Unbending Purpose

How Conflict, Controversy, and Stubbornness Shaped the Founding of Norwegian-American Lutheran Colleges in the Nineteenth Century

By Jennifer Kovarik

It is impossible, in a few short pages, to share the stories of all of the Norwegian Lutheran colleges and institutions of higher learning here in the United States. For the sake of this article, the focus will be on several of the colleges that had their founding in the nineteenth century and continue as institutions today. There are many excellent resources—books, articles, and even webpages—where one can learn about the interesting histories of the individual schools. Stories from a variety of nineteenth and twentieth century Norwegian-American Lutheran colleges will be the focus of a Vesterheim exhibition opening in May 2011. “

Ahundred higher schools in a hundred years! That is the mark reached by the Norwegians in America,” wrote Olaf Morgan Norlie in his book History of the Norwegian People in America, published in 1925, the centennial of Norwegian immigration to America.1 Academies, preparatory schools, colleges, and seminaries were established in many Norwegian communities throughout the United States. Curricula may have varied, but the schools shared a common goal of providing a Christian education for Norwegian Americans. The separation of church and state in the United States meant religion was not to be formally taught in public schools. This was quite the opposite of Norway, where the state church was the Lutheran Church and religion was taught alongside other subject areas. “Only a true Christian instruction can create a Christian conscience and faith, in short, a Christian character.”2

Very early in their history, Norwegians in America agreed upon the need to establish schools of higher education; however, they could not always agree upon how, and sometimes even where, to do this. From the early settlement years until the early 1900s, “Norwegian Lutheranism was plagued by almost continual internal conflicts and divisions, both doctrinal and personal.”3 Many of the Norwegian Lutheran colleges in existence today were founded because of, or even in spite of, conflict and controversy during the nineteenth century.

The crux of the conflict was the tension between the “high” church and the “low” church in Norway. The high

church followers greatly “respected the Church as a divine institution, the Word and the Sacraments as the Means of Grace, and the ministry as a holy office.”4 As members of the upper and ruling class, pastors were afforded a good deal of power and influence over the lives of their congregants, and this power became associated with worldliness. High church followers also believed in the traditional method of preparing pastors through university training in theology and classical studies. The low church came about in protest to the influence and worldliness of the pastoral position in the high church. According to O.M. Norlie, the low church “called for personal experience in the power of the Gospel to save sinners and the privilege of every man, nay, even the duty, to bear witness of the fact that he has himself found peace with God and that God can save sinners.”5 The low church advocated Bible reading, prayer meetings, and lay preaching, along with the regular work of the pastors. The pastors of low church followers could receive a personal call from God and be educated by the experiences of their lives.

Ironically, the majority of Lutherans in Norway were tolerant and moderate in their religious views, seeing the value in the ministry and ceremonies of the Lutheran church and acknowledging the importance of personal expression and worship. By immigrating to the United States, many Norwegians hoped to leave the high church/low church conflict behind, but this was not to be. Along with more moderate Lutherans, high and low church followers also immigrated, bringing their beliefs and the conflict with them.

Elling Eielsen, a lay preacher and follower of Hans Nielsen Hauge, immigrated to the United States in 1839 and began evangelizing in the Fox River, Illinois, settlement in 1839. Soon after his arrival, Eielsen erected a building that served as his home, a hospice for new immigrants, and an assembly hall. His fervor and determination helped him to win back immigrants who had been drawn away from the Lutheran faith by Mormons, Methodists, and Baptists. He moved to Wisconsin in 1843, where the more moderate and churchly followers of Hauge at Muskego were less than friendly.

In August 1844, the tension between the high church and the low church began to grow with the arrival of Reverend J.W.C. Dietrichson in Muskego. Dietrichson was

a missionary and university-trained ordained pastor who was sent by the Church in Norway (high church) to survey the religious situation and establish the Church of Norway among the immigrants, who were seen as members “in exile.”6 He based himself in Koshkonong and, from there, he set about introducing “in all of the congregations the liturgy and discipline of the Church of Norway, including formal membership in the local congregation and a commitment of spiritual obedience.”7 Dietrichson was zealous and imperious, winning him few friends; however, he laid the groundwork for the structure of an organized church. In 1848, universitytrained pastors from Norway began answering the calls of the newly organized congregations.

Interestingly, it was the Haugeans who made the first move to organize a church body. Despite thriving as an unstructured movement in Norway, Eielsen found that some structure was needed to meet the needs of the congregations. He sought ordination for himself in Chicago by a German clergyman and organized the first Lutheran synod among Norwegians in America in 1846, known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or more commonly as Eielsen’s Synod. In 1853, the Norwegian state church pastors organized their own synod, the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or the Norwegian Synod as it became known. It was also the Haugeans who made the first organized effort to provide schools of higher education to train pastors and teachers, and they did so by joining with other Lutheran groups in America. In 1851, the Synod of Northern Illinois was founded, joining German-American and Swedish Lutheran congregations with five Norwegian congregations that were served by associates of Elling Eielsen. The new synod pledged to support the college and seminary of the Illinois Synod, which was moving from Hillsboro to Springfield. This school was rechartered as Illinois State University and was the first formal college and seminary of any group of organized Norwegian Lutherans in America. The university, which included a theology department, lasted from 1852 to 1867 and between 1852 and 1861 seven Norwegian students received theological training and entered the Lutheran

ministry. (One of these students was Abraham Jacobson, whose family farm is included in Vesterheim’s collection.)

The Norwegian Synod, like the Haugeans, first joined with other Lutherans in America to provide an educational opportunity to train pastors. In the 1850s, efforts by the Norwegian Synod to attract enough university-trained pastors from Norway to serve the growing number of congregations in America were insufficient. While a school of their own was ideal, it was not practical, and relationships with existing institutions were explored. The Norwegian Synod considered working with the University of Wisconsin and the seminaries of the joint Ohio, Buffalo, and Missouri Synods. In 1857, an affiliation with the Missouri Synod’s Concordia Seminary in St. Louis was ultimately chosen. Also in 1857, the Norwegian Synod determined to establish its own school as soon as possible and began fundraising, with a goal of $50,000 for a “University Fund.” If their own institution of higher education was not achievable, the funds could be contributed toward educating Norwegians at a German Lutheran institution. In the meantime, a portion of the interest from the fund was used to establish a Norwegian professorship at Concordia Seminary. Peter Laurentius (Laur.) Larsen, a young, recently recruited pastor from Norway, accepted the position and began his work at Concordia Seminary in 1859.

In 1860 doctrinal and personal conflicts led Norwegians to found their own school. Lars Esbjørn, a Swedish pastor who had been hired as the professor of theology and Scandinavian languages at the Illinois State University, became personally dissatisfied with some members of the Northern Illinois Synod’s refusal to formally adopt the Augsburg Confession, the primary Lutheran confession of faith. He resigned in 1860. He was fully supported by the Scandinavian and Swedish conferences of the synod, which severed ties with the synod and formed a new one, the Scandinavian Augustana Synod. The new synod quickly organized its own school, Augustana Seminary in Chicago. They elected Esbjørn as its first professor and planned to hire a Norwegian and English professor as soon as possible.

Portraits of Elling Eielsen, left, and Johannes Wilhelm Christian Dietrichson, right. A main source of the controversy between Norwegian Lutherans in the United States was the conflict between “low church” followers and “high church” followers. The conflict escalated in 1844, when Rev. J.W. C. Dietrichson arrived as a missionary from the Church of Norway, encroaching on the territory of Elling Eielsen. Eielsen was a lay preacher and follower of Hans Nielsen Hauge, who had been evangelizing to Norwegian immigrants in Illinois, and later Wisconsin, since shortly after immigrating in 1839. Vesterheim Achives.

Group of early Norwegian graduates from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis Missouri, circa 1866. Seated, left to right, are Jacob D. Jacobsen (born 1842, Skien, Norway, immigrated 1843, ordained 1870) and Ole Juul (born 1838, Valdres, Norway, immigrated 1848, ordained 1864). Standing, left to right, are Torger Andreas Torgerson (born 1838, Skien, Norway, immigrated 1852, ordained 1865), and Styrk Sjursen Reque (born 1836, Voss, Norway, immigrated 1845, ordained 1865). Vesterheim Archives.

This was the beginning of what would come to be known as Augustana College, which has sometimes been called the “college on wheels,” due to a series of splits and mergers and the desire of the school’s administrators to move with the Norwegian settlements in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1863, the school moved with its students to Paxton, Illinois, and still had no permanent Norwegian professor of theology. In 1868, August Weenaas joined the school as its first Norwegian theology professor. But almost immediately, Weenaas took issue with the educational philosophy of his American colleague, Sidney L. Harkey, Augustana’s professor of English and strong proponent of liberal arts education courses for all entering the seminary. In 1869, Weenaas proposed to the Scandinavian Augustana Synod that the Norwegian members separate and form their own school. The synod consented, ending years of cooperation with English-speaking German and Swedish Lutherans.8 In 1869, a building in Marshall, Wisconsin, was purchased for the new Norwegian seminary and academy, named Augsburg Seminary and Marshall Academy. Endre Endresen Eidsvaag, a Norwegian immigrant farmer, presented the school with a bell, which itself would later become embroiled in conflict. As president and professor of theology at the new seminary, August Weenaas was able to implement his educational model of practical preministerial courses versus liberal arts courses.

After establishing their own school, the Norwegians in the Scandinavian Augustana Synod desired to organize their own synod. In 1870, the Scandinavian Augustana Synod granted the request. Almost immediately there was disagreement among the Norwegian pastors and delegates who had gathered to organize the new synod. Thus, two separate synods were formed, the Norwegian-Danish Augustana Synod and the Conference of the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Control of the newly established Norwegian seminary in Marshall, Wisconsin, became an issue, with the Norwegian-Danish Augustana Synod claiming legitimacy over the Conference. Reverend O.J. Hatlestad, president of the Norwegian-Danish Augustana Synod, ordered August Weenaas, who sided with the Conference, to vacate the seminary. Weenaas opted not to mount a legal challenge, left the building, and took his 20 seminarians to a nearby farm where he rented a room, which was dubbed “Cooper’s Attic.” Weenaas soldiered on for two years with mounting debts and no salary until the Norwegian-Danish Conference made the visionary decision to re-establish Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis.

Doctrinal and personal conflicts also changed the opportunities for higher education in the Norwegian Synod during the 1860s. Counter to tradition, it was the lay delegates of the Norwegian Synod who effected the change, not the clergy. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Concordia College and Seminary in St. Louis was temporarily closed and Laur. Larsen and the Norwegian students returned to their homes. The returning students related that the professors at Concordia had sympathetic tendencies toward slavery. In general, Norwegian immigrants were against slavery, with the majority having left Norway for personal and financial freedom in the United States. In June 1861, the Norwegian Synod had its annual meeting and it was agreed that the synod should open its own school immediately. Rev. Ulrik Vilhelm Koren gave a convincing speech, which won everyone's vote for Decorah, Iowa, as the location of the school. A committee report written by the clergy recommended the relationship with Concordia continue until sufficient funds were raised to erect a building for the college, but the lay delegates strongly opposed this and won the majority vote to halt the relationship with Concordia because of the school’s endorsement of slavery.9

Luther College was established during the beginning of the Civil War, with Laur. Larsen being installed as its first president on September 1, 1861. A vacant parsonage at Half Way Creek near La Crosse, Wisconsin, served as its first temporary home, with the school moving to its second temporary home, the St. Cloud Hotel, in Decorah, Iowa, in 1862. The University Fund, which the Norwegian Synod had begun in 1857, was not sufficient to pay in full the construction costs of the college’s first main building and this, along with the weather, delayed its dedication until October 14, 1865. The dedication, though, was not without its own controversy, when students mounted a strike against the ministers of the Norwegian Synod who were in conference immediately following the dedication.

The students protested against crowded accommodations and the abuses of power by the clergy and professors, which included forcing the students to shine the pastors’ shoes.10 The students presented a list of grievances, which were quickly

The Norwegian Lutheran College, Decorah, Iowa, 1865. Although Luther College was founded in 1861, the first main building was not completed and dedicated until the fall of 1865 because of finances and construction delays. In this photograph, piles of bricks and construction materials are visible around the building. Vesterheim Archives.

dismissed by the pastors. All of the students recanted their actions, except for one leader of the strike, Rasmus B. Anderson. He was expelled, but was given his B.A. degree in 1890 after becoming a successful professor, author, and diplomat.

For a time, the Norwegian-Danish Augustana Synod maintained its academy at Marshall, Wisconsin, and later added a seminary department, led by Pastor David Lysnes of rural Decorah, Iowa. It decided to move westward with the Norwegian immigrant settlements to Beloit, Iowa, in 1881, after the town offered land and a building. In protest of the move, the citizens of Marshall, Wisconsin, refused to help with the move, and wagons, moving supplies, and outside help had to be brought in to transport furnishings, educational materials, and staff to the train station. An early snowstorm put a temporary halt on the move of all except the bell, which the town sheriff confiscated due to pending litigation brought by the farmer who had given the bell to the school under the condition that the school would always remain in Marshall. In Beloit, the school regained the name “Augustana Seminary and Academy” and, after a two-year legal battle, it also regained its bell. In need of more space, the school moved across the river to Canton, South Dakota, in 1884, where it became Augustana College. After two synodical mergers (1890 and 1917), Augustana College was officially moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where it remains today.

In 1872, Augsburg Seminary moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, which had a growing population and was becoming a major destination for Norwegian immigrants to the Midwest. August Weenaas was commissioned by the Norwegian-Danish Conference to search in Norway for additional professors. In 1873, Sven Oftedal joined the faculty and immediately made his philosophy known, publishing an “Open Declaration,” which charged “the Norwegian Synod clergy with ‘anti-Christian’ tendencies and with blighting the potential contribution of the Norwegian laity to the cultural development of the Midwest.”11

Other professors from Norway soon arrived, one being Georg Sverdrup. Sverdrup and Oftedal teamed for 40 years

to develop the curriculum and shape the history of Augsburg Seminary. The curriculum, known as the “Augsburg Plan,” was formulated in 1874 and implemented in 1876, when August Weenaas returned to Norway and Georg Sverdrup assumed the school’s presidency. The Augsburg Plan was an integrated program consisting of three courses: a three-year preparatory course; a four-year college course with two parallel departments, a Greek Department for preministerial students and a Practical Studies Department for those not going into the ministry; and a three-year theology course. The Augsburg Plan kept the historical Lutheran tradition of preparing both the clergy and laypersons, and the integrated progression of courses sought to move away from the “classical orientation,” which was often referred to as “humanism, to a pattern by which the school could serve as the mediator between the congregations and the technical study of theology.”12 By 1879, Sverdrup could report that all of the courses had been fully implemented.

The Norwegian Synod was also considering its educational plan. The clergy and the laity of the synod were at odds about preparatory education at common or public schools. The clergy, who were led by synod president Herman Amberg Preus, were decidedly against the English-speaking schools for being inferior, religionless, and without any opportunities to cultivate and maintain Norwegian heritage. The laity were decidedly for the schools that could provide the opportunity for their children to learn English and how to navigate American life and become productive U.S. citizens.13

Augustana College campus, Canton, South Dakota. Augustana College has sometimes been called the “college on wheels” due to a series of splits and mergers and the desire of the school’s administrators to move with the Norwegian settlements in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The school had its start at Hillsboro (Illinois) Academy in 1835. It then moved to Springfield to the University of Illinois and from there on to Chicago, Illinois; Paxton, Illinois; Marshall, Wisconsin; Beloit, Iowa; Canton, South Dakota; and, finally, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1918. Vesterheim Archives.

Olaf College was a coeducational school from its opening session in 1875. One third of the pupils were women. The college’s main building served as classroom and residence for both men and women for the first year after its dedication in 1878. Vesterheim Archives.

Inset: Advertisement for St. Olaf College from Lutheraneren, September 5, 1895. The advertisement welcomes boys (gutter) and girls (piger) to attend the school, which offered both a classical course leading to a baccalaureate degree and an English course, which gave students a practical education. Vesterheim Library, Preus Collection.

In 1869, the controversy came to a head, when Rasmus B. Anderson and several Norwegian-American editors organized the Scandinavian Lutheran Education Society in Madison, Wisconsin, to put forth a plan for Norwegian-American Lutherans to become leaders and educators in public schools of all levels in order to guide Norwegian-American students to careers as educators and leaders in their own communities.

By a parliamentary maneuver, the parochial school supporters were excluded from the society’s first meeting, but met the next day. They, too, acknowledged the importance of preparing qualified teachers, but disagreed about using state universities to do this. Reverend H.A. Preus proposed English instruction be given at Luther College instead and that parochial high schools or academies be set up in Norwegian communities, providing a link between elementary school and higher education opportunities in a Norwegian and Lutheran environment. While he was not ready to make Luther College co-educational, he did acknowledge the need for higher education opportunities for girls.

In response to Preus’s proposal, Bernt Julius Muus, a Norwegian-born pastor from Minnesota, conducted a private school in his parsonage at Holden for two terms in 1869 and 1870, until declining enrollment and funds forced him to cease the lessons. Four years later, when the Norwegian Synod convention met in his parish, Muus asked for church schools, and Harold Thorson, a prosperous Lutheran businessman, offered land and $500 cash if the synod would establish and operate an academy in Northfield, Minnesota. The synod took no action, so Thorson and Muus worked independently to garner enough good will and donations from the citizens of Northfield to be able to establish St. Olaf’s School, a coeducational high school. Thorbjørn Mohn, a Luther College and Concordia Seminary graduate, became the school’s principal when it opened in January 1875. At the dedication,

Muus delivered his speech in Norwegian and Mohn delivered his address in English; however, both leaders talked about the role of education in creating responsible, Christian citizens.

Conflict and controversy shaped the history of St. Olaf for the next 25 years. The predestination controversy divided the Norwegian Synod. On one side, followers of Professor C.F.W. Walther, professor at Concordia Seminary of the Missouri Synod, believed individuals are predestined unto faith, meaning that one is saved by God’s grace alone. The opposing side believed that one’s actions are also a salient factor and salvation is not by God’s grace alone. At the 1881 synodical meeting, delegates voted to sever ties with groups that disagreed with Walther’s view.14 The Joint Synod of Ohio and the Norwegian Synod, who were members of the same synodical conference as the Missouri Synod, were forced to make a choice. Ohio disagreed with Missouri and withdrew. The Norwegian Synod withdrew in 1883, but only because its 1882 convention delegate was denied the chance to defend himself against charging Missouri with Calvinism.

About two-thirds of the Norwegian Synod’s pastors actually agreed with Missouri, including H.A. Preus, U.V. Koren, Laur. Larsen, and Johannes Ylvisaker (all connected to Luther College). The remaining third of the Norwegian Synod who disagreed with Missouri formed the AntiMissourian Brotherhood, which included Bernt J. Muus, J.N. Kildahl, and Thorbjørn Mohn (all connected to St. Olaf). The dispute polarized the Norwegian Synod and it was played out in congregations, in synod schools, and in the press. As a result, the Anti-Missourian Brotherhood began to function independently within the synod and established its own seminary at St. Olaf. The school agreed to open a college department as well, starting in 1886. In 1889, the St. Olaf board changed the name of the institution to St. Olaf College and made Mohn its president.

St. Olaf College, July 1898, photo presented to Luther College Museum by O.G. Felland. St.

In 1890, a new conflict developed, one between St. Olaf and Augsburg Seminary. That year the Anti-Missourian Brotherhood joined the Norwegian-Danish Conference and the Norwegian Augustana Synod to form a new synod, the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in America. St. Olaf College was designated the college of the new synod, with Augsburg Seminary being designated as the synod’s divinity school. This new arrangement threatened the Augsburg Plan, the seminary’s well-developed nine-year curriculum, which included college and seminary preparation courses. The battle turned ugly and personal in private and in public, with St. Olaf supporters accusing Augsburg of being stodgy and pietistic and Augsburg supporters accusing St. Olaf of embracing worldliness and humanism.

The new synod also discovered legal difficulties with the transfer of the schools and, to get around this, separate corporations for the schools were to meet separately and transfer ownership to the United Church. This they did, but Sven Oftedal packed the Augsburg corporation with additional members in an effort to maintain the school’s nine-year curriculum. A referendum declaring Augsburg as the United Church’s only institution of higher learning was passed by the new synod’s member congregations, but Augsburg supporters did not believe their curriculum would be permanently maintained. The United Church attempted to end the controversy at its 1893 convention by rescinding its recognition of St. Olaf as its college. Still, Augsburg supporters were unconvinced and Georg Sverdrup and Sven Oftedal both resigned as professors of the church, but continued on as faculty members at Augsburg.

Another synod split and school founding were in the offing. The congregations that supported Augsburg developed their own association called The Friends of Augsburg and eventually left the United Church to become the Lutheran Free Church. It was decided at the 1893 United Church convention to look for a new location for the synod’s divinity school because of Augsburg’s secession.

In Minneapolis, the United Church rented a building that was formerly a macaroni factory owned by a man named Zacharias, and opened a new seminary and preparatory school

St. Georgs Kamp med Dragen (St. George’s Battle Against the Dragon) by Herbjørn Gausta. The drawing depicts the conflict between Augsburg Seminary and St. Olaf College in the 1890s over educational philosophies and the status of the schools as institutions of higher learning in the United Church synod. Georg Sverdrup, President of Augsburg Seminary, is on a horse representing Folkebladet, which was a Norwegian-American newspaper in which Sverdrup defended his beliefs and Augsburg Seminary and attacked St. Olaf College.

Sverdrup is slaying the dragon of humanism whose multiple heads represent St. Olaf faculty members, including Thorbjørn Mohn, Ole Felland, Halvor T. Ytterboe, and possibly Bernt Julius Muus. Vesterheim Archives.

there in September 1893. (Graduates of this seminary were called “macaroni prester [pastors]” or “Zachariter.”)

In 1896, the United Church elected a new board for Augsburg, which it presumed to have inherited through the merger to form the United Church, and took their case to court in order to gain control of the Augsburg property. The Hennepin County court sided with the United Church; however, the appeals court sided with Sven Oftedal’s Augsburg board. Both parties ultimately decided to settle in 1898. The settlement gave Augsburg’s $49,000 endowment and a portion of the seminary library to the United Church and Augsburg was given the school’s property. In 1899, the United Church’s seminary, which came to be known as Luther Seminary, was relocated to a building in St. Paul and St. Olaf College was reinstated as its official college. Augsburg Seminary continued as the Lutheran Free Church’s divinity school and clung to its curriculum for several more decades before transforming into a liberal arts college.

It would be unfair to say that all of the NorwegianAmerican Lutheran schools of higher education in the nineteenth century were founded in an atmosphere filled with conflict and controversy. A good example is Concordia College, which was established in Moorhead, Minnesota, in 1891. The college’s name was chosen because of the “harmonious” merger of the Anti-Missourian Brotherhood with the Norwegian Augustana Synod and the NorwegianDanish Conference to form the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America. (Note the founding of Concordia predates the secession of Augsburg Seminary’s supporters.)

The pastors of the United Church felt the time was right to establish a school in the Red River Valley, to which Norwegian Lutherans were flocking for good agricultural land, commerce, and trade, and as a portal to the West. In 1891, a small group of pastors and laymen organized the Northwestern Lutheran College Association and purchased a building that had been vacated by Episcopalians for their new school, which functioned initially as an academy. Classes began at the coeducational school in the fall of 1891 under Principal Ingebrikt Grose, a Luther College graduate and professor of English at St. Olaf College. Initially, Concordia offered a commercial course,

Sven Oftedal Crying Over the Loss of Augsburg’s Endowment to the United Church by Herbjørn Gausta. The drawing depicts Sven Oftedal, pastor and professor at Augsburg Seminary, crying over the loss of the school’s $49,000 endowment to the United Church in 1898. The transfer of funds was part of the settlement reached between the supporters of Augsburg Seminary and the United Church after years of litigation. Vesterheim Archives.

a practical course, and a classical course of study. It would take several more decades of convincing and funding for Concordia to morph from an academy to a college. Likewise, it would take time for Norwegian Lutherans in the Pacific Northwest to establish schools of higher education. In 1891, the Pacific Lutheran University Association under the leadership of Pastor Bjug Harstad, whom the Norwegian Synod sent to Washington, broke ground for a school in Tacoma, Washington. Land speculation and the economic depression following the panic of 1893 put the school in debt. Finances and construction delays pushed the dedication of the school’s buildings back to the fall of 1894. In 1895 the synod was asked to assume responsibility for the school, but was unwilling to undertake the debt. Pastors and congregations in the area helped the school stay afloat. In the early 1900s, other Norwegian Lutherans of the Lutheran Free Church and the United Norwegian Lutheran Church attempted educational ventures in Everett and Spokane. Another church merger in 1917 and efforts to consolidate eventually led to choosing Tacoma as the site for the Norwegian Lutheran school of higher education, which became Pacific Lutheran University.

The history of the early Norwegian Lutheran colleges is fraught with conflict and it would seem that all the Norwegian Lutherans could do was agree to disagree. But without the stubbornness and passion of pastors and the laity or the controversies and conflicts in faith of the nineteenth century, these schools may never have existed. Looking back on his life and career, Rasmus B. Anderson, a “rabble rouser” himself, appreciated this irony:

These pioneers in our church and school work . . . were teneces propositi viri, unbending in their purpose. They were not infallible, but their integrity and piety stand unquestioned. Nor do I claim infallibility for myself. If I have at times been tenacious and stubborn, I may with some justice claim that I was their disciple. If we had not been blessed with this quality of stubbornness, we might not have been able to accomplish those results to which we now point with pride. We did not in those days know who to trim and compromise.15

Sources

Benson, William, High on Manitou Heights: A History of St. Olaf College 1874-1949 (Northfield, Minnesota: The St. Olaf College Press, 1949).

Nelson, David T., Luther College 1861-1961 (Decorah, Iowa: Luther College Press, 1961).

Norlie, Olaf Morgan, Elling Eielsen: A Brief History (reprinted in 1975 by Fox Valley Norwegian American Assn., Inc.).

Norlie, Olaf Morgan, History of the Norwegian People in America (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1925).

Sneen, Donald J., Through Trials and Triumphs: A History of Augustana (Sioux Falls, South Dakota: Center for Western Studies, 1985).

Solberg, Richard W., Lutheran Higher Education in North America (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985).

Wentz, Abdel Ross, The Lutheran Church in American History (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1923).

Endnotes

1 Olaf Morgan Norlie, History of the Norwegian People in America (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1925), 396.

2 Norlie, 377.

3 Richard W. Solberg, Lutheran Higher Education in North America (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985) 208.

4 Norlie, 189.

5 Norlie, 189.

6 Solberg, 208.

7 Solberg, 208.

8 Solberg, 211.

9 Solberg, 221.

10 David T. Nelson, Luther College 1861-1961 (Decorah, Iowa: Luther College Press), 77.

11 Solberg , 214.

12 James S. Hamre, “Georg Sverdrup and the Augsburg Plan of Education,” Norwegian-American Studies, vol. 26, 167-168.

13 Solberg, 225, 227.

14 I.F. Grose, Fifty Memorable Years At St. Olaf (Northfield, Minnesota, St. Olaf College, 1925), 38.

15 Rasmus B. Anderson, Life story of Rasmus B. Anderson (Madison, Wisconsin, 1915) 102-103.

About the Author

Jennifer Kovarik is Vesterheim’s Registrar. She also oversees the museum’s archives and library collections, and directs many of Vesterheim’s youth programs, including the Pioneer Immersion Program and WOW Farm Program. She holds a B.A. in history and English from Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, and an M.A.T. in elementary education from Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska.