Nationalism
Introduction
What are you willing to die for? The most universally accepted answer to this question in practice in the last 250 years has been nationalism, an ideology that requires loyalty to the nation as the ultimate commitment of human beings. Unfortunately no scholarly consensus exists for the definition of a nation, in part because for every rule there seems to be some exceptions. Most definitions, however, deal with a community shaped by some combination of a common language, history, territory, religion, and/or ethnic makeup embedded in a longer-standing cultural heritage that defines itself by its difference from other nations.
For Mennonites, nationalism has been one of the most persistent and difficult challenges of the last two centuries because their primary commitments have traditionally been to discipleship, modeling their lives on the teachings and example of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible, and have included love of the other, even the enemy. Mennonites have responded to nationalism in two broad and overlapping patterns of accommodation or evasion. Among those who accommodated to nationalism in some form the reception ran the gamut from enthusiastic acceptance to reluctant compromise, among those who tried to evade it the main options were migration or renewed efforts at separation from the surrounding culture. Given the pervasive nature of nationalism, however, virtually all Mennonites exhibit an affiliation to the nation in which they reside in some form.
Although the academic study of nationalism goes back over a century, it is only recently that scholars have started to investigate more systematically the essential role that military violence, conscription, and the total involvement of society in warfare have played in the development of nationalism. Because Mennonite encounters with nationalism originally focused on these issues and directly challenge the nation’s very definition by preaching the love of the other instead of fear or exclusion, the historical experience of their tenacious opposition and eventual accommodation with nationalism and the military service it requires illuminates particularly well the foundational role of the violence of nation on nation in the modern world.
Origins of Nationalism
Most theories of nationalism link its emergence to the rise of modernity, the urban, industrialized way of living, and date the origins of this ideology to the Enlightenment of the latter 18th century. The Enlightenment sought to rationalize the organization of society and found it necessary to delegitimize monarchical government and institutional religion to achieve this goal.
One influential new model of society was Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s On Social Contract of 1762. He argued that the only legitimate basis of government was the consent at some level of the governed, a consent that only makes sense if the government serves the interests of the people. Rousseau labeled these interests the general will, the only legitimate sovereign in the modern world. In chapter eight of book four On Civil Religion Rousseau suggested that this style of society would require a civil religion of the citizen to keep social unity. Significantly for Mennonites, Rousseau maintained such a religion would require the banishment of those who could not believe and uphold this new, higher religion and the death penalty for those who would not sacrifice their lives to defend it.
While Rousseau’s theories were nowhere put into direct practice, their spirit animated developments in the French Revolution and the nineteenth century. Crucially the first French Republic in 1793 instituted the first modern draft on the basis of this ideology that requires citizens as sovereigns of the nation to also kill and die in its defense. At the same time liberal political theories fleshed out abstract claims of the general will with specific demands for political rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, and religion as well as inviolable property rights. As these rights were owed to the people as sovereigns, liberals also acknowledged that citizens had duties of obeying the laws, paying taxes, and defending the state. The shift of political rights and duties from the nobility to the masses paralleled the shift in economic systems from feudalism to industrial capitalism and in politics from absolute monarchies to constitutional monarchies and republics on the continent of Europe from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, thus this is the time period when nationalism went from being a theory of intellectual and economic elites to being one embraced by masses of peasants and workers.
Given the centrality of nationalism to the life and death of twentieth-century humans, especially in Europe, an extensive literature has been developed. In the middle third of the century Hans Kohn and Carlton Hayes explored the idea that in a secularizing modernity nationalism had replaced Christianity as the main religious force, an idea reaffirmed by Anthony Smith recently who noted however the compatibility of nationalism with traditional religious ideas of being a chosen people. By the 1980s other theories came to the fore. Ernst Gellner, for example, argued that the adaptations necessary to move from an agrarian society to an industrial one swept away "deep barriers of rank, of caste or estate." (Nations and Nationalism, 25). As society underwent these wrenching transformations and people shared common experiences of mobility and education, a type of conformity appeared that then found expression in nationalism. For Gellner social structures alone explained, indeed required, the emergence of nationalism.
At the same time, another set of theories described nationalism and nations as cultural artifacts, that is, ideas and cultural practices constructed over time by individuals and social forces. Benedict Anderson referred to nations as Imagined Communities. In his view, nations derived in part from people imagining their communities as existing within the orbit circumscribed by the administrative boundaries in which their lives, careers, and dreams unfolded. Those ties were reinforced by the ability of modern print capitalism to captivate readers via novels and newspapers as it taught them to imagine their immediate and personal connections to other readers who lived within this same orbit. John Breuilly has argued that the state-building actions of monarchs made the state more active in the development of nationalism, a claim especially relevant for Mennonites since nationalism drove states to institute universal conscription, a move many monarchs resisted before nationalism because of its implication that the people as defenders of the nation were then sovereign. Because Mennonites were mostly directly confronted by nationalism in the guise of conscription, Breuilly’s attention to state-building is particularly crucial to understanding nationalism’s impact on Mennonites. Anthony Smith has stressed the importance of ethnic ties to a common myth of origin and meaning to the foundations of nations and advanced theories that help explain why many Mennonites of European descent think of themselves as an ethnic group, but not as a nation.
Mennonite Accommodations with Nationalism
The civil equality that nationalism insists on for members of the nation opened up a promising avenue of acceptance for Mennonite who had long faced persecution and discrimination. The starting position for religious minorities in the eighteenth century had been that of toleration, which often meant severe limits on livelihoods, public worship, property rights and marriage options outside the faith along with extra taxes and fees in exchange for a legal right to reside in the monarch’s territory. This situation applied to Jews as well as to Mennonites, although scholars have made relatively few efforts to compare these two groups.
Especially notable for Mennonites were payments in times of war in exchange for protection and toleration by monarchs, for example the Dutch Doopsgezinde to William of Orange in 1572, Prussian Mennonites to the crown in 1813, and Russian Mennonites to the tsars during both the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars. In all three cases, Mennonites at the time did not see these payments as linked to support of the nation but rather as the price of toleration. The Prussian state, however, explicitly stated the trade off between embracing nationalism, putting service to the nation in the form of military service ahead of religious tradition, and having the civil rights of other citizens of the Prussian or German nation. From 1801 to 1867 Mennonites who accepted military service were to be excused from paying extra taxes and promised full property rights. After 1867 most German Mennonites accepted this trade-off with gratitude. A new Mennonite Law of 1874 gave them full civil rights with only a limited exception in the area of church taxation. Mennonites who accepted and propagated the new pride in the achievements of the German nation were rewarded with new economic and educational opportunities.
Roughly two-thirds of German Mennonites served as regular soldiers in World War I even though the legal option of serving as noncombatants was open to them. The Mennonite press reported on every Mennonite Iron Cross awardee and every casualty until censorship ended such public reporting at the end of 1915. The distance traveled by Mennonites in Europe toward accepting nationalism is highlighted by the fact that by the end of the nineteenth century many Mennonites in the Netherlands, Germany and Russia anachronistically accepted and even celebrated those earlier payments as patriotic gifts in support of the nation. They were also relieved and proud to be accepted as part of the nation now instead of being harassed and discriminated against as perpetual outsiders. Their acceptance into and strong desire to contribute to the German nation removed a critical fulcrum from which they might have objected to projects like World War I or the rise of National Socialism that purported to be defending Germans.
In the United States, Mennonite failure to support the revolutionary cause cost them voting rights in Pennsylvania for a time. The violence and oppression meted out to Mennonite conscripts in World War I along with growing high school education and acculturation led 40% of US Mennonites drafted to serve as regular soldiers in World War II. Many congregations in the Great Plains placed US flags in their sanctuaries at this time where they remained for decades. For many Mennonite soldiers and their families in whatever country, the pride of service and joy of acceptance in the nation have become important parts of their identity and the embrace of nationalism made it possible for these relative outsiders to become fully accepted and valued members of their respective nations.
Other Mennonites have been more ambivalent in their acceptance of nationalism. One form of this has been to highlight a two-kingdom theology whereby the sword is given to government to employ for justice, but not for Christians to wield. One expression of this type of accommodation would be the purchase of substitutes, an option for Mennonites in the Netherlands for a time, Germany outside of Prussia until 1867, and at various times in the United States until World War I. Another example would be Mennonite support for politicians who favor a nationalist, aggressive foreign policy even while they refuse themselves to volunteer for military service. A different important option for those reluctant to fully embrace nationalism has been some form of noncombatant service in the military in an attempt to support the nation by being willing to die for it but not kill for it. When this option was created for Mennonites in Prussia in 1868 by royal decree, it was the first time such a distinction was made in the Prussian army. One-third took advantage of this option yet in World War I, although more did so at the beginning than at the end. Many Russian Mennonites served in the medical service during World War I. In the US in World War II, 14 percent of Mennonites took this route.
Mennonite Evasion of Nationalism
Some Mennonites have tried to combat nationalism by directly confronting its requirements to serve the nation. When the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848 debated the question of military service for religious minorities, specifically Jews and Mennonites, the three Mennonites who were members of the assembly supported drafting their co-religionists. Mennonites from Baden and provincial Prussia became political activists on the issue, unsuccessfully petitioning the assembly to exempt themselves on the basis of the primacy of religious freedom over the duties of the nation. Similar political activism led to the creation of the forestry service as an alternative to military service in Russia after 1870 and to Civilian Public Service in the United States after 1940 in which 46 percent of Mennonites participated in World War II. At least one Mennonite was arrested for refusing to cooperate with the military in Prussia in the 1870s, in the US hundreds were court marshaled during World War I for refusal to don uniforms or carry guns.
More common, however, were migrations to escape the nation. Every country with Mennonites in Europe gave witness to this option. Indeed virtually all the Mennonites in Russia first came as refugees from Prussia seeking freedom from restrictions linked to their refusal to acculturate into the nation. After the Russian Empire instituted the draft in the 1870s the Americas became the refuge of choice for most, with a third of the Russian Mennonites leaving for the United States or Canada at that time. Hundreds of Mennonites left the United States for Canada during World War I and thousands left Canada for Mexico and Paraguay in the 1920s due to their refusal to accommodate to the national culture. Significantly all the Amish left Europe during the nineteenth century, before they experienced the split into Amish Mennonite and Old Order Amish.
By the 1950s, however, the ideology of nationalism had spread around the world, making migration a very limited option. These migrations to avoid acculturation into the nation do, however, answer the question of why there were few Mennonites who rejected military service in the 20th century in Europe. Their societies had stopped offering this as a legal option and those who remained had accommodated in some form. Those Mennonites who refused to serve in the military and instead emigrated mostly based that refusal on a straightforward Biblicism and rejected as well the new historical-critical methods of biblical interpretation then emerging in Europe. This attitude made them more susceptible to fundamentalist theology in the United States and Canada. Both fundamentalism and refusal to serve in the military are two very different ways to reject modernity, perhaps their only commonality. Nonetheless it is no coincidence that European Mennonites have had few fundamentalists or conscientious objectors.
A final response of some Mennonites has been to reject nationalism and modernity as far as possible. Hundreds of Mennonites in provincial Prussia signed a petition in 1868 offering to give up the right to vote if they could have their military exemption back. Mennonites in the US, especially those with a Swiss or South German background, have been reluctant to vote until more recently. Many of the most conservative groups in Americas have opted out of public schools that they have rightly seen as purveyors of nationalism and modernity. They have likewise worked to stay out of national pensions systems and refused to obey laws they see as contrary to their beliefs on a wide range of issues.
After the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, some Kansas state legislators became aware of the fact that Hesston College was not flying the US flag since the flagpole had been removed during the Vietnam War. Their attempts to punish the college financially were ultimately unsuccessful but drew national attention. Goshen College in 2010 decided to start playing the national anthem before sporting events, a practice common and expected in the United States. The board reversed this decision in June 2011 after some alumni, faculty, and students protested this accommodation to US nationalism. The report that the national anthem was now banned attracted a harsh response from some national media outlets and the college developed a dedicated website to make their case to the public.
Mennonites and Ethnicity
Nationalism with its focus on group identity and boundaries has raised awareness among Mennonites of these issues for themselves. In a few cases Mennonites have even referred to themselves as a nation, for example, in an 1830 petition from the Mennonites of Brenkenhofswalde or earlier the Danzig Mennonite elder Georg Hansen. Without a specific territory or claim to political sovereignty, these claims of a Mennonite nation, however, do not match modern definitions.
More common have been claims of a Mennonite ethnicity. Anthony Smith has claimed that ethnicities are the necessary forerunners of nations and are "named human populations with shared ancestry myths, histories and cultures, having an association with a specific territory and a sense of solidarity," (Ethnic Origins of Nations, 32). Mennonite solidarity had been practiced since early times with the Dutch helping Swiss and Prussian Mennonites politically and materially beginning in the seventeenth century and a similar impulse leading to the creation of Mennonite Central Committee in 1920. Creating a common myth of intellectual ancestry was, however, largely the work of the nineteenth century, for example, with the creation of Mennonite newspapers and schools that brought Mennonite readers into a common community and taught a common history. The revival of Anabaptist studies that began in the late nineteenth century and culminated in the United States in Harold Bender’s 1944 Anabaptist Vision would be one example of creating this kind of ancestry myth.
While Mennonites do not have a specific single territory, there remains a large archipelago of Mennonite strongholds and historic places that ethnic Mennonites instantly identify as Mennonite: Zurich, Emmental, Witmarsum, Amsterdam, Hamburg-Altona, Weierhof, Bielefeld, Danzig, Vistula Delta, Chortitza, Molotschna, Akron, Goshen, Newton, Hillsboro, Steinbach, Winnipeg, Fraser Valley, Fresno, the Chaco are all instantly recognized as Mennonite territory, not to mention the scattering of Blumenorts and Rosenorts Mennonite immigrants have planted around the world.
Many Mennonites in North America and Europe who no longer identify with Mennonite religion still have a strong sense of being Mennonite, with Ukrainian or other European food now dubbed Mennonite ethnic food sold at local restaurants and ethnic fairs within the Mennonite ethnic islands of North America. The terminology of ethnic Mennonite, which more properly should perhaps be cultural Mennonite, was developed and shaped by nationalism. Smith warned, however, that ethnic groups who do not practice solidarity dissolve. Since Mennonite solidarity has been practiced more for religious than ethnic reasons, a non-religious Mennonite ethnicity seems unlikely to survive long term.
Nationalism as Organizational Principle
Considering how Mennonites have been impacted by nationalism highlights in a unique way the centrality of military service and the ideology of universal conscription to nationalism. Ute Frevert and Karan Hagemann have recently pointed in this direction but much more work remains. For Mennonites, however, the world has so been shaped by nationalism and the rise of nation-states that it has become the standard mode of organization. The merger in North America of the largest Swiss-South German and Dutch/Prussian/Russian groups in 2002 was finally only possible by reshaping them into two national bodies as Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA. Anderson’s argument that the administrative circuits we follow create the boundaries of our group or nation seemed to be borne out in this realignment. Mennonite World Conference lists member conferences by nation, suggesting that everywhere Mennonites organize themselves primarily by nation. It is hard to imagine the Anabaptists or anyone else in the sixteenth century embracing this organizational principle.
Primary Sources
Mannhardt, Hermann Gottlieb. Danziger Mennonitengemeinde: Ihre Entstehung und Ihre Geschichte. Danzig: John and Rofenbert, 1919.
Mannhardt, Wilhelm. Die Wehrfreiheit der altpreußischen Mennoniten. Marienburg: Komm Helmpels, 1863.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract, 1762.
Bibliography
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Additional Information
This article is based on the original English article that was written for the Mennonitisches Lexikon (MennLex) and has been made available to GAMEO with permission. The German version of this article is available at: https://www.mennlex.de/doku.php?id=top:nationalismus
| Author(s) | Mark Jantzen |
|---|---|
| Date Published | January 2026 |
Cite This Article
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Jantzen, Mark. "Nationalism." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. January 2026. Web. 5 Feb 2026. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Nationalism&oldid=181479.
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Jantzen, Mark. (January 2026). Nationalism. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 5 February 2026, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Nationalism&oldid=181479.
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