The remoter wars of the USA and Canada in the second half of the 19^th century did not greatly disturb the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church, but the outbreak of a Great War in Europe in 1914 did. By 1917, volunteers to the war from Canada were not enough to keep up Canada’s combat strength at the front and reluctantly but forcefully the Canadian government instituted conscription.¹ Young Mennonite and Tunker men should have been exempted under Canadian laws,² but popular sentiment and ignorance of the law put many of them in danger of being drafted anyway. All members of non-resistant churches in Canada lost the right to vote.³ Quite a few Pentecostals and others were abused by the Canadian military for a conscientious objector stance for that was not recognized legally at that time.⁴ Some suffered penalties in the training camps unnecessarily before being released, such as Brethren in Christ member Ernie J Swalm from the Stayner area in a St Catharines, ON, barracks.⁵ A Manitoba Mennonite called Frank Peters wrongfully suffered torture in Canadian military camps in WW II. You can access a fascinating CBC profile of the man and the story’s background.⁶

In Canada, only about a dozen MBiC members volunteered to the armed forces in the first World War, such as English-born Thomas John Drinkall (b 1883), a probationer who joined the British Royal Army Medical Corps via the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Drinkall had married Sarah (Sadie) Douglas in 1906. He was first a helper at the MBiC mission in Stratford, ON (1914-1916), but joined the Army July 4 1916. The Ontario Conference listed him as a local preacher until 1921, presumably at Stratford.⁷ Another church member who enlisted but as a conscript, surviving to bring a bride, Leonora, from England, was Herb Stover from Markham.⁸

In the USA, a slightly larger percentage of MBiC men joined the military.⁹ The USA, of course, declared war on Germany in April 1917, whereas Canada had automatically joined with the UK in August 1914 as part of the British Empire. At the time of WW II, the MBiC and other Mennonites were better prepared to advise their churches on Canadian law, Conscientious Objector (CO) status and alternate service. Attitudes toward war in the MBiC had broadened or weakened, however, (depending on your point of view) so that about 50% of young male Canadian members joined the war effort in some way, while 90% of the young male members did in the USA.¹⁰ (In Ontario between 20-30% of military age men in other Mennonite or Amish churches enlisted.)

Ontario MBiC response. Sam Goudie was one of the Presiding Elders of the Ontario Conference during the first World War, and he responded with a few other Conference leaders to a Mennonite call to “thank” the Canadian government for upholding the law (they hoped) by recognizing the law’s exemptions through making donations to the government to be used for relief.¹¹ The government of Canada told the Ontario Mennonites to give their money to relief organizations instead, saying the government could not receive charity! The representatives formed a Mennonite relief organization (the Nonresistant Relief Organization, NRRO) in January 1918 in Kitchener, at the home of MBiC Elder Cyrus N Good on Chapel Street, next to Bethany MBiC Church. This commitment involved only the Ontario Conference, but it was the first non-MBiC organization the Conference officially joined, with three representatives elected annually from 1918 to past the end of WWII.

From the beginning of the Great War, women in the MBiC, as many women did in Canadian churches, prepared medical supplies and other relief kits for people who suffered in the war, sent through the Red Cross. Cash was also sent.¹² When the NRRO formed, it urged churches to make donations through it as well. In 1920, Goudie was encouraged by his Conference to publish a pamphlet on nonresistance.¹³ He continued his representation in the NRRO all the way to 1944 when an injury forced him to resign. He had been chair of the NRRO 1923-1924 and 1941-1944.

Goudie was not alone in teaching nonresistance in the Ontario MBiC: he was supported by C N Good, Silas Cressman, Ephraim Sievenpiper, Milton Bricker, and succeeded by J Harold Sherk, Percy G Lehman, Virgil K Snyder and Bruce Wideman, among others. Goudie and Good published a pamphlet in 1933 collecting Canadian laws to that time respecting non-resistant church societies.¹⁴ It seems J Harold Sherk was behind the revival of the NRRO in 1937 to assist refugees of the Spanish Civil War. Goudie along with J Harold Sherk and Milton Bricker reviewed the 1937 Mennonite “Turner Statement.”¹⁵ They secured the Ontario Conference’s and the Canada Northwest Conference’s endorsement of the slightly modified version in expectation of a new European war.¹⁶ These three met with Brethren in Christ leaders in Ontario such as bishop E J Swalm and Orla Heise, and bishop Samuel F Coffman of the Mennonite Church, and together they sent their memorials on peace and war to the Mackenzie King government days after war was declared in September 1939.¹⁷

Individual responses. Many MBiC members continued to support non-resistance. Dorwin Storms, at one time an MBiC missionary to Armenians and a minister, owned a bookstore in Owen Sound in the 1940s who declined to sell Victory Bonds in his shop. His son Paul did alternate service as a Conscientious Objector and his other son, Everek, also a CO was working as a school teacher on the Bruce Peninsula.¹⁸ Clarence McDowell (b 1911) was farming around Markham, ON, in the second World War. He registered as a Conscientious Objector and was allowed to work his farm as an essential industry. He paid a periodic fee which he understood shielded himself from losing that status.¹⁹

Some Owen Sound young men such as Ellis Lageer joined the military, often the air force.²⁰ Ivan Goudie, Sam’s grandson from Stouffville, began as a CO, going to the alternate service camp at Montreal River north of Sault Ste Marie, ON. When the government extended their service indefinitely, it was devastating to many of the camp members.²¹ Ivan left and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Alfred W Rees, a son of a family which attended Grace Chapel (Jones Avenue), also joined the air force, though he was not converted at the time. After the war, to fulfill vows he made bailing out of burning bombers, Rees attended Emmanuel Bible School, becoming a pastor, missionary in India and even President of the Missionary Church of Canada.²² The airmen and others enlisted fully in combatant service, such as one young man who was to be prominent preacher after the war, Clarence Hunking from Shrigley MBiC. Meanwhile his brother Willis stayed on the farm in the war years under the program for essential workers (Ellis Lageer,”Willis Hunking,” Who’s Who in the UMS). Two of the doctors who pioneered the United Missionary Society hospital in Tungan Magajiya, northern Nigeria, had their medical training under the Canadian army. They were Ross Bell, from Stayner, and John Erb, from Toronto, son of Isaac H Erb. (The senior Erb was a pathologist at Sick Kids Hospital, Toronto, and a local preacher in the MBiC for decades.)

Many Canadian churches functioning during one or both of the World Wars honoured young men who enlisted. It is unusual for MBiC congregations to recognize military people with plaques or other memorials in the buildings as some denominations do, but the death of a member of a church family is hard to ignore. Vineland Missionary Church in the 1980s had a memorial for all the young men from Vineland village (I think), including at least one from their own congregation, Gordon H Good (b 1915). Good enlisted in 1943 and was killed in Holland, February 1945, leaving a wife and a young child born weeks before he went to Europe.²³

Non-combatant work. The modified Turner Statement permitted non-combatant service under the military, which was the path taken by Earl Pannabecker (1910-1990), my first United Missionary Church pastor. I often heard him say he was a Red Cross stretcher-bearer in the World War. He enlisted in 1942, trained in Canada with the Army Medical Corps a year, then served at the Neurological and Plastic Surgery Hospital in England 1944-1946.²⁴ The Markham Church centennial history mentions the alternative service others did as COs, and that some joined in non-combatant medical service.²⁵

J Harold Sherk (1903-1974), a pastor from Kitchener, was especially active promoting non-resistant doctrine and alternative service work. He was a chaplain to the COs in northern Ontario,²⁶ and served the Mennonite Central Committee in India toward the end of the war, 1944-1946. His story has been honoured beyond the EMCC, with a GAMEO article written by Lucille Marr, and prominence in a history of the MCC Ontario by the same author.²⁷ A number of years ago Emmanuel Bible College named its newest building after him.

Percy G Lehman (1902-1962), a pastor from Toronto, taught in the first years of the MBiC’s Emmanuel Bible School in Stouffville and Gormley 1940-1944. He served on the Conference’s Peace Problems Committee and the Committee on Military Problems in 1942, taking Sam Goudie’s positions when Goudie became the chair of the NRRO.²⁸ Lehman served the NRRO as vice-chair 1944 to 1955 and chair from 1955 to 1959.²⁹ Lehman, as pastor of the Markham MBiC 1938-1942 was likely an influence on Clarence McDowell to register as a CO (J A McDowell).

Virgil K Snyder (1906-1978), who joined the faculty of Emmanuel Bible College in 1945 to 1956 was from the Canada Northwest Conference. His 1949 MA thesis for Winona Lake School of Theology explored “The Christian and War: A Vital Problem Candidly Examined.”³⁰ While in Ontario he supported the non-resistant efforts of the Conference’s committees, and represented the UMC at a Study Conference on Non-Resistance at Winona Lake with J Harold Sherk in 1950.³¹ His career is notable for the evangelistic programs he preached in and for teaching in three Missionary Church colleges (Bethel, Emmanuel and Mountain View). He and his wife Anna spent a year in Beirut assisting the Armenian Brotherhood’s Ebenezer Bible School 1957-1958.

The MBiC/ United Missionary Church continued to be a member of the NRRO until 1963, when the NRRO merged with Mennonite Central Committee Ontario. By then, the Ontario District of the UMC was no longer widely interested in the activities of the MCCO, and the denomination as a whole dropped its support of the nonresistant position in favour of a policy of personal choice at the 1962 UMC General Conference. This ended a 110-year commitment to non-resistance since the formation of the New Mennonite Church.

Banner: The Battle of Passchendaele, July-November 1917, Royal Army Medical Corps action. PICRYL, Public Domain.

1https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/life-at-home-during-the-war/recruitment-and-conscription/conscription-1917/

2“Quakers” (Society of Friends) and “Tunkers” (Brethren in Christ) are also named in the legislation.

3https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/voting-rights-through-time-0/brief-history-federal-voting-rights-canada

4Murray K Dempster, “The Canadian-Britain-USA Triad: Canadian Pentecostal Pacifism in WWI and WWII,” https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/cjpcc/04-1_001.pdf No Pentecostal denomination qualified because they had not organized by July 1917, the cut-off date of the legislation. Jehovah’s Witnesses were even harder hit because they had an even stricter stand against national service in wartime; J A Toews, Alternate Service in Canada during World War II (Winnipeg, MB: Publication Committee of the Mennonite Brethren Church, 1959) p 51.

5Recorded in his testimony, E J Swalm, Nonresistance under Test: The Experiences of a Conscientious Objector, as Experienced in the Late World War (Kitchener, ON: Cober Printing, 1938].

6Note: not the Frank C Peters who became president of Wilfrid Laurier University; https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/jailed-for-his-faith/

7Samuel J Steiner, In Search of Promised Lands: A Religious History of Mennonites in Ontario (Kitchener, ON/ Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2015), p 194 and 652, n 10. Conference Journals 1914-1921.

8Clarence McDowell and others, Built in This Place: Centennial 1877-1977 (Markham, ON: Markham Missionary Church, 1977) p 35. Russell Herbert Stover, 21, P[ennsylvania]. Dutch, Mennonite, was working for a British Baptist couple on a farm in 1911 (Canada census) and in 1921, he was 31, married to Leonora, who entered Canada 1919. He listed himself as Baptist, and she was Church of England. Later they were regulars in the Markham Church. Their baby, Rita, was just 11 months old. Rita (Stover) Daniels died in 2008 a member of the Markham Missionary Church. Herb’s conscription enlistment papers (October 1917) listed him as a baker (his father had a bakery in Stouffville), and a Baptist. His brother Percy apparently also enlisted in the first World War, and his son Russell was a pilot in the RCAF in the second World War (Allan Stouffer).

9Summarized in Steiner, p 195, 310. In his opinion, the Ontario Conference of the MBiC, a “U.S.-dominated denomination,” “almost reluctantly” left the Mennonite fold after the World War, p 326.

10See my biography of Sam Goudie, Hidden in Plain Sight, for references. Again, the USA did not declare war until December 1941 after the Pearl Harbor raid, while Canada declared war separately from the UK, one week after Britain, on September 10 1939.

11See a more detailed story of Goudie’s actions in the YouTube about the NRRO, by Allen Stouffer, Thomas Fuller and Clare Fuller, (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnYmFEK680A

12The Ontario Conference Journals 1917-1920 reported $928.16 sent to the Red Cross 1917 and 1918, $3456.12 sent to the Red Cross and the NRRO in 1919, but only $129.55 in 1920. Ontario Conference members also had been supporting Armenian orphans from massacres in 1895/6, and 1915-1919 since 1898 through the United Orphanage and Mission organization.

13Sam Goudie, A Scriptural Exegesis of the Doctrine of Non-Resistance ([Stouffville, ON: MBiC Ontario Conference], 1920).

14Sam Goudie and C N Good, ed, Laws Affecting Non-Resistant Religious Societies ([Stouffville, ON: MBiC Ontario Conference, 1934)]. This pamphlet was republished with updates edited by Jesse B Martin & Noah M Bearinger, Laws Affecting Historic Peace Churches (Conference of the Historic Peace Churches, 1941).

15Mennonite Church, “Peace, War and Military Service: A Statement of the Mennonite Church… adopted…at Turner, Oregon, August, 1937.”

16Ontario Conference Journal 1939, p 38-39.

17E Morris Sider, The Brethren in Christ in Canada: Two Hundred Years of Tradition and Change (Nappanee, IN: Evangel Press, 1988) p 231.

18Toews, p 100; Charles S Gingerich, The Peninsula Pilgrims: A History of Bethel Church (RDP Graphics, 2007) p 56.

19Personal communication from James, his son, July 2024.

20Ellis Lageer was just one noted in newspaper clippings in the scrapbook kept by his sister Eileen Lageer, Box 6101 MCHT.

21Steiner, p 312-317.

22Wayne F Shirton, Tried, Tested, Triumphant: The Eventful Life of Alf Rees (Np: By the Author, 1997).

23Skip Gillham, ed, The Church on the Hill: Our First Hundred Years (Vineland, ON: Vineland Missionary Church, 1981) p 50-51.

24Emmanuel Bible College Pilot 1950, p 22.

25McDowell, p 36.

26Toews, p 77.

27Lucille Marr (2013), https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Sherk,_J._Harold_(1903-1974). Lucille Marr, The Transforming Power of a Century: Mennonite Central Committee and its Evolution in Ontario (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2003).

28Ontario Conference Journal 1942 p 41.

29Samuel F Coffman (1953) with updates, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Nonresistant_Relief_Organization_(NRRO)

30The MCHT has a copy donated by his widow, Anna M (Neufeld) Snyder, Box 7201.

31Clare Fuller (2015), https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Snyder,_Virgil_Kinzie_(1906-1978)