Introduction

Abstract

This introductory chapter discusses how spokespersons in Germany had employed the language of nationalism to reconnect with pacifist coreligionists abroad. Depicting Mennonitism as the most Germanic form of Christianity, they posited the existence of a global German Mennonite diaspora. The confession's largest and most influential branches had developed during the Reformation, not in countries that would later form the German Empire, but in Switzerland and the Netherlands. The chapter, however, rejects traditional definitions of both religion and nationality, whether as immutable identity markers or as ideological forces, capable of generating uniform communities. Rather, it sees “collectivism”—the representation of social groups—as a contestatory process. Socially constructed and historically situated, religious and national cosmologies are negotiated at each moment.