It surprised me, because nearly every Cornies is Canada is somehow related, however distantly. Nearly all arrived in this country during one of several waves of Mennonite migrations from Europe — either as settlers or refugees — during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. And with them came the dominant view of warfare and participation in it: that it ran counter to their understanding of Christian faith. They were, and are, predominantly pacifist. So how was it, I wondered, that a young man of Mennonite ancestry came to serve in the Canadian military?

I began my search with Library and Archives Canada. I wasn’t immediate family, so there were strict limits on what the Archives’ analysts could tell me. They could reveal this: He enlisted on Feb. 1, 1944, and was discharged on July 15, 1946. He served with the Irish Fusiliers (Vancouver Regiment) at the rank of fusilier.

The next step was to ask my parents (I’m fortunate both are still alive). I provided what details I had and they, in turn, dove into their multi-tiered network of acquaintances, as robust — and often as reliable — as any Internet connection. Within a matter of days, the answer came back: They knew someone who knew someone who would likely know. (Among Canadian Mennonites, the notion of six degrees of separation shrinks to two or three.)

I followed the virtual trail of DNA and, before long, was speaking to Henry Cornies of St. Catharines, Ont. Private Bill had been his older brother. During that conversation, a picture emerged of an independent-minded young man who didn’t unquestioningly accept the religious views of his parents. (His father, Wilhelm Henry, had served in the Russian army during the First World War and had become an ardent pacifist.)

After his draft notice arrived shortly before his 18^th birthday, William refused to let anyone talk him out of enlisting in the army. He was determined to serve his country and didn’t want to be branded a coward — the epithet leveled at many young Mennonite men who applied for and received conscientious objector status. They served their tours of duty as farm workers, loggers, lumberjacks, miners, grain handlers, factory labourers, construction workers and similar assignments. Some served in the medical or dental corps.

In all, about 7,500 young Mennonites claimed CO status during the Second World War. There is another figure, however, that gets far less mention in official denominational circles: about 4,500 young Canadian Mennonite men (and a few women) enlisted for active military service, despite church’s historic peace position and the invocations of their elders to shun enlistment in the Canadian forces in favour of CO service. For them, church leaders deployed an unfortunate term: verlorene Soehne. Lost sons. And thus began a disaffection that, in many cases, would be last a lifetime. William was one of these. He was resolute. For church elders, there would be no saving Private Cornies.

He trained as an anti-aircraft gunner in Nova Scotia, where he met Shirley Smith, his future wife, from nearby Windsor, N.S. He was eventually relegated to the service corps and was discharged from the army on July 15, 1946, after serving about 30 months. He spent the lion’s share of his career as a steelworker and boilermaker at Foster Wheeler in St. Catharines, which, at the time, was doing a lot of work for Atomic Energy of Canada.

After his children, Billy Jr. and Linda, had grown and his wife Shirley had died, William Cornies continued his connection to a brotherhood that would never have dubbed him “lost.” He was a proud member of the Legion’s General Nelles Branch in Niagara-on-the Lake, where even today he is remembered for his loyalty, independent thought and the frequent companionship of his dog.

I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet this distant relative a few years earlier. I would have enjoyed the conversation.

And I loved it. An English professor at Hope College in Holland, Mich., Janzen is intimately acquainted with Mennonite history, theology and culture, yet far enough removed to possess the refreshing perspective of one who can skewer them with ease and a certain relish. For those of us who were raised in Mennonite homes and have, through our lives, been alternately repelled by and attracted to various aspects of this faith tradition, Janzen’s memoir of her return home after a series of personal crises was unvarnished, penetrating, insightful and humorous in the deadpan manner of a Mennonite Bob Newhart. The last time I rang up this many LOLs per page was reading Armin Wiebe’s The Salvation of Jasch Siemens.

If I’d been paying closer attention to the denominational press or the book sections of prominent U.S. newspapers, Janzen’s memoir wouldn’t have come as much as a surprise. In the Mennonite Weekly Review, editor Paul Schrag went to great lengths to document the decidedly mixed reception the book has had in Janzen’s home community of Fresno, Calif., where there is much handwringing about the promotion of stereotypes and the biting nature of Janzen’s satire and critiques. A profile of the author by Cathy Horyn in The New York Times, however, is much more revelatory of Janzen’s personality and intent. Erika Schickel’s review in the Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, seems to miss the essence of the book almost entirely.

Janzen has posted a kind of trailer to the book on YouTube, in which she provides some of the anecdotes from the memoir’s opening chapters (see the clip below). The video, however, doesn’t match the wonderfully engaging style that is Rhoda Janzen in print.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Janzen has already reached a deal with her publisher for a kind of sequel, titled Backslider, which Horyn describes as “an ongoing history of a skeptic’s move back to a community of faith.” Which could easily describe Little Black Dress, too. What’s evident from the early pages is that implanted in Janzen’s consciousness is a homing beacon that steadily points the way back to a tradition she thought she’d left — but that evidently had never left her.

Mennonites have been sufficiently schismatic over the centuries that it takes a church historian to really delineate between the dozens of religious groups with a legitimate claim to the term. To simplify, Mennonites are the spiritual descendants of Menno Simons, one of a series of Anabaptist (meaning “re-baptizing”) reformers of the early 16th century. Other branches of Anabaptism include the followers of Jacob Amman (the Amish) and Jacob Hutter (the Hutterites). I could go on and list some of the others, but to do so would require a book, not a blog post.

Let’s just say this: Contrary to North American perception, there are now more non-white Mennonites in the world than white. Canada and the United States are home to only about one-third of the globe’s 1.5 million Mennos, and there are significant populations in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Indonesia and the Indian subcontinent. So much for the Waterloo County stereotype.

Danisa Ndlovu and Nancy Heisey

The global Mennonite family holds a worldwide gathering once every six years or so under the auspices of an organization called Mennonite World Conference; that event got underway in Asunción, Paraguay, this week. Most of the weeklong celebration is devoted to worship, study and, as you might expect, service projects (someone once said that Mennonitism is Christianity with work clothes on). Occasional live streaming from the conference is planned.

There have so far been two interesting markers at the Asunción gathering. First, Danisa Ndlovu, a bishop in the Brethren in Christ church of Zimbabwe, has assumed the presidency of Mennonite World Conference from Nancy Heisey, an American religion scholar (see photo). Second, representatives of the Lutheran World Federation were on hand yesterday as a gesture of reconciliation and solidarity (warning: more arcane church history follows) for the difficult and ofttimes deadly hatred that stained relationships between the two emerging Protestant groups during the early years of the Reformation. They disagreed intensely over issues such as baptism and ecclesiology (the nature and structure of the church), with the Lutherans hardening their position against the Anabaptists in the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Essentially, the Lutherans agreed that the state (under the sway of the Roman Catholic Church) had the right to execute the Anabaptists for their sedition and heresy.

So the centuries-old rift between Anabaptists and Lutherans is beginning to heal. The same can’t yet be said for the much deeper divide between Anabaptists and Roman Catholics, though dialogue is ongoing at a number of levels.