Daniel Musser (1809–1877) was a physician and a bishop at the Longenecker's Reformed Mennonite Church in

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Lancaster County (; ), sometimes nicknamed the Garden Spot of America or Pennsylvania Dutch Country, is a County (United States), county in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 United States ...

, USA. He is best known for his 1864 book "''Non-Resistance Asserted''", from which

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

quoted extensively in his 1894 book "''The Kingdom of God is Within You''". Musser belonged to the

Reformed Mennonite The Reformed Mennonite Church is a Conservative Anabaptist denomination of Christianity that officially separated from the main North American Mennonite body in 1812. History The Reformed Mennonite Church was founded on May 30, 1812, in Lancaste ...

s, one of the smallest and strictest

Mennonite Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...

groups, formed in 1812 and which, by 1906, had 2,079 members in 34 congregations, mainly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Ontario. The Church adopted the sixteenth century

Anabaptist Anabaptism (from Neo-Latin , from the Greek language, Greek : 're-' and 'baptism'; , earlier also )Since the middle of the 20th century, the German-speaking world no longer uses the term (translation: "Re-baptizers"), considering it biased. ...

practice of banning and shunning to reform members. Musser was unusual in being a physician in a community largely dominated by farmers and artisans. As a writer, he wrote with remarkable style and was well-read. American Mennonite historian Theron Schlabach described him as "the most systematic theologian of any nineteenth-century Mennonite group". However, John Funk was highly critical of Musser's book ''The Reformed Mennonite Church and her accusers''. Although Musser and Tolstoy agreed on

nonresistance Nonresistance (or non-resistance) is "the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised". At its core is discouragement of, even opposition to, physical resistance to an enemy. It is considered as a form of pr ...

, Musser's views on government and human nature differed sharply from those of Tolstoy: Musser saw humans as basically evil, needing governments to control them; Tolstoy, on the other hand, saw governments as inherently evil, and humans as essentially good.

References

External links

Rev Daniel MusserFamily of Daniel MusserA History of the Reformed Mennonite Church
by Wilmer J. Eshleman
Official website
of the Reformed Mennonite Church {{DEFAULTSORT:Musser, Daniel 1809 births 1877 deaths Mennonite ministers Mennonite denominations Christian ethics Nonviolent resistance movements Nonviolence

See also

References

Further reading

External links