California Mennonites Froese, Brian
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California Mennonites Froese, Brian Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Froese, Brian. California Mennonites. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.36155. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/36155 [ Access provided at 27 Sep 2021 18:45 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. California Mennonites Young Center Books in Anabaptist & Pietist Studies Donald B. Kraybill, Series Editor 12 California Mennonites Brian Froese z Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2015 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Froese, Brian, 1969– author. California Mennonites / Brian Froese. pages cm. — (Young Center books in Anabaptist & Pietist studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4214-1512-3 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4214-1512-7 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4214-1513-0 (electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-1513-5 (electronic) 1. Mennonites—California—History. 2. California—Church history. I. Title. BX8117.C2F76 2014 289.7'794—dc23 2014002821 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. All photographs courtesy of the Mennonite Library & Archives, Fresno Pacific University. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. To Lorelee and Benson z This page intentionally left blank Whoever will, let him read history. —Menno Simons, “Reply to Gellius Faber,” 1554 The analyst of California is like a navigator who is trying to chart a course in a storm: the instruments will not work; the landmarks are lost; and the maps make little sense. —Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception, 1949 This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xxv chapter 1. Going to California: The Mennonite Migration 1 chapter 2. Alone in the Garden: Boosters, Migrants, and Refugees 23 chapter 3. Urban Dystopia and Divine Nature: The Early Mennonite Colonies 45 chapter 4. Outsiders from Within: Defining California Mennonite Identity 65 chapter 5. New Neighbors: Confronting Racial and Religious Pluralism 91 chapter 6. From Sewing Circles to Missionary Societies: The Public Roles of Women in the Church 111 chapter 7. Peaceful Patriots: California Mennonites during World War II 133 chapter 8. Socially Active Mennonitism and Mental Health: The Origins of Kings View Homes 154 chapter 9. Feeding the Hungry: A Story of Piety and Professionalization 176 chapter 10. Protect and Assimilate: Evangelical Education in California 193 x contents chapter 11. Labor Tensions: Mennonite Growers, the United Farm Workers, and the Farm Labor Problem 212 chapter 12. From Digging Gold to Saving Souls: The Transformation of California Mennonite Identity 230 Epilogue. A New Breed of Mennonites 243 Notes 255 Bibliography 303 Index 323 Preface n 1949 Carey McWilliams, the influential social commentator on California society, asked, “Is there really a state called California or is Iall this boastful talk?”1 California was, in the mid-twentieth century, still defined by dreams of gold, movie magic, and endless sunshine. That the world moved in was testament to the drawing power of California as both a place and an exportable idea. McWilliams brought his perceptive eye to bear on the religious environment of Southern California by coun- tering the romantic mythologies surrounding the Spanish Catholic mis- sions and Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare Church. Though separated in time, that juxtaposition of images—the mission of the old established church and the new religious movement—has largely defined California religious historiography. In the first half of the twen- tieth century, thousands of Mennonites moved to California, joining the millions of people from all over America and the world making the same trip.2 Of course, there really was, and is, an American state called Califor- nia. What millions of people found, however, were countless interpreta- tions, understandings, and manifestations of what that state could be. Historian and former state librarian Kevin Starr once observed, “Un- like New Englanders or the citizens of Oregon and Utah, Californians could not justify themselves on the basis of founding ideals . those who reflected upon experience from the vantage point of an ennobling ideol- ogy did not set the tone of society, or, indeed, have much to say about its direction.”3 California is characterized by a lack of religious hegemony, which for some has provided freedom, for others, concern. Mennonites expressed both. xii preface In this book, I examine the Mennonite experience in California through 1975 and in a brief epilogue add an update into the twenty-first century. Although we know of a few Mennonites who dug for gold in the 1850s, the real story of Mennonite religious experience in California began in the 1890s with westward migrations for fertile soil and healthy sunshine. By the mid-twentieth century, the Mennonite story in California develops into an interesting tale of religious conservatives, traditionally agrarian, finding their way in an increasingly urban and always religiously plural- istic California. In the geographically and spiritually wide open spaces of California, Mennonites, like many other ethnic, national, and religious groups from the world over, by necessity managed the pressures of mo- dernity. By choosing to migrate to and remain in California, I argue, Mennonites employed several strategies to bring together religious identity, accom- modation, and practice so that their Mennonitism could take root in the Golden State. The plurality of their responses and strategies demonstrates the freedoms and concerns the far west frontier provided for a small group of ethno-religious agrarians well into the twentieth century. Indeed, by the 1960s, California Mennonites were well on their way to becoming as racially and ethnically diverse as the state around them. Summarily de- scribed as Anabaptist, evangelical, or secular, California Mennonites often situated themselves among these three categories to denote their religious identity: historically rooted in the sixteenth-century Reformation ideals of the early Anabaptists (pacifism, congregationalism, discipleship); in twentieth-century American evangelicalism (evangelism, missions, Billy Graham); and in a commitment to social justice that involved practical ties to government programs and a quiet connection to religion. Mennonites are a religious group born of primarily Dutch and Swiss descent—forged in the flurry of sixteenth-century European Protestant reformations and in the fury of its persecutions—that espoused anticleri- calism, adult baptism, bibliocentrism, and eventually pacifism. Men- nonites moved throughout Europe seeking safe havens from religiously motivated persecutions, which largely dissipated during the seventeenth century. About the time Spain colonized present-day California, Dutch Mennonites who sought employment and escape from tribulation moved eastward from the Netherlands to North Germany. These Mennonites, along with other German and Swiss Mennonites, were eventually re- cruited to William Penn’s colony, and some migrated to Pennsylvania in the early eighteenth century. preface xiii Additionally, numerous Dutch Mennonites migrated to the Vistula Delta, and in the late eighteenth century, at the invitation of Catherine the Great, settled the steppes of the Russian Ukraine. These Russian Men- nonites began migrating to North America in the 1870s. During the nine- teenth century, as California went through several political permutations and a gold rush before becoming an American state in 1850, many Swiss– South German Mennonites migrated to and settled mostly in the eastern and midwestern United States. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russian Mennonites from the Ukraine migrated largely to the American Midwest and western states.4 To oversimplify these histories, Dutch and Swiss–South German Mennonites migrated from Germany to Pennsylvania during America’s colonial period, Swiss–South German Mennonites migrated from Swit- zerland to Pennsylvania and to the American Midwest—then to the west- ern frontier—during America’s period of westward expansion, and Rus- sian Mennonites migrated from the Ukraine to America’s Midwest and western states during America’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Although a few Mennonites were present at the gold rush, their real story begins in the last decade of the nineteenth century and accelerates with many twentieth-century transformations. In California, the Menno- nites take us to cities like Los Angeles, but mostly to cities and towns in the Great Central Valley, where the vast majority of California Mennonites chose to live. California history has largely been the history of gold mines in the Sierra, the Los Angeles basin, the San Francisco Bay area, and the capitol building in Sacramento. In the Mennonite story, those three great city