Died in Russia, Resurrected in Germany

Not a mennonite (Photo credit: atomicity)

Full Churches in Europe

We think of Europe as a land of empty cathedrals, but there are also full churches in Europe—immigrant churches. Among the immigrants to Germany are up to 100,000 new Mennonite arrivals from Russia, according to the March 17 issue of Mennonite World Review. People long thought dead and hidden from the world screen for more than half a century since Stalin’s purges—these people have been reappearing in Germany for the last couple of decades. Worshiping in German, these Mennonites bring their traditional faith, steeled and tempered in the fires of a Stalinist hell on earth, back to the land that tried to exterminate them almost 600 years ago.   Like Israel among the nations, the clay pots of this Mennonite cultural embodiment continue to carry the faith value of redemption by God. Like weeds in the back yard you thought had been exterminated by your grandparents, they still can come back. Who knows what other new surprises God will bring up from the soil in our time to confront the conformity of unbelief that hides behind pretentious tolerance and simplistic egalitarianism? Oh yes, and apparently it drives modern Germans crazy to see German women wearing a head covering (like Muslims), the ultimate expression of inequality and injustice, as they perceive it?

Isn’t it ironic that the church a government has protected for 600 years has is effect, almost died, and the church two governments tried to destroy is alive and growing in the world?