AN ANCIENT CULTURE IN A NEW LAND CONRAD BERGENDOFF Vilhelm Moberg in his immigrant series has given us a master• ful description of the Swedish peasant who left his native land and built a new home for his family on the frontier in Minnesota. Karl Oskar may well be taken as the type of the culture of the hand which cleared the land, plowed the field, produced the lum• ber, forged the tools, toiled in the shops of the new world. We applaud Moberg who both in this country and in his own turned his attention to the common people who are the builders of a nation. But there is a culture of the mind and spirit which calls for the art of another Moberg to recount the achievements of the Swedish immigrants. The newcomer lives not by bread alone. Karl Oskar's Kristina longed for something more—something that connected her with the homeland she had lost. The heart is not satisfied by rich acres and full barns. Swedish immigrants brought along more than their tools and manual skill. Some cherished rich memories of worship, of learning, of literature. A love of order, of beauty, of family history followed across the Atlantic. It is to that epic of the immigrant that we turn when we speak of an ancient culture in the new land. For when Pastor Lars Paul Esbjörn gathered a few Swedish men and women to organize a congregation at Andover on the Illinois prairie in 1850, he opened the door of the mind to a whole flood of memories from the Swedish past. This was no informal religious prayer meeting. The order of service was the inheritance of the ancient Swedish Church. A confession of sin, a hymn of praise, a recital of the Creed, lessons from the Scriptures, a sermon on selected texts, a solemn communion serv• ice, prayers for people and land, a benediction. I have nowhere found a careful study of what this spiritual treasure meant in the lives of tens of thousands of homesick people scattered across the Swedish settlements. For half a century the högmässa was celebrated in Swedish. Who can estimate what the hearing of these familiar forms in 127 their own language meant in a land where a new language had to be learned, painfully and only half successfully? Nils Hassel• mo, in writing on "Language in Exile," tells us that "the lan• guage represents history and traditions, home, parents, and child• hood, religious and aesthetic ideals."1 When in those pioneer churches the old Swedish liturgy was recited and the chorals were sung so slowly and solemnly, the mind of the worshipper went back to those medieval temples in which he and his fam• ily had been baptized, confirmed, married, and around whose walls in a neatly kept kyrkogård his ancestors rested. In many an immigrant's home I have noticed the pictures that adorned the simple rooms—mother, father, a framed baptismal or wed• ding certificate, and a picture of the venerable church raising its graceful spire over the countryside. Who can calculate how deeply the religious memories of the Swedish immigrant influenced his conduct in the primitive com• munities he found on the plains and in the wilderness of Amer• ica? The emotional excesses of the camp meeting seemed strange to him. He held closely to old customs—the child should be baptized and confirmed. Marriage vows should be given in the presence of the pastor. The last rites were solemnly observed in church. The church year gave emphasis to Easter and Christ• mas in an environment where the Puritan influence neglected or resisted special holidays. Prayer was observed at meals, often daily in morning or evening. Bible reading was enjoined and devotional literature in Swedish—Rosenius, Pietisten, Arndt— was in many a home. It may be hard for our generation to comprehend. But those of us whose memories go back to the beginning of this century know whereof I speak. That was a half century after the early immigrant period. But it was on the foundation of that heritage that there arose those great temples of Swedish Lutheranism in America—the churches of Jamestown, N. Y., Immanuel in Chica• go, the churches of Rockford, Augustana in Andover, First in Mo- line, Augustana in Minneapolis, Ebenezer in San Francisco. In these and a thousand other places of worship the liturgy, the hymns, the organ music of Bach and Buxtehude, went on from generation to generation. Yearly classes of confirmands knelt at the white altar rail. Baptisms, weddings, funerals followed forms 128 translated from the Swedish. At group and prayer meetings, hemlandssånger were sung. To these people the art of wor• ship was the most important art of the ancient culture in this new land. As we remember Moberg's Karl Oskar let us also remember Carl Johan Samuelson, who tilled the soil of Illinois and by his generous gift proved his loyalty to the spiritual her• itage of the land of his birth.2 But where would the leaders of the hundreds of congregations that soon dotted the Midwest and extended to the East and West coasts come from? I consider it a remarkable fact that those early congregations seem to have taken it for granted that a parish pastor have had a university type of education. Esbjörn and the few pastors who followed him from Sweden at first thought they could induce clergy from the Church there. It was a vain hope. The churches here must educate their own min• isters. Today we are hardly able to realize the demands of this chal• lenge. Before the Civil War Illinois was little interested in higher education. A handful of small church colleges had been started by the denominations—Shurtleff by the Baptists, McKen• dree by the Methodists, Illinois and Knox by the Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Northwestern had opened in 1855 with two teachers and a small group of students. Baptists were found• ing the- University of Chicago in 1858. Illinois State Normal School trained teachers only after 1857. There was no state uni• versity—in fact there was open hostility to paying taxes for a col• legiate institution. Not until the Land Grant Act of 1862 could support be found sufficient to begin the university. It was called Illinois Industrial University, and opened in 1868 with three professors and 50 young men. That was seven years after Au• gustana College and Seminary had begun in Chicago and five years after it had moved to Paxton. The American environment, therefore, hardly stimulated the idea of an institution of higher learning among the Swedish im• migrants. It was from among themselves the determination arose to have a school commensurate with the schools of Sweden they knew. So captivated are we by the picture of the poverty of the immigrants that we overlook hidden riches they possessed. Es• björn was a graduate of Uppsala University, both of its academic 129 and theological departments. He was interested in mathematics and astronomy and had translated a book from German into Swedish. Likewise Tufve Nilsson Hasselquist had graduated from Lund University, as had Erland Carlsson and O. C. T. An• drén. A. R. Cervin was a Ph.D. from Lund and had taught in Helsingborg. These were the men who dreamed of a classical and theological school on the prairies of Illinois 125 years ago. Esbjörn in 1860 had already taught two years at the school in Springfield which early Illinois Lutherans had attempted under the high sounding name of Illinois State University. There he had come in contact with graduates of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania—a connection which bore fruit in the bringing of English-speaking and American-educated professors, Reick and Harkey and Eyster, into the faculty at Paxton. Hasselquist wanted, he wrote, a school combining the best of both Swedish and American academic traditions, and it should have the breadth of a university training. An incident of 1868 casts light on the purpose of the institu• tion. Since the Augustana Synod then comprised both a Swed• ish and a Norwegian element, a Norwegian professor, A. Wee• naas, was brought over from Norway. He wanted only a theo• logical school and criticized the inclusion of other subjects. But he was overruled. Students were to be given a broad liberal arts foundation for their theological studies in the new institution. What did the curriculum at Augustana College look like 100 years ago? We have the catalogue of 1876 and it tells us that instruction was imparted in both Swedish and English languages. Swedish was used in the teaching of Latin, German, and Greek (4 years), English was the medium in History, Natural Science, Higher Mathematics, and Mental Science (Psychology, Philo• sophy) . Of course English and Swedish Language and Literature and Religion had their place. Graduates in those early years had passed courses in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History, Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry, Physiology, Psychology and Logic, Botany, Zoology and Chemistry. In Swedish they had read the history of Swedish Literature, Runeberg and Teg• nér. Beside the history of English and American Literature they had read Shakespeare, Tennyson, Irving and Longfellow. Schiller was read in German, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil in Latin, Xenophon 130 and Homer in Greek. New Testament Greek, Bible and Church History were college courses. Hebrew was taught in the Sem• inary classes. My father came to the campus in 1883. He went through Academy, College, and Seminary. I still have his report card attesting to his grades in the various departments. Fol• lowing a Swedish custom examinations were given in public, with essays and orations.