Rule Requiring Forgiveness or Expulsion

The Rule Requiring Forgiveness or Expulsion makes continued membership in the Molotschna Colony conditional on the women forgiving the men accused of attacking them. Peters presents the choice as a religious obligation with a severe consequence: refusal means exile from the colony and, as the women understand the rule, loss of their place in heaven. The women’s debate exposes the rule’s central contradiction: a demand intended to secure forgiveness can make sincere forgiveness impossible.

Origins and terms of the rule

The immediate background is the colony’s response to the attacks. Molotschna is self-policed; after the accused men’s lives were endangered, Peters and the elders called the police, and the men were taken to the city. The remaining men then went there to post bail, hoping the accused could return while awaiting trial. Peters tells the women that when the men return, they will have the opportunity to forgive them. That opportunity is also an ultimatum: if they do not forgive, they must leave for an outside world they know nothing about. They have only two days to organize their response.

The rule therefore links three matters that might otherwise be distinct: the men’s return, the women’s response to the harm, and their right to remain within their community. Mariche explains that refusal to forgive, or refusal to accept the men’s apologies, would bring expulsion and excommunication. In her account, exile is not only separation from home; it threatens the women’s hope of eternal life. The rule gives religious consequence to a decision made under pressure, while placing the cost of that pressure on the women.

Forgiveness under pressure

Mariche argues that staying to fight would leave the women defeated, guilty of rebellion, and in breach of their commitment to pacifism. Even if they resisted, she says, they would still be required to forgive if they wanted God’s forgiveness and entry into heaven. Her reasoning shows how the rule narrows the available choices: resistance does not escape the demand, while refusal carries the threat of exile.

Ona challenges the idea that words of forgiveness can settle the matter. She asks whether coerced forgiveness is genuine and whether pretending to forgive without feeling it might itself be a deeper sin. She proposes that some harms, particularly violence against children, may be so difficult for a parent to forgive that God alone must assume responsibility for that forgiveness. Later, she argues that forgiveness has moral meaning only when it comes from the heart. It must be a matter of the women’s own souls, not compliance with what Peters or the accused men expect.

Mariche also points out that the attackers have not asked to be forgiven. Salome replies that Peters will insist they ask, and that the women will then be pressured to forgive so as to avoid sin, excommunication, and exile. The demand thus risks treating an expected apology as a mechanism for securing the women’s compliance, rather than as evidence of accountability or repair. The women’s discussion distinguishes forgiveness freely chosen from forgiveness produced by the threat of losing home and religious belonging.

Faith, pacifism, and the decision to leave

The women do not simply reject their faith when they question the rule. Agata argues that remaining in the colony would expose them to further violence and place them in a position of conflict. In her reading, staying would betray Mennonite pacifism and risk turning the colony into a battlefield. Leaving, by contrast, could preserve their commitment to nonviolence and create enough distance for forgiveness, compassion, and love to become possible without being compelled. Agata describes departure as a duty to God, to their own souls, and to the children they must protect.

That argument changes the meaning of departure. It is not presented as a refusal of forgiveness or as a renunciation of faith; it is a way to resist the conditions under which forgiveness is demanded. Agata also says that leaving would teach the children to pursue pacifism, love, and forgiveness above their fathers’ expectations. The women’s decision therefore makes their interpretation of faith a practical alternative to the rule imposed by community authority.

The debate also reaches the authority used to justify women’s submission. Salome notes that women cannot read the Bible for themselves and must rely on men to interpret it; she argues that the demand to submit to husbands rests on what husbands say the Bible requires. This restricted access to scripture matters to the forgiveness rule because religious authority helps define both the women’s duties and the consequences of refusing them. The women’s effort to interpret their obligations for themselves challenges the assumption that Peters’s account is the only faithful one.

Consequences and significance

The rule shapes the women’s deliberations over whether to do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Salome says she can identify no disadvantage to leaving, while Agata connects departure to the preservation of peace and the protection of children. The group eventually agrees to leave after dark, avoiding the Chortiza and Hiakjeke colonies as they begin their departure. The rule’s threatened exile thus precedes and helps determine an exile the women choose for themselves, on terms they can defend as consistent with their faith.

Their preparations make the decision concrete. The narrator has wrapped a map around a block of cheese and hidden it in ordinary brown paper; the co-op safe is in Greta’s buggy, along with onions, soap, and pieces of wood to help the wheels in mud or to kindle a fire. These provisions point toward an unfamiliar outside world, but also show that the women are organizing their own movement rather than waiting for Peters to define their fate. The rule’s significance lies in that reversal: a demand meant to compel forgiveness and preserve communal authority becomes part of the reason the women leave, carrying their faith and their decision with them.