"We are all Americans." Kansas mennonites and Patriotism during World War I

Abstract

During World War I, Mennonites, in the Kansas counties of Marion and Harvey, had to find ways to publically demonstrate their loyalty and patriotism to the United States of America. Through the Mennonite paper, the Tabor College Herold, and the two county newspapers, the Marion Record and the Weekly Kansan-Republican, the debate over the loyalty and patriotism of Mennonites came to a head. The Mennonite paper, the Tabor College Herold, spent the years 1917 and 1918 arguing that Mennonites could maintain their nonresistant beliefs while still serving their country in ways that would not lead to killing. For the Marion Record, Mennonites were patriotic citizens who should be respected and treated well even though they believed differently than the majority of Americans, but that Mennonites still had to find a way to publically demonstrate their loyalty to their fellow Americans. The Weekly Kansan-Republican, though, cast the war as a religious crusade against an evil empire, and that refusal to participate in any aspect of the war effort, whether joining the army or purchasing war bonds, bordered on treason and, thus, deserved to be suppressed. These different approaches to the question of loyalty and patriotism during America’s involvement in World War I (1917-1918) help provide a glimpse into how the war affected both the Mennonites and American society as a whole.