Scandinavian Baptists

English was not the only language spoken in Minnesota Baptist worship services in the 19^th century. Immigrants often settled in ethnic groups to be near family and friends who spoke the same language. Sometimes families with similar religious preferences also settled close to each other. One such group was the Scandinavians: Dane, Norwegians, and Swedes.

F. O. Nilssen, an influential Swedish Baptist, was exiled by the king of Sweden because of his Baptist beliefs. He arrived in America in 1853 with twenty-one other Swedes. He was among six families who settled in Houston County. They suffered illness, fire, and poverty in the early years, but that didn’t prevent them from establishing a Baptist church August 18, 1853. Nilssen then helped other Swedish groups establish churches before moving back to the Houston County area in 1869, where he pastored at the church and was later buried in the Houston Baptist Cemetery.

Becklund writes that early records of the Baptist Scandinavian Conference were lost on a streetcar in Minneapolis, so the exact date of the conference’s beginning isn’t known. Amory Gale, the State Itinerant Missionary Explorer, had encouraged Nilssen to organize a Scandinavian conference. Gale assured Nilssen that the American Baptist Home Mission Society would support such a conference.

Swedish Baptists met in Scandia in September 1858 and formed the Swedish Baptist Conference with 160 members. Circumstances changed drastically in 1861 when the Civil War began in the East and South, but tragedy hit close to home in 1862 during the Dakota Uprising.  Strand put it this way in his book:

Everything looked dark, and there were many who wondered whether the morning of a brighter day would ever dawn. However even these dark clouds were scattered. The war was over. The soldiers came back and the fugitives returned to their homesteads….The old, beloved book which had been their companion across the sea was again brought forth and the Christian housefather gathered his family for prayer and praise to God.

The Scandinavian conference was essentially under the umbrella of the Minnesota Baptist Convention. It looked to the MBC for finances and for missionaries to work among the Swedish people. In turn, the Scandinavian Conference published all its annual reports through the MBC, and finances were funneled through the executive secretary of the MBC.

^Sources:

^{The History of the Minnesota Baptist Convention by David Becklund, 1967.}

Minnesota Historic Sites

^{A History of Swedish Americans of Minnesota by Algot E. Strand, 1910.}