Sofia Samatar and Modern Mennonites

A review of Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque: A Memoir (New York, Catapult, 2022)

This is a rather complex book. Although it is sub-titled a memoir, it’s running thread is a report of a tour of Mennonites to Central Asia in 2016. Why were they on this pilgrimage? They were retracing some of the steps of a group of Mennonites who left Russia/Ukraine in the late 19th. century to follow the vision of a charismatic leader, Claas Epp Jr., who predicted that Christ’s return was immanent and would be located in Central Asia. A description of this original trek is another thread running through The White Mosque. Interspersed in all this are other topics which the author has obviously spent a good deal of time researching – a treatment of 125 years of Uzbek photography, a review of Central Asian films, and an exploration of the dominance of Martyr’s Mirror in Mennonite life.

A theme running throughout the book is the question of identity. I want to use this theme to summarize and evaluate the book. Yes, this book is in part a personal memoir of the author born to a Swiss Mennonite woman and a Somali Muslim man and raised as a Mennonite of color in America. As such, Samatar explores her own struggle with a mixed identity, which “might make someone feel like a mistake, a cosmic gaffe” (p. 12). She describes meeting with a group of students of color at Goshen College in 2016 where they gave expression to feelings of isolation as they faced what they called “the Mennonite wall” – an exclusive white group identity (p. 129). It would seem that Samatar has come to terms with her complex identity, in that she describes herself as “a graceful, pale yellow, good looking, attractive negress, a little mysterious sometimes in my ways, and always good and pleasant and always ready to do things for people” (p. 15). And yet, the book begins with Samatar describing her mixed identity as an “electric storm” (p. 9). “I stand amid this lightning which, here in the twenty-first century, only seems to be growing more intense” (p. 9).

Samatar’s complex identity is further complicated by the fact that she marries a Swiss-American, “the grandson of Mennonite missionaries, raised in Nairobi, multilingual, a total rootless cosmopolitan” who has become “a staunch atheist” (p. 17). She and her husband have become “secular Mennonites,” though Samatar herself still attends church, sort of. She admits that while she loves the music, she drifts and doodles and writes while at worship services (p. 17). Strangely, Samatar later criticizes Mennonites who have given up the faith but still go to church (p. 292).

So this book is also about a confused religious identity. Samatar is very much a modern North American Mennonite. As such, she revels in skepticism, though she does worry at times about being congenitally “bent on finding the cracks in any position whatever” (p. 83). For example, she draws attention to the disparities in the four gospels which seem like “some fantastic postmodern novel” (p. 157). Their children are being raised with no religious tradition, but the parents are “scared they’ll be cultural nitwits” (p. 17). So they do teach their children some biblical stories, “not for religious reasons, but so they’ll be able to understand Western literature” (p. 18). I can imagine that Samatar and her husband would say that they want to free their children to make up their own minds with respect to religion. What they forget is that they are indoctrinating their children into secular Mennonitism – see my Teaching for Commitment (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).

The main thread of the book is a detailed description of Samatar’s participation in a Mennonite and Uzbekistan history tour in 2016, retracing some of the steps of the pilgrimage described in the book, The Great Trek of of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884, by Fred Belk (Herald Press, 1976). The reader is made to see and feel the surrounding landscape, the weather, the dust and the memorable visit to Ak Metchet, meaning “the White Mosque.” It is here where a group that had split off from Claas Epp settled and built a church/mosque which they had white-washed. They lived here for some 50 years, learning to live together with Muslims in peace. Sadly, they were eventually deported in 1935 when they refused the collectivization required by the new Bolshevik government. It was a picture of this church taken by the Swiss photographer and adventurer Ella Maillart in 1932 that captured the imagination of Samatar and that drew her to participate in this tour. At one point she reflects on the members of the tour group and how “preposterous” they seem to her – “All of us, with our bizarre investments in the past, our naïve susceptibility to narrative” (p. 57).

Then there is the thread of the book that deals with the original trek from Ukraine to Central Asia by Claas Epp and his followers. Epp somehow managed to recruit a good number of followers after reading a novel and then writing his own book, The Unsealed Prophecy of the Prophet Daniel and the Meaning of the Revelation of Jesus. He predicted March 8, 1889 as the day of Christ’s return which would be located in Uzbekestan. When this didn’t happen Epp was forced to revise the date to a few years later, but yet again, there was disappointment. Amazingly, some of the families remained loyal to him to the very end.

Samatar wrestles with the likes of charismatic fanatics like Claas Epp. Do they have anything to teach us? Yes and no. Epp’s group had a misguided goal. “They thought they were pilgrims, but they were wanderers” (p. 39). Samatar refers to a history book which calls this sort of thing “a monument of warning” – a “wild desire for something that can’t be true” (p. 57). She quotes Ross Bender who argues, “The Mennonite story is not a narrative but a sort of consensual hallucination” (p. 103). I would have liked to have seen Samatar wrestle with some additional questions. What is the difference between fanatical and healthy religious commitment? Are we as modern Mennonites in danger of being misled by fanatics like Claas Epp? Have we ourselves strayed from orthodox Christian belief? Is it possible for us to be so obsessed with peace and justice and inclusion that we miss out on other essentials of the Christian faith? And is this not another expression of fanaticism?

Samatar makes much of the interactions between Muslims and Mennonites and their occasional cooperation in Central Asia. Indeed, Samatar holds this up as a liberal ideal, even suggesting that this is the heart of Mennonite faith – diversity, tolerance and respect for the other. She worries about monoculture – “it chokes variety out” (p. 194). Indeed, she is “terrified of monoculture” (p. 197). This leads her to identify the strength of the Mennonite church as being “the patchwork of people brought together in such different ways, by birth and faith and thirst, to build a house of effort and care. I would say our strength is that we can’t get everyone on the same page. I would say my church almost looks like my idea of utopia” (p. 292). But I have to wonder whether this emphasis on diversity is not itself a monoculture of ideas within modern Mennonitism. And, whatever happened to Paul’s reminder that we are called to one hope, and that there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:3-6).

Samatar’s commitment to diversity and tolerance leads her to object to evangelism and missionary activity. Indeed, she comes back to this theme again and again. If only Christians and Muslims could live “without forcing their views on one another, without the rage for conversion, without the need to make others think and worship like themselves,” then we could live in peace (p. 209). She argues that “Mennonites would never have tried to bring Somalis to Christ had they been capable of true religious tolerance” (pp. 166-7, 170). She berates mission websites like “Somalis for Jesus” (p.166). She objects to glorifying missionary martyrs in Muslim countries (p. 166). Samatar also devotes a few pages to testimonies of the difficulties faced by Somali converts (pp. 168-9). But isn’t the notion of “forcing” one’s religious beliefs on someone else rather vague? And what does “tolerance” really mean? And what of her own evangelistic fervor in spreading the gospel of liberal progressive ideas? Indeed, are not human beings by nature persuading animals, crusading for what they believe to be true and right? So instead of condemning evangelism outright, what is needed is an articulation of the criteria of ethical evangelism which I have attempted elsewhere – The Ethics of Evangelism (IVP Academic, 2011), and The Scandal of Evangelism (Cascade Books, 2018).

To her credit, Samatar does engage in some critique of Mennonites, past and present. She exposes the sense of superiority held by Mennonite missionaries, the feeling that they had something to contribute to primitive natives (p. 76f). Even Mennonite wagons were viewed as superior to those built by the Cossacks (p. 76). She describes how a modern progressive Mennonite who has given up church planting for work in a non-governmental organization like MCC is now seen as “transformed overnight into a very clever and virtuous person,” and as “an extremely modern person, cutting edge” (p. 77). “Mennonites think they’re literally God’s gift to humankind” (p.141). Yes, there is a danger of self-righteousness in Mennonite do-goodism. And as is noted by Samatar, it is simply dishonest to fail to admit that we ourselves gain in our giving (p. 143).

But Samatar is proud of one Mennonite core belief – non-violence. The followers of Claas Epp left Russia because of their refusal of violence. “In this shining absolutism lies the great honor and dignity of Anabaptist life” (p. 52). Again, there is a worrying self-righteousness here. Indeed, as Samatar notes, there are other traditions, Muslim and Somali, who also have peace traditions (p. 134). We are not alone in our “shining absolutism” regarding non-violence. And let’s not forget Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector which Jesus gave “to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else” (Luke 18:9-14). I wonder, would Jesus condemn us for being Mennonite Pharisees?
Towards the end of the book there is a reminder of how Claas Epp and his followers were shaped by a German novel, “Das Heimweh,” or home-ache, a “longing for at-homeness,” a “driving homesickness” (pp. 96, 294). Samatar applies this to herself. Perhaps the longing for at-homeness affects all of us. If only we could find this in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, rather than in human invented visions that so often go awry.

Samatar concludes the book: “And how I love their wrongness. Their beautiful error. The collapse of their intent. It’s failure that saves these wanderers from the old lines, the known gestures, the missionary effect” (p. 297). Surely there is something very wrong here. Loving the errors and wrongness of others? Is not mercy and forgiveness the more appropriate response to the errors of others? And being saved from old lines? Is the new necessarily better than the old? And then a final comment about what drew Samatar to this pilgrimage – it gave her “a sense of the fragmented nature of others; of everyone” (p. 304). Yes, everyone! Here, a glimmer of humility.

This book is not an easy read. I skimmed parts, but I did keep reading to the end. If readers would like a more positive take on this book, see a review written by Shirley Hershey Showalter, in Anabaptist World, and in the Canadian Mennonite, Jan 16, 2023.

Tags: diversity, education, ethics, ethics of evangelism, fanaticism, identities, indoctrination, liberalism, Martyr's Mirror, Mennonite liberals, Mennonites, modern Mennonites, non-violence, progressivism, secular Mennonites, Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque, tolerance