Pacifism and Nonviolence

Pacifism and Nonviolence become the women’s way of testing what faith requires when they are told to forgive men accused of attacking them or leave Molotschna Colony. Rather than treating peace as passive submission, Agata Friesen and the other women reason that they cannot remain faithful to nonviolence in a community where staying risks renewed violence, coerced reconciliation, and harm to their children. Their decision to leave is therefore framed not as a rejection of faith but as an attempt to practice it.

Doctrine Tested by the Crisis

The debate takes place against years of attacks on girls and women in Molotschna Colony. Since 2005, many victims had believed that unseen forces were responsible; the attacks were eventually traced to eight men from the colony, including relatives of the women. After the accused men were arrested, Peters and the elders’ arrangement put the women under pressure: when the men returned, the women would be expected to forgive them, while refusal meant leaving for an outside world they knew little about. The women had only two days to organize their response.

That choice makes the meaning of forgiveness inseparable from the meaning of nonviolence. Ona Friesen challenges the premise that the women can be required to forgive what they were not conscious of and cannot fully understand. She also questions the assumption that ignorance of the outside world makes the women free. Her argument shifts the discussion away from a formal religious obligation and toward the conditions under which forgiveness could be meaningful. If remaining in the colony entails a forced act of forgiveness, then it does not fulfill the spiritual value it claims to serve.

Leaving as a Practice of Peace

Agata argues that pacifism is central to Mennonite faith and that violence cannot be justified. In her account, staying would place the women in a direct collision with violence, whether they inflicted it or suffered it; the colony could become a battlefield. Remaining would therefore contradict their faith rather than prove their loyalty to it. Mejal Loewen accepts Agata’s reasoning, and the women increasingly treat departure as the option that best preserves their commitments.

Agata later develops the argument through the women’s duties to God, to themselves and their children, and to their faith. Staying, she says, risks making them adversaries of the accused men and leaving them with forgiveness imposed rather than freely offered. Leaving offers a better chance of living by pacifism, love, and forgiveness, while teaching their children that those values matter beyond their fathers’ expectations. The distinction is crucial: peace is not presented as a demand that women endure danger without protest. It is a standard for action, and the women judge the safety of distance more compatible with that standard than a return to the conditions they are being asked to accept.

Who Gets to Interpret Faith

The women’s discussion of nonviolence is also a dispute over who has the authority to explain the Bible. Salome Friesen points out that women cannot read the text for themselves and that the interpretations they receive are handed down by men. Ona agrees that their inability to read or write puts them at a disadvantage in any negotiation over biblical meaning. Salome further observes that submission to husbands is presented as a biblical command by the husbands themselves. In this setting, an appeal to religious duty can reinforce male authority even when women lack independent access to the scriptural text invoked against them.

This conflict gives the decision to leave its religious force. The women are not simply choosing between faith and freedom from faith; they are questioning whether obedience to male interpretations is the same as obedience to God. When Agata argues that the women should leave in order to uphold pacifism, she offers an interpretation grounded in the consequences of staying. The women’s restricted literacy makes that act of interpretation difficult, but it does not prevent them from reasoning together about what their professed values require.

Children, Collective Responsibility, and Limits

The women extend nonviolence beyond their immediate departure to the upbringing of their sons. Salome insists that re-educating boys and men is not merely desirable but necessary if the community is to uphold pacifism and non-conflict. Ona connects that responsibility to protecting children. Agata describes the decision as a collective maternal duty: the women will act according to their understanding of faith, love, and peace, bringing their instincts, intellects, and souls together. Boys who refuse to leave may remain in the colony in the care of the Do Nothing women and their fathers, showing that the plan does not require every child to make the same choice.

The women consider whether men could join them by signing their manifesto, but Salome fears that the document could be altered or its terms gradually weakened. Mejal agrees that this could return them to the conditions they are trying to leave. The concern makes nonviolence a continuing discipline rather than a declaration that resolves conflict once and for all: the women want a way of life in which their commitments cannot simply be absorbed into the old order.

Their preparations carry the argument into action. They agree to leave after dark so they will not be seen passing the Chortiza Colony and Hiakjeke Colony. Agata again refuses Salome’s proposal to obtain guns and whips. At the same time, the buggy is prepared with a map, food and practical supplies, including dynamite; the evidence records the dynamite as part of the packed equipment, not as proof that the women intend to use it. These details place their commitment to nonviolence alongside the material uncertainty of departure. Pacifism does not make the journey safe or erase the threat behind it. It shapes the means the women are willing to choose, and the kind of community they hope to carry with them.