This chart is a sort of ancestor tree for Mennoism in Waterloo Region in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It isn’t complete and probably not completely accurate, but it shows where the main mennonite groups in Waterloo come from, as far as I can tell.
Mostly what we see are divisions (usually over theology, church practice, or accommodation to mainstream culture). The only merger I show is that between some of the Tunkers with the “New Mennonites” to form the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church in 1883. There were other mergers and schisms I don’t show, particularly (but not only) within the David Martin people and some of their offshoots.
Note that the two Russian Mennonite groups don’t come out of a split that I know anything about. They are simply the result of two different groups arriving in the Waterloo area in the 1920s. I think the Mennonite Brethren come from Russian Mennonites who immigrated into the United States and Western Canada in the 1870s, some of whom settled here in the 1920s, while the United Mennonites immigrated directly from Russia in the 1920s and settled here. I’m sure there’s more of a story there, but I haven’t been bothered to track it down.
Unlike most charts of Mennonite evolution, I do not show one “main Line” from which other groups diverge. As I’ve said elsewhere, I refuse to privilege any group over any other. This is not because I believe they are all wrong in one way or another (as some might think), but because I don’t have a position on the matter. Since I do not believe there is any objective standard or “Truth” in matters theological or spiritual or religious, I simply cannot favour any one group over the others. Each group sees itself as distinct from all the others, so I represent them as such.
500 Years of Migration 