Friday, June 16, 2023

It is the 16th of June 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Would you look at that? Two characters on two straight days, parallel men coming from the old world to the new in the 1800s, both raised Lutheran and both charged with pastoring immigrant churches here in America. And while in the big picture, they might be seen as similar characters, they would have seen each other as polar opposites. Let me explain. Wilhelm Nast, a Lutheran in the pietist tradition, believed that the church would flourish if it adopted American Methodism. Nast was born on June 15th, 1807. It was on June 16th, this day, in 1825, that Herman Preus was born- a man with a decidedly different approach to church growth as an immigrant pastor in America.

Herman Preus was born in Kristiansand- the southern tip of Norway, where his father was the headmaster at the Cathedral school. Herman attended the cathedral school and then Royal Frederik’s University in Kristiana (now called Oslo), Here, he was in the confessional school of Lutheranism- that which saw the Lutheran Confessions as adopted in 1580 as the rule of faith. Herman graduated in 1848 and worked as a school teacher while he pondered a move to America. He was at first rejected on account of his rejection of some teachings of the popular N.F.S. Grundtvig, a Lutheran who was not himself of the strictly “confessional” school.

Nevertheless, in 1851 having been recently married to Linka, he received a call to Spring Prairie Lutheran church in Wisconsin- a church he would serve for the remainder of his life. He believed his call, and that of his fellow Norwegian Lutheran immigrants in America was not to adopt American theological fashions like the camp revival meeting, lay preaching, or unionism.

There would be a schism (well, a lot of schisms, but for our sake, let’s focus on one) amongst Confessional Lutherans and Norwegians. This was the charge of Wisconsinism (I’m holding back jokes about cheese and being strangely polite). Wisconsinism was seen as, among other things, an undue link with C.F.W. Walther and the Missouri Lutherans. At its core (please note I’m making qualifiers here because it’s quite complicated, but I’m not here to do all the intricacies), the issue was about predestination.

Walther and then Norwegians (led by Herman, who had formed their own Norwegian Synod in 1853) held that those who were saved were elected by God but that those who were damned were damned of their own fault and not by God’s active damnation. It seems Christians either can’t get enough of this kind of talk or can’t get far enough away from it- you can be either, but let me finish…

Walther and Herman believed that if you said God elected the saved in light of knowing they would have faith, you make faith a kind of meritorious work. Herman would teach objective universal justification- that is, on the cross, the work of salvation for the world- the WHOLE world was achieved. Thus, when the pastor says, “Your sins are forgiven,” they are. It’s not a question of whether salvation was only achieved for some. Herman’s critics- those that took the rather unwieldy title “the Anti-Missourian Brotherhood.” They accused Herman and his Norwegian Lutherans of essentially being Catholics- too enamored with Walther (who was seen as too powerful a character in his own right) and giving pastors the priestly power of absolution.

Herman would argue that he was anything but Catholic, that he was a confessional Lutheran who saw the local church and pastor as divinely instituted but anything beyond that as a human invention. Herman would continue to preach out of his parish in Spring Prairie. The Norwegian Lutherans would later split, some joining the American Lutheran Church that was assimilated into the modern ELCA and those who stayed in the tradition of Herman Preus who would form the “Little Norwegian Synod today called the Evangelical Lutheran Synod with headquarters today in Mankato Minnesota. Herman Preuss would die in 1894. Born on this day in 1825, he was 69 years old.

 

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary- Psalm 100, and in the style of the Scottish Metrical Psalter.

1  All people that on earth do dwell,

       Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

 2  Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell,

       Come ye before him and rejoice.

 

 3  Know that the Lord is God indeed;

       Without our aid he did us make:

    We are his flock, he doth us feed,

       And for his sheep he doth us take.

 

 4  O enter then his gates with praise,

       Approach with joy his courts unto:

    Praise, laud, and bless his name always,

       For it is seemly so to do.

 

 5  For why? the Lord our God is good,

       His mercy is for ever sure;

    His truth at all times firmly stood,

       And shall from age to age endure.

 

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 16th of June 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man guilty of Wisconsinism if you mean eating cheese curds and the cannibal sandwich- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who was given his first job as a professor by Herman Preus’ descendent Jack Preus III- true story, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.