Peace, Order, and Good Government: Mennonites in Politics in Canada by T.D. Regehr (review)

Book Reviews 587 Peace, Order, and Good Government: Mennonites in Politics in Canada. T.D. REGEHR. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications 2000. Pp. xii, 130. $10.00 This book stems from four lectures Regehr gave at the Canadian Mennonite Bible College (now Canadian Mennonite University) in Winnipeg in the fall of 1999. As part of the ongoing J.J. Thiessen Lecture series, Regehr's presentations had several purposes beyond providing a historical account of Mennonite involvement in Canadian politics. One was to inform his lay audience of the Canadian historical political context into which Mennonites fit. A second was to outline the thinking of selected Mennonite politicians, including the first Mennonite member ofparliament in the late nineteenth century, western Canadian Mennonite MPs in the 1940s and 1950s, and Tory Cabinet minister Jake Epp in the 1980s. Both ofthese subtexts serve the book's main concern to answer a religious quandary for Regehr's largely Mennonite audience: How can one be true to Mennonite religious values of Christian discipleship and pacifism, yet be integrated in Canadian politics? Sectarian characteristics may have made Mennonites aloofof state politics in past centuries, but acculturation in recent decades has made them intensely active in politics. The concern is whether they have also changed religiously. In the process ofinterpreting this shift in political behaviour, Regehr has written a book that will be of interest to students of both religious history and ethnic politics. For example, he documents an important political transformation. Mennonite settlers in nineteenth-century Ontario and Manitoba followed a martyr tradition that made direct appeals to the monarch, beseeching it for special privilege, paying it humble deference, or quietly protesting its assimilative policies through civil disobedience. But Canadian society was inherently integrative and, by the mid-nineteenth century, the Ontario Mennonites had joined a 'convergence' of Protestant political interests. And western Canadian Mennonites, arriving from the Russian Empire in the 1870s and 1920s, came to believe that economic problems required voting, lobbying, and running for political office. By the late twentieth century, Canadian Mennonites had found modern politics so effective they had become disproportionally represented in the country's legislatures. Mennonites may have become politically active, but there was no uniform 'Mennonite' voting pattern. Indeed, the Mennonite world of politics was complex, as multilayered identities, intersecting Mennonite ethnicity with regional, class, and religious diversities, as well as with different Old World experiences, directed Mennonites to various parties. While the CCF repelled the Mennonites who fled the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1940s, the modern NDP attracted many Mennonites, espe- 588 The Canadian Historical Review dally urban professionals. The Liberals drew their share of support because they were in power during each of the three major waves of Mennonite migration from Russia. The Conservatives began drawing Mennonite support after Diefenbaker turned the party of the Old Flag into a populist celebration ofthe small 'c' conservative agenda offamily, decency, and hard work. And the fringe Social Credit and Reform parties have, in sequence, received significant support from Mennonites who identified with petty bourgeois concerns. The book, however, has a wider purpose than to record these trends. It is to test this behaviour against traditional Mennonite-Anabaptist religious values ofpeace and social justice. In this endeavour, Regehr is especially critical of Mennonite support for right-wing politics. He is dismayed that many Mennonites have exchanged their socially radical heritage for middle-class concerns for 'peace, order and good government .' He is critical ofthe way in which the British parliamentary system has assimilated members from minority religions. He is even more critical of Mennonites for having become pragmatists, ignoring their socially radical tradition and making only 'limited contributions in ... debates ... [on) war and peace.' The book marks a useful contribution to ethnic political history in general and to the nascent field ofMennonite politics in particular. Many questions remain and further in-depth study, perhaps appropriating ethno cultural methods, may address them. What were the voting patterns of Mennonite-dominated rural ridings and Mennonite-dominated urban polling stations? What were the political views ofMennonite newspapers? What were the points ofinter-Mennonite conflict, and how did national issues such as capital punishment, gay rights, and free trade illuminate them? Did political...