Against the Strømme

I promise there will be a point somewhere further down in this post, but the first part involves a lot of Norwegian stuff. I apologize for that, after the fashion of one who apologizes for a vice he has no intention of giving up.

Someone gave our library a couple books recently, and I’ve been reading them in preparation for accessioning them, because of their historical value. They’re translations, done a few years back by a very small publisher, of a couple books by a Norwegian-American pastor and journalist named Peer Strømme (1856-1921). Strømme was quite well known—within our community—in his own time, but because he wrote mainly in Norwegian, and was not great enough to invite translation on the scale of Ole Rølvaag, he’s not much remembered.

The Memoirs of Peer Strømme (not available on Amazon, though this volume, which seems to be the first part of it, is) tells of the author’s life from his boyhood in eastern Wisconsin, though his education at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, to his installation as a Norwegian Synod pastor on the prairies of northwestern Minnesota (he would later leave the ministry and become a journalist in Chicago).

The second book, Young Helgeson (also not available on Amazon, though you can get the original Norwegian version here) is a semi-autobiographical novel, which largely takes up where the memoir leaves off. It tells of the travails of a pastor in a frontier community beset by blizzards, floods, and Haugean pietists.

The Haugean pietists, of course, are my people, which makes the reading a little uncomfortable for me. Although Strømme writes civilly about pastors with whom he differs in the autobiography, he lets himself go in the freer environment of a fictional story, telling us in no uncertain terms what he thinks of the Haugeans (and their equally awful allies, the Free Lutherans, another group to which I belong). How wicked are those Haugeans! What hypocrites they are! What self-righteous legalists! The more peaceful and godly their words, the deeper and more insidious their schemes! They are shameless in their lust to destroy the true church and sow dissension and fanaticism among the people.

(This attitude sits awkwardly, for the modern reader, alongside Strømme’s fervent and uncompromising Prohibitionism. There is no justification, in his view, for any social order refusing to utterly outlaw and stigmatize the consumption of alcohol in any form.)

But a strange thing struck me as I read the Memoirs. As he spoke of his years at Luther College, Decorah (a place where I spent a year—admittedly an unhappy one—in my own youth), and at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, names kept coming up—names of teachers and fellow students—which were familiar to me. They’re familiar because they became the authors of books which, today, we assign in our seminary classes in our Free Lutheran seminary (I know this because I run the bookstore and order the books).

I’m one of those who tends to misuse the word “irony,” I think (I get it confused with sarcasm), but I’m pretty sure irony is the right word to describe this situation. We despised Free Lutherans and Haugeans form one of the very few Lutheran church bodies of Norwegian heritage today which still teach the old doctrines that meant so much to Strømme and his colleagues of the Norwegian Synod. What’s left of his Norwegian Synod has today been subsumed, through a series of mergers, into the Very Large Lutheran Church Body Which Shall Remain Nameless, a body which (I am confident) Strømme would identify (and denounce) in a second as apostate.

Which goes, I think, to demonstrate the principle stated by C. S. Lewis (but not, I’m sure, originated by him) that those at the center of every “sect,” the “true believers,” are actually closer to each other than they are to the liberals of their own groups.

0 thoughts on “Against the Strømme”

  1. This hits a nerve and sad memories. I was born baptized, and raised (in my early years) in the old lutheran free church. I grew up reading the devotional writings of O.Hallesby as I was learning about and memorizing the catechism of Martin Luther for confirmation. I remember as a child sitting on the floor with other children listening to the stories and handling the artifacts of missionaries home on furlough from Madagascar that our parish directly supported. I experienced the spiritual legacy and vitality of the life and ministry of Scandinavian American Pietism that I will always be grateful for.

    A turning point in my awareness and understanding of ‘The Lutheran Tradition’ beyond my narrow subjective experience came about in several simultaneous ways. My friends and brethren who went ahead of me into seminary and were sharing with me what they were actually experiencing there. This led me to the conviction that I should visit as many lutheran seminaries as I could to better understand them before I entered one of the seminaries. During this Grand Tour where I stayed and mingled with faculty and students at each seminary, The Academic Dean of Luther Theological Seminary called me into his office and asked me what was preventing me from enrolling there in the coming fall. I told him that I was feeling a growing conviction that I should go to the Lutheran Bible Institute before I went to seminary. He replied politely, but firmly: “If you do that, you will have to unlearn anything you get from there before you can learn anything here”. Sometime later, a senior Norwegian American lutheran pastor, who treated me like a grandson, advised me: “Son, if your heart calls you to study the Bible, then go to bible school. At seminary they will teach you how to interprete the Bible, which you are expected to already know”. So I went to LBI, and while there I pursued some independent study…

    I discovered Johann Arndt and his True Christianity, and Philip Jakob Spener and his Pia desideria(Earnest Desire), and Hermann Franke, who together with Spener founded the University of Halle out from which sprang the lutheran holiness or pietistic movement. This led me to the rereading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship and Gustaf Aulen’s Christus Victor with greater understanding and insight. And then I learned why ‘mainstream lutherans’ considered the lutheran pietists theologically incorrect and how they resented the self-righteous judgementalism that pietism often breeds. Looking at Martin Luther objectively was a growing learning curve and revealed the dangers of putting too much stock into one man. Martin Luther was an imposing and devote Man of God, but he was only one man, who struggled with his own demons. The Augsburg Confession could not resolve my unresolved personal issues and I visited many RC monasteries trying to find the resolutions to those issues and found none. The discovery of The Ancient Christian Church (Eastern Orthodox Christian Church), borrowing an expression from C.S. Lewis, led me to be ‘Surprised by Joy’.

  2. Lars, sorry to nitpick, but I believe the present form of the Norwegian Synod is the ELS (Evangelical Lutheran Synod) based in Mankato, and in fellowship with the Wisconsin Synod (and the only Lutheran church body in the USA to have that distinction).

    Did his prohibitionism make any exception for Communion wine?!

    Brad, I’m intrigued by your story, because though mine is different, we share a number of contact points. I’m a pastor in the same church body that Lars belongs to, most recently serving as an interim pastor. My wife and I were married in a Greek Orthodox Church where she was a member at the time (we had a “small, modest” Greek wedding, as opposed to big and fat!), and so I’ve had a more than passing contact with the Orthodox Church, including the growing number of converts to it, and I no doubt have more Eastern Christian influences in my thinking than are typical in my circles.

    Anyway, you left a few of my questions unanswered just as things were getting interesting. Since evidently your heart called you to study the Bible, what have you learned in your Bible studies at LBI and elsewhere that has led you on your present path? What particular insights did you gain about pietism from the “mainstream Lutheran” perspective? What new things did you learn about Bonhoeffer’s and Aulen’s works? (I’ve never read Christus Victor, but I’ve heard second-hand from an Orthodox person that it reflects Orthodox thought about Christ, even though it was written by a Lutheran) And what in particular (I realize it may or may not be possible to summarize it briefly) in the Orthodox Church has helped you to be “surprised by joy?”

    Just an observation about Pietism: I don’t consider it a monolithic phenomenon. There’s pietism at its best, which I would consider simply to be an earnest seeking to apply the Christian faith to all areas of life, and whose “spiritual legacy and vitality” you benefited from early in life; and there’s pietism at its worst, which as many have noted, has degenerated into legalism, “self-righteous judgmentalism,” etc.

    I’ve read critical treatments of pietism from the “mainstream Lutheran” as well as Eastern Orthodox perspectives, and they had this in common, that they took pietism at its worst as representative of all pietism. They also both engaged in detailed analysis of the history and pietism, and on that basis seemed to think that they had pietism and pietists “figured out.” Now, the history of ideas and how they work their way through history, movements, etc., is one of my favorite topics, but I think it’s a fallacy to think that we have people figured out because we know something of the previous history of their ideas. I’ve always bristled whenever people seemed to think that they instantly had me sized up because I’m a Lutheran, or a straight-laced non-drinking guy, or a pastor, or whatever. Pietists are like what Gandalf said about Hobbits: you can learn everything about them in a day, but after a hundred years they can still surprise you. And pietists aren’t alone in that regard.

    It’s true that it’s a mistake to lean too heavily on one mortal human, and Lutherans have often done that with Luther, but one can react too much in the opposite way, and I’ve seen both of these things happen among the Orthodox, who tend to have a dim view of St. Augustine, another towering figure, and are slow to acknowledge any debt to him. A notable exception to this trend is Jaroslav Pelikan, who even after converting from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy retained a balanced, magnanimous view of Augustine, and who also showed no signs of repenting of being possibly the greatest Luther scholar ever.

    Anyway, Brad, either here or somewhere else I’d like to know more of your story, and how it relates to the desire you showed to be rooted in Bible study. More thoughts come to my mind, but this comment has become very long, so I’ll bring it to a close.

  3. By the time I finished LBI in Seattle (it moved to Issaquah during my time there)in the Spring of 1980, I decided to go a different path than the seminary. I grew up around missionaries and their faith lifestyle was the only role model (at that time) I felt I could trust and follow with integrity. I attended Urbana’79 and committed myself towards missionary enterprise during a general prayer led by Rev. Billy Graham. During the winter quarter 1980, I did a cross-cultural internship with the World Mission Prayer League (pan-lutheran parachurch missionary society)in Mexico and traveled and lived among the Mexican lutheran families there. May God forgive me, but I met with a very important (AFLC)missionary in Mexico, whose name I cannot remember, during my internship as well as other missionaries.

    During my time at LBI, the bamboo curtain was falling in China and missionary opportunities were opening up for teachers of English As A Second Language. I was originally trained as a tutor by the Laubach Literacy League at LBI. I was invited by the late Morris Watkins (founder of Lutheran Bible Translators) to come down to the newly organized pan-protestant U.S. Center for World Missions (USCWM) and its affiliate William Carey International University (WCIU)to pursue further training to become a career TESL missionary to China. So, I spent one of the most stimulating summers of my life (1980) first taking the Institute for International Studies followed by the Institute of Chinese Studies and then in the fall I enrolled into the TESL/Applied Linguistics program at WCIU (1980-81). Later I also took the Institute of Buddhist Studies as well. My classmates were getting teaching jobs in either Japan and Hong Kong, and then from there it became relatively eaasy to enter China and be hired as an experienced TESL instructor. Morris Watkins, who never retired from doing missionary work, set up a missionary agency that helped lutheran (and non-lutherans too)TESL teachers get into and employed within China.

    (to be continued)

  4. I was atypical of many of the students and staff members of USCWM/WCIU. I still maintained my active membership in the Lutheran Church(ALC)and was the council secretary of my local parish and was elected synod representative to its district council and later became a global mission consultant to the district council and local synod.

    I was also asked to replace a lutheran missionary at USCWM (who left for Ecuador) and became the correspondence secretary for Lutherans For World Evangelization. I helped any lutheran individual and/or parish that wanted to know more about world missions. Before the internet, I was networking my various contacts among the lutheran parachurch groups (LBI,LBT,WMPL,LYE,etc.) to advance awareness, education, training, and career vocations for lutheran missionary enterprise. It was a very interesting job.

    At the same time I was tutoring and teaching part-time with foreign students and immigrants, and was getting involved with some local christian hospitality outreach groups among the many foreign students in Pasadena, CA.

    Forgive me for all of this background information

    which I am using to give a context to my life at that time. USCWM/WCIU was located on the former Pasadena College campus that they bought and converted for their use. The old gym was converted into the largest lecture hall on campus. Every thursday evening the gym was set aside for current and former missionaries to share what was happening in their foreign field of service. Morris Watkins was speaking one evening, and during the mid-evening break, he introduced me to John and Isabel Anderson, who were the first missionaries that were commissioned and sent under the newly organized Lutheran Bible Translators (1964).

    John & Isabel served first in Liberia and then in Sierra Leone, which are both located in West Africa. John was a LC-MS pastor during that time. He shared a bit about his work in West Africa and then told me that he was currently a deacon in the OCA. And then he invited me to his ordination in a few weeks time and wrote up the date, time, and driving instructions as to how to get there. I never heard of the OCA before, and asked him what it was. He said it was the Orthodox Church in America, but, of course, that meant nothing to me. We then parted when the break was over.

  5. Part 3. A few weeks later I went to St. Innocent’s Orthodox Church in Tarzana, California. I was expecting an ordination service like I was used to within the lutheran church. The Orthodox Church does not have ordination services.

    They have the Divine Liturgy, which are done on Sunday mornings and other special feast days (sometimes every day in monasteries). When a bishop or metropolitan leads the Divine Liturgy it is often called a Hierarchical Liturgy. Ordinations to the diaconate and priesthood are a special rite that is grafted into a hierarchical liturgy. What was even more confusing to me that day was there was one metropolitan and two bishops presiding over the hierarchical liturgy. The parish was celebrating a major anniversary and a new relic was being installed alongside an existing one into the altar to commemorate the festive occasion. A deacon and a priest were also ordained at the same time for the occasion. The choir sang in both English and Slavonic (old liturgical Russian…something similar to King James English in comparison). After the very long service, the assembled congregation went to the parish hall for a banquet and various presentations. It was all a bit overwhelming, and I sat next to Fr. John Anderson who tried to explain to me what was going on. I went home that evening and was mentally exhausted.

    (to be continued)

  6. I find there is a balance to be learned from church history. The Lutheran Pietistic movement of the 1600’s came about as a reaction against a very academic church that failed to impact the way people lived. As Spener observed in Pia Desideria, corruption was running rampant in government, commerce and even the church even as doctrinal thesis were being produced left and right in the universities. Pietism came from the understanding that religion should change how we live.

    Unfortunately, the pietists became so focused on the experiential aspects of religion that they drifted away from the foundations of doctrinal orthodoxy. Over the course of a generation or two they lost their way to the extent that Halle University, the center of pietism, became one of the first universities to fall to rationalism.

    What I like about Lars’s AFLC (where I am also a pastor) is the desire to strike a balance between doctrinal orthodoxy and experiential religion.

  7. Part 4. Four years later I ran into Fr. John Anderson on the WCIU campus and recognized him immediately and called out to him by name. I asked him how his priesthood was going. He told me I had to come and see it for myself in order to understand it. In typical missionary fashion, he drew a map for me with driving instructions and encouraged me to come for a saturday evening service, so I could still go to my lutheran sunday morning service. So, I agreed to come.

    Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Mission was located in LaHabra, CA in Orange County. HTOM was located in a storefront strip between a beauty salon and a auto supply shop. The entrance was in the back from the parking lot. I brought two colleagues with me from USCWM. One was a quaker and the other was an episcopalian. Orthodox saturday night services are called either a Vigil or Great Vespers. That evening it was Great Vespers for Pentecost(Orthodox calendar). The Orthodox liturgical calendar day starts with Saturday evening and continues with Sunday Divine liturgy.

    I was a choir person, so I asked if I could stand with the choir and silently read the words of the service that were spoken, chanted, and sung. So, I stood in the bass section where most of the men were and silently read along with them. The entire service was done in English.

    I was immediately captivated by the opening antiphonal dialog between the priest and a reader within the choir:

    Priest: Blessed is Our God, always, now and ever and unto ages of ages.

    Reader: Amen. Glory to Thee Our God, Glory to Thee! O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere and fillest all things. Treasury of Blessings, and Giver of Life. Come and Abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.

    Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us (spoken three times).

    Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

    O Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us.

    O Lord, cleanse us from our sins.

    O Master, pardon our transgressions.

    O Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities,

    for Thy name’s sake.

    Lord Have Mercy (spoken three times).

    Our Father, Who art in Heaven…

    …and lead us not into temptation,

    but deliver us from Evil.

    P: For Thine is the Kingdom, the power,

    and the glory: of the Father, and of

    the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

    now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

    R: Amen. Come, let us worship God, our King!

    Come, let us worship and fall down

    before Christ, our King and our God!

    Come, let us worship and fall down

    before Christ Himself, our King and

    our God!

    I felt myself entering Sacred Space/Sacred Time.

    Choir: Lord, I call upon Thee, hear me!

    Hear me, O Lord!

    Lord, I call upon Thee, hear me!

    Receive the voice of my prayer!

    When I call upon thee!

    Hear me O Lord!

    Let my prayer arise

    in Thy sight as incense,

    and let the lifting up of my hands

    be an evening sacrifice.

    Hear me O Lord!

    R: Bring my soul out of prison,

    that I may give thanks to Thy name.

    Choir: By Thy Cross, O Christ our Savior,

    death’s dominion has been shattered;

    the devil’s delusion destroyed!

    the race of men, being saved by faith,

    always offer Thee a song!

    R: The Righteous await me, for Thou will

    deal bountifully with me.

    Choir: All has been enlightened by Thy

    Resurrection, O Lord!

    Paradise has been opened again!

    All creation, praising Thee,

    always offer Thee a song!

    R: Out of the depths I cry to Thee,

    O Lord! Lord hear my voice!

    Choir: I glorify the power of the Father and

    of the Son, I praise the authority of

    the Holy Spirit! The undivided,

    uncreated Godhead, the consubtantial

    Trinity which reigns forever.

    In the middle of the service the choir sings:

    O gladsome light of the holy glory of

    the immortal Father: heavenly, holy,

    blessed Jesus Christ! Having come to

    the setting of the sun, and beheld the

    light of evening, we praise the Father,

    Son, and Holy Spirit: God! At all times

    Thou art worthy, of praise in songs

    as Son of God, Giver of Life, therefore

    the world glorifies Thee.

    Toward the end of the service the choir sings:

    Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart

    in peace, according to Thy word;

    For my eyes have seen Thy salvation,

    which Thou has prepared before the face

    of all people, a light to enlighten the

    Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people

    Israel.

    My pietist heart was profoundly pierced by this first Orthodox liturgy that I completely heard in my own mother tongue. I continued coming on saturday evenings. During my summer vacation I visited my first Orthodox monastery. That fall

    I became a catachumen. On Lazarus Saturday 1985 I was chrismated and received into the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church(OCA)as Barnabas, since I did not have a christian birth name. I was born at St. Barnabas hospital and St. Barnabas was already my secret patron saint. Finally, I was able to take St. Barnabas out of the closet and publicly make him my name’s sake. Glory be to God for all things!

    I will continue this discussion at a later time to respond to your other questions/statements.

  8. Thanks, Brad. I hope you’ll continue being a “Son of Encouragement” by visiting this site. I’m with Greybeard in appreciating that in the AFLC we don’t believe that content and experience need to be at odds, and I see that deep content combined with rich experience have led you to where you are.

  9. 11.16.2012 Friday

    Amazing Brad! I thought of you today and did a search for you took awhile but then I found this!-still amazing! I remember going to the LaHabra Mission with you once and maybe twice. I remember Fr. John. If you are still on this blog, I’d like to get back in touch with you.

    I have been teaching ESL in Blacksburg VA for Virginia Tech Language and Culture Institute. I am not doing that now but am expecting a call soon about going back to Pasadena(I moved here last June from what we called Goodwin Dorm-now Aylward House at WCIU/USCWM- I do remember a lot of your journey and some of the things you have written here. Let me here from you.

    God’s pleasure,

    Eddie Boylan

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