All posts by Lars Walker

Religion

Pietists vs. Confessionalists

7 Comments
Portrait discovered in Copenhagen,, believed to be Hans Nielsen Hauge.

I wrote a fairly long meditation on Pietist Christianity and legalist Christianity yesterday. And I think I failed to actually say one of the things I meant to say.

Which is ironic, because that was one of the very weaknesses I meant to criticize (gently) in my hero, the Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge. Some years back I began work on translating his works, a project another linguist has since taken over. Mostly to my relief. Because Hauge is exceedingly hard to translate. I’ve heard of one scholar who started the same project years back and simply gave up in frustration. “He’s untranslatable!” that person said.

I think that’s an exaggeration, but I sympathize. Hauge is very hard to translate. The man was in no way a systematic thinker. He was an enthusiast. He poured his words out onto the page, it appears, just as they came to him. Sometimes he goes on for pages without a period or a paragraph break. I imagine Hauge as being very much like a certain pastor I once worked for. He hired me precisely for my writing skills. Because he found it almost impossible to actually get to the point. He communicated all right in person, because he could supplement his words with facial expressions and gestures. But when writing he just lost his way.

After many years, I think I finally figured out Hauge’s point. It’s a point he never states in so many words, but once you’ve figured it out, it illuminates all the rest of his verbiage. And it explains some of the puzzling – or even apparently unorthodox – things he seems to say.

That central point, I think – and I mentioned this part last night – was that he believed that a true believer – someone who was genuinely “awakened,” as he put it, would find the Christian life easy. They would be filled with the same joy and love he felt. We all know how love lightens burdens. When I was in love, long ago, I would have done many things far outside my comfort zone – and sometimes I actually did those things – just to please her. Just to be close to her. Love made hard tasks light.

This is a beautiful vision, and I believe it’s true in the Christian life to some extent.

But it’s not equally true for everybody. And it’s not always permanently true . I have good reason to believe that Hauge himself, during his ten-year imprisonment, when he was denied books and visits from his friends for long periods, eventually learned that the Way could be hard. He never lost his faith, but he learned that even true believers can struggle.

Some of us aren’t like Hauge. Our experience with God may be lower-key, less emotional. We have a smaller tank of emotional fuel to burn (those of us who are introverts feel this especially). We’re more like John Haugvaldstad, who needed rules and lists to keep himself on the straight path. I believe he took it to an extreme, but for some people this pattern seems prudent. Books like Jordan Petersen’s 12 Rules for Life fill a need for them (us).

Among us Lutherans there’s an old tension – sometimes fiery verbal warfare – between the Pietists and the “Confessionals.” The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod is the largest and best-known Confessional church body in the US. Going back to the days of immigration, the Pietists and the Confessionalists anathematized one another. The Pietists (like Georg Sverdrup, subject of the journal I edit) condemned the Missouri Synod as cold, formalistic, Catholic-adjacent, and spiritually dead. Confessionalism, Sverdrup wrote, provided a “sleeping pillow” on which members of dead congregations could slumber while their pastors tried futilely to do all the work of the church on their own.

The doctrine-centered Missourians, on the other hand, condemned the Haugean Pietists as unstable, emotional enthusiasts. If synods and pastors didn’t keep a close eye on the laity, checking their every statement for orthodoxy and basically barring them from any kind of spiritual ministry, then everybody would just go crazy. Subjectivism would take over. You’d have churches abandoning traditional sexual morality, and syncretizing with other religions, and reciting something like, oh, “the Sparkle Creed.”

Which, sadly, is just what happened. Missouri Synod theologians rarely hesitate in making the charge that all the aberrations we see today in The Very Big Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless (as I call it) spring from the subjectivism inherent in Pietism.

I have to admit their prophecies came true.

But I still think Hauge and Sverdrup had a point.

The heart of my own theology, for many years, has been the Incarnation. The Word became Flesh. Somehow, through the power of God, body and mind came into harmony. Justice and Mercy kissed. The absolute and the subjective cooperated perfectly in the one perfect Man.

That’s what I want to see reflected in the church, and in myself.

Religion

Hauge and Haugvaldstad

3 Comments
Bust of John Haugvaldstad outside the Mission School in Stavanger.

My mind was so uplifted to God that I had no consciousness, nor can I express what occurred in my soul. For I was outside myself, and as soon as I had come to my senses again, I understood that I had not been serving the beloved God who was good above all things, and that I now thought nothing in this world worthy of esteem. That my soul experienced something supernatural, divine, and blessed, that it was a glory that no tongue can express. I remember it to this day as clearly as if it had been a few days ago, though 20 years have now passed since God’s love visited me so overwhelmingly. Nor can anyone dispute this with me: for I know that everything good in my spirit followed from that moment, especially the sincere, burning love for God and my neighbor, that I had a wholly altered attitude and a sorrow over all sins, a passionate desire that people should share with me in that same grace, a particular desire to read the holy Scriptures… (Hans Nielsen Hauge’s memoirs, trans. by me)

I hope this little essay won’t be too provincial to interest our readers. I’m writing, as I do so often, about the Lutheran “sect” in which I was raised, the Haugeans. I came to some realizations about the Haugeans this past weekend, based on reading I’d been doing and some conversations I had with other members of the Georg Sverdrup Society. The wider implications, I think, touch all Christians.

The Haugean movement, especially as it developed among Norwegian-Americans in this country, was probably best known for its legalism. We were the kind of people who (by and large) did not drink or smoke, did not play cards, did not attend the theater or dance. There were great revivals among the Haugeans in America, especially in the 1890s and the 1920s. After that, the rains never seemed to come again. My own observation, based on what I know of people who grew up in my church in the 1920s, was that the young people were embittered and driven away by all the rules. Being “awakened” seemed to mean (to those young people) a commitment to following the rules. Forever.

Based on some recent reading, I think the fault for this probably lies, not with Hans Nielsen Hauge himself but with another man, John Haugvaldstad (1770-1850). I suppose I bear some familial guilt for this development, since Haugvaldstad was a neighbor to my Hodnefjeld ancestors on Mosterøy Island (before he moved to Stavanger), and they were close friends and supporters of his.

Look at the excerpt from Hauge’s memoirs above. That’s not the testimony of a rule-bound soul. It’s the testimony of a man in love. I think Hauge ought to be imagined as a man with a big smile on his face. All his work, all his rugged foot-journeys, his long days and hard work, even his imprisonments, were experienced with joy, because he’d fallen in love with Jesus. For Hauge, the Christian life was fun. That was how the movement began.

But when Hauge went to prison, John Haugvaldstad arose as leader of the movement – at least in Stavanger, an important Haugean center. And Haugvaldstad was a very different soul from Hauge. Haugvaldstad struggled with temptation. At last he decided that the only way to handle temptation effectively was to avoid all questionable activities (“if it’s doubtful, it’s dirty”). Debauchery and fights happened at parties, so avoid parties, dancing and drinking. In fact, avoid all music other than hymns. Don’t play cards. (Smoking was acceptable in some circles; it depended.) Don’t attend the theater. Don’t read worldly literature. And on and on.

It was Haugvaldstad who made the Haugeans teetotalers. Hauge himself was always opposed to drunkenness, but he sometimes seems to have served brandy at social gatherings and he served beer to his household at Christmas. In a famous conversation, he said to John Haugvaldstad, “Ditt Væsen er taget, ikke givet!” Which means, “Your temperament is taken [upon yourself], not given [by God]!”

But Hauge went to prison, and he died young, and Haugvaldstad prospered as a businessman in Stavanger. He was highly regarded (he’s considered one of the founding fathers of modern Stavanger), and not without reason. He was a very good man, a man with great concern for the poor. He did much good for his neighbors, and for Christian missions. The esteem in which he was held led many people to make him their role model. The “temperament” of Haugvaldstad became the Haugean norm.

Today, in our situation, I would very much like to see the spirit of Hauge return. I think we could use it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bull Rush,’ by David Chill

Leave a comment

The Burnside books by David Chill comprise a PI series I’d never heard of. Yet in many ways Bull Rush was exactly what I look for in a detective book.

Burnside (like Spenser he goes by his surname) is a private eye in Los Angeles. An old acquaintance comes to his office to ask him to look for his missing adult son. The young man was once a hot pro football prospect (Burnside himself is a former college player and sports culture permeates the story), but now he works for a slightly shady real estate operation. The young man has had trouble with drugs in the past, so it’s likely he’s passed out somewhere.


Burnside isn’t entirely happy with the job – the father was never someone he liked a whole lot. On top of that, Burnside knows he got the referral from another mutual “friend,” a crooked sports agent who’s always playing the angles. But it’s a legitimate job, and he isn’t in a position to turn it down.

Then, in the course of his search, Burnside stumbles on a murder victim. Now he’ll have to deal with the police. And soon, with politicians and the very wealthy.

What pleased me best about Bull Rush was its traditional qualities. Burnside doesn’t have an ideological agenda. He doesn’t have a kick-butt female partner. He’s not involved in deconstructing or normalizing anything. He’s just doing a human job among human beings. The main way he differs from your classic Golden Age gumshoe is in having a wife and a young son. Oh yes, and a psychotherapist he sees regularly.

The writing in Bull Rush was clean and professional, without either pyrotechnics or illiteracies. The characters were believable, the dialogue sharp. This is honest, meat-and-potatoes detective fiction. I recommend it highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘After Death,’ by Dean Koontz

Leave a comment

Duty is based on something more profound than hope, on faith that what is too wrong to endure will be made right, rectified by a system of justice that underlies all of nature, far beneath the subatomic level, a system that may right a wrong in a day or through the passage of time or outside of time. The schedule isn’t ours to protest or endorse. His duty is to act with all the skill and wisdom he possesses, not with hope but with conviction.

Rejoice! We have a new Dean Koontz book. He just keeps rolling them out – always good, sometimes exceptional. After Death is somewhat reminiscent of Koontz’ recent series of novellas about a character called Nameless. But it handles similar concepts in a different way.

Michael Mace was dead, and is alive again. It wasn’t a miracle in the religious sense, but it still may change the world. Michael was head of security at Beautification Research, a company that was ostensibly a cosmetics business but actually did top-secret genetic and nanotech research. When an accidental leak kills everyone in the building, Michael dies with all the rest. But then he wakes up. And now he’s changed. He has new powers that give him mental access to all the information on the internet. No firewall can stop him.

The first item on his agenda is to help a single mother named Nina Dozier and her son John. Michael’s best friend and co-worker Shelby was very fond of them, and probably would have courted her if he’d lived. They’re in danger from John’s natural father, a gang lord who’s decided it’s time to claim his son and make him his successor. Nina will have to be taught a lesson too, for dissing him.

But there’s a larger danger than that. It comes from the Internal Security Agency, the corrupt law enforcement body that supports the corrupt bureaucracy now running the country. Their chief agent is a psychopath named Duran Calaphas, an efficient killer but increasingly delusional. He takes Michael’s appearance as a personal sign for him, giving him a worthy foe he must destroy in order to achieve his grandiose personal destiny. Without loyalty to anyone or anything but himself, Calaphas will stop at nothing, destroy anything, to kill Michael Mace. And his companions.

Koontz hits every note precisely, manipulates the reader with the deft hand of a master. It’s beautiful to behold. Especially delightful (for me) was one amazing plot twist unlike anything I’d ever read before (it involves storytelling). A delightful moment.

My only quibble (spoiler alert) was that I thought the ending might have been too good to be true. But that’s no great failing in a book. No failing at all, actually. We’re allowed a happy ending from time to time.

Highly recommended.

Authors, Fiction

James Scott Bell interview

Leave a comment

Above, an interview — a few years old — with author James Scott Bell. Among the topics touched on are whether writers are born or made, and if a series character can have a character arc.

He mentions his blog, Kill Zone, which I wasn’t aware of. You can find it here.

The Press

Coyote Nation

2 Comments

I am now contributing, occasionally, to The Heartland Daily News. My article, “American Life Has Become a Cartoon – and Not In a Good Way,” appeared today:

Allan Bloom warned us in The Closing of the American Mind that relativists are incipient authoritarians. If right and wrong aren’t universal but are merely personal or social constructs, there’s no criterion for judging one person’s case against another’s. The decision can only go to the party with the most power. Not on any kind of principle, but because nature abhors a vacuum, just as gravity abhors unsupported coyotes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Up Close and Fatal,’ by Fergus McNeill

Leave a comment

‘More and more, people tend to confuse “understanding” with “agreement”,’ he said, leaning forward in his chair, and resting his elbows on his knees. ‘If you say you understand something bad… like a racist or sexist comment, for example… then people accuse you of being racist or sexist. They deliberately confuse understanding with agreement….”

Two “gripping” novels in a row that were actually gripping. I’m on a roll, I guess. Up Close and Fatal, by Fergus McNeill, was a fascinating, sometimes creepy ride.

Tom Pritchard is an Englishman living in New York City. Once a successful journalist, his career is on the skids now. He’s divorced and guilty about neglecting his young son.

One day he gets an envelope in the mail. Inside the envelope is a numbered list. There are names next to some of the numbers, next to others are blank lines. There’s also a driver’s license belonging to a woman, one of the people named on the list. A quick web search shows that the woman is the victim of an unsolved murder. In fact, all the people named have been murdered, but in widely separated locations, and nobody seems to have guessed at a link.

Tom calls a police detective friend to tell him about it. The friend is intrigued, but says this material by itself isn’t enough to take to his superiors.

Soon Tom gets a phone call from the sender. This man, who call himself J, tells Tom he’s been killing these people, because the world is a better place without them. He’s read Tom’s work and was impressed by it. He wants to tell Tom his story, so he can write it the right way.

This gets Tom a meeting with the police, and they agree to give him protection and a tracking chip so he can be bait in their trap. But when he arrives at the rendezvous point, a remote spot upstate, J never appears. However, when Tom gets home he’s attacked, tazed, and dumped in a car trunk.

J still wants Tom to write his story. But he wants him to understand it from up close – through accompanying him on his pilgrimage of murder as he completes his list. And if Tom interferes, J has arranged for his son to be murdered.

It gets worse when they encounter an innocent witness. What will Tom do to prevent J killing her to shut her mouth?

Up Close and Fatal was a well-written book (American location, English orthography) that kept the dramatic tension dialed all the way up. The social awkwardness of enforced socialization with someone you despise, who can nevertheless be charming or even thoughtful at times, compelled my interest. Also, there was a great twist at the end. I was highly impressed.

The only oddity was when Tom and J are riding around in a big SUV and the author keeps talking about its trunk. What’s with that?

Music, Religion

‘Jesus, I Long for Thy Blessed Communion’

Leave a comment

Music today. I wanted to share the video above, because I’d found it – and found it surprisingly beautiful.

There’s a story involved with the hymn, “Jesus, Din Søte Forening á Smake,” (Jesus, Thy Sweet Communion to Savor), which is called “Jesus, I Long For Thy Blessed Communion” in the English translation.

The story does not concern the writing of the hymn. I know nothing about the author, P. J. Hygom, and a quick web search indicates nobody else does either (I presume he was a Dane). The hymn itself is not one I grew up with. When I finally discovered it as an adult, I thought it rather dull. I never considered it beautiful until I heard Sissel’s rendition above. Now I’ve got it as an earworm.

But even its surprising beauty isn’t the point. My point is its historical significance.

I’ve written before here about the founder of the Lutheran… sect, or whatever you’d call it, in which I was raised. The Haugeans. Hans Nielsen Hauge, a poor farmer’s son, was plowing his father’s field on April 5 1796, singing this hymn for his own edification. Then something happened to him. He wrote in his autobiography:

“Now my mind was so uplifted to God that I became senseless, nor can I explain what happened in my soul, because I was completely outside myself. And the first thing I understood when I regained my senses was a feeling of grief that I had not served above all things this dear, good God, and that I now believed that nothing in this world was of any value. And my soul felt something supernatural, divine and blessed; it was a glory which no tongue can express.” (My translation)

So overwhelmed was Hauge by this experience that he devoted his life to sharing the gospel with his neighbors. This would lead him to prominence in Norway, and also to prison and premature death.

But his movement was a seed planted in the right place at the right time. Not only was there a powerful Christian revival in Norway, but society itself was changed.

Hauge’s followers were often called “the Readers.” That wasn’t a compliment. The term expresses the surprise felt by the upper classes when they saw commoners going around with books. This troubled them. Books gave the lower classes uppity ideas.

To this day, Norwegians are among the most literate people on earth, with a surprising number of newspapers per capita.

A couple of the verses go:

Jesus, I long for Thy blessed communion,

Yearning possesses my heart and my mind.

Break down all barriers that hinder our union.

Draw me to Thee, O Redeemer most kind!

Show me now clearly my need that is crying.

Show the extent of my sin unto me.

That unto sin I may daily be dying,

And in the Spirit live only to Thee.

Mightily strengthen my spirit within me,

That I may learn what Thy Spirit can do;

O take Thou captive each passion and win me,

Lead Thou and guide me my whole journey through!

All that I am and possess I surrender,

If Thou alone in my spirit mayst dwell,

Everything yield Thee, O Savior most tender,

Thou, only Thou, canst my sadness dispel.

Uncategorized

‘Kill Romeo,’ by Andrew Diamond

Leave a comment

“There’s no in-person interaction anymore. Hardly anyone goes to church—at least around here. Hardly anyone belongs to leagues or social clubs, like our grandparents did. Work is the one place where people spend enough time together to actually get to know each other, and it’s the one place where developing a deep, meaningful relationship is forbidden. What kind of world is this?”

*

The boldly-colored tattoos on his milk-white arms made him look like a choirboy who’d fallen asleep on the subway and been vandalized.

Freddy Ferguson, hero of Kill Romeo, the second book in a series, is a former heavyweight boxer, former mob thug (reformed), and now a Washington, DC private eye. He’s in a small Virginia town doing a background check on a prospective political candidate. It’s a quick and easy job, and when it’s done he takes a walk in the woods. That’s when he discovers the body of a woman, dressed all in white, lying on a river bank. A storm is blowing up, the river is rising, and he tries to move the body to higher ground. The river pulls it away from him, and he barely gets out alive himself.

He reports the discovery (and loss) of the body to the local sheriff, but their department is overwhelmed in the storm’s aftermath. Also, there’s no local woman unaccounted for. Freddy feels bad about this, but it’s not his case. However, his local host, a cheerful busybody, uncovers a single clue. Since business is slow, Harry agrees to follow that clue up. Gradually, bit by bit, puzzle pieces are uncovered. They lead Freddy and his team to places he’d never have guessed, and to a crime with mob, big business, and international implications.

Meanwhile, there’s trouble at the office. Freddy and his partner have two employees, and are evaluating a new investigator, Claire. Freddy likes Claire – too much. Not only is she a really top-notch detective, she’s beautiful and extremely appealing. He can’t stop thinking about her, but he knows office romances are absolutely forbidden in this day and age. He’s going crazy over Claire, and is very much afraid he’s going to have to quit or else he’ll do something that could get him in big trouble.

For this reader, Kill Romeo genuinely fell into the over-used category of “gripping.” The mystery was interesting, and Freddy’s awkward, uncomfortable passion for Claire is both funny and compelling. The topic of romance in the age of political correctness is an awkward one for me, so my personal discomfort rendered the dramatic tension all the more agonizing.

Also, there was a one-sentence chapter, which is cute when not overused.

Pretty good book, and it struck some blows against PC. I might read the prequel and the sequel.

Non-fiction, Poetry

‘The Tale of Arnor, Poet of Jarls’

Leave a comment
The Viking hall at Ravnsborg, Knox City, MO. Photo by me.

It’s been a little while since I reviewed another saga in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Tonight’s saga is not a saga at all, but a tale, just two pages long. It’s a sort of parenthetical incident found originally in the Icelandic Morkinskinna saga manuscript. I can’t find any cheap collection you can buy that contains it, so you’ll have to take my word about it. Its title is The Tale of Arnor, the Poet of Earls.

“Earl,” of course, is a translation of “jarl.”

Arnor Jarlaskald is a figure known from the saga histories, and considered one of the great skalds of the 11th Century. This story doesn’t explain his nickname (he deals only with kings here), but we’re told elsewhere that he got it because he spent a lot of time with the jarls of the Orkneys and composed often for them. Otherwise he was a merchant.

This story is set during the time when King Magnus the Good (St. Olaf’s son) ruled jointly with King Harald Hardrada. (Harald had come back from Constantinople dripping with money, intending to depose his nephew Magnus and take over Norway. Intermediaries convinced them to do a deal – half of Harald’s fortune in exchange for half of Magnus’ kingdom. Though their time together wasn’t without tensions, they managed to keep the peace, and when Magnus died, it’s remarkable to note that nobody seems to have suggested that Harald murdered him. That’s the sort of thing Harald easily might have done, after all).

In the tale, Arnor arrives in the town (doesn’t say what town here; no doubt it’s explained in the larger context. Could have been Nidaros (Trondheim), but it might have been Tunsberg), having composed poems in honor of both kings. But he seems to have been told to wait, so he started to work tarring his ship. Then messengers came to summon him to court. He went directly, not even stopping to wash the tar off his hands.

He then goes into the hall, where both kings wait in their high seats. They ask Arnor whose poem he means to recite first. Arnor says he’ll start with Magnus, because “it is said that young men are impatient.”

Arnor begins the poem, and Harald (himself a poet) can’t resist interrupting to complain that it’s mostly about Arnor’s own journeys and dealings with the jarls. Magnus wants to hear more, and then the saga writer gives us excerpts from the original poem. Harald continues butting in with objections, but in the end he appears jealous. After hearing his own poem, he says, “My poem will soon fade away and be forgotten, while the drapa composed about King Magnus will be recited as long as there are people in the North.”

Which is true, because we have Magnus’ poem preserved here, while Harald’s is not.

In the end, Arnor is rewarded by Harald with a gold-inlaid spear, while Magnus gives him a gold ring and, later, a merchant ship and cargo.

This is a snippet, an anecdote without much of a plot. Its significance would seem to be in the insight it gives us into the characters of two very different kings. And probably an old man’s proud reminiscence of the days when he met celebrities.

Irrelevant details like Arnor’s dirty hands give a strong impression of verisimilitude. This sounds very much like a genuine memory, passed down only a few generations before being preserved on parchment.