Doing my homework online

Georg Sverdrup Sven Oftedal

I’ve been neglecting you folks recently, because of the pressure of graduate school work. Tonight I’m going to compound the offense by using this space for homework purposes.

The two fellows you see above, reading from top to bottom, in photographs from the H. Larson Studio circa 1904, are Georg Sverdrup and Sven Oftedal, professors at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, and founders of the Lutheran Free Church, of which my current employer, the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, is the spiritual descendant. Both born in Norway and respected scholars, they are nevertheless best remembered for the bitter controversies they were involved in (and often initiated), especially in the 1880s and ’90s.

As an assignment for one of my classes, I have to help assemble a “Digital Library Project” at Omeka. This involves posting, and coding with metadata, certain items relating to the theme of a group project. My project involves Scandinavian Culture in the Upper Midwest. Two of the items I chose to post were the above photographs, which reside in the archive I oversee at work. I took the pictures myself (obviously), and my lack of competence is apparent. But the instructions require a link to an external source for the photographs, so I’m making this blog post the source. (I’m not even sure that’s ethical, but I can’t think of another way to do it.)

But since I’m posting anyway, I want to discuss something shocking I’ve learned in my studies of these two men.

The most unbelievable thing I’ve learned about these guys, who started the movement which my very conservative church body carries on today, is that they were liberals.

Now bear in mind I’m talking about them in the context of their time. And in their time being a liberal had nothing to do with challenging traditional standards of morality. It certainly had nothing to do with challenging the reliability of the Bible.

In those days, especially in Europe, where these two came from, being liberal was about how you wanted the common people treated.

Conservatives believed in the old social order. The nobility, the church hierarchy, and the officials should run things. Common people should do as they were told, because they didn’t have the training, education, or breeding to have a say in how the world was run.

Liberals believed that the common people could be raised by education to complete equality. The old classes should be swept away.

Sverdrup and Oftedal wanted to extend this principle to church government. The members of the congregation, with the help of their servant pastors, could control their own affairs very well, and did not need bishops or synods to guide them — providing they were truly revived.

Their opponents called them anarchists, and there was some justice in the accusation.

I can understand the objection.

But we’ve done OK so far.

9 thoughts on “Doing my homework online”

  1. 19th century European nomenclature is very different from each 21st century US nomenclature.

    “Conservative” means to conserve the historical system. In the US, this means a fairly libertarian, small government system. In Europe, it meant a much more hierarchical system with everybody staying in their proper place. In today’s Russia, it means a Socialist system.

    “Liberal” used to stand for liberty from the government. Today, it seems to start for government-mediated “liberty” from big corporations.

  2. Ori, you should say “select, big corporations” since liberals have big corporate money behind them as much as conservatives (or at least Republicans) do. But the accepted maxim is that big corporations are the evil hands rocking the government cradle. They cry about the Koch Brothers with George Soros’ blessing.

  3. Of course, that is the reason I put quotes around liberty. The tops, on both sides, belong to different factions of the same elite.

    OTOH, the fear that animates the rank and file is fear of corporations. That is the reason they welcome government intrusion – they think corporations are the entities to fear.

  4. BTW, I’m using “corporations” here the way they do, large firms, rather than in the legal meaning of a limited liability business.

  5. …The members of the congregation, with the help of their servant pastors, could control their own affairs very well, and did not need bishops or synods to guide them…

    These guys sound like…Presbyterians! At least as far as church gov is concerned.

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