# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S181
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Something More about the Church of Norway. 181

as has shown itself in Tromsö, is content with very poor fruit, so long as she can have only the outward appearance of a gain.

Much more stir has been caused by the formation of several "free apostolic-Christian congregations." This sect is entirely new and peculiar to Norway, although its teaching agrees quite well with the other ultra-reformed enthusiast parties — indeed is almost entirely Baptist, and will perhaps soon become entirely Anabaptist. Its founder is Gustav Adolph Lammers, educated at the University in Christiania and, from 1827 to 1856, a respected preacher in the state church, where the "awakened" looked up to him with great confidence and hope on account of his strict zeal. In the town of "Skien," where he was preacher last (from 1848), he gave the whole town a different appearance, brought an inner mission into being, built prayer-houses, and closed down the dance floors, and truly seemed to be in earnest about calling the decayed church discipline back to life. But little by little his complaints about a lack of discipline, and especially about the ordinary manner of absolution, grew ever louder, and because real difficulties occurred with the latter, the supreme church authority gave him, in 1855, an assistant preacher to carry out this part of his ministerial duties in particular. In the following year, however, he sought his dismissal, without, however, giving any other reasons than general complaints about the poor state of the church, and asked at the same time, on account of his services to the state, for a pension. He obtained both, and it was already expected that the no-longer-young man (he was born in 1802), and moreover a frail one, would withdraw into quiet retirement; but in that very same year he founded a "free apostolic-Christian congregation" and, in its constitution, rejected infant baptism. No one had expected this, and a general alarm ran through the Christian part of the whole population. He also at the same time published a "Defense" to justify his peculiar assertion that the free congregation had, indeed, perhaps departed from the letter of the Augsburg Confession, but that thereby it had only brought Articles 9 and 13 of it into harmony with themselves. The Defense, however, was as untenable as it was long-winded, and it became evident here, as so often elsewhere, that not every fluent and eloquent tongue is paired with logical rigor. He was thoroughly refuted, first by Lector G. Johnson, whose writing is still much read and has also been translated into Swedish, and later by many other writers. Notwithstanding this, he has found followers and founded congregations, especially in Skien and in Tromsö. He himself resides chiefly in these two places — about 400 geographical miles apart from one another — and naturally makes use of his journeying back and forth throughout the whole country also for "strengthening the faithful" in other places. He has also begun the publication of a new paper, called "Communications," and gives, in one number of it, an "Attempt at a Brief Presentation of the Chief Doctrines of the Word of God, as They Are Understood in the Free Apostolic-Christian Congregations."