How we do get our hair shorn from these religious? Spare the names. Our thoughts are poor enough. Does rehabilitation override covering the sins of Lot? There is no answer in good taste. Content neutral writing shows that the passion of a character trespasses the moral universe. There is no avoiding what Ezekiel saw through a hole in the wall, the elders making pact and sacrifice, sordid inglorious sins, not the “heart became proud on account of its beauty” (Ez 28.17), but "The Spirit lifted me up…I dug into the wall and saw a doorway…I went and looked. I saw portrayed on the walls all kinds of crawling things and detestable animals… In front of them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, and Jaazaniah son of Shapham was standing among them (Ez 8.11)." The were worshiping the walls, burning incense.
The sins of the world in all their sickness stain Andrew Mack who mediated them with weakness and pain. It’s not wit, it’s heartbreak. Ezekiel writes with outrage and judgment, but his knowledge is by revelation, caught up. Andrew Mack writes with sorrow and unbelievable contradiction, but he was also a farmer. When the weeds are rank in their growth the husbandman gets the moist blades and severed roots on his clothes. Weed puller! He was a stone puller.
The circumstances of his early life as a pastor formed the career he was to have as a peacemaker and bishop. These took principally two forms, the problems he faced in his own church and his sickness when elevated to Bishop.
The first letters from 1870 to 1876 preoccupy with pastoral problems: discord, adultery and immorality leading to disfellowship. In spite of the custom that Mennonites would confess their sins before the whole congregation, he is the last to learn, hearing only secondhand of discord and adultery. The problem with digging around in the past is that we find things that have been buried.
The young preacher does not believe his own advice to the parties of discord and doesn't send the letter. Are we to take it literally when he says he writes “partly in tears?” He says, “I have heard that discord has taken place” and feels that he must act, “write.” Perhaps the reason he doesn't even believe himself is that he assumes their guilt in such language that they might “sooner return to your first love.” What are you going to say to gossipers, “I heard that you were gossiping?” That’s gossip too. He senses that his counsel is flawed. So he doesn't send it, all the more strange since this letter is not cataloged with the other 49! As though it had fallen through some crack and ended up in the Mensch collection.
He admits things are "sometimes made worse by writing” which leads in the second part to addressing his own self doubt as if he were seriously thinking, “I will lay down my office” rather than intervene. He includes himself in a triangle, “consider with me where we stand.” He is rational but their disagreement is emotional, fueled by false beliefs about themselves and each other, “the old Adam,” who threatens in this. His solution is humility, his own as he has said, and theirs, but are they hardhearted or tender? Whose spirit is it that “will make us believe this or that, which often has no significance?” Satan.
The solution is one he sought in his own life, “take each other’s weaknesses upon yourself,” that is, bear one anothers burdens to the “ocean of oblivion.” "Hear Him say, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It doesn’t sound like this is going to work.The letter would make it appear he is taking sides. What is the flaw? He is still learning to feel his way. The solution is not argument. His wife feels this too and gives the best counsel, stop. Later in life he will have learned how to bring the disagreeable together, but also he will know when not to speak.
He learns of the second issue, adultery, at the 11th hour when there is little to do except try to heal the injured by counseling, but he is counseling his own family, daughter, cousins, aunts. The offender is John L. Gehman who confessed himself an adulterer “several weeks ago,” an act that transpired “several years ago, with the maid who was with Ihst.” This raises two issues, first that Ihst “did not wish to say anything; yet he talked about it so much it made me wonder; then he told me about it himself.” It sounds derelict of Ihst first not to have defended the maid better after “she told Ihst about it,” but further, when she had confided in him, not to have properly reported it, instead gossiping the news all over so that Mack heard it from others before Ihst ever said a word.
John L. GEHMAN
12 SEP 1819 - 3 MAR 1892
BIRTH: 12 SEP 1819 [24459]
DEATH: 3 MAR 1892, Hereford, Berks Co PA [24460]
BURIAL: Old Hereford Mennonite
REFERENCE: LKG
Father: Johannes Ziegler GEHMAN
Mother: Maria M. LATSHAW
Family 1 : Susanna S. STAUFFER
Mother: Maria M. LATSHAW
Family 1 : Susanna S. STAUFFER
MARRIAGE: 25 AUG 1844 [61708]
Family 2 : Elizabeth S. STAUFFER
MARRIAGE: 4 APR 1847
Another problem for him is that this John L. Gehman, ordained deacon in 1858, is the son of the preacher John Z. Gehman (Noah Mack, 4) who had grown up in the church and community. Gehman was about 50 when taken with the maid, but had married Elizabeth Stauffer in 1847, Mack's cousin. Mack had both sisters and daughters named Susanna and Elizabeth, but with different birth dates than Gehman's wives. Gehman had previously been married to Elizabeth’s sister, Susanna Stauffer in 1844. He had one child with the first wife, and a daughter, and three sons with the second, two of whom became deacons. [see Noah Mack 10, the number of sons and daughters is in question.] No wonder the “church is in a sad situation.”
Mack's relation to the Stauffer family and because Gehman had married both daughters is the cause of him saying, “you wouldn’t believe how much trouble this caused for me and also for many others, especially the family." Gehman’s “wife thinks she can bear it with the help of God,” meaning that she can go on living, “yet for the rest of life can have no more joy.”
Mack's relation to the Stauffer family and because Gehman had married both daughters is the cause of him saying, “you wouldn’t believe how much trouble this caused for me and also for many others, especially the family." Gehman’s “wife thinks she can bear it with the help of God,” meaning that she can go on living, “yet for the rest of life can have no more joy.”
As with the previous discord of the “old Adam,” “the flesh still feels its weakness” and nobody can correct those who will not correct themselves: “verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” Later he says that “Gehman also desires that all faithful ones should pray for him. He is quite depressed because of this sin,” not altogether to the point since, “what is man when he flees from the Lord? He is as the prodigal son. He must arise and go to the father, but no man can come to him except the father draw him.” Mack bears the lesson himself and mutually exhorts Mensch, “dear brother, let us seek to accomplish our office faithfully,” always realizing that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities…the rulers of darkness of this world….”
The extraordinary closeness of these Mennonite communities is illustrated in that Gehman’s own daughter was married to the same (John M.) Ihst (1844-1923) with whose maid Gehman conducted the affair! Andrew Mack had visited upon him a vision of the sins of the world.
In a third, greater personal tragedy, reported in these first letters, his own brother-in-law is disfellowshiped. This is more poignant because it comes with the first report of his severe ensuing illness that lasted years, “I write tonight as I have never written before.” Taking his lead from “the saddest part,” he writes that “brother John Gabel fell into an abominable sin and is discharged from the church.”
John L. Gabel (1837-1887) had first been married to Leah High who died 23 Aug 1873 at age 34. Andrew Mack preached the sermon at her funeral. He had eight children with her. A sawmiller and merchant, he then married Elizabeth, sister of Andrew S. Mack and had four more children. Gabel had been ordained a deacon at Hereford 17 Oct 1872.
The thing cannot be named. This letter comes two and a half years after the death of Gabel's first wife. That the transgression had occurred while he was, past tense, still a widower, we would say “single,” suggests he was remarried at the time of this report. Mack writes that “this took place while he was still in the state of widowhood.” “You can’t imagine how my poor heart often feels, especially at this time while I am weak and unwell.” Gabel’s father, who died at age 86 in 1885, with his son J. L. Gabel bought the Gleason company machinery and had begun production in 1871.
Everybody knew everything about everybody else, “old father Gabel was here today and he wept over his son.” While he says nothing about the pain of his sister in all this, he does say “pray for J. Gabel. He is in great sorrow yet there are those who press him farther down.” Depression and gossip, the reward for sins, “when I see the church and how I labored these 12 years that I served, my courage would often sink.”
Everybody knew everything about everybody else, “old father Gabel was here today and he wept over his son.” While he says nothing about the pain of his sister in all this, he does say “pray for J. Gabel. He is in great sorrow yet there are those who press him farther down.” Depression and gossip, the reward for sins, “when I see the church and how I labored these 12 years that I served, my courage would often sink.”
Not To Do
Like the first account where writing could have been misconstrued, he says to Mensch as relief, “I could still write much of what is on my mind, but too much writing isn’t good for me either.’ This is because of the sickness he has first reported, “I am not well…my nerves are also weakened.” Those things which had been his escape from the ministry are now denied to him: “I am not to do any heavy physical work, not preach, not indulge in deep thoughts and not read. The latter is the most difficult for me. I couldn’t keep up with reading much anyhow.”
This sickness is to vex him off and on. When “our pilgrimage is over, we may all enter into that heavenly home where no sickness nor sorrow may overtake us.” He recommends, “I will seek to totally surrender myself to my dear Jesus and as He decides for me is right.”
These letters must be only a sampling of those first six years, the low spots. This period of comes to an end. Never again does he address dire straits, either because they don’t happen, other issues are more urgent, or because he says nothing. His health continues to be difficult, both from the burden of his accountability and from physical weakness. He writes, “how serious it often appears to me when I consider what we are accountable for, if we have not been found faithful stewards.” This does not refer to finance, but moral leadership, compassion, wisdom, judgment in administering his office. He would always feel this deeply. He says, “I find myself so weak, physically and spiritually,” “I am still not supposed to preach and cannot work much yet.” It has only been six weeks since he had released the doctor’s report in his last letter, but it shows how much he wants to continue his vocation.
Whether to Resist
He has opportunity to be accountable. About a year after being ordained bishop by acclamation in 1875, a dispute arose between the old and new Mennonites at Boyertown, formerly Colebrookdale. This corporate discord had its roots in the original split of 1847, the Oberholtzer controversy. He was not a minister then, but was the first ordained after it at Hereford in 1863. His jurisdiction as bishop now includes the problem, so his care of the larger Mennonite community impacts both Old and New Mennonites as it was also to do later in life when he “approved the organizing of the Mennonite General Conference, even though the majority of his conference did not” (The Mennonite Encyclopedia, III, 432).
Mennonites had shared buildings a long time. After their initial division between old and new in 1847 the two groups shared the Hereford meetinghouse until the new Mennonites built their own in 1851. The old group then bought out the new’s half share in the old building. There being also a building at Boyertown, then Colebrookdale, about six miles from the Hereford church, “built for the convenience of the Hereford Mennonites in and near Boyertown” (Wenger 366), but with no pastor separate from Hereford, this building had been used by both groups until 1876 when the old purposed to build anew on the original 1819 building, first tearing down the old. In the midst of the demolition the new “served an injunction against the building committee, enjoining them against the tearing down of the meetinghouse, and sued for equal rights as tenants in common” (Wenger 122).
Andrew’s son Noah says that his father “always upheld the idea that the old Mennonite Church should not have made any defense but when the sheriff came and placed an injunction on the church building the brethren just should have left and built a meeting house outside of the town” (Mack ms., ) A question as to why he could not overrule the building committee as bishop does not understand the conditions applied. Neither could he introduce footwashing or missions when he wanted. Pressed on his first trip to Kansas in 1881 about missions by some Prussian Mennonites at Beatrice, Nebraska, he could only reply that “he had to wait until the time when such support could be had” (5). The injunction about the building not only resulted in a lawsuit that lasted seven years, decided ultimately by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but it caused a scrutiny of the conditions of the original Oberholtzer controversy of 1847.
“However, he was somewhat relieved in heart when the judge of the supreme court called the old Mennonites the defendants still to the close of the litigation but from a pure non-resistant standpoint he considered the true way would have been to leave all when and flee to another city as Jesus says Matt. 10-23.” (Mack, )
Andrew Mack would of course know nothing of this when he wrote, before the fact, the letter of 27 Feb 1876:
“For some time there have been quite a few communications among us regarding the building of a meeting house in Boyertown. The new (Mennonites) wished to build with us and we did not want that. Then our members decided that we would build a house, but they [the New] would have nothing to say to the building, but after it was built they could donate to the costs voluntarily and then have meetings in the new house as before in the old house. The new (ones) wished to have meetings in the new house as before in the old house. The new (ones) wished to have a written agreement drawn up so they could show that they had their rights, but ors did not wish to commit themselves. Now this is as it stands and I haven’t heard anything more. I heard that in Matdege they built in a similar way. If you know how they did in Matdege then write to me as soon as you can. I did not intend to be concerned with the building, but I would like to tell the brethren how they did it there.”
The two factions in Boyertown fought all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. When the old group referenced in Andrew Mack’s letter decided to rebuild they offered tenancy to the new, on condition of their using no objectionable musical instruments. This demand initiated a series of conundrums that lasted six years. When demolition had already partly removed he old building, the New Mennonites sued for tenancy in common before the Berks County Court. That suit, denied in 1879, was subsequently reversed. Then, on appeal in 1883, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, reversed it back, finding for the Old, a truly contradictory procedure for people who did not believe in such legal remedies (see Wenger, 122-23 and Ruth, 366-67) and a betrayal of principles held by traditional Mennonites.
The disagreement between old and new at Boyertown was similar to a similar one in Skippack except there the old Mennonites surrendered the meetinghouse and built anew. This was celebrated by John F. Funk as “one of the most glorious examples of self-denial and devotion to … religious principles, presented to us in modern times. The new factions claimed the old meeting-house and were determined to have it at all events. The property was one of considerable value and justly belonged to the Old Church, and any impartial judge or jury would have, without any scruples, freely accorded it to them, had they presented their claims, but instead of doing so, they chose rather to obey the scriptural injunctions 'not to resist evil, and of him that taketh away thy goods, not to ask them again,' and quietly, leaving the new factions in possession, they purchased other grounds and built themselves a new house.” (Funk, 128.)
Andrew Mack’s thinking on all this was reported much later by his son, Bishop Noah Mack in 1939. This eleven page biography of Andrew Mack never got much circulation since it was solicited by Noah’s own biographers and served only as background for their work.
John F. Funk. The Mennonite Church and Her Accusers. Elkhart, Indiana: Mennonite Publishing Company, 1878
Revised 20 June 2013
Jacob Mensch Letters. Jacob Mensch corresponded with every Old Mennonite community (Ruth, Maintaining, 395) and "kept records of meetings from 1880 to 1907" (Wenger, History, 52). I obtained the Mack letters in just the fashion suggested below, by donating to defray costs. Mr. Horst is now deceased. Anyone interested in contributing to translations of the completed archive is welcome to do so: "A project is underway to have the 1603 letters of Jacob Mensch translated and typed, with the possibility of eventual publication. The first phase is estimated to require about $4000.00 for completion of copying, translation labor, and typing. You are invited to send a donation to help defray the costs of the project."
Revised 20 June 2013
Jacob Mensch Letters. Jacob Mensch corresponded with every Old Mennonite community (Ruth, Maintaining, 395) and "kept records of meetings from 1880 to 1907" (Wenger, History, 52). I obtained the Mack letters in just the fashion suggested below, by donating to defray costs. Mr. Horst is now deceased. Anyone interested in contributing to translations of the completed archive is welcome to do so: "A project is underway to have the 1603 letters of Jacob Mensch translated and typed, with the possibility of eventual publication. The first phase is estimated to require about $4000.00 for completion of copying, translation labor, and typing. You are invited to send a donation to help defray the costs of the project."
Notice in the Mennonite Historian,Winnipeg, Manitoba March 1982
