large block of cheese and covers it with brown paper. In Greta Loewen’s buggy, the Co-op Safe is placed beneath the back seat; onions, soap, and pieces of wood are packed for food, washing, traction, or kindling. Dynamite, the map, and more food are stowed in a hatbox at the front. These objects make visible the work required to turn a collective decision into a journey: the women need provisions, transport, and a way to orient themselves beyond the colony.

By the end of the meeting, departure has acquired a religious and collective meaning that challenges the demand for forgiveness as a condition of belonging. The women do not treat safety, faith, and thought as separate concerns. They argue that leaving can protect children, prevent a coerced response from being mistaken for genuine forgiveness, and preserve the possibility of living by pacifism. The meeting’s significance lies both in that argument and in its conversion into a plan, carried forward through the women’s shared deliberation and concrete preparations.