Lutheran Free Church - Background

Background

Georg Sverdrup and Sven Oftedal were two scholars from prominent Haugean families in Norway who came to Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to teach in the 1870s, bringing with them a genuinely radical view of Christian education, centered on Scripture and the simple doctrines of Christianity. The Haugean movement took its name from Norwegian lay evangelist Hans Nielsen Hauge who spoke up against the Church establishment in Norway. Sverdrup and Oftedal had been concerned with hierarchy within the Christian church and as well as the study of the Bible. They believed that, according to the New Testament of the Holy Bible, the local congregation was the correct form of God's kingdom on earth.

Their vision was for a church that:

• Promoted a "living" Christianity,
• Emphasized an evangelism that would result in changed lives,
• Enabled the church member to exercise their spiritual gifts.

In 1890, the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America was formed by three Lutheran church bodies that included the Conference of the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Augsburg was the school of the "Conference" and thus Sverdrup and Oftedal.

A dispute within the UNLC over which school Augsburg or St. Olaf should be the college of the church body lead in 1893 to the creation of the Friends of Augsburg. By 1896, Sverdrup, Oftedal and others felt their beliefs of a "free church in a free land" were being compromised and broke away from the UNLC, forming the Lutheran Free Church in 1897.

The LFC's publishing house was the Messenger Press and its official English language magazine was the Lutheran Messenger started in 1918. The church also had for most of its earlier history a Norwegian language publication Folkebladet (the People's Paper).

In harmony with its emphasis on utilizing and developing the natural spiritual gifts of all the members of the Church the LFC, although they did not ordain women, gave a freer range to women within its church body to hold non-ordained ministries, offices and responsibilities in its organization than many of its contemporary Lutheran counterparts. In harmony with its evangelical emphasis the LFC strongly emphasized the importance of foreign missions (with missions fields in Madagascar and the Cameroons) and spent more of its financial resources on foreign missions and supported a larger number of foreign missionaries than many of its contemporary Lutheran church bodies of comparable size.

By the 1950s, however there was a growing movement by many Lutherans throughout the United States to join their many small Lutheran bodies into larger body. The Lutheran Free Church joined the American Lutheran Church on February 1, 1963 after three votes (1955, 1957 and 1961). The ALC in time also joined with other Lutheran churches and, in 1988, formed the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). About 40 Lutheran Free Churches however did not join the ALC, instead forming the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations (AFLC) in October 1962. Today the AFLC has more than 250 congregations.