Family, Church, and Market: A Mennonite Community in the Old and the New Worlds, 1850-1930

T.D. Regehr is a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan and
author of The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Entrepreneurship and
Politics.

This book describes and analyzes how members of one small Mennonite
group—the Kleine Gemeinde (small church)—adapted to social,
economic, and political conditions, opportunities, and problems in
widely separated settlements at or near Borosenko, Russia; Steinbach,
Manitoba; and Cub Creek, Nebraska.

A remarkable collection of personal diaries, letters, memoirs, sermons,
and family records, supplemented by interviews, census data, and
relevant secondary sources, provide the source material for this social
history. Since many of the diaries and letters were written by women,
this study provides exceptionally informative insights into family and
community life from a female perspective.

The growth of two local market towns—Steinbach, Manitoba, and Jansen,
Nebraska— provides an unusually interesting contrast. “In
Steinbach,” Loewen tells us, “the settlers saw a town that could
serve as a social mechanism to safeguard old values; in Jansen they saw
the opposite, a town that was a threat to a solidaristic community.”
In his discussion of these remarkable differences, Loewen challenges
standard explanations of the differences between Canadian and American
frontier experiences, focusing instead on deliberate but divergent
strategies adopted by the leaders.

A major force for change in all three communities was the appeals of
new evangelical and religious movements of renewal. Those influences had
been rejected at Borosenko, and were resisted by the leadership in both
Manitoba and Nebraska. But that resistance eventually shattered the
solidarity of the communities and led to the establishment of branches
of other Mennonite churches, most notably the Holdeman, Bruderthaler,
and Krimmer Mennonite Brethren.

This innovative work offers new, well-documented, and cogently argued
interpretations of the different ways in which members of one small
sectarian group adapted to changing conditions on three widely separated
settlement frontiers.