by FREDERICK HALE
4
Norwegians) Danes) and the Origins
of the Evangelical Free Tradition
N HIS RE CENT
appraisal of neglected aspects of
I Norwegian-American history, Kenneth O. Bjork
lamented that historians have not fully understood the
Americanization of Scandinavian immigrant churches,
and observed that "the part played by Methodists, Baptists, Unitariarts, liberals, Mormons, and others in in1migrant religious life has been treated only superficially." 1
Among the "others" one might well include the Evangelical Free Church of America. Although this heavily
Scandinavian denomination numbers fewer than
100,000 members, it is one of the fastest growing in the
United States. Its seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity
School at Deerfield, Illinois, is among the !argest in the
country. It is surprising, therefore, that historians of
Nordic immigration have generally ignored its roots.
Theodore C. Blegen, despite his willingness to describe
non-Lutheran religious movements, did not mention the
Norwegian forebears of the Evangelical Free Church in
his seminal Norwegian Migration to America: The
American Transition. 2 George Stephenson referred cursorily to one of its antecedents, the Swedish Evangelical
82
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
Free Church, in The Religious Aspect of Swedish Immigration,3 but naturally did not treat the parallel DanaNorwegian body which played an equally instrumental
role in the background of the present denomination.
Members of the Evangelical Free Church have also
failed to demonstrate much scholarly interest in its historical roots and development. The standard history of
the denomination, a sketchy, popular book written to
commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of its oldest
antecedent, contains numerous errors but little of analytical value. 4
If scholars would examine more closely the forebears
of the Evangelical Free Church of America, they would
discover not only a colorful segment in the kaleidoscope
of Scandinavian immigrant Christianity, but also a fascinating story of international religious influences and
ecclesiastical assimilation. These early organizations
were composed ofrevivalistic Swedes, Norwegians, and
Danes who in the 1880s and 1890s shared the transatlantic expectations of the imminent Second Coming of
Christ then current. In the United States, same of these
immigrants founded the Swedish Evangelical Free
Church in 1884, while likeminded Norwegian and
Danish newcomers formed the Eastern and Western
Evangelical Free Church associations in the 1890s. In
1912 the two regional bodies united as the Evangelical
Free Church Association, which existed alongside the
Swedish-American group until they merged at midcentury to form the present denomination. The formation of the Dana-Norwegian parent, whose origins are
even less well understood than those of the Swedish
Evangelical Free Church, is the subject of the present
essay.
More than an y other figure, Fredrik Frans on ( 18521908) deserves to be called the guiding force behind the
Evangelical Free Church. 5 This Swedish American
83
Frederick Hale
gathered man y of the congregations on both sides of the
Atlantic which eventually constituted the Eastern and
Western Evangelical Free Church associations as well as
the analogous Mission Covenants of Norway and Denmark. Bom on a farm in the southwestern Swedish province of Varmland, Franson emigrated to Nebraska with
his family when he was a teenager. Both his mother and
stepfather had been active in mid-century revivals in
Sweden, and lay preachers and colporteurs frequently
visited their rural home. Frans on' s own conversion,
however, did not occur until he was twenty and suffered
a lengthy illness. After his health returned, he joined the
Baptist church in Ensteina, Nebraska, and became a lay
evangelist among Nor di c immigrants in the region.
Franson's association with the eminent American revivalist Dwight L. Moody made a profound impact on
the young Swede and, indirectly, on the Evangelical
Free Church. 6 When Moody in 1875 returned from his
twa-year evangelistic tour of the British Isles - a
crusade which made his name a household word in
Scandinavia and the United States as well as in Britain
- Franson moved to Chicago and joined his new
Chicago Avenue Church. During four years of lay work,
among that congregation' s polyglot members and other
Scandinavians in the Windy City, he became proficient
in American revival methods, adopting nearly all of
Moody's proven techniques. He conducted awakenings
in any edifice that would accommodate him, and addressed his hearers as sinners whose salvation depended
on their immediate acceptance of Christ. Whenever possible, Franson supplemented his preaching with the
songs of a gospel singer, just as Moody had co-operated
with Ira D. Sankey. Finally, like Moody, he organized
Bi ble courses to continue the fruits of his revivals.
Franson also became a millenarian in Chicago. Expectations of Christ' s Second Advent had waxed and waned
84
---
-
----------------
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
since apostolic times, but apocalyptic fervor enjoyed a
recrudescence during the nineteenth century. 7 Christians who awaited the return of the Son of God debated
vigorously such matters as the sequence of apocalyptic
events and to what extent, if any, historical phenomena
fulfilled Biblical prophecies. But most millenarians
agreed that the Second Coming was imminent.
The particular interpretation of Christ' s return that
Franson adopted and that became normative in the
Evangelical Free Church was developed by an Irish
Protestant, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). This millenarian, who founded the small Plymouth Brethren
sect, added a number of designs to the apocalyptic consensus. He foresaw both second and third comings. The
earlier, which Darby believed would precede the time
of troubles, or "tribulation," mentioned in several New
Testament passages, he called the "secret rapture." It
would be perceptible only to the true Christians, both
living and dead, who would be united with Christ and
protected from the tribulation. This rapture could occur
at any time, Darby felt, a belief which added a sense of
immediacy to his message. The prophecies relating to
non-Christians, such as the binding of Satan and the Battle of Armageddon, would occur later. Christ would
come a third time and conclude the history of the world.
Furthermore, Darby believed that no denomination
could encompass all of the present and past Christians
who would be caught up in the secret rapture; hence, he
believed that the true church was a spiritual entity, not a
physically perceptible structure. Finally, like many
other nineteenth-century millenarians and nonmillenarians, Darby divided the history of the world into a series
of eras, or "dispensations." 8
Probably because of the influence and popularity of
Moody, Franson accepted most of Darby's eschatology.
The Irish millenarian co-operated with the noted Ameri-
85
Frederick Hale
can revivalist during his visits to Chicago, and Moody
gradually became a full-fledged Darbyite millenarian.
James F. Findlay has concluded that "it is entirely possible that Moody came under Darby' s direct influence in
1868, and certainly no later than 1872." 9 From the 1870s
until his death in 1899, Moody frequently preached on
the Second Advent and, beginning in 1880, held annual
conferences in Northfield, Massachusetts, which many
leading British and American millenarians attended and
frequently dominated. 10 Moreover, William J. Erdman, a
prominent Presbyterian millenarian, preached at
Moody's Chicago Avenue Church from 1875 to 1878,
while Franson also worked there. It seems plausible that
the young Swede became a Darbyite during those years.
In any event, Franson proceeded to Minnesota in
1879, where, equipped with Moody's methods of winning converts, he worked briefly as a millenarian revivalist. Franson then departed for the lion's den of Utah,
where he spent most of 1879 and 1880 trying to reconvert Scandinavians who had thrown in their lot with the
Latter-day Saints. Upon returning to Illinois, he began a
short period of fruitful co-operation with another Darbyite, John G. Princell. Princell, himself a Swedish immigrant and a former pastor in the Augustana Synod, the'
largest Swedish-American Lutheran body, founded in
1884 the Swedish Evangelical Free Church. 11 The two
immigrants continued the British and American tradition
of prophetic conferences when they staged a "nonsectarian convention" in Chicago in April, 1881, to discuss questions pertaining to the Second Advent,12
Shortly after this conference, Franson left for Scandinavia, where he spent several years proclaiming the
imminent Second Coming in controversial revival meetings which often surpassed Moody's awakenings in
commotion and the intensity of his personal appeals to
those in attendance. Franson's evangelistic activities in
86
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
his homeland, which brought him into frequent conflict
with the ecclesiastical and civil authorities who regarded him as a threat to the established Lutheran order,
need not concern us. In January, 1883, however, he arrived in Kristiania (until 1624 and since 1925 called
Oslo) to conduct revivals among certain Norwegian
free-church congregations. During a year and a half of
evangelistic work in Norway, Franson made a profound
impact on many of the scattered Protestant nonconformists who, heeding his prompting, organized in 1884 the
Norwegian Mission Covenant. 13
The dissenters who invited Franson to Norway traced
their spiritual roots to the separatist revival that Gustav
Adolph Lammers led in Skien during the 1850s. In the
wake of Søren Kierkegaard' s virulent attacks on the established Lutheran clergy, Lammers, many of his
parishioners, and dissatisfied Christians elsewhere in
Norway had severed their ties with the state church and
organized independent congregations. Lammers eventually re-entered the established church, but many of his
followers remained aloof, and more than thirty "Free
Apostolic" congregations continued to function on a
free-church basis. They sought to consolidate their work
through a series of national conferences in 1863, 1870,
1874, 1877, and 1882. These meetings, which were
structural roots of the Norwegian Miss ion Covenant,
confirmed the autonomy of the local bodies but united
them in a loose confederation headed by a steering
committee. Bernhard Falck, a southern Norwegian
teacher and merchant, emerged as a leader in the
sporadic conventions that gave the scattered congregations limited measure of cohesion during these early
years. Little was accomplished, however, until Franson
arrived in 1883.
Frans on' s Ame ri can re vi val techniques breathed new
life into these Norwegian free churches. The peripatetic
a
87
Frederick Hale
Swede traveled as far south as Arendal and north to
Tromsø, leading awakenings in sanctuaries of several
denominations, including, on occasion, prayer chapels of
the state church. He als o recommended house visits as a
means of supplementing revivals. This, toa, was an
evangelistic method taken from Moody. "A few years aga,
when Moody and Sankey conducted awakenings for
three months in Chicago," Franson wrote, "every home
in this metropolis with its 500,000 inhabitants was visited." He urged that this effort be emulated in Norway.
With a note of urgency, he reminded his followers that
"the sinner is dear, the time is costly and short, and the
work to be done is spread over the whole world." 14 To
as sure that the re would be a sufficient supply of millenarian preachers in Norway, Franson designed and led
short Bible courses. He held the first one in Kristiania-for
sixty Norwegians and Swedes in 1884. Franson described the backbone of the course as the "study of 100
to 200 of the simplest and most practical Bible texts,
which can be best used as revivalistic arrows against
those who are dead in sin and against backsliding." 15
Franson continually encountered stiff opposition from
the state church during his year and a half in Norway and
after he left that country. Hostile observers described
him as an ecstatic and unstable intruder who showed no
respect for traditional Norwegian forms of worship. The y
also depicted his revivals as chaotic assemblies where
those in attendance were compelled against their will to
participate in rowdy procedures. Spearheading the attack, the editor of the conservative journal Luthersk Kirketidende declared that the meetings had "considerably
more in common with Franson's spirit than God's
spirit." He charged, further, that the Swedish-American
evangelist relied on theatrics because he "does not possess real talent as a preacher, nor is a serious, thorough,
and comprehensive proclamation of God's Word his
88
THE EV ANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
concern, His method, his procedure - if that is removed, Frans on is nothing." 16
The same editor quoted approvingly a bitter article in
the Methodist organ, Kristelige Tidende, which
lamented that the revivalist had not emulated his
teacher's ecumenism. "When Franson came to Norway it
was said that in his activities he would follow Moody's
example," the Methodist newspaper reported. But "it
was not lang befare he began to form mission societies
with the goal of gathering all of the converts into a new
kind of church with its own polity and activities." 17
Franson was compelled to ward off such charges of sectarianism throughout his lang stay in Scandinavia.
In the summer of 1884, shortly befare the Norwegian
Mission Covenant was officially constituted, Franson
departed for Denmark, where he spent approximately
six months attempting to awaken Danes with his millenarian message. Estimates of his success vary, but
even his sympathetic Danish biographer agrees that he
made few conversions. 18 Hampered by legal difficulties
and state-church hostility, Franson was deported befare
he and his followers could give their evangelism the
kind of structure needed to assure its continuation.
Nevertheless, Frans on and his associates, same of whom
were Norwegians and Swedes who remained in Denmark, paved the way for the Danish Mission Covenant,
which was organized in 1888. Consequently, his brief
stay in Denmark merits examination.
To a sn'lall degree, the remnants of a separatist revival
movement of the 1850s in Denmark, related to that
which Gustav Adolph Lammers led in Skien and other
Norwegian communities, supplied a basis for Franson's
evangelism there. Mogens Abraham Sommer, a Jewish
teacher who had converted to Christianity, gathered
several small congregations in Jutland and a larger one
in Copenhagen during the mid-1850s but, like Lammers
89
Frederick Hale
who ordained him, soon abandoned the movement
which he had fostered. Same of the "Free Apostolic
Churches in Denmark" dissolved, while others continued to function for several decades. The historian of
the Danish Mission Covenant has asserted that "many"
of Sommer' s followers affiliated with the denomination
when it was organized in places where the Danish Jew
had led awakenings. 19 The absence of detailed records
of the se loosely structured congregations, however, preel u des any systematic analysis of the historical link between Sommer's revivals and those of Franson in Denmark.
It is known, however, that Franson conducted awakenings in nonconformist ch urches of several denominations in Copenhagen and other Danish communities,
and that his preaching again incurred the wrath of the
Lutheran clergy. Vilhelm Beck, a nationalist Lutheran
zealot who headed the Danish Inner Mission and resented all foreign and sectarian intrusions into his country' s religious life, personally led the attack. 20 He accused the Swede of posing as a Lutheran to win the
confidence of Danish state-church members. "Which
church Franson belongs to is not knbwn," Beck wrote;
"the Methodists refuse to co-operate with him, but he
uses the American Methodist type of preaching while
wanting to give the impression that he belongs to the
Lutheran state church or accepts [its] teachings." He ordered pastors in the Inn er Miss ion not to co-operate with
this Swedish "nuisance." 21
One of Beck's colleagues, Peter Krag of Copenhagen,
questioned the sincerity of the conversions which Frans on had ostensibly effected. "It is certainly that way at a
paper factory, where one can see a soiled cloth go into
one end of the machinery and come out at the other end
clean white paper," he commented. "But whether an
ungodly man can go into a meeting hall one evening and
90
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
emerge a few hours later a saved person, who has found
rest in God because of faith in the forgi ving of sins, ought
to be doubted seriously." 22
The attacks on Franson's revivals, designed to hinder
the proliferation of religious dissent in Denmark, were
counterproductive. Franson had hoped to co-operate
with Danish churclunen, but as Emil Larsen has pointed
out, their rejection forced him to work with independent
groups and organize mission societies to proclaim the
millenarian doctrines that the state church' s pastors seldom preached. 23 These local bodies did not coalesce to
form the Danish Mission Covenant until 1888.
Nevertheless, Franson's influence on the larger organization is unmistakable. It embodied and preserved the
Anglo-American revival rnethods which state churchmen disliked, and it added another facet to the religious pluralism which they feared.
Millenarianism was a second characteristic that both
the Norwegian and Danish Mission covenants inherited
from Franson and the tradition of Dwight Moody. Indeed, even before the former body was officially constituted, the journal which became its organ, Morgenrøden
(The Dawn), devoted much of its first issue to one of
Moody's sermons on Christ's Second Coming. Moody
had assured his audience that it was "completely safe to
take God's Word just as we find it," and quoted extensively from Revelation as well as from the New Testament epistles to stress the imminence of the Second Advent and to describe the secret rapture of the saints.
"There will be a short period between his meeting the
saints in the sky and his arrival with all his saints to
exercise judgment over the ungodly, to bind Satan for a
thousand years and erect a thousand-year reign of power
and majesty." 24 These Darbyite words echoed the message that Franson had brought to Norway only a few
months before.
91
Frederick Hale
The editor of Morgem·øden, who stated that ane of his
central purposes was to propagate "the great and significant truth of the Lord' s return," 25 printed man y of
Franson's shorter millenarian works, aften as serials.
One series, for instance, taken from Frans on' s lectures in
a workers' auditorium in Kristiania, began with a discussion of the Darbyite nation that Christ could return at
"any moment." "There has not been a single da y or hour
since the days of the apostles, when the remarkable occurrence which is discussed in I Corinthians 15:51 and I
Thessalonians 4:15-18 or the resurrection of the justified
and tl1e transformation of the li ving believers could not
have occurred," Franson declared. "The bride must not
wait for a sign, but for the bridegroom." 26
The leaders of the Danish Miss ion Covenant also generally adhered to tl1e Darbyite position. "We have reason to shout 'Alas!' a thousand times at tl1ose who have
no desire to come along and meet Him in the sky," stated
their newspaper, Morgenstjernen (The Morning Star). 27
This journal repeatedly stressed the imminence of
Christ' s re turn: "The gre at communion of the Lord' s
wedding will soon be held," it announced; "there is still
ramn for many guests." 28 One Darbyite writer warned
that those "who do not come along will find it hard to'
live on earth during this gre at, great tribulation." 29 More
frequently tl1an its Norwegian counterpart, the Danish
Miss ion Covenant warned its members that participation
in worldly pleasures might prevent them from sharing
the glory of Christ' s re turn. In o ne typical jeremiad, a
preacher asked his congregation: "Do you want Jesus at
an entertainment place? At the club, the theater, or a
masquerade ball?" He warned that Christ would judge
those whose ways had "led down to the boggy swamp of
drunkenness and immorality, from which hell is the only
exit." ao
Although Darbyism became the normative eschatol92
THE EV ANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
ogy of the Danish and Norwegian Mission covenants,
other forms of millenarianism also made n:linor inroads
during the 1880s and 1890s. Anwng these was a school
known as "historicist millenarianism." In contrast to the
Darbyite position, historicists believed that the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments were already be ing
fulfilled, and they consequently interpreted such
phenomena as Zionism and the rise of Louis Napoleon
as signs of the imminent Second Advent. So many types
of eschatology came from the United States and Great
Britain to Scandinavia after 1880 that few could sort out
the aften contradictory messages associated with them. 31
Even Franson was ten1porarily confused. Although he
remained a Darbyite, he briefly recognized the "yearday" theory usually associated with the historicists. Accm·ding to this understanding of prophecy, "day" should
be construed as "year" in Biblical passages referring to
Christ's return. Franson stated in 1884 that "the 1260
prophetic days or 1260 years" of papal power had ended
and that therefore the events relating to the Second Advent were already unfolding. 32
The evangelist soon abandoned this argument, however, because he regarded the year-day theory as a violation of the literalist Biblical hermeneutics which he espoused. But during the first few years of Frans on' s revivalistic work in Scandinavia, he eclectically reproduced
almost any shred of evidence that seemed to point to
Christ' s in:m1inent return. Morgenrøden carried his
favorable comments about astronomical speculation in
this regard. "It is a noteworthy fact which the astronomers mention, that the star of Bethlehem, or the same star
visible at Jesus' birth and which emnes into view from
our earth every 315th year, will again appear in the year
1887." 33
The prediction of the influential English historicist
Michael Baxter, that Jesus would return in March, 1896,
93
Frederick Hale
and that the great tribulation would begin shortly
thereafter, also found some acceptance in the Mission
covenants. J. Madsen, ·chairman of the Danish body,
translated Baxter's "prophetic calendar" for 1890-1901
into Danish and published it in Morgenstjernen. 34 In
response to the objections of some readers, the editor
disavowed any firm commitment to the apocalyptic
chronology, but did not explicitly disown historicist millenarianism. He regretted, however, that the Englishman had set a date, because "we believe it best to
emulate those who expect our Lord and Master every
day." 35 The Danish Miss ion Covenant apparently lost
interest in Baxter' s prognostications by the turn of the
century, perhaps because his prediction of a French
conquest of Germany in the 1890s failed to materialize.
As Ernest Sandeen has pointed out, a literalist interpretation of the Bible was a conditio sine qua non for
nineteenth-century millenarianism. Inheriting a view of
the Scriptures which antedated most modem Biblical
criticism, "the millenarians assumed that divine inspiration had so controlled the writing of the Bible that the
resultant text was free of error or fallibility and that this
freedom guaranteed them a divine, not a human source
of truth - an immediate and not a mediated revelation." 36
Franson's view of Scripture, which he instilled in the
Mission covenants of Norway and Denmark, fit this
mold. His eschatology was rooted in thoroughly literalist
hermeneutics, a rule which he sometimes accused other
millenarians of violating. In his treatise on the Antichrist, for example, he challenged the historicists' identification of the papacy with this archenemy of Christ.
"In Revelation 13:18 he is called a 'person,'" Frans on
pointed out. "If the Antichrist is a person, then this expression cannot refer to the papacy, for that is not a person." He also denied explicitly that "God's temple,'' in
94
THE EV ANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
which the Antichrist would place himself, meant a
church. "What is meant by 'God's temple?' Answer: Just
what it says . . . . To call Christians' meeting places
temples is completely foreign to the Bible. Nor is this
any figurative language . . . and there is not the slightest
hint of allegory." 37
Franson stressed repeatedly that the Bible alone
should be the foundation of Christian doctrine and discipline,38 a position that the Mission covenants always
sought to follow. Biblical faith had lang been a characteristic of free-church movements as well as lay movements in Scandinavia. But Franson's heavy reliance on
the Scriptures reinforced this trait, as was true of his
preoccupation with eschatology. The close relationship
of the Covenants to Frans on tied them to the transatlantic community of Biblical millenarians during the last
years of the nineteenth century, when many traditional
views of the Scriptures were under fire. Botl1 of these
twin denominations firmly resisted the progress which
radical Biblical scholarship was making in Scandinavia.
As neither body had a theologian of any stature, they
were compelled to turn to conservative arguments written by like-minded foreigners, particularly Franson,
Moody, and the renowned London evangelist, Charles
Spurgeon.
The organ of the Danish Miss ion Covenant, for example, quoted at length Moody' s state ment that the Bi ble' s
inexplicable passages were proof ofits divine origins. "I
am glad there are heights in the book that I haven't been
able to climb," he proclaimed; "I am glad tl1ere are
depths whose bottom I haven't been able to reach. This
is the best proof that the book came from God." In the
same article, Morgenstjernen printed his advice that
"the best way to convert a nonbeliever is to show him
the fulfilled prophecies ." 39 Borrowing this intransigent
stance against the so-called "high er criticism" of the Bi-
95
Frederick Hale
ble, which tended to view the Scriptures as being in part
products of the cultures. from which they emerged, the
Covenants placed themselves squarely in the camp of
what is now widely known as "evangelical" Protestantism. Both denominations have maintained their
commitment to Biblical literalism right down to the
present.
Franson's concept of the church was the fourth major
element of his legacy which the Norwegian and Danish
Mission covenants inherited. His ecclesiology revealed
the influence of both Darby and Moody. To the former,
the church was the invisible company of saints whom
Christ would take up in the secret rapture. The visible
churches of the world played no positive role in his
theology. Franson accepted this nation of the church as
an eschatological community whose members were
aften unknown to one another. But his understanding of
this idea was tempered by the practicality that he gained
from Moody. As the American evangelist's biographer
has observed: "In a strict sense he did not possess a
doctrine of the church . . . . Rather, he simply paid little
attention to it in a formal way, for his concern was to
achieve conversions and to work with individual believers ." 40
The same also seems true of Franson. Like his
Chicago mentor, he was prepared to co-operate with any
church - including that of Rome- and to hold revivals
in any available sanctuary. His purpose, however, was to
gather sinners into the spiritual church which anticipated the secret rapture. He initially advised converts in
Norway not to secede from the established church.
Rather, those "who cannot [conscientiously] commune
with the unregenerate" should "let them, if they think
fit, exclude you." He maintained that "the dissenters in
Norway have committed an error by seceding from the
state church. It would have been better if they had all
96
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
stayed there, even if same had been imprisoned like
Hans Nielsen Hauge." Christians hamper evangelization when they leave the established church, "for the
moment they do that, they lose their influence on the
state church' s members ." 41
Franson's ecclesiology, which evolved during his stay
in Norway, directly shaped the Norwegian Mission
Covenant. To this revivalist, the inclusive state church
meant little. The independent congregations, or "mission societies," which he helped gather, were the visible
manifestation of Christ's true church in Norway. Frans on
suggested modelling them after the Swedish Mission
Covenant. 42 The Swedish mission societies, he remarked, did not allow nonessential matters to prevent
varians kinds of converts from uniting. Swedish Covenanters, he related, were tired of being told by same
denominations that "you cannot be one of us because
our confessions and statutes forbid us to acct?pt those
who do not believe this and that regarding baptism,
communion, the state church, Luther, and so on." He
added, however, that the Swedes were "very particular
about not allowing anyone who did not have life in God
to become a member." 43
The Norwegian Mission Covenant adopted the se
principles at its organizing convention in 1884. According to its third rule, admission of either societies or congregations to the Covenant could occur "without regard
to varying perceptions of those things which are less
important for salvation [and] which do not conflict with
life in God." 44 The Covenant's constitution did not
specify these adiaphora, which Franson seems to have
construed to include nearly all religions matters save
Darbyite millenarianism and Biblical literalism. Given
his key role in its founding, however, they almost certainly included the sacraments and membership in the
established church, for these two matters have never de97
Frederick Hale
termined membership in either the Norwegian or the
Danish Mission Covenant. To millenarians, they are of
little importance compared to the urgent task of proclaiming Christ's imminent return. Even the form of
baptism, crucial in many free churches, is a matter of
considerable personal freedom in these two denominations.
The Danish Mission Covenant adopted similar views.
Like its Norwegian counterpart, it was initially a very
loose confederation of the independent mission
societies which Franson and his associates had helped
organize, and not all of these approved the forma ti on of a
closer union. The reasons for their opposition are not
recorded. In any case, only five societies sent representatives to the organizational meeting in Ålborg in
1888, and the new denomination initially numbered
only 695 members. 45 Although documents for its early
years are sparse, it seems clear that the body followed
Frans on' s guidance along a path similar to that of the
Norwegian Miss ion Covenant. His fri end, F. Joh ans on,
came to Denmark in 1884; shortly after Franson was expelled, J ohanson sent to Copenhagen another Swedish
revivalist, Carl Wiktor Gillim. 46
The handful of la y evangelists who form ed the Danish
Mission Covenant expressed the wish "that all partisan
walls, which the devil has built, may fall" and that all
true Christians could unite. 47 Jens Jensen-Maar, a
fisherman who emne into contact with Gillen in the
mid-1880s and later served as the Covenant's chairman,
expressed a view of the church which characterized
Covenant ecclesiology throughout Scandinavia. "The
church which apens its doors to unconverted people
cannot be God's church, but neither can one which
excludes any of them whom God has accepted as his
children." He added that "any congregation which consists of truly faithful and broad-minded people can be98
THE EV ANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
come a member of this Covenant, regardless of its views
on sacramental questions and minor matters." 48
The revivalism and renewed interest in millenarianism which led to the formation of the Mission
Covenants in Norway and Denmark influenced
Scandinavian-American Christians as well. In the 1880s
severallay evangelists who had be en active in Frans on' s
crusades in northern Europe emigrated to the United
States, while other Nordic immigrants came into contact
with Darbyite eschatology through the proclamations of
John Prince li and his associates, who founded the
Swedish Evangelical Free Church in 1884. Severin Didriksen, for example, who had worked with Franson in
Norway and preached at Bethlehem Church in Kristiania
during the early 1880s, left his homeland soon after the
Norwegian Mission Covenant was founded to join his
older brother in Boston. Ludvig Ellingsen, a young
Norwegian vocalist who also had co-operate& with the
Swedish evangelist, followed shortly thereafter and in
the late 1880s took pastorates in Boston and Providence.
N. P. Lang, a Dane who had been associated with
Moody' s church in Chicago from 1864 until he re turn ed
to Denmark in 1882, went back to that city two years
later; there he resumed his career as a revivalist.
These men quickly generated among other Scandinavian newcomers the same kind of religious movement
they had been involved in in Europe. In a letter to M'issionæren, the organ of the Norwegian Mission Covenant, Ellingsen described his evangelism among
Swedes and Norwegians in Rhode Island in 1890. "We
have had blessed meetings here and there," he remarked. "In one place God saved more than 20 children
from 12 to 20 years of age, mostly boys." 49 Lang repmted
that he had spent seven months in 1889 and 1890 traveling "over 2,000 miles in 3 states, holding revivals nearly
every evening and often 3 times on Sunday." He had
99
Frederick Hale
also made "countless home visits in all of the communities which I have visited [and] where Scandinavians live." Lang had preached in the forests of Wisconsin' s Do or Peninsula as well as in the cavernous
Swedish Tabernacle in Minneapolis, where he worked
briefly with Franson. 50
As in Norway and Denmark, millenarianism furnished
much of the impetus for this immigrant revivalism. Correspondence from the 1880s reveals that even in rural
Midwestern settlements many Scandinavian newcomers
shared the transatlantic eschatological community. Writing from Alta, Iowa, in 1884, Christian Corneliussen disclosed tl1at Darbyite millenarianism dominated his view
of the world' s destiny. "The times are bad," he wrote the
Norwegian Mission Covenant, "but the Lord will come
soon to fetch His own and protect them in His abode
until the tribulation is over." Corneliussen had been in
the New World for at least a decade and appears to have
been unaware that a series of millenarian waves had arri ved in Norway since his departure. During his youth,
he complained, "tl1is glorious hope had been lost or
buried in form Christianity and explained away . . . . I
never heard a word or received a writing by any pastor or
teacher about tl1is matter." 51 Meanwhile, in Rhode Island Ellingsen, like Frans on, pointed to signs of Christ' s
imminent return, as did the Dane J. C. J. Klim in Iowa. 5 2
The congregations that men like Ellingsen and Didriksen gathered remained relatively isolated for several
years. They did not have a newspaper until American
Congregationalists, from whom they began to receive
educational and financial assistance in the mid-1880s,
first published one for them in 1890. Shortly tl1ereafter,
members of that Yankee denomination assisted them in
forming the Eastern and Western Evangelical Free
Church associations, their first inclusive organizations.
This initial lack of structure, and their millenarianism
100
THE EV ANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
which seems to have discouraged preservation of church
records, make it difficult to examine the origins of the
earliest congregations. Consequently, the historian is
aften forced to rely on contemporary observations by native Americans.
One Congregationalist described the genesis of a
Danish free church in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1882
a group of about fifteen Danes li ving there began to hold
occasional meetings. They arranged for a Lutheran pastor to vis it them monthly, but his inclusive concept of the
church clashed with their ideal of a congregation comp os ed exclusively of born-again Christians. A la y
member of the group, a watchmaker named L. C. H.
Haubroe, then assumed the pastoral duties. His ministry
apparently sparked the little congregation, which began
to hold several meetings each week. Haubroe began to
preach in Bridgeport, Hartford, and otl1er neighboring
communities. He claimed to draw approximately one
third of New Haven's Danes and half of those in
Bridgeport to his worship services, but admitted that attendance in Hmtford was much lower. "Only a few are
yet converted there." 53
In Boston, David Didriksen and Olai Johansen were
the prime movers in founding a Norwegian free congregation. They first attended a Norwegian Lutheran
church in that city, but were disenchanted with the failure of its pastor to stress the need for conversion. When
Didriksen's brother, Severin, emigrated to Boston, the
three began to hold meetings in a Congregationalist
church in Roxbury. The small congregation also soon
encompassed several Swedish Americans. 54
The Scandinavian Evangelical Church of Tacoma,
Washington, was als o a product oflay initiative. In 1884,
sixteen Norwegian Americans in that harbor city began
to worship together in a private home. They called as
their pastor L. P. Paulson, a Norwegian Lutheran. The
101
Frederick Hale
congregation soon affiliated with the Washington Congregationalist General Association. Lack of funds almost
forced the group to dis band, but a grant of $500 from the
American Congregational Union allowed it to build a
chapel and call a pastor. 55 In 1890 Paulson claimed that
there were "many small brother congregations in the
area." 56
These scattered Danish and Norwegian congregations, which probably did not number more than two
dozen befare the 1890s, emulated their counterparts in
Scandinavia in striving to rise above sectarianism. Like
Franson and Princell, they had little use for denominations and professed to abhor sectarian bickering. A
Danish immigrant churchman complained that in the
United States "orre says: 'I am a Lutheran,' the other:
'Methodist' or 'Baptist' and so on." 57 Orre of his countrymen in Iowa lamented to the editor of the Danish
Mission Covenant' s newspaper that whenever he spake
about Christ, he was immediately asked, "What denomination do you be lang to? What is the name of the
church, the society of Christians, to which you belong?"
When he answered "'I belong to the same orre as Paul,
Peter, James, and John,"' his inquirer expressed "doubt,
astonishment, and scorn, as though such an answer were
orre of the stupidest which a person could gi ve." 58
In line with their opposition to denominational
zealotry, these immigrant preachers changed their
affiliation from orre communion to another with surprising frequency. John Hanson Meyer, for example, studied
at the Baptists' Morgan Park Theological Seminary in
Chicago befare his ordination at the Bridgeport Scandinavian Mission in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He subsequently organized Norwegian Congregationalist
churches in Jersey City and Hoboken and held several
Lutheran pastorates. 59 Another Norwegian immigrant,
L. P. Paulson, was ordained a Lutheran pastor befare
102
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
taking the pulpit of the Scandinavian Evangelical Church
ofTacoma. In the 1890s he served a Norwegian Presbyterian congregation in Minneapolis. 60
Millenarianism, the chief stimulant of the revivals that
led to formation of the Norwegian and Danish Mission
covenants as well as the antecedents of the Evangelical
Free Church, became a chief characteristic of the latter
from their inception in the 1880s. It was thus an element
of continuity between the European and American
wings of this transatlantic tradition. During the 1890s
few of the Congregationalists who helped support the
Eastern and Western Evangelical Free Church associations accepted the eschatology which was normative in
them. Rather than awaiting the return of Christ and the
end of his tory, most prominent Congregationalists of the
Gilded Age optimistically perceived progress in the history of the world in general and the United States in
particular.
Even Reinert Jernberg, a Norwegian-American Congregationalist minister who trained clergymen for the
Free Church associations at the Congregationalists'
Chicago Theological Seminary, accepted the myth of
progress. As editor of Evangelisten, the unofficial organ
of the associations, he gave those two regional bodies a
much less millenarian image than they deserved. Rather
than continually urging his fellow N ordic immigrants to
await the Second Advent, Jernberg pleaded with them to
co-operate more closely with Congregationalists to preserve traditional, Protestant America from the rising tide
of southern and eastern European newcomers. 61
In spite of their teacher' s indifference to millenarianism, however, the Norwegian and Danish immigrants whom he educated remained eschatologically
oriented. Meeting at Wesley, Iowa, in 1894, the Western
Evangelical Free Church Association discussed vigorously the question "How shall we understand the doc103
Frederick Hale
trine of Christ' s Second Cmning and the thousand-year
reign?" Hans Josephsen, a Norwegian who had cooperated in gathering the Norwegian Lutheran Free
Church of Milwaukee in 1887 and had graduated from
Chicago Theological Seminary a few months befare the
1894 convention, moderated the discussion. He stressed
three points which, he believed, were matters of consensus among Scandinavian free-church immigrants and
therefore should be discussed by the Association. First,
among apostolic Christians "the hope of the Lord' s rapid
return ignited their love and enthusiasm for the Lord
and the advancement of His Kingdom." Second, "the
Lord' s re turn has be come a very popular matter in o ur
time and because of this ought to be considered." Finally, "the doctrine of Christ' s re turn and the thousandyear reign has been falsely presented and thus perverted, so that, to many, such a teaching suggests a picture of terror, while to others it seems to be nothing more
than fanaticism."
The other ministers who participated in the discussion
shared these observations and added same of their own.
One then1e that ran consistently through their comments
was joy over the anticipated return of Christ. These
ministers were apocalypticists, but their millenarianism
precipitated neither fatalism nor despair. Charles J. Jensen (1873-1940), an immigrant carpenter who conducted
a lay ministry in northern Wisconsin, addressed himself
to a common misperception about their eschatology.
"Marry believe that when Christ comes, the whole world
will collapse," he observed. To Jensen this was an unchristian fear, because witl1 the Second Advent "a glorious time will begin for God's people, while the ungodly
will meet their judgment."
Charles Nelson, a young Evangelical Free Church
clergyman who later served Lutheran free congregations
in Wisconsin and Illinois, agreed wholeheartedly, re104
THE EVANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
marking that "talk of the Lord' s re turn is the finest music
to my ears ." Nelson concurred with J osephsen that the
Bible should be the only source of millenarian doctrines,
as did Niels Julius Bing, an equally young immigrant.
This Dane, who served briefly as minister of the Scandinavian Congregational Church of Britt, Iowa, before
joining the ministerium of the United Danish Lutheran
Church, combined millenarianism and Lutheran
eucharistic theology. For a reason that he did not explain, belief in "the blessing and greatness that the Lord
himself will come" reminded Bing "of the Lord's pres. con11nun1on.
. "'
ence 1n
Some of the clergymen who attended this conference
agreed with Josephsen that recent interest in millenarianism meant the recovery of a long-ignored Christian teaching. K. Knudsen observed, perhaps a bit anachronistically, that "it is seldom that such a topic is taken
up for discussion." Bing echoed this belief, blaming the
rigidity of the Old-World churches for neglecting the
doctrine of the Second Coming. "I am glad the brethren
here expect the Lord soon," he told his colleagues, "and
that the old dogmas of the state church no longer blind
the people." 62
Kenneth Bjork has noted that the few studies of the
assimilation of Norwegian immigrant churches that have
been undertaken have been too narrow in scope. "Discussions of the subject of 'Americanization' have focused
on language," he wrote, "but the congregation of today
was already largely formed while Norwegian was still
the language of the pulpit." 63 This brief look at the origins of the Dana-Norwegian antecedent ofthe Evangelical Free Church confirms Bjork' s observation. At l east
two decades before English became the predominant
language of these immigrants, the lineaments of the
present denomination's faith had clem·ly been drawn.
These included Anglo-American revivalism of the
105
Frederick Hale
Moody tradition, resistance to liberal Biblical scholarship, belief in the imminent Second Advent of Christ
as interpreted by John Nelson Darby, and a denigration
of various adiaphora which have divided Protestants
since the Reformation.
But this study also suggests that the process of
Americanization was not simply a matter of immigrants
adapting to the religious atmosphere of the United
States, either befare or after they began to preach and
worship in English. Men like Ludvig Ellingsen and
Severin Didriksen displayed the characteristics which
became normative in the Evangelical Free Church before they left Norway, as did their nonemigrating countrymen in the Norwegian Mission Covenant and Danes
in the Danish Miss ion Covenant. Rather than thinking in
terms of the Americanization of N ordic immigrant
churches, historians would do well to place such communions as the Evangelical Free, whose theological and
religious roots lay chiefly in the United States and Great
Britain, into the context of transatlantic Protestantism.
Both befare and after Scandinavian-American Christians
adopted English, many participated in this international
community, in which ideas and practices shuttled from
shore to shore with surprising rap~dity.
NOTES
OddS. Lovoll and Kenneth O. Bjork, The Norwegian-American Historical
Association, 1925-1975, 66 (Northfield, 1975).
2 Theodore C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America: The American
Transition (Northfield, 1940).
3 George Stephenson, The Religious Aspects of Swedish Immigration,
287-291 (Minneapolis, 1932).
4 H. Wilbert Norton et al., The Diamond]ubilee Story (Minneapolis, 1959).
See also Hugo
Norton, "The Contribution of the Evangelical Free Church
of America to Foreign Missions," an unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1955.
5 No dispassionate account of Franson's life and evangelistic activities
exists. He deserves better treatment from historians than his laudatory followers and vilifying enemies - particularly the Lutheran clergy in Scandinavia
- afforded him during his lifetime and after his death. The best account is
Josephine Princell's eulogistic Fransons lif och verksamhet (Chicago, 1909).
1
w:
106
THE EV ANGELICAL FREE TRADITION
For Franson's revivals in Norway, see John Christensen, Verdensmisjonæren
Fredrik Franson (Oslo, 1927).
6 The best study ofMoody is James F. Findlay, Dwight L. Moody: American
Evangelist, 1837-1899 (Chicago, 1969). Findlay, however, does not mention
Moody's association with Franson.
7 Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American
Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago, 1970) is an excellent study of the various types of Christian apocalypticism which developed during the nineteenth
century.
8
Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, Chapter 3.
9 Findlay, Dwight L. Moody, 251.
10 Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, 174-176.
11 No satisfactory study of the controversial Princell exists. The most revealing source is his memoirs, which his wife edited shortly after his death. See
Josephine Princell, ed.,]. G. Princells levnadsminnen (Chicago, 1916).
12 The proceedings of this millenarian convention were published serially
in 1881 in Chicago-Bladet, a newspaper which later served as the unofficial
organ ofPrincell's Swedish Evangelical Free Church. An edited version was
subsequently published as a book in Sweden; see Fredrik Frans on, ed., Utfor-
ligt referat ofwer forhandlingama wid denforde profeti ska iimnenas studier
afsedda konferensen i Chicago (Kristinehamn, 1882).
13 The best historical treatment of the Norwegian Mission Covenant is Ingulf Diesen, Det norske misjonsforbunds historie (Oslo, 1973). See also
Diesen's Fem foredrag om det norske misjonsforbund (Oslo, 1975).
14 Morgenrøden, April 15, 1884.
15 Leif Eeg-Olofsson, O ile i kroken: Olaf Olafs son, fork u nnare och frikyrkooriginal, 30 (Stockholm, 1957).
16 Luthersk Kirketidende, May 23, 1885. Moody's revivals were also severely criticized in other countries, particularly in Great Britain, by more
h·aditional churchmen who disliked his "indifference to forms"; see Findlay,
Dwight L. Moody, 145, 157.
17
Luthersk Kirketidende, March 22, 1884.
18 Emil Larsen, Historiske studier over kirkelige og frikirkelige brydninger,
86 (Copenhagen, 1965).
1 9 Emil Larsen, "Det danske missionsforbunds forhistorie," in Helge Rasmussen, ed., En dansk vækkelsesbevægelse, 22 (Copenhagen, 1963).
20 Vilhelm Beck commented at length on his campaign against ecclesiastical
pluralism in Denmark in his Memoirs (Philadelphia, 1965).
21 Den Indre Missions Tidende, March 8, 1885.
22 Den Indre Missions Tidende, March 14, 1885.
23 Larsen, Historiske studier, 130.
24 Morgenrøden, April 15, 1883.
25 Morgenrøden, April 15, 1883.
26 Morgenrøden, April 15, 1884.
2 7 Morgenstjernen, August l, 1889.
28
Morgenstjernen, July l, 1893.
2 9 Morgenstjernen, April l, 1893.
30 Morgenstjernen, April l, 1884.
3 1 For a more detailed analysis of the impact of these eschatological cosmologies in northern Europe, see Frederick Hale, Trans-Atlantic Conservative Protestantism in the Evangelical Free and Mission Covenant Traditions
(New York, 1979).
107
Frederick Hale
32
Morgenrøden, May l, 1884.
Morgenrøden, May 15, 1884.
34
Morgenstjernen, October l, 1889.
35
Morgenstjernen, October 15, 1889.
36
Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, lll.
37
F. Franson, Bibelns liira om antikrist, 2--4 (Hedemora, Sweden, 1886).
38
See, for example, Morgenrøden, February l, 1884.
39
Morgenstjernen, September l, 1890. See als o Morgenstjernen, February
15, 1889, April l, 1890; Morgenrøden, June l, 15, 1883.
4 0 Findlay, Dwight L. Moody, 246.
41
Morgenrøden, November 15, 1883.
42
The Swedish Mission Covenant, constituted in 1878, was an outgrowth of
pietistic revivalism among Lutherans in Sweden. Despite the similarity of
their names, the Mission covenants of Norway and Denmark had little in
common with the Swedish body. For an excellent study of the Swedish Mission Covenant and its American counterpart, the Evangelical Covenant
Church, see Karl A. Olsson, By One Spirit (Chicago, 1962).
43
Morgenrøden, February l, 1884.
44
Morgenrøden, August 15, 1884.
45
Morgenstjernen, January l, 1889.
46
Viggo Ramsvold, "Det første halve sekel," in Rasmussen, En dansk
vækkelses-bevægelse, 43.
47
Morgenstjernen, January l, 1889.
48
Ramsvold, "Det første halve sekel," 44.
49
Missionæren, July 6, 1890.
50
Morgenstjernen, April l, 1890.
51
Morgenrøden, October 15, 1884.
52
Morgenstjernen, March l, 15, 1890; Missionæren, July 6, 1890.
53
M. W. Montgomery, The Work among the Scandinavians, 19 (New York,
1888).
54 R. Arlo Odegaard, With Singleness of Heart, 101-102 (Minneapolis, n.d.).
55
Montgomery, Work among the Scandinavians, 16-17.
56
Evangelisten, February l, 1890.
57 Morgenstjernen, March 15, 1890.
58 Morgenstjernen, August l, 1894.
59
Odegaard, With Singleness of Heart, 560; Evangelisten, February l,
1890.
60
Odegaard, With Singleness of Heart, 565.
61
Reinert Jernberg,A Nation in the Loom: The Scandinavian Fibre in Our
Social Fabric (Chicago, 1895).
62
Evangelisten, September 15, 1894.
63
Lovoll and Bjork, Norwegian-American Historical Association, 66.
33
108