Mary Prepares for Baptism

May 17, 1931  Sunday.  Very warm.  We were in the south church.  The baptismal candidates were asked their questions.  For dinner and faspa we were at P. F. Rempels.

When a Mennonite boy or girl was in his latter teens or early twenties, it was customary to be baptized.  Adult baptism was the mark of becoming a Mennonite, and Mennonites stressed that it a voluntary act that could only happen after a person consciously made a decision to follow Jesus.  Rebaptism had been a capital offense in early modern Europe, and many Mennonites had paid for this with torture and with their lives.  When a Mennonite was baptized, he was consciously joining a lineage of physical and spiritual ancestors going back for centuries.  A person could not marry in the church unless he had been baptized in it, so it was important to do this before marrying.  For all these reasons, baptism was the way a person joined the spiritual community and became an adult.

Usually baptismal candidates wrestled with their faith and consulted one or more older, respected persons to discuss what it meant to follow Jesus.  Of course, some young people just went through the motions without ever experiencing regeneration, but for many this was a very serious time.  Some wildness was allowed for young people (less in Kansas, more in Manitoba), but once a person was baptized, he was expected to leave that behind and behave as a serious adult and church member.  Mary was nineteen years old, so it was a natural time for her to be baptized, and she was in this group of candidates, as we can tell from Cornelius’ diary entry one week later when she was baptized.

Those who requested to be baptized went through a catechism to teach them the fundamentals of the faith.  The KIeine Gemeinde and nearly all other Mennonites from Russia used the Elbing catechism that had first been published in West Prussia in 1778 to instruct the candidates.  You can see an English translation of this catechism here.  

After the candidates had learned the material in the catechism, they were presented to the congregation for questioning, which was what occurred this Sunday morning.  Mary was probably very nervous – although it happened rarely, once in a while a candidate would be rejected if the congregation felt that he had not actually experienced a spiritual rebirth.  The elder and ministers would have asked Mary and the other candidates questions about their testimonies, their willingness to renounce the ways of the world and sin, and their willingness to pledge obedience to Christ and the church body.  Mary apparently was accepted by the congregation to be baptized.  It would have been a much relieved young lady who ate Sunday dinner at her uncle and aunt, the P. F. Rempels, that day.

An 1824 edition of the Elbing catechism that Mary would have studied in preparation for baptism.