Stanton Covenant Church today

"In the late seventies, a group of people having adopted a slightly different creed from the Lutheran faith, began to organize congregations in the new settlement. They were first called Mission Friends but later adopted the name, "The Covenant Church". Their congregations are located at Stanton, Red Oak, Essex, Shenandoah and in the country eight miles east of Essex." ("Gracious Bounty", p. 24)

Stanton Mission Church: built in the shadow of Mamrelund

By contrast with Sandahl's Nebraska Augustana history, Iowa's Lutheran writers have so far been found as irenic as the above account in reporting the rupture which surely occurred in their state as well. While it is reassuring that their position was so strong that they could afford to express no bitterness, we have accumulated information which better reveals the actual events.

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The first Stanton Mission Church and its successor

At the Fremont Lutheran church mentioned above, there were two deacons named Falk and Wenstrand. Both were Lutheran Mission Friends who were part of the movement which in Sweden had embraced revivalism and reacted against what they considered the worldliness of the Swedish church. At the beginning, they viewed themselves as part of the Lutheran church, but formed "mission societies" within that body as was the case in Sweden. So it was possible at that time for them to organize mission meetings within the Fremont Lutheran Church to which mission pastors would be invited. In 1878 such a meeting was conducted which was indeed momentous.

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Mission preachers C.A. Björk and A. Hallner

Two people who appear in the Swede Bend, Iowa and Swedeburg, Nebraska stories came to preach at this meeting. They were C.A. Björk and A. Hallner. Those familiar with their stories know that these two were major architects of both the Mission Synod and the Covenant denomination. As these two had formed independent congregations of Mission Friends while working in Augustana churches in their home situations, the harmony of Fremont was soon to be disrupted. They found eager listeners in Falk, Wenstrand and others.

Iowa Lutheran historians seem to understate this conflict, and Covenant historians shrink from portraying their founders such as Björk and Hallner as those who aggressively breached the Lutheran walls to counsel separatism. In fact, the congregation soon was split and deacons Falk and Wenstrand became leaders in the seceding body, the Fremont Mission Church.

C.A. Falk of Stromsburg: his forbear of the same name donated land for the Fremont Augustana church and is buried there

The revival of 1878 at Fremont resonated throughout the Mission Friend world and is mentioned by most historians of the time. "Who was there" was a common theme. The local Hultman family was one, including pastors J.A., F.O. and H. Hultman. Hallner encouraged J.A. to pursue ministry. He was first called to serve the Fremont group but soon went to Omaha. The "Sunshine Singer", as he was known, had a long career there and on concert tours in the U.S. and Sweden. F.O. was an area pastor who served both Wausa and Stromsburg congregations.

J.A. Hultman

Another Fremont family was the Harts, J. Hart being board chairman at Fremont. He and J. Wenstrand represented the group at the Mission Synod annual meeting at Swede Bend, making the trip by horse and wagon, a trip of some 300 miles. We know descendents of the Harts at Oakland.

A Hart family gravesite at Fremont

Still another were the Falks. We have this reminiscence of a Falk descendent from Wausa. From the Wausa Centennial book comes the story of insights into the Falk family pilgrimage from daughter Teckla Falk Peterson's family: "Teckla, sixth child of Sarah C. and C.A. Falk, sailed with her mother, four sisters and one brother to join their father, who had gone ahead to America to locate and build a cabin in preparation for his family's arrival. His choice was the Red Oak-Essex, IA, area. When mother and children arrived the cabin wasn't finished, so the side that was missing was closed in by long strips of woven rugs that Sarah had brought with her from Sweden. There was a spring on the hill in back of the house, so father Falk dug a hole and lined it with sand, which served as their water supply. Teckla took on household duties at an early age - knitting socks, and herding cattle over the prairies that were full of rattlesnakes. Her father was a traveling minister. There were no churches, but he went from one area to another and held meetings in homes. There would be 18 to 25 people that would meet in a 2 or 3 room home, staying overnight."

Charles and Teckla's son Clarence Peterson is one I remember from the Wausa Covenant Church. One of the well-remembered Greenwall neighbors in Wausa was the Edgar Johnson family. Edgar was born near Essex, IA, to C.A. Falk's daughter Selma Falk Johnson, one of the sisters mentioned above. This family, the F.A. Johnsons, also lived at Wakefield before coming to Wausa.

C.A. Falk (the elder) along with Harts and Hultmans are buried in the Fremont cemetery
Lutherans and Mission Friends together

We also know that the younger C.A. Falk was a student at Paxton, Illinois, at the Augustana seminary where Halland had been, and later at the Ansgar Mission seminary. He held his ministerial license from the Ansgar Synod and later transferred to the Covenant. He was called to Stromsburg and became its first pastor.

In 1876 a Swedish Augustana Lutheran church followed in Essex along the railroad to the south as the towns grew and the center of gravity moved away from the rural neighborhoods to these new places. There is a common pattern in these immigrant communities of a "town" church and a "country" church.

One of the issues dividing the Augustana Synod and the Mission Friends who were seceding from their congregations at this time went back to the Swedish situation. There, the parish system of membership which included all citizens prompted objections from those who considered the true church to be made up of believers only, and the policy of including all as members was seen as contributing to the decline of spirituality and vitality in the church. This was particularly accute when members of the clergy could themselves be venal and indifferent to those with strong convictions and the desire for growth and nurture in the faith.

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Essex Swedish Methodist Church and its site today

The issue was not a new one in the American church, since in the Congregational form of church organization, membership was certainly not predicated on citizenship in the geographical boundaries of a parish, but on confession of faith and particularly on confession of a conversion experience. L.P. Esbjörn's Illinois congregation of Swedes had encountered this new way of doing things, and he had objected to restricting communion in this way.

Essex Covenant Church today

But the Mission Friends were not opposing Augustana's position in order to be more "American" or "congregational". They did not like the similarity between the Swedish parish situation and Augustana's position which did not make conversion a condition for membership. This was in many ways unfortunate, for we know that many pastors of Augustana were themselves examples of the piety of the Swedish awakening; they considered themselves "converted" believers and worked to engender the same kind of faith in their congregations.

former Essex Baptist today: absent from Swedish Baptist records
We encountered one of its members while at the post office!

What caused their leadership to go on the defensive was an understandable concern that in many outlying settlements their lack of trained pastors and the serial influx of prosyletizing Swedish Baptists, Swedish Methodists and now Mission Friends, not to mention Mormons and others, made their people vulnerable. This was indeed the case. This defensiveness unfortunately crystallized in the ban against all other preachers in Augustana churches.

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Essex Lutheran when new and today

Furthermore, the issue was not as clear cut as it first appears. The condition for "congregational" membership in American churches had become much more "relaxed" through the years; that is, the confession of saving faith on the part of the individual was not really much of a barrier. It had become obvious that an objective test for this experience was an impossibility. Practically speaking, if one gave verbal expression of such a faith it was deemed adequate, except for obvious contradiction in that person's behavior. In what way was that different than giving verbal assent to a creed?

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Red Oak Lutheran Churches; then and now

Since this continued to be such an issue, it is instructive to see the actual policy as implemented in the Mission Synod to distinguish its policies from Augustana and the Ansgar Synod:

"In order to make sure that all churches of the Mission Synod adhered strictly to the principle of having believers only as members a circular letter was addressed to them requesting an answer to the following questions:

1) Have you a positive hope that all the members of your church live in true communion with the Lord?

2) If members there be who live carelessly what steps are taken in order to warn, reprimand, and discipline such members?

3) If such discipline proves not to have the intended result, does the church according to the Word of God separate such members from the church?

4) Is peace and harmony prevalent within the church?

5) If there are members of the church who cause factions, what are the principal reasons for such disturbances?

Having in a satisfactory manner answered these questions, the churches were to be considered of good standing, eligible to membership in the (new) Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America." (C.V. Bowman's history, p. 148)

Seen in the bold light of day as stated policy, this condition reveals at least two things: one, that the simple "holier than thou" attitude which is such a pitfall for believers and churches is surely false, and two, that one could hardly imagine an Augustana congregation that would not themselves qualify under these terms. It appears to have become a "straw man".

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In Red Oak, the Mission and Methodist Churches vied with Lutherans

But unfortunately this stated policy may not exhaust the real content of what the Mission Friends understood as regenerate membership. There was probably a considerable amount of "holier than thou" not captured in these words.

This was one issue; another was the Waldenströmian controversy which we detail elsewhere.

Red Oak Covenant Church: Waldenström laid the cornerstone
on one of his visits to America

Another unlikely survivor in Red Oak is the Swedish Salvation Army building, which did not drop its Scandinavian title till 1926. It was first housed in a former Presbyterian church which must have stood near the Covenant church, then it was in a commercial building and finally in its own building which today appears to contain apartments.

Red Oak Swedish Salvation Army building today

The strength of the Scandinavian Salvation Army related to the temperance movement. I like to think that Swedes favored the Salvation Army because it was practically focused: instead of loud lamenting, they went where the victims of the problem were and attempted to lift them up. Their logo says it well:

In a brief aside in one of the sources, we read that K.F. Larson was working with a group "north of Red Oak". We had no more light on this subject till encountering Elaine Artlip and her book "Rural Churches of Montgomery County". There we learned the story of the Rosenlund Swedish Evangelical Mission church. Quoting from the 1912 memoirs of Rev. A. Noren, she tells of C.M. Peterson of this neighborhood who invited Red Oak Mission pastor Peters to preach in the local schoolhouse. "From 1878 through 1880 John Hultman and J. Wenstrand also preached the Word, as did K.F. Larson and a number of others..." "Brother Peterson of Oakland, Nebraska, also visited." The writer, Noren, was one who later served the group along with Rev. Youngberg. Now the Rose Hill church of another denomination became available, was dismantled and reassembled on the location shown in the picture in 1912. Noren preached at the dedication. The cost of the project was $950. In 1937 the structure was again recycled and the property reverted to the Covenant. How long it had been dormant is unknown.

Rural Red Oak Rosenlund Swedish Mission church

Claus Anderson, superintendent of the Stanton Children's Home and author of "Gracious Bounty", conveys a picture of everyday life and the early days which includes memories of farming practices and family events. Crops of wheat and corn are detailed in their planting, harvesting and processing. These practices changed quickly as the mechanization of farming swept across the land in these very days. Methods which were rooted in Swedish practice soon disappeared. One such practice was apparently the "stacking" of grain bundles before threshing. In the Wausa Centennial book the Greenwall historian remembers that great-grandfather Anders was one of the last to practice this "stacking" in that community.

Stacking grain bundles in the Halland Settlement

The details of land acquisition and ownership are also interesting: "The contracts of the land department of the Burlington and Missouri River railroad company were drawn to favor the purchaser whose means were limited. These contracts stipulated a certain price for each parcel of land sold. The interest rate was fixed at six percent and was payable annually in advance. The first four payments were for interest only. This arrangement gave the purchaser time to bring his farm under cultivation and to use the proceeds of the sale of farm products, after having paid interest and taxes on the realty, for erecting the first primitive farm buildings and for the purchase of livestock and the most basic farm implements.

Beginning with the fifth year and continuing for seven consecutive years, one-seventh of the purchase price together with accrued interest constituted the annual payment. At the end of this period the company issued a deed for the real estate and that farmer's home was his own free of debt." While this worked out well for the Swedes of Halland settlement, it should be remembered that the railroads got every other section free from the government and the settlers became paying customers for the railroads, whom they exploited later.

From Stanton on the north to Shenandoah on the south, including Red Oak, Essex, and several other churches and preaching stations in between, the story of the Swedish Churches of southwest Iowa is a rich and rewarding one. For online access to O.M. Nelson's book on the swedes in Iowa, see G. Gustafson's excellent website in the Kiron Kountry Library section. Click here