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“The Snares of Reason“—Changing Mennonite Attitudes to “Knowledge“ in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

James Urry
James Urry
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
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Extract

During the early 1830s Russian officials drew up plans to reform the educational system of foreign colonists in southern Russia. The colonies of Mennonites there welcomed the proposals as evidence of official interest in plans already formulated by leading Mennonites. In certain quarters, however, educational reform met fierce resistance. Around 1833, Heinrich Balzer, a Lehrer of the Kleine Gemeinde, a small schismatic group in the Mennonite colony at Molochnaia, wrote a number of tracts warning fellow brethren and the other colony Aeltesten of the dangers of close involvement with the “world”, particularly through educational reform. One pamphlet was concerned with the categories of “understanding and reason” (Verstand und Vernuft).

Type
Adapting Religion to Society Changed
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 306 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1983

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References

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