The American Lutheran churches undertook to aid their co-religionists, and in 1850 the Pittsburg Synod and the Joint Synod of Ohio each sent one of its ministers into the Northwest, but the epidemic of cholera caused them to hurry back to their former homes.[272] The real support of some of the immigrant Lutheran missionaries came from the American Home Missionary Society (Congregational). One of the men thus assisted was Paul Anderson (Norland) who came from Norway in 1843, and received a part of his education in the new Congregational college at Beloit. He was chosen pastor of the first Norwegian Lutheran Church in Chicago in 1848, and journeyed to Albany, New York, to be ordained by a Lutheran minister, but he nevertheless served under a commission from the Congregational Society, and made reports to it for several years.[273]
In a similar manner this Society supported for several years the missionary labors of Lars Paul Esbjörn, a graduate of Upsala University, who was ordained a Lutheran clergyman when he emigrated in 1849, and likewise the labors of T. N. Hasselquist. Esbjörn was appointed a missionary of the Society in December, 1849, on the recommendation of the Central Association of Congregational Ministers of Illinois, to whom he presented his credentials and by whom he was examined and received into the Association.[274] He was re-appointed year by year, making reports from 1851 to 1854.[275] Hasselquist makes acknowledgment of his obligations to the Society in a letter of July, 1853, saying that he rejoices “in connection with your in the highest sense benevolent Society, without which it would have been impossible for me to do for my scattered countrymen what I have done.... I give humble thanks to the Home Missionary Association which out of Christian benevolence helps to build up the Kingdom of Christ among scattered Swedes who are almost all very poor, but still love the word of God.”[276] In 1852 the Society appointed the Rev. Ole Anderson [Andrewson?] to the charge of the Scandinavian church in Racine, Wisconsin, and two years later he reports to the Society from La Salle County, Illinois.[277]
Since the Civil War and the great increase in the numbers of immigrants, the home missionary efforts of the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists have been carried on with persistence, if not always with perfect wisdom. In 1911 the Methodists had five Swedish Conferences with 222 churches, a membership of about 18,000, and property valued at upwards of $2,000,000, and two Norwegian-Danish Conferences, with 119 churches, 6,300 members, and property worth $400,000.[278] The cost of this work to the Methodist Missionary Society is not far from $50,000 per year.[279] The Baptists began their proselyting work in Norway and Sweden, and have prosecuted it steadily in the Northwest since the establishment of the first Swedish Baptist church in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1852. In 1912 the church reports showed 18 Swedish conferences, 374 churches, 28,000 members, and current income of about $350,000, and also eleven Norwegian-Danish conferences, 94 churches, 5,900 members, and current income of $65,500.[280] The Congregationalists have pushed their denominational interests in like manner, and in 1913 had about one hundred churches, with rather more than six thousand members.[281] Besides these churches regularly connected with the Congregational organization, there are about one hundred congregations of the Swedish Mission Union, and the group of independent congregations whose faith and practice are closely allied with those of the Congregationalists.[282] The Unitarian church has endeavored to organize congregations, spending $25,000 on one church in Minneapolis in sixteen years.[283] A few Protestant Episcopal parishes also exist among the Swedes, chiefly in the large cities.[284]
The three denominations first mentioned have for many years maintained, in their respective western theological seminaries, departments or professorships for the education of young men for ministerial service among the immigrants from the Northlands. At the Chicago Theological Seminary (Congregationalist) the Dano-Norwegian department was organized in 1884, with one professor and two students; in the following year a Swedish department was added, the professor being chosen from the Swedish Free Mission Church. In 1906 these two departments had each two professors and respectively thirteen and twenty-seven students, and published a religious paper, Evangelisten.[285] Besides the Garrett Biblical Institute (Methodist), Northwestern University has two similar departments, with thirty-one students in the Swedish, and sixteen in the Norwegian-Danish section.[286] In the Divinity School of the University of Chicago (Baptist), the same departments appeared up to 1912; in 1897 there were twenty-two students in the Dano-Norwegian Department, and thirty-five in the Swedish; for 1905, the corresponding figures were twenty-four students, with one professor and two instructors, and thirty-four students, with two professors and one instructor. Both departments were dropped after 1913.[287]
So far as the movements represented by these missionary endeavors and by the organization of schools help to furnish church privileges to those beyond the reach of other Protestant churches—since the Catholics are out of the question—they are admirable, accomplishing much good. But when they cease to be efforts to extend religious opportunities, when they are mainly devoted to swinging men and women already Christian from one denomination to another, they simply add one more factor to the inexcusable competition which too often characterizes the home missionary activity, even when it does not degenerate into a mere scramble for denominational advantage. The results in very many cases have been sadly disproportionate to the expenditures.[288]
Not all the forces, however, have been centrifugal; the divided body of Lutherans has attempted, with varying success, to effect permanent union. Since 1890 the centripetal reaction has been strong, gaining impetus from the highly significant efforts of the branches of the Norwegian Lutherans in a synod held in that year in Minneapolis, to create a single organization. The United Norwegian Lutheran Church, formed June 13, 1890, was made up of the Norwegian Augustana Synod, the Norwegian-Danish Conference, and the Anti-Missourian Brotherhood, thus becoming the strongest of all the American Norwegian churches, numbering 1,122 congregations, about 120,000 members, and having property valued at more than $1,500,000.[289] But old antagonisms and animosities, generated in the bitterness of religious controversy, were not easily overcome, and disputes soon arose to disturb the life of the United Church. The chief of these related to the control of certain educational institutions, especially Augsburg Seminary (theological) in Minneapolis. So acute was the factional quarrel that it was taken into the courts in 1893, and continued on until 1898, when the “Augsburg strife” was settled out of court by mutual agreement. Meantime the Augsburg party had withdrawn from the United Church, taking some 40,000 members, keeping the Seminary, worth about $60,000, but giving up to the United Church the endowment fund of about $40,000.[290] In spite of factions, secessions, and the expulsion of twelve congregations, the United Church as a whole prospered. Its annual report for 1905 gave the following statistics: congregations, more or less closely affiliated, 1,325; ministers and professors, 453; communicants, 267,000; property, $715,000.[291] While the United Church was the largest, there were no fewer than four other branches of Norwegian Lutherans in 1914.[292]
In contrast with the Norwegians, the Swedes have manifested a commendable unity in keeping the faith once delivered to them by the fathers, the chief exception being the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant, which can scarcely be called Lutheran. The great Swedish Lutheran Augustana Synod, one of the constituent members of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, stood staunchly united in the midst of many changes in other branches of the church. Under the broad name of the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod of North America, which comprised both Norwegians and Swedes down to 1870, it grew rapidly, setting its face sternly against the New Lutheranism which sought to modify the old rigidity of doctrine and practice. In 1894 the word Scandinavian was dropped.[293] By 1899 the Synod represented 900 congregations, 200,000 members, and a material estate of $4,200,000.[294]
The break-up of the Lutheran church is not wholly to be regretted when viewed in relation to the process of Americanization, for the church has usually been a stronghold of traditionalism and conservatism. Perhaps, too, the vigorous religious and ecclesiastical disputes, wasteful of energy and of money as they sometimes seem, have contributed to a wholesome and pervasive intellectual activity not altogether unlike the results of the Puritan disputations. So careful a student of Northwestern immigrants as Mr. O. N. Nelson is inclined to the opinion that the contentions of the Lutherans may have benefited the church. “Close observation has convinced us that if there had been peace instead of war, the Norwegian Lutherans in the State (Minnesota) would have numbered several thousand less than they do. It may not seem pious to say so, but many a worldly-minded Viking has become so interested in the fight that he has joined the faction with which he sympathized in order to assist in beating the opposing party.”[295]
The church services in the great majority of cases are still conducted in the mother-tongue. In the United Norwegian Lutheran Church, in 1905, for example, the services in Norwegian numbered 30,407 as against 1,542 in English, and out of 1,300 congregations reporting, no more than six held services in English only, including two large congregations in Chicago and Milwaukee.[296] Five other congregations conducted more services in English than in Norwegian; in ten localities the numbers were equal; and in twenty-two, they were about equal, making a total of forty-three in which English figured prominently.[297] The Hon. N. P. Haugen, speaking on Norway Day at the World’s Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, commented on the fact that a Lutheran church had just been dedicated, in which English alone would be used, and said significantly: “Twenty years ago our theologians would not have entertained such a proposition.”[298] Now the younger Lutheran preachers are expected to be able to preach both in their mother-tongue and in English.
The conduct of services in non-English languages will and should continue so long as there is a considerable body of men and women who emigrated too late to learn the new language well enough to stand that final linguistic test, the power to worship genuinely and satisfyingly in the adopted speech. This means that the churches will use the foreign speech until the generation of the foreign-born ceases to be predominant, and in the cities, perhaps while the second generation is in the majority; but children who receive their education in the public schools or other English speaking schools, will require that their religious instruction and their devotional exercises be conducted in English.