Mennonite pacifism

Mennonite pacifism is the central religious principle through which the women of Molotschna assess whether to stay, fight, or leave. Rather than treating nonviolence as passive endurance, Agata Friesen and others argue that leaving is the course most consistent with peace, forgiveness, and care for their children. Their interpretation turns a doctrine invoked within a male-led colony into grounds for collective action, while exposing the difference between professed religious ideals and the conditions under which women are expected to live.

Doctrine Under Pressure

The debate takes place amid the aftermath of years of attacks on women and girls in the Molotschna Colony. The attackers have been identified as men from the colony, and Peters and the elders have called in the police. The remaining men have gone to the city to post bail, hoping the accused will return while awaiting trial. The women have only two days to organize a response before the men are expected back. Under the rule presented to them, they must forgive the men or leave the colony; the choice is made under threat, not in a setting of safety or free religious discussion.

The women’s deliberations also challenge the way their suffering has been treated by authorities. Ona Friesen asks what forgiveness can mean when the elders and bishop have decided that women do not need counseling because they were unconscious during the attacks. Her question links religious obligation to the women’s ability to know and describe what happened to them. If their experience is discounted, forgiveness risks becoming a demand imposed without recognition of its grounds. Pacifism, in this discussion, cannot be separated from questions of whose account is heard and who has the authority to define a faithful response.

Leaving as a Peaceful Choice

Agata argues that staying would place the women in the path of further violence, whether violence carried out against them or violence they might commit in response. To remain and fight, she warns, would turn the colony into a battlefield and put the women in conflict with the pacifist principle they regard as central to their faith. Mejal Loewen accepts Agata’s reasoning. The argument does not portray departure as an easy escape from danger: the women are choosing among constrained options, with little time and an unfamiliar outside world ahead of them.

Ona develops the case in terms of religious duty. The women, she says, are responsible for protecting themselves and their children and for bearing witness to their faith. If they stay, any forgiveness offered under pressure may be coerced rather than genuine, while the prospect of conflict threatens the commitment to peace. Leaving, by contrast, can teach their children that love, forgiveness, and nonviolence matter more than their fathers’ expectations. The decision therefore makes pacifism practical: it guides where the women will go and what they hope to pass on, not only what they refuse to do.

Agata also presents their decision as a matter of belonging. The women have no homeland apart from their faith, and she argues that they can preserve that faith by leaving rather than remaining in a place where violence threatens to govern their conduct. Salome Friesen sharply objects that the peace promised by this reasoning is not present in Molotschna. Her interruption does not erase the religious argument; it registers the distance between its promise of eternal peace and the women’s immediate circumstances.

Rejecting Weapons and Retaliation

The principle is tested again when the women consider how to protect themselves during departure. Salome proposes obtaining guns, possibly with help from August Epp, who has procured dynamite. Agata refuses. The women have no guns or whips, she insists; the existence of buggy whips does not make them instruments for attacking people. Greta Loewen adds that she has never whipped her horses, Ruth and Cheryl. The distinction is significant: the women are preparing to leave amid concerns that others may try to stop them, but they do not convert their fear into a plan for armed resistance.

This refusal is not presented as indifference to danger. Mariche Loewen worries that the Koop brothers might enlist men from the Chortiza Colony and Hiakjeke Colony to block the women’s departure. The group must consider that possibility, but Agata again maintains that weapons and punitive force are not acceptable means. The women’s commitment consequently requires more than a declaration of principle: it constrains their preparations even when they anticipate opposition. Their departure plan relies on moving at night and carrying supplies, rather than on a campaign to defeat those who might confront them.

Who Interprets the Faith

The women’s account of pacifism is bound up with a dispute over who can interpret scripture. Salome argues that the women do not know exactly what the Bible says because they cannot read it, and that their supposed duty to submit to husbands has been conveyed to them through their husbands’ claims about scripture. She challenges the authority of a religious interpretation that women have had little opportunity to examine for themselves. Ona agrees that their inability to read or write puts them at a serious disadvantage when biblical interpretation is being negotiated.

This contest makes pacifism more than a general ban on fighting. The women ask whether submission and staying are genuinely required by their faith, or whether male authority has represented them as religious duties. Salome identifies the problem not simply as missing information but as the male interpretation of the Bible being handed down to women. Their departure argument is therefore also an effort to reason about faith without treating the men’s interpretation as unquestionable. The book does not present the women as having equal access to scripture; it shows them making a collective religious argument from a position shaped by restricted literacy.

Care, Education, and Departure

The women extend their pacifist commitment beyond their immediate decision. Greta Loewen raises the question of re-educating the boys and men. Salome corrects the framing: it is not merely something the women would like, but an obligation if they are to uphold nonviolence and avoid conflict. Ona connects that responsibility to protecting children. Agata calls the decision instinctive as well as reasoned: the women are mothers acting for their children, while bringing their intellect and religious understanding into a decision from which they have long been excluded.

That responsibility also sets a limit on what departure means for their sons. Agata says boys who refuse to leave may remain in the colony, with their care entrusted to the Do Nothing women and their fathers. The women’s plan is thus not a claim to control every person’s choice. It combines a collective departure with concern for children who may not accompany them, and with an intention to influence the boys who do.

As the women prepare to leave that night, Agata asks whether the plan is agreed: they will travel after dark so they are not seen passing the Chortiza Colony and Hiakjeke Colony. August Epp reports that a map is concealed around a block of cheese and wrapped in ordinary brown paper; a safe and practical supplies are packed in Greta Loewen’s buggy, with dynamite and other items stored there as well. These arrangements give material form to the decision. Pacifism has not made the outside world safe or resolved the women’s uncertainties. It has, in their deliberation, determined that they will not answer the threat by fighting, and that leaving together is the means by which they intend to protect their children and remain faithful to peace.