Some days a blog topic leaps out at me and takes me by the proverbial throat. Other days I’m like a wallflower at a dance, watching all the topics foxtrot past; everyone else in a couple and me the odd man out.
Not that I ever went to a dance.
So I shall free-associate. The thing I heard today that impressed me most was something a pastor said at the meeting of the board of the Georg Sverdrup Society, which I attended in my capacity as Journal Editor.
He was talking about the history of Scandinavian Lutherans in America.
In general, he said, there were two kinds of Swedes in America—those who belonged to the One Lutheran Church (called the Augustana Synod), and those who left Lutheranism altogether and became Baptists or Evangelical Free Church or nothing at all.
And among the Danes there were also two sorts—those who belonged to the One Lutheran Church (called, I think, the Danish Synod), and those who left Lutheranism altogether and became Baptists or Pentecostals or Salvation Army (for instance) or nothing at all. (My mother, who was half Norwegian, half Danish, was raised a Methodist, and some of her family were Baptists).
But among the Norwegians, you had 57 varieties of Lutheran (this pastor guessed there were somewhere between ten and twenty different denominations): Free Lutherans, and Haugeans, and Lutheran Brethren, and Eielsen Synod, and others even I know nothing about.
Nowadays it’s common to laugh at all those old Norwegians who couldn’t get along with each other, and so split into schisms over the shape of the pastor’s beard or points of punctuation in the hymn book, but the end result was that more Norwegians (by percentage) stayed Lutheran than did the Swedes or Danes. In the long run, it was good for the Lutheran Church.
I’m not sure where to take this idea. “Diversity” is an overworked word in our day, one we have trouble using because everybody’s got their own definition. Is diversity better served by bringing diverse people into one group and demanding they all get along with each other, which can easily produce counterproductive results? Or by allowing everyone to go their own ways, and run the risk that they’ll snub and stereotype each other, and never realize how much they have in common?
And who was being diverse in the case of the Scandinavian Lutherans? Those who tried to shoehorn all the factions into one central church where everybody was a little uncomfortable, or those who broke up into splinter churches?
I love an old saying, which I’ve heard attributed to Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s close associate (except that he didn’t say it. It was the Moravian John Comenius, or else St. Augustine. I’ve done a web search and I’m still not sure.) It goes like this: “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.”
Of course nowadays we don’t even agree on what the essentials are.
For instance, those little soul patches are definitely not appropriate for a pastor’s beard.
Back in my Seminary Church History class, the instructor explained the difference by noting the attitude of the central people in the various revivals.
In Norway Hans Nielsen Hauge urged his followers to stay in their local congregations and work for revival from within. These small conventicles met in homes and became a church within a church. Only in America did they begin to form new denominations. Also, many of the early Norwegian Lutheran denominations were regional in focus because of the difficulties of travel in the frontier areas.
In Sweden the followers of Carl Olaf Rosenius left the spiritually dead state church for the groups which eventually branched into what we know as the General Baptist Conference, The Evangelical Covenant Church and the Evangelical Free Church.
I’m not sure where to take this idea. “Diversity” is an overworked word in our day, one we have trouble using because everybody’s got their own definition. Is diversity better served by bringing diverse people into one group and demanding they all get along with each other, which can easily produce counterproductive results? Or by allowing everyone to go their own ways, and run the risk that they’ll snub and stereotype each other, and never realize how much they have in common?
Speaking a somebody whose ancestors argued over such questions as whether it’s OK to leave fabric in a die vat over the Shabbat(1), do both.
Split the denominations, so everybody can worship in a manner that works for them. Worship is a training program, and one size does not necessarily fit all. However, still talk to each other. Argue. Discuss. Be polite but inform the misguided fools of their being misguided and foolish ;-).
(1) Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, around the time the Second Temple was destroyed. Eventually Halacha settled on Beit Hillel, that it’s OK as long as you put it in the vat prior to Shabbat.
Is that supposed to be the “Baptist General Conference” (BGC), formerly the “Swedish Baptist Conference”?
I attended Bethel University, and Bethlehem Baptist downtown (MN). I was also born at Swedish Hospital, although I’m not Swedish. I have Norwegian blood (among other nationalities), and the doctor was Scottish and singing Robert Burns songs. Hmmmm…
Maybe I’m a Pseudo-Swedish-Swegian-who-thinks-he’s-a-Scot.
I don’t know, Robert. I have enough trouble keeping Lutherans straight (and failing). I leave Baptists pretty much strictly alone.
My mother took her nursing degree at Swedish Hospital, although she was Danish/Norwegian. Somebody clearly wasn’t paying attention!
Ah, the fissiparus nature of Protestantism…
Not that I have anything to crow about!
Thanks for the clarification on the quote. I’d apparently blindly followed the common attribution to Melanchthon.