Religious Nationalism in an Age of Globalization: The Case of Paraguay's "Mennonite State"

Goossen, Benjamin W.

doi:10.1590/2236-463320161405

Religious Nationalism in an Age of Globalization: The Case of Paraguay's "Mennonite State"¹ 1 This essay draws on research for my forthcoming book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, conducted with funding from the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Harvard University. I wish to thank Uwe Freisen of the Menno Colony Archive and Gunolf Niebuhr of the Fernheim Colony Archive for providing primary sources, as well as Rachel Waltner Goossen for her comments. Except where otherwise noted, all translations are my own. While all qualifications in brackets are mine, italicized words are emphasized in the original documents.

Abstract:

This article uses the example of Mennonite nation-building in Paraguay during the 1920s and 1930s to argue that state formation is not inherently modernist. Tracing nineteenth and early twentieth-century discourses of Mennonite colonies in Imperial Russia, Canada, and elsewhere as a "state within a state," the essay advocates a reevaluation of theories of modern statehood advanced by thinkers like James C. Scott and Ernest Gellner. As conservative, pacifist Mennonites traveled from North America to the Paraguayan Chaco to escape the pressures of assimilation in democratic society, their migration paved the way for coreligionists fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union to join in the formation of a rural, autonomous "Mennonite state" that was organized internationally, characterized by deep religious observance, and conceived in opposition to high modernist projects.

Keywords:
State-building; nationalism; Mennonites; modernity; diaspora; globalization

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Abstract: