In today’s really important news, my article on the Lutheran Free Church for the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Magazine is now available free online. You can marvel at its awesomeosity at this link.
In even better news, I HAVE FINISHED MY MARATHON SLOG THROUGH THE VIKINGS: VALHALLA SERIES.
It was particularly frustrating watching a series that covered events I’ve researched and dramatized in my own novels, observing how the producers took historical events and characters, shuffled them like cards, and dealt them out in random order. Particularly annoying was their treatment of King Magnus the Good of Norway, who is treated here as a homicidal psychopath. I mean, they called him “the Good” for a reason.
But what’s important is that I can write my article now, with an eventual eye to payment. All through my life, I’ve harkened back to a poem I read somewhere, which went like this (more or less):
There’s a little check at the end of this verse.
I see it just three lines away.
And it shall be mine
For the good of my purse
If luck is my fellow today.
(I’d credit the author, but a web search doesn’t reveal his name, and I can’t find it in the book where I thought I saw it.)
I see echos in the article with what I know of the American experience of Reformed and Presbyterian groups, right down to being sued over the name by the mainline.
We were members for a long time of a local Evangelical Free Church congregation — similar impulse to the Free Lutherans, from Sweden. Congregational autonomy is big. They’re basically Baptists now.
(I hope they pay you a bunch for the Viking article, for making you slog through infuriating drek. Let’s see if I can hotlink the appropriate pic (Leonardo Dicaprio yelling and pointing at screen).)
https://i.imgflip.com/5wkmmv.png
Thanks. Yes, the Evangelical Free Church and the LFC were parallel, but not connected.