(Due to popular demand, or at least my own demand not to have to come up with an idea tonight, here is the text of my talk at the 150th anniversary celebration of Hauge Lutheran Church, Kenyon, Minnesota, on June 28, 2009.)

At 10 o’clock on the evening of November 22, the bailiff came and delivered to me the provincial government’s order to read, which said that I should, under strict guard… be transported to Christiania…. The bailiff brought only his servant along and drove me to Christiania. He expressed his opinion that I would either be imprisoned in Munkholmen [prison] or exiled to the islands of the South Seas, so that I must not expect ever to see any of my faithful friends again. I answered him that as long as there is life there is hope of better things; and that if his prophecy should be fulfilled, my God would certainly take care of me, and “I am in His hands and satisfied to accept whatever tribulations He wills that I encounter.” With such thoughts and words I kept my courage up, and since the bailiff, as I experienced, did not care for my religious conversation, I spoke mostly with him of various projects for the public good of which I, here and there in the country, had been the initiator, of which I said, “It is sad to think that they should all be shipwrecked. Many will thereby lose their livelihoods. But even concerning that I will be at peace, if only I am myself satisfied that I have done what I could for the benefit of my homeland and my fellow men’s benefit, both temporal and eternal.”

These are Hans Nielsen Hauge’s own words, from his account of the arrest in 1804 which led to his long imprisonment. I read them here because they express something we sometimes forget about Hauge. He lived his message. He preached, first of all, that the gift of salvation must be received in the heart, and secondly, that true salvation must lead to good works. And he demonstrated that teaching by doing good—getting his hands dirty, sharing useful information and ideas, and building businesses that provided jobs.

It’s interesting that, while early critics of Hauge and his followers accused them of being shiftless, superstitious vagrants, later critics accused them of the exact opposite—they worked too hard, studied too much, were obsessed with money and profit. They didn’t have enough fun, and tried to spoil the fun of others.

These changes in criticism are really testimony to Hans Nielsen Hauge’s tremendous success. He changed the very character of his country. When Hauge was born, the best the average Norwegian could hope for was to be just what his father had been—and that was only if he was lucky enough to be the firstborn. If he wasn’t firstborn, he was lucky to make a living at all.

After Hauge, all Norwegians knew they had a multitude of possibilities. They could go into business. They could be teachers or pastors. They could write for a newspaper. And many of them did what was perhaps the most Haugean thing of all—they emigrated to America, where there was no class system and no state church, and no law prevented anyone from improving his situation and “edifying” his fellow men.

In a 1926 essay on Hauge’s significance in Norwegian history, P. J. Eikeland wrote that Hauge taught the Norwegians two things they had never understood before—one was that a Christian may disobey earthly authorities when those authorities are clearly in conflict with God’s Word. The second thing was what Eikeland called “Strongwilled earnestness.” The Haugeans saw life as stewardship. Life was a trust, like money on deposit, and they were expected to invest it wisely and multiply it.

It’s hard to imagine nowadays, when we all know the Garrison Keiller stories of dull, placid, overly responsible Norwegians, but there was a time when Norwegians had the reputation of being rowdy, drunken, ignorant louts. The opponents of immigration in early 19th Century America were no more pleased with Norwegians coming to this country than with the Irish or Germans, who also had bad reputations.

It was the Haugean movement that changed all that. The reputation of Norwegians in America didn’t improve because of affirmative action programs or laws against hate speech. It improved because the Norwegians—awakened by Haugean preaching—earned the respect of their neighbors.

When people were converted under Haugean preaching, the first thing they wanted to do was to read the Bible. In order to do that, they had to be able to read—in fact, one of the earliest nicknames for Haugeans was “The Readers.” And once they could read the Bible, they could read everything else. They read newspapers. They read books. They discussed what they read, and even wrote books of their own now and then. They became active and informed citizens.

Even back in Norway, it grew harder and harder for what was called “the educated classes” to argue that it was their right to run the country, because only they possessed wisdom. The common people, especially the Haugeans, were proving every day that they had common sense and practical ability second to none. When ordinary Norwegians got the right to vote for a parliament, it was no surprise that Haugeans were among the chief leaders.

John 1:14 says, “The Word became Flesh.” This is the motto of our AFLC seminary, and is evidence of the wisdom of the first Free Lutherans, who honored the legacy of Hans Nielsen Hauge. They understood that, just as God, who is Spirit, translated Himself into human flesh and time and space and mortality, so those of us who have Christ in our hearts have no choice but to live our faith out in practical ways that build up our neighbors and improve our communities.

Without question, some of the Haugeans of the past lost their perspective. They traded the joy which led Hauge to embrace imprisonment and suffering for Christ’s sake, for a sour and bitter legalism that turned a love relationship into a mere list of rules. Hauge himself wrote of a visit to his followers in Hallingdal and Numedal, “Nearly everywhere in those upland areas I found more solid character among the people and a deep desire for the Word of God. They were faithful to defend what they believed, and a fair number of them were so strict in their self-denial that I had to remind them often that they ought not to discard the innocent along with the blameworthy.”

Passionate love can sometimes go a little overboard. But the answer is not to love less. The answer is to go back to the heart of the thing, to take our bearings from the Word of God, and to seek Him with all our hearts. As Hauge did.

“I know that all that is good in my spirit,” [he wrote of his conversion,] “followed from that moment, especially the burning love for God and my neighbor within me, that I have a wholly transformed mind, a sorrow over all sin, a deep desire that people should partake with me in the same grace, a particular desire to read Holy Scripture, especially Jesus’ own teachings, together with new light to understand it and bind together the teachings of all God’s men toward this one goal—that Christ has come for our salvation, that we ought to be born again by His Spirit, repent, be sanctified more and more in the nature of God to serve the Triune God alone, in order to ennoble and prepare our souls for eternal salvation.”