The Brethren, or Dunkards, are the last important group of "plain people," Although they prefer to call themselves the Church of the Brethren, or more simply, the Brethren, their fellow Pennsylvania Dutchmen use the more vivid terms of Dunkard and Dunker. These popular. names, meaning one who dips, seize upon the central tenet of their faith that sets them off from other churches, baptIsm by immersion in a flowing stream. In general the Dunkard ideas of baptism were derived from the early Anabaptists and the Mennonites, but to these they added the further refinements of trine immersion and a flowing stream. Their leader was Alexander Mack, a native of the Palatinate, who was one of a small group of deeply religious men who met together for study of the Bible and worship. Having come to the conclusion that trine immersion in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost was of paramount importance, they went down to the river and, kneeling in the stream, baptized one another. Thus was founded the Church of the Brethren in 1708 in the town of Schwarzenau on the banks of the river Eder in Westphalia.
This new religion immediately attracted much attention and soon began to make converts. Since many of the early Brethren had been members of the Reformed Church, this older Protestant church was bitter and resorted to persecution to stamp out the new sect. Many of the Brethren fled to Krefeld on the lower Rhine; but hearing of the religious freedom of Penn's new colony, twenty families consistipg of one hundred and twenty people set sail for America. Arriving in Philadelphia in 1719, they settled in Gennantown. On Christmas Day, 1723, the first congregation was organized with seventeen members who had been baptized in Gennany and six converts baptized that day in the Wissahickon. At this first baptismal service in America they had to break the ice on the creek before the new members could be baptized.
After the ceremony they held their first love feast and communion at the home of Johannes Gumre, one of their members. The following year a second congregation was fonned at Coventry and a third at Conestoga. In 1729 their leader, Alexander Mack, came to America, bringing with him most of the other Brethren. As the few who were left in Europe returned to the Refonned Church, the whole church may be said to have been transferred to Pennsylvania.
Like the Quakers, the Brethren were a church without a creed. Later in the century, when Franklin suggested to Michael Wohlfahrt, an Ephrata Dunkard, "that it might be well to publish the articles of their belief and the rules of their discipline," Wohlfahrt replied:
When we were first drawn together aa a society, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which were esteemed truths, were errors, and that others which we had esteemed errors were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we have arrived at the end of this progression and at the perfecting of spiritual and theological knowledge, and we feel that if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as concerning what their elders and founders had done to be something sacred-never to be departed from.
Franklin's reply shows the admiration he felt for an attitude so modest and reasonable:
This modesty in a sect is perhaps a single instance in the history of mankind. Every other sect, supposing itself in the possession of all truth and that those that differ are so far in the wrong, like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, though in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.
Like the Quakers, too, the Brethren believed in nonresistance, which in those early days they took with the utmost seriousness. One of their members, Jacob Neff, had built a flour mill in a lonely spot north of the Blue Mountains. During the French and Indian War he was attacked by the Indians, and after killing two of them he fled to his neighbors for help. By the time he got back, his mill had been burned to the ground. But it was the taking of life, even in self-defense, rather than the burned mill that troubled his fellow Brethren. Neff was expelled from the church, and when he rebuilt his mill the Brethren
were forbidden to carry their grain to it.
The Brethren's emphasis on the simple life also endeared them to the Friends. This insistence on plain and unpretentious living, which became almost the hallmark of the "peace churches," was borrowed from the Mennonites and the Quakers. The Brethren were the most eclectic of the churches of colonial Pennsylvania. Except for their belief in trine immersion there was little that was original in their religion. Like the Mennonites, they were congregational in church government. Their dress closely resembled that of the Mennonites and Quakers: for the men, broadbrim hats, coats without lapels, and bushy beards; for the women, small white house caps and for outdoors slightly larger bonnets, simple dresses with high necks and long sleeves, and capes instead of coats. As gold was reg'arded as a "signal to Satan," jewelry was forbidden. Their churches were plain meetinghouses, again like those of the Mennonites and Quakers, in which the congregation sat on backless benches. They followed the example of the Mennonites
and Quakers once more in forbidding their members to take an oath. And last of all, they disapproved of going to law. Only when he had the sanction of the church was a Dunkard permitted to bring suit.
It is their method of baptizing that sets the Brethren apart from other Protestant sects. No other religious body insists on dipping, three times face forward, in a flowing stream. Baptism usually takes place in the spring of the year; but sometimes, as in that first Christmas Day ceremony in the Wissahickon, it is in the winter and the ice must be broken, not once but two or three times, before the ceremony can be performed. The person to be baptized and the bishop usually wade
out into the stream until the water is well above their knees. Then the candidate for baptism kneels while the bishop prays-nor are his
prayers always marked by brevity. The immersion is complete. The bishop places his hand on the aspirant's head and three times dips him face forward under the water. Once baptized, the newly made Dunkard hurries to a farmhouse, sometimes a full mile away, to change into dry clothes. Tradition among the Brethren has it that no one ever catches cold, let alone pneumonia, from this experience.
Another feature of the worship of the Brethren that has attracted much attention is the love feast. The service begins with the singing of hymns-vigorous, warmhearted singing unaccompanied by an organ or any other musical instrument. After half an hour of singing one of the Brethren rises to offer testimony to the divine power and love of the Lord in the manner of the old-fashioned "experience meeting". Intermingled with this are more hymns, which are followed by sermons, one by the bishop and several by other preachers. After this is the foot washing, which begins on the men's side of the church. With a towel tied around his waist, one of the men, usually the bishop, washes and dries the feet of the man next to him, who in turn performs this rite for the man beside him, until each man has washed the feet of another man and has had his own feet washed. In a similar fashion
the women on their side of the church wash one another's feet. Although this strikes many Protestants as a curious ceremony, none
of the rites of the Christian church is more fully sanctioned by the words of Christ. The puzzle here is not why foot washing is an important rite among the Brethren but why it is not practiced by all Christian churches. The thirteenth chapter of St. John shows what emphasis Christ put upon foot washing:
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God;The rite of foot washing followed by Communion, and this by a handshake symbolizing "the right hand of fellowship" and by "the holy kiss of charity" on the cheek. Each man shakes hands and exchanges kisses with the man whose feet he washed and the man who washed his feet, and so does each woman. Sometimes this kiss is given to other members of the congregation of the same sex as a sign of Christian fellowship. Finally there is a supper in commemoration of the Passover, at which. the main dish is a stew of the paschal Iamb. Tables are set up in the meetinghouse or under the trees outside. Often four Brethren eat from a single bowl. Sometimes, too, there are as many as three sittings at the tables, in which case the bowls and spoons are unchanged. To ask for a clean dish or spoon would be thought a mark of pride and also a reflection on the one who had just used them. At the larger Dunkard meetings the love feast may last two days. Usually the meetinghouses have kitchens in the cellar and sometimes even sleeping quarters in the attic.
He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.
After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.....
So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set; down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
Another peculiarity of Dunkard belief is the anointing of the sick with oil in the name of the Lord. Here the Brethren have in mind
James 5: 14: "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."
As in the case of the Mennonites and Amish, the Brethren ministry was uneducated. The ministers, who served without pay, were elected by individual ballot by all members of the congregation. Usually the most gifted young men were chosen. Among the Dunkards were some men of undoubted ability. Christopher Sauer, the eminent printer, was one of these. At Sauer's house in Germantown, Ludwig Hoecker in 1738 started the Sunday afternoon services for the young people of the meeting, more than forty years before Robert Raikes set up the first Sunday school in England. Conrad Beissel, the founder of the Ephrata community, was a Dunkard preacher at Conestoga for four years. But the Brethren by and large were mostly farmers, although there were a number of artisans among them, especially in the first colony in Germantown. To this day most of the Brethren are farmers.
Like so many of the other Pennsylvania Dutch, they knew good land when they saw it. Many of them scttled in Lancaster County, which even in this century has more Brethren than any other single county in the country; but the growing population of southeastern Pennyslvania and the high land values led the Brethren to search for good land elsewhere. In the latter part of the eighteenth century they began to move down into Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, as well as farther west in Pennsylvania to the fertile valley of Morrison's Cove. In the nineteenth century many of them settled in the Miami
Valley in Ohio and later in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. Wherever they went they chose good land. Today a full five-sixths of
their membership lives in the open country or in small country towns. In the last half-century the Brethren have undergone a great change.
Many of the peculiarities they borrowed from the Mennonites and the Quakers are disappearing, as they disappeared among the Quakers last century. Except among some of the older people in the more conservative meetings of southeastern Pennsylvania, the plain dress is vanishing. The Dunkards still dress simply, the women in quiet prints, but the plain somber colors, the white prayer caps, and the small skirtless bonnets are seldom seen. Nor are the broadbrim hats and the buttonless, high-neck coats worn very often by the men. Ornate churches with organs are replacing the simple meetinghouses. The ministers, most of
whom are college-bred, are paid for their services. There are even Dunkard colleges-Juniata in Pennsylvania and Manchester in Indiana, to mention two. Nor are nearly so many of the Brethren pacifists as in .ormer years. Each man decides for himself whether or not it is right for him to fight. Consequently, there were many Brethren, just as there were many Quakers, in the armed services during the past war.Divorce, too, is becoming more frequent among the Brethren. They still disapprove of gambling, drinking, and smoking; but in spite of their belief in "quiet moderation in all things" the Brethren are no longer a "separate" people in the sense that most of the Mennonites and all of the Amish are. Through most of their history the Brethren have been less suspicious of "the world's people" than the other "plain people." And now they are becoming one of "the world's people" themselves.
This is by no means a criticism of the Brethren, since in sloughing off many of their peculiarities they have been careful to preserve the essence of Christianity. Their heifer project is proof of that. Under this program heifers have been shipped to the war-torn countries of Europe to restore the depleted herds. This was done so that the newborn infants and mothers with babies might have milk. It was Dan West,'one of the Brethren relief workers in Spain, who hit upon this idea. During the civil war in Spain he saw the disastrous effect of the lack of fresh milk on babies and nursing mothers. Long before the Second World War ended, the Brethren started to raise heifers to be shipped abroad. A group of four or more farmers would band together to provide a shipment of four or more animals, caring for them until they were from eighteen to twenty-five months old, when they were
sent to Union Bridge, Maryland, to await shipment abroad. Churches in towns and other urban groups often bought calves, placing them with local farmers and paying for their care. Many others contributed money for this project. All heifers were bred before they were shipped so that on their arrival or shortly afterward there would be two heifers instead of one, or a heifer and a bull calf. Before the heifers were shipped, the Brethren made certain of the need for these cattle and the presence of enough fodder and shelter to maintain them on their arrival. The Brethren also provided men to care for the heifers during the voyage. These "seagoing cowboys" were usually ministers, school- teachers, farmers, and high-school youths. All the heifers were freely given to the people abroad; none were sold.
Before it became possible to ship heifers across the Atlantic, some were sent to Puerto Rico and Mexico and a few to some poverty-stricken areas of Arkansas, but most of the heifers were held to await the end of the war in Europe. The first European shipment was the one to Greece in June, 1945. Before the ship sailed, the heifers were consecrated in an impressive ceremony by a Greek Orthodox priest. By March, 1946, I, I 38 heifers had been sent to Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, and Holland as well as to Greece.
In the heifer project the Brethren were soon joined by other churches, notably the Reformed Church, the Quakers, the Mennonites, and the Northern Baptists. In some places as many as twenty-five Protestant denominations joined them. Through much of the country other groups, sometimes statewide, followed this excellent Dunkard example.
The aid of the Brethren to war sufferers was not confined to heifers. Like the Mennonites and the Amish, the Brethren found themselves with plenty while people in many parts of the world were dying from hunger and cold. The Brethren, too, felt a deep shame and made up their minds to do whatever they could to provide pcople in need with
food and clothing. Food and clothing and money for relief were collected in all sorts of ways. Often they were joined by friends and
neighbors and even strangers who belonged to other churches or to church at all. In a section of Ohio where the farmers grew only enough wheat for their livestock, with perhaps a few bags left over to sell, it occurred to a farmer's wife that these people might be willing to give those few bags of wheat for relief instead of selling them. A day was set to collect the wheat, and in this one community alone a whole carload was given by the end of the day. By March, 1946, the Brethren Service Committee had shipped abroad 69 carloads of wheat, flour, corn, and oats, most of it wheat; 32 carloads of clothing and bedding, " including thousands of pairs of shoes and 180,000 diapers, these last to Russia; and 8 carloads of "other commodities." Among these "other commodities" were a carload of rice; a carload of seed potatoes sent to France; 5 tons of dried milk; 10,4 75 packages of seeds, also to France; 24 1/2 tons of soap to France, Holland, and Italy; 22 boxes of thread to Greece; I ,240 pounds of tools and household utensils to France; 10 large boxes of toys to Holland; and 6,750 Christmas boxes. Canned goods were sent to Finland, and 56,800 eggs for hatching to Poland. Clothing, shoes, and bedding went to France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Greece, Russia, China, and the Philippines.
Mennonite, Amish, and Dunkard may disagree on other matters but not on the necessity of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked: these are Christian duties plain for any man to see. Their herculean effort to aid the victims of war was but the logical and practical application of their Christian principles, a visible sign of the Christianity of these peoples.
Yet another group which may be included among the "plain people" are the Schwenkfelders, who even more than the Dunkards have lost most of their plainness. Of ancient lineage, they are the followers of an Anabaptist mystic, Kasper Schwenkfeld von Ossig, born in 1490 of an old aristocratic family in the Duchy of Leibnitz. Schwenkfeld, who was an early supporter of the Reformation in Silesia, corresponded with Luther, with whom he soon found himself in disagreement. Rejecting Luther's emphasis on the Bible, Schwenkfeld believed that the " Scriptures in themselves were not enough: to them must be added the living word, or what he called "the spirit of Christ in man," better known as "the inner light," the term thc Quakcrs gave this conception. Although this idea of "the spirit of Christ in man" or "the inner light" was an old one in the medieval church, Schwenkfeld was one
Iof its chief proponents in the sixteenth century. In his rejection of baptism and Communion as a means of grace he also took a point of view later adopted by the Quakers. But in the importance he attached to the worship of Christ he resembled the Moravians. The Roman Catholics were mistaken in their worship of the Virgin Mary, he maintained; Christ was not from Mary but from God.
When Luther understood how radically he and Schwenkfeld disagreed, he looked upon him as a dangerous heretic. Lutherans and Jesuits vied with one another in their attempt to convert the Schwenkfelders. To escape persecution Schwenkfeld fled from one place to another, gathering around him a devoted band of followers yet making no attempt to found a separate church. It was persecution rather than any desire to form a new religion that forced the Schwenkfelders into separatism. Under the pressure of persecution they scattered throughout Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, Swabia, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. By 1700 all were wiped out except a remnant of fifteen hundred in the Gorlitz and Liegnitz sections of Silesia. In 1720 the emperor Charles VI, through a Jesuit mission formed for the purpose, decidedon their extermination. Many of them fled to Saxony, where for a time they found refuge at Berthelsdorf on the estate of Count Zinzendorf. When they were ordered to leave Saxony within a year, they determined to go to America. Zinzendorf tried to persuade them to go to Georgia, but wishing to make certain of religious frcedom they
came to Pennsylvania instead. Like the Amish and the Brethren, a whole religious group moved to Pennsylvania; none were left behind in Europe. On September 24, 1734, all that survived the ruthless persecution, about forty families, arrived in Philadelphia. So grateful were they to be at last in a land where they were permitted to worship as they pleased that they have observed ever since then the anniversary of the day of their arrival as Gedachtniss Tag, or Remembrance Day,
their Thanksgiving.
In Pennsylvania the Schwenkfelders settled in what is now upper Montgomery County, mainly along the Skippack and Perkiomen, with a few in the Goshenhoppen (now Bally) section of eastern Berks and " in upper Bucks and lower Northampton counties. There they live to this day, less than a dozen congregations in all-one of the smallest religious bodies in the United States.
The Schwenkfelders were so accustomed to being a hunted people, so used to remaining hidden, that for their first fifty years in Pennsylvania they built no meetinghouses or churches, though they did set up schools. There was no official ministry; instead the heads of families conducted services in one another's houses. For many years there was little attempt to organize, but in 1762 a general conference was held and a catechism and hymn book adopted. This hymn book, printed for them by Christopher Sauer, the Germantown printer, included a number of hymns by Schwenkfeld and by his followers in Pennsylvania and
also some borrowed from the Moravians. The organization into a separate church did not come until 1782. For a long time brethren
served as ministers without pay.
In the past two centuries the Schwenkfelders have lost most of the characteristics that set them off from the "church people." Once upon a time the women wore white caps, white kerchiefs, and long aprons; but like the Moravians and the Quakers their plain dress has long since: been abandoned. Their early meetinghouses were plain and simple like Mennonite and Quaker ones; today their churches are like those of any of the "church people." Their pacifism, too, has given way to the more usual attitude toward war. During the Revolution the Schwenkfelders often got cold looks from their rebel neighbors, but since that time the Schwenkfelders have fought in every war in which America has been engaged. Even mixed marriages, which once they frowned on, are taken as a matter of course today.
Despite the loss of many of their old peculiarities the Schwenkfelders look upon themselves as a religious group different from all
others. The publication of the monumental Corpus Schwenkfeldianorum, in which all the works of Kasper Schwenkfeld von Ossig
have been collected, has served to make them aware of this difference.They are still mostly a country people with country ways. They are generous toward their poor and unfortunate. The fund early set upfor the aid of their poor has never been exhausted. Gedachtniss Tagwith its simple feast of home-made bread, butter, and apple butter has by the very choice of its foods the flavor of a country festival. This is a homecoming day for all Schwenkfelders. On this day the exiles in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington go back to Salford and Goshenhoppen, to Skippack and Worcester and Towamencin. The apple butter alone is worth the trip. Knowing housewives in near-by towns seek out a Schwenkfelder farnler to make sure of good apple butter. Yet even more noted is the Schwenkfelder cakes served at their marria,ge feasts. This is a raisin cake, flavored with saffron and sprinkled with sweetened crumbs, baked from an old recipe brought from Silesia, where it was known as Streuselkuchen. Wide as the oven door,
it is baked in an old-fashioned bake oven attached to the kitchen or in a separate building near by. Another old Schwenkfelder custom, and one that deserves to be widely copied, is their gift of baskets of food to the poor on the occasion of a wedding.
These are by no means all the "plain people." Division and subdivision among the Mennonites have given rise to numerous tiny sects. One of the most important of these is the River Brethren, or Brethren in Christ, founded about the time of the Revolution. They differ from the Mennonites chiefly in their adoption of the Dunkard belief in trine immersion. As most of them live close to the Susquehanna, they were early dubbed River Brethren. The Old Order, or Yorker Brethren, most of whom live in York County, split off from the River Brethren. They have no churches or meetinghouses but, like the House Amish, hold their services in houses or barns. The United Zion's Children, or Brinserites, are a group who because of a difference of opinion over a church building left the River Brethren to follow Matthias Brinser and form a sect of their own. The River Brethren, the Yorkers, and the United Zion's Children aIl have in common a strong strain of mysticism and a desire to withdraw from the world. Like the Mennonites and the Amish they are strongly opposed to the use of force. AIl of them wear the plain dress of former centuries.
Eisenhower's mother was a member of the River Brethren Church. At least several of the qualities the world has so much admired in Eisenhower are apart of his inheritance as a son of the "plain people": his simplicity and naturalness, his modesty and serenity, and above aIl his integrity. These are no small virtues. whether they be found in a man or a people.