Willard Swartley and Donald B. Kraybill

An Amish farmer recently described mutual aid in this manner. “In the spring when I am plowing on the higher slopes of my farm, I can see six other church members plowing with their teams. I know that if I got sick or something, all six of those teams would be here plowing my field.”1 For this Amishman, the meaning of mutual aid is clear, but for Mennonites coping with the complexities of modern life, the definition has blurred.

From their origins in the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement, Mennonites have been committed to provide material aid to the needy in their ranks. Membership in Mennonite circles has historically carried responsibilities to assist others in the household of faith struggling with material misfortune of one sort or another.Mennonite mutual aid is a reciprocal responsibility, based on biblical teaching, to provide material aid to other church members who face special economic and physical hardships. Such help involves giving labor, services, goods, gifts, and payments in both spontaneous and organized forms at local and churchwide levels. This definition of mutual aid has three key components: membership, material needs and resources, and reciprocity.

Christians typically live in overlapping circles of social responsibility: family, church, community, society. Mutual aid is directed toward fellow church members. Thus it differs from other forms of benevolence––charity, service, and neighborliness––which address general human need regardless of membership and without expectations of reciprocity. The service ministries of such agencies as Mennonite Disaster Service and the Mennonite Central Committee are not technically mutual aid. Even service to Christians of other denominations does not strictly fit the definition.2

Mutual aid is thus not unlimited obligation, as some have suggested; rather, it limits itself to the denominational family. Focusing on meeting material needs within the church is somewhat restrictive yet offers clarity of purpose and understanding. Human need proliferates around the world, and the gospel of Christ calls Christians to compassion. However, the Christian response of love to such need is service and charity, not mutual aid.

Mutual aid seeks to meet the special material and physical needs that arise among church members. They obviously have many needs––emotional, social, spiritual––which can be addressed through interpersonal support and care in the context of the church. Prayer and support groups, counseling, and visiting do offer mutual support to believers but do not typically involve material aid. Although some of these needs may intertwine with material misfortune, the church’s role in addressing them falls outside our understanding of mutual aid. Furthermore, although mutual aid is an expression of care in the midst of material hardship, its primary aim is not to create an egalitarian society or to promote a communal sharing of goods.

Finally, mutual aid involves reciprocity––a willingness to give and receive. Mutual aid is mutual aid. In this sense it involves both expectations and obligations. The healthy farmer plowing his field anticipates that other church members will help plow the fields if he becomes ill. But he also carries an obligation to help when misfortune strikes a neighbor. The mutuality of mutual aid also distinguishes it from charity and service, which carry no obligation to reciprocate. Mennonite mutual aid does not pretend to promote a society of equals, offer help for social and psychological problems, nor serve the vast pockets of human need around the world. Mennonite mutual aid provides a cushion of support by church members for those among them who have experienced material hardships.

Many Christian groups have long practiced various forms of mutual aid. Those that immigrated to the United States often established mutual aid societies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Material care in the church is not unique to Mennonites. Nevertheless, mutual aid in its many forms has been an enduring trademark of Mennonite communities. Why have Mennonites shown such persistent interest in mutual aid? A blend of theological and socioeconomic factors have helped foster such Mennonite commitments to mutual care.

Mennonite theological understandings stem from the Anabaptist movement of sixteenth-century Europe. The Anabaptist view of the church provided theological underpinnings for mutual aid. The church was conceived as a visible body of Christ mirroring the kingdom of heaven. It was made up of adults who had voluntarily decided to follow Christ in daily life. They were thus aware of the obligations of membership. The church was seen as a new redemptive society where the love and corporate care of members were simply assumed to be a norm of redeemed behavior. Members were members one of another and called to share their spiritual and material burdens. The Anabaptist understanding of discipleship accented the importance of obedience to Christ in all dimensions of life. An emphasis on stewardship emphasized the fact that material goods were ultimately owned by God and under the temporary care of members of the community.

Another factor that fostered mutual aid was Anabaptist insistence on separation of church and state. The ultimate authority for the life and conduct of the church was grounded in Scripture, the commands of Christ, and the practice of the early church. The theological chasm between church and state encouraged the descendants of Anabaptists in later years to stress the importance of relying on the church rather than the state for the care of its members. Old Order Mennonite and Amish groups continue this tradition of political independence by refusing to participate in social security and other programs of government subsidy, including some for agriculture.

The primacy, centrality, and visibility the Anabaptists gave to the church made mutual aid a natural consequence. The Hutterites, one of several branches of the Anabaptist movement, argued that an Anabaptist understanding of the church requires a community of goods where all members share material resources on an equal footing. Seeking to recover the spirit and practice of the apostolic church recorded in Acts 2 and 4, the Hutterites formed a communal society.

James Stayer has recently argued that community of goods was a typical practice in the households of other early Anabaptist groups as well. Stayer (1991:9) suggests that by the 1540s many of the Anabaptist communities were practicing an “economics of mutual aid.” They expected members of the church to share one another’s material burdens in the spirit of Christian love.
Rresponding to charges that the Anabaptists held property in common, Menno Simons (1956:558) said,

We do not teach and practice community of goods. But we teach and maintain by the word of the Lord that all truly believing Christians are members of one body and are baptized by one spirit into one body (1 Cor. 12:13); they are partakers of one bread (1 Cor. 10:18), they have one Lord and one God (Eph. 4:5-6).

It is only “Christian and reasonable,” Menno argued, that

All those . . . called into one body and love in Christ Jesus, are prepared by such love to serve their neighbors, not only with money and goods, but also after the example of their Lord and head, Jesus Christ, in an evangelical manner with life and blood.

The essays in this volume provide windows––analytical and narrative portholes––which offer glimpses into the myriad expressions of mutual aid. These essays are not comprehensive; a full and systematic history of mutual aid remains to be written. We have invited scholars to write on five key aspects of mutual aid: (1) biblical foundations, (2) theological and ethical underpinnings, (3) selected historical case studies, (4) the emergence of formal organizations, and (5) contemporary issues faced by the church. The select bibliography brings together key sources and offers a bibliographic map for others who want to explore the topic.

These essays were chosen to highlight pivotal moments and issues in the saga of mutual aid. Our efforts represent the first scholarly effort to tell the story of Mennonite mutual aid in a single volume. We hope this book will stir the imagination of others who will someday provide a fuller account of the legacy of mutual aid. And we hope our efforts will also prod faithful Christians of every stripe to build communities of care where members bear each other’s burdens.

Notes
1. This paraphrased, edited quote comes from an Amish farmer in Ohio.
2. This definition differs with Redekop’s (1989:436-438) argument that mutual aid is unlimited obligation. Such a definition stretches the concept so broadly that it effectively erases meaningful distinctions between mutual aid and notions of charity and service. Fretz’s (1947:9) somewhat vague definition describes mutual aid as, “Christian love in action. . . . using the resources God has given us for his glory and the good of ourselves and our fellowmen. It is a way of limiting selfish desires for the good of the larger group or the community of which we are members.” The larger group or community for Fretz could refer to the civic community or even the nation. In another place Fretz (1947:8) is more explicit: “The purpose of mutual aid is to help needy church people to help themselves rather than to give them direct relief.”
Kreider (1972) adopts the definition given at the All Mennonite Conference on Christian Mutual Aid at Smithville, Ohio in 1964. The statement endorsed by the conference described mutual aid as the use of the resources of the church, “to serve the mutual needs of its individual members and to contribute to the more effective equipment of the Christian community for its mission in the world” (“Statement” 1964). Building on the Smithville statement, Kreider (p. 21) proposes two functions of mutual aid: (1) assistance within the church; (2) the extension of the Christian mission to the world. Although the discussions of mutual aid in the Mennonite Encyclopedia (vols. III and V) do not formally define mutual aid, all the illustrations in these articles depict care within the church––Mennonites helping Mennonites with material needs.

References
Fretz, J. Winfield
1947 Christian Mutual Aid: A Handbook of Brotherhood Economics. Akron, Pa.: Mennonite Central Committee.

Hernley, H. Ralph, Ed.
1970 The Compassionate Community. Scottdale, Pa.: Association of Mennonite Aid Societies.

Kreider, Carl
1972 Care One For Another: Mutual Aid in the Congregation. Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House.

Menno Simons
1956 The Complete Writings of Menno Simons. Trans. Leonard Verduin, ed. J. C. Wenger. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press.

Redekop, Calvin
1989 “Mutual Aid: Unlimited Obligation,” Gospel Herald (June 13): 436-38.

“Statement on Christian Mutual Aid”
1964 Smithville, Ohio, June 4-6. In The Compassionate Community, ed. H. Ralph Hernley (1970): 569-573.

Stayer, James M.
1991 The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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