Does it matter where an EMCC General Assembly meets? Could the world take interest in any action or teaching of our church today? We grumble in many congregations about issues supported by current Canadian culture with which we disagree, but behind closed doors as it were. In the past, Everek Storms, an editor of the denominational magazines the Gospel Banner and later Emphasis used to rush off after a conference and distribute a press release about the notable features of conferences for other media to publish. Some newspapers in Ontario at least, paid attention. Could it be that today no one cares what we do in our General Assemblies, not even in Christian media?

In 1912 the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, a precursor of the EMCC, fixed its binational 1916 General Conference to meet in Berlin, Ontario, Canada. In 1912 Berlin had celebrated becoming a city, and proudly promoted its German heritage.¹ No one planned for a world war involving Germany to come first.

Canada was gripped by patriotism from the start of the 1914 war. Most of the Protestant churches considered the war a righteous cause. German newspapers in Canada were shut down and German-language groups lay low. By 1916, mobs led by soldiers recruiting for a new battalion, were attacking people in the Canadian city of Berlin who did not agree to change the city name.² Cultural clubs and even a Lutheran pastor were attacked. Although the MBiC had switched to using English well before the war, they were Mennonite after all and still held to a non-resistant faith, including a leader in Ontario, Sam Goudie.³ Goudie and numbers of his generation in the MBiC spoke English and German. Their “loyalty” was suspect. By adhering to non-resistant doctrine in the war, members of the Quakers, Mennonites and Tunkers lost the right to vote.

Then some American Mennonite bishops were turned back at the Canadian border: it was suspected they were counselling their young men to avoid enlisting.⁴ (They were!) But the USA had not yet entered the war, and Canadian Mennonites were still free to visit the States. Sam Goudie, as chair of the binational Executive Committee, could see trouble at the border for American delegates to the 1916 General Conference. He led the Executive to switch the Conference to New Carlisle, Ohio.⁵ While there, Goudie reported that in Ontario, “During the past two years the persecution has increased…We stand by the Mennonite doctrine.”⁶ The Ontario Conference reference committee switched the planned 1916 camp meeting at Berlin to rural Gormley in Whitchurch Township, York County, for the same prudential reasons.

Mennonites in Waterloo County by 1916 were a minority of the population and largely rural. The war was not theirs. The MBiC had both rural appointments surrounding the city centered at New Dundee to the southwest, Blair and Hespeler to the south, Breslau to the east, and the urban Bethany. As was their practice, they would not participate in the strife. In the Ontario Annual Conferences they prayed for war sufferers. By 1918 they did pray for victory for the Allies, which is a bit of a slip for Mennonites.

In May 1916, Berlin voted in a contentious campaign to change its name.⁷ Shortly after, another vote chose the name of the recently deceased British Field Marshall, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, First Earl of Kitchener. He was England’s top military man. He had been the conqueror of Sudan, chief of the British Army in India, virtual ruler of Egypt, a Freemason, inventor of the concentration camp during the Boer War, which was a cruelly efficient imperial device of oppression many countries have adopted since. Kitchener drowned along with hundreds of the crew when his armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire struck a mine in the North Sea on its way to Russia to consult with the Czarist government about the conduct of the war in early June 1916.⁸

The only comment I have seen in MBiC writings about the name change is that, “I suppose, we have to call it Kitchener now.”⁹

1John English and Kenneth McLaughlin, Kitchener: An Illustrated History 2^nd ed (Toronto: Robin Brass. 1996) p 116.

2English and McLaughlin, p 117-125, and W R Cochrane, The Battle for Berlin Ontario; An Historical Drama (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992).

3Shameless self-promotion: see my forth-coming biography of Sam Goudie, Hidden in Plain Sight.

4Samuel J Steiner, In Search of Promised Lands: A Religious History of Mennonites in Ontario (Kitchener, ON and Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2015) p 194.

5Ninth [MBiC] General Conference (1916) p 18.

6Ninth [MBiC] General Conference (1916) p 15.

7Berlin, Pennsylvania, retains its name to the present. The USA has 4 other towns called Berlin and 3 unincorporated communities by that name.

8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hampshire_(1903)

9Quote is not accurate. I need to find the original my brain is trying to recall! 1916 Conference Journal? Gospel Banner?