The Rempel family of Rosenort, Man., is taking the booming success of its manufacturing business in stride.
In fact, 33-year-old entrepreneur Ken Rempel seems more worried about the dangers of success than he is fearful of failure.
“Financial gain is all from the Lord,” said Rempel recently in the modest office of his company, Lo-Pel Manufacturing, located on the family’s home quarter. He, his wife Gretta and his sister Phyllis are the lead partners in the company.
“If God has made us prosperous, we have to share that. We can’t be greedy with it,” said Rempel.
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He invented the company’s innovative earth scraping machinery with pencil and paper, not sophisticated computer programs. Lo-Pel now employs more than 20 people directly, and helps generate dozens more jobs at other local manufacturing suppliers. Rempel was recently recognized by the Business Development Bank of Canada, receiving its Young Entrepreneur Award for Manitoba.
The scrapers are exported to more than a dozen U.S. states and to Australia.
Rempel, who has no engineering background, said he was willing to take the entrepreneur’s leap of faith because his Mennonite beliefs made him embrace his inventiveness.
“Whatever the Lord gives you, work with it,” said Rempel, a conservative Mennonite.
Similar sentiments of commitment to doing the most possible are echoed by the Martens family of Boissevain, Man. They are longtime, committed donors and supporters of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which channels food aid to poor and disaster-stricken developing nations.
“Our (Mennonite) faith, the way we understand Christianity, is that what you are doing to the least of my brethren, you are doing to me. That is what it is all about,” said John Martens, a grain and cattle producer who participated in his first Foodgrains project in the early 1970s.
Gwen Martens, who also works at the Mennonite Central Committee thrift store in Brandon, said her beliefs commit her to social action.
“To us it’s a biblical injunction, because as it says in (the book of) Micah: What does the Lord expect of you? It’s to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly.
“These are the things we try to live out.”
These sentiments are common across the Prairies, where most farmers come from a Christian background. But something seems different about the effect of those beliefs in Mennonite communities, especially in southeastern Manitoba, arguably the centre of the Mennonite world.
While towns and villages across the Prairies have shrivelled, died and blown away by the hundreds, that’s not the case for the belt of Mennonite communities in southeastern Manitoba, where they first settled in the 1870s.
Formerly small farming towns like Steinbach and Winkler have been upgraded to city status and are stretching their boundaries in all directions. Major factories have sprung up in communities like Rosenort and Altona as the fruit of local Mennonites’ labours.
Although most of the land around these communities is not of the highest quality, the farm economy is also healthy compared to other prairie regions. Large hog barn complexes dot the landscape, on-farm manufacturing is booming and the local roads rumble and roar with trucks.
People in this area donate lots of money to organizations such as the foodgrains bank and the MCC, showing that capitalism can co-exist with social commitment.
So the question arises: where does this economic and social drive come from?
Mennonite people and experts on the religion say industriousness and social commitment are woven deeply into the Mennonite psyche, based on biblical principles embraced at the birth of anabaptism almost 500 years ago.
The religion was born in the 1530s after many Dutch anabaptists embraced the biblical views of Menno Simons. Anabaptists believe that only adults can willingly consent to becoming a Christian, and so only adult baptisms of faith are accepted.
Anabaptists put emphasis on the New Testament, are generally pacifist and believe the government should not have a role in religion.
The Mennonites were joined by other anabaptists in central Europe, often facing intense persecution by the Roman Catholic church, official state Protestant churches and secular authorities. Many moved ever eastward, to Prussia, Poland and finally Russia, in search of peace and opportunity. Often they would settle with the blessings of the government, but after achieving prosperity would draw the ire of neighbours and be compelled to move again.
The mass migration of Mennonites to North America began during the latter half of the 19th century, as thousands emigrated from Russia to the United States and then Canada. Thousands more fled Russia after the communist revolution again brought famine and persecution to the sect.
Often in their history, when free of persecution for long enough, Mennonites have become economically successful.
Ken Reddig, director of Winnipeg’s Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, thinks the group’s social commitment and economic prosperity today are based on a centuries-held theology that promotes work, creativity, humility and commitment.
“The theology is that we are put here with a purpose, and the purpose is to make things better,” said Reddig.
Industriousness is driven by a sense of thrift, a rejection of waste that includes wasting time in non-productive pursuits.
Creativity is driven by the belief that “God was creative when he created the world, and we also are to be creative as we work within the world which we were given.”
Central to this notion is the belief that every individual has a gift and should feel obliged to use it.
Reddig also said Mennonites are willing to learn from their neighbours and embrace their successes, which helps new businesses grow in Mennonite communities.
“If someone does something that works, everyone else says ‘I can do that too,’ ” said Reddig.
Humility is promoted among Mennonites by reading the New Testament urgings of Jesus and his apostles to live frugally and avoid the extravagances of wealth. This leads many Mennonites to reinvest most of their profits in their businesses, to donate large sums to charities, and to avoid living in luxury.
“I know a number of Mennonites worth tens of millions of dollars, and you’d never know it,” said Reddig.
“I know one worth more than $100 million who is leaving almost all of it (when he dies) to different organizations.”
The chair of Mennonite studies at the University of Winnipeg, Royden Loewen, wonders, “to what extent is this a Mennonite ethic, and to what extent is it the Protestant work ethic?”
Max Weber, a German sociologist at the beginning of the 20th century, argued that modern capitalism erupted out of the penchant of Protestants to be industrious, innovative and unwilling to enjoy the fruits of their economic success. They reinvested most of their profits in their businesses, causing the businesses to further prosper.
This has seemed to carry on in Mennonite communities, as it has for five centuries, often for pragmatic as much as religious reasons.
“Mennonites have often been socially isolated. You’re not part of the elite, so you don’t get ahead by being in finance or law or in any of those sectors of the economy that are dominated by the elite,” said Loewen.
“There’s a belief that if you’re going to get ahead, you have to get ahead by honest hard work.”
But whether it’s a Mennonite ethic or a Protestant one, it’s clear many Mennonites hold it in spades. And other Mennonite characteristics have also held.
For instance, Loewen said, Mennonites are far more committed to rural and farm living than the average Canadian. By 1921 half of Canada’s population lived in towns and cities, but more than half of the Mennonite population lived in villages and on farms until 1971. And cities like Winkler and Steinbach are really just grown-up farm towns, Loewen said.
These roots in agricultural life grow out of a Mennonite commitment to farming, which Loewen said comes from the sect’s reading of the New Testament.
“There has been a teaching that farming is the most sacred of the vocations,” said Loewen.
“A preacher in 1833 said (that) to be a farmer was the life most conducive to emulating the humility of Christ.”
This may explain the Mennonites’ success with rural communities, Loewen said. Unlike other ethnic and religious groups, which are not specifically committed to rural living, Mennonites cling to the soil and will do anything to make it work.
But despite appearances, they may not necessarily be more economically successful than other groups in Canadian society, he said. Rural Mennonite successes are visible because they stand out in the relatively uncluttered rural economy and because many other people have left the countryside. The biggest Mennonite business success stories may be in cities like Winnipeg, but they are lost in the larger and busier urban economy.
Loewen said Mennonite social commitment to organizations like the foodgrains bank and the MCC also remain strong, but he cautioned that Mennonites were not always great benefactors to society at large.
“Mennonites are much more charitable in the last 50 years than traditionally,” said Loewen. Mennonite food aid shipments began with efforts of North American Mennonites to get food to their relatives and co-religionists in Russia, who were facing starvation early in the last century.
It wasn’t until after the Second World War that Mennonites seemed to commit to helping humanity at large. He thinks it was a response to the Mennonite experience during the war, in which many were sent to work camps for refusing to serve in the military. A lot of soul-searching and recommitment to the faith occurred then.
“Pacifism was reinforced in them, because they were tested on it, went to the camps and had to do some thinking on it,” said Loewen.
“Religion cost something. And the minute it costs something, it becomes meaningful.”
But with the wartime recommitment generations past, will the Mennonite incarnation of Christianity continue in its present, apparently robust form?
One snowy November night, three Mennonite pastors from Grunthal and Steinbach discussed this issue during their monthly meeting.
“It’s very precarious whether these things carry on,” said Gary Martens, a University of Manitoba crop scientist and lay pastor.
“It’s as precarious as the Christian religion. Religion only passes on one generation at a time. There’s no guarantee it will carry on.”
Martens, fellow lay pastor David Reimer and senior pastor Darryl Klassen all agreed that some of the traditional Mennonite industriousness, humility and social commitment seem to have faded as Mennonites assimilate in Canadian society.
Klassen said Mennonites cannot afford to assume their beliefs will remain if they are not committed to practising them. He has visited an apparently typical Mennonite community in Paraguay that has almost lost all spiritual connection to its past.
“They’re prosperous, but they are also faithless,” said Klassen, noting that some of the Paraguayan Mennonite farmers treat local Indian workers almost as “slave labourers.”
Martens said the same problem occurred in Russia, when Mennonites became wealthy and forgot their spiritual commitment to humility, generosity and fair treatment of others.
“Some abused their workers,” he said.
Klassen said Manitoba Mennonites could lose their biblical faith and continue being prosperous – for a while.
“I think the ethic of work would carry on for a couple of generations, but then what? What would it be based on?”
Klassen is not against Mennonite beliefs evolving and developing with time, but he hopes modern Mennonites don’t lose their connection with the Bible, which has been the source of all their values since the 16th century.
“Anabaptist values evolve, but biblical values carry on.”
Reimer said that as long as core Mennonite teachings on the Bible are embraced, the sect’s social commitment should continue.
“All Christians have the Sermon on the Mount and all Christians have Revelations. But which do you take literally? To Mennonites, we take the Sermon on the Mount literally. We concentrate on that,” said Reimer.
Loewen said since the beginning of Mennonitism, adherents have focused on emulating the example of the earliest Christian believers, rather than on the intricacies of theology.
“The Mennonite interpretation of Christianity has as much to do with following Christ as having faith in Christ,” said Loewen.
Gwen and John Martens hope their Mennonite beliefs can carry on in today’s less work-focused culture.
“We’re pretty used to our leisure time,” said Gwen. “We like to golf and we like going on a holiday every winter.”
She said the couple hopes their two single sons, who farm with them, will pick up the same commitment to social causes that they have shown for farming. It’s already hard to find younger Mennonites to volunteer at the Brandon MCC store.
“Our younger people don’t have the time,” Gwen said.
“They’re running to hockey games and all these things. Life is very busy. But who is going to carry on all this important work that has been started?”
John said he has heard young members of their local church are “surprisingly generous,” and that gives him hope for the future of the faith.
Loewen said a common observation about Mennonite families today is that if they have three children, one will remain Mennonite, one will become an evangelical Christian and one will become secular. The survival of the Mennonites’ unique Christian synthesis is not assured. It has died out in many countries in Europe, such as the Netherlands.
But in recent years, thousands of Mennonites from across the world have immigrated to southern Manitoba, drawn to what is now seen as the capital of the Mennonite world.
Reddig hopes that Mennonites can stick to their principles and faith while existing amicably with the surrounding community, because that is the core of the sect’s success in Manitoba so far.
“I think the common faith is integral,” said Reddig. “It’s the core.”
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