1
“DEVOUTLY WOULD HE TEACH”
The Legacy of Bernard M. Christensen
“That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preache; His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche.” CT 481‐482
To begin with, let me express my thanks to President Pribbenow and the committee for the
invitation to give this lecture. It is a very great honor to be part of passing on a cherished and unique
legacy to a new generation who did not know Bernard Christensen. As I have researched and thought
about his legacy it has been a kind of remembrance of things past, the old title for Marcel Proust’s huge
novel. Even if you have not read it, you may have heard of the scene near the beginning when the
author tastes a madeleine soaked in tea, the “short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which
look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell.”
The pilgrim’s shell was the symbol of St. James, and the pilgrimages to St. James in Compostella,
Spain, popular during the Middle Ages and now again. The shell was the utensil from which the pilgrims
drank and received food on their way to the shrine, and a souvenir of the journey. For Proust the
fragrance of the tea soaked cookie in the shape of that scallop shell became the occasion for his lengthy
pilgrimage into the past, as this lecture has been for me as we gather to inaugurate Martha Stortz into
the Bernard Christensen chair ????. For Christensen, pilgrimage was a fundamental metaphor for the
Christian life, as his last book, The Inward Pilgrimage, put it.
The title of the lecture “devoutly would he teach” is drawn from Chaucer’s General Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales in which he describes the Parson, the” povre Persoun of a Toun,” the teller of the
last tale, an ideal character, on his pilgrimage to visit the bones of the martyred Thomas Beckett. Unlike
many other of the pilgrims, the Parson lives what he preaches: “But Cristes loore and his apostles
twelve/He taught, but first he folwed it himselve.” Here Chaucer gives us a picture of a man who was
not only a teacher, but one who lived what he taught, a holy man. It is a perfect description of Bernard
Christensen, a man known also to have lived what he taught. First I will talk about the “devoutly” and
2
examine his spiritual roots and how he took that legacy, and then something of him as a teacher,
concluding with some thought on his legacy.
I
BACKGROUND, CONTEXT AND CULTURE
“But riche he was of hooly thought and werk. He was also a lerned man, a clerk.”
Bernhard Marinus Christensen was born, in 1901, to Danish immigrants Nels and Inger
Christensen, and was raised in the Porterfield, Wisconsin, Lutheran Free congregation in what was
known as the Marinette District. He was a child of the best of Augsburg and the church formed to
support it, the Lutheran Free Church. He was born into it, he was raised in and shaped by it, and in his
life and work he represented it eloquently as he furthered its mission.i In his life and work he gave its
children a sense for the intellectual richness and spiritual heritage it represented.ii While its smallness,
parochialism and yes, even its legalism, caused some of those children to be ashamed of it and rebel
against it, they could never reject this truly significant person who taught them to live and think in the
freedom he believed was at its heart. To use an image from the poet, William Blake, from this tiny grain
of sand, he opened up and helped us befriend a world of faith and thought as wide as the universe. He
did it from this place.
Christensen’s home congregation had been part of the Norwegian Danish Conference formed in
1869 by August Weenaas, the President of the new school, Augsburg. It soon became the middle group
of Norwegian American Lutherans between the more radical Hauge Synod, and the more established
Norwegian Synod which had founded Luther College in Decorah. The Conference leaders, a generation
younger than those at Luther College, were ably led by Georg Sverdrup (1848‐1907) and Sven Oftedal
(1844‐1911) who had been students of Gisle Johnson (1822‐1894), the revered professor of Systematics
at the University of Oslo. Johnson had had a powerful effect on his students because, like Christensen,
he was more than a beloved teacher of doctrine. He lived his faith by leading Bible studies and prayer
3
meetings with his students.iii One way to describe Johnson is to say that he took the legacy of Hans
Nielsen Hauge (1776‐1824), the great lay evangelist, whose work changed Norway, and made it
theologically acceptable to the students of the day.iv
Although I would like to spend much more time on Hans Nielsen Hauge, whom Christensen also
found to be an important influence, there is no time, except to say that he is now being treated more
fairly by his biographers. Dag Kullerud, a journalist associated with the secular Dagbladet in Oslo, wrote
a book describing him as the first modern Norwegian because his work spiritually awakened and
economically revolutionized Norway.v Hauge taught a living Christianity that involved personal decision
for Christ, and a deep engagement with the society in which one was a part. He was, however, no
theologian. He wanted to and did change individuals and society. Christensen, in his inaugural address at
Augsburg in the fall of 1938, said that one result of Hauge’s awakening was the founding of Augsburg
Seminary.vi Because of his emphasis, the flood of immigrants from Norway built seminaries, colleges,
hospitals, orphanages, old people’s homes, and other social service organizations that have made
Minnesota the envy of the country. We see in the Hauge movement themes Christensen will adopt: a
strong concern for spiritual conversion, a sober and serious life devoted to serving the neighbor and
fellowship with others.
One can draw a bright line from Hauge to Gisle Johnson to Georg Sverdrup, Augsburg’s second
president, also an admirer of Hauge, who himself taught the necessity for personal transformation in
one’s Christian life and serious work in one’s vocation by emphasizing free and living Christians in free
and living congregations.vii All shared the conviction that the Christian faith was not simply a set of
doctrines, liturgical practices, or ecclesiastical systems, but a matter of the transformed heart. As
Christensen wrote in his lecture on the history of the LFC,
“The members of the Church are not simply to be baptized and confirmed and instructed, but there is to be an earnest attempt made to lead each one to a conscious and personal knowledge of the grace of God.”viii
4
This puts Augsburg and the LFC in what Ernst Troeltsch (1865‐1923) would describe in his morphologies
of religious groups as a “sect type” since the sect type emphasizes faith as a decision, believing that the
normal beginning of genuine Christian life is spiritual transformation through explicit commitment to
Christ and taking responsibility for one’s life in moral terms. As one of my colleagues argues, Lutherans
historically have been both church types as well as sect types especially if they have been Pietists as
most of the Lutheran immigrants to this country tended to be.
When Johnson’s students came to this country they burned with the fires of the Johnsonian
awakening. They were weary of a state church whose spiritual conditions seemed as lifeless to them as
they had to Søren Kierkegaard, who mocked the Danish folk church for being filled with baptized but
nominal Christians only.ix In Sverdrup’s thought, as in Kierkegaard’s, people were not automatically
Christians by virtue of being Danes, or Norwegians. Preaching the Gospel was necessary to bring life to
hitherto slumbering congregations, and to create free and living Christians ready to work together. With
Sverdrup’s understanding of the American scene and the concomitant need for pastors trained for
ministry in America, the Norwegian Danish Conference flourished.
To make a long story very short, in 1890 the United Norwegian Lutheran Church was formed
when the Norwegian Danish Conference, the Norwegian Danish Augustana Synod and the Anti‐
Missourian Brotherhood centered at St. Olaf joined together. What began with great celebration and
hope, however, soon dissipated when the conflict between the Augsburg and St. Olaf parties began to
escalate and grow poisonous. Which of the two schools was to be THE college of the new church? The
conflict, bitter and unseemly, ended in 1897 with the founding of the Lutheran Free Church.
This action sidelined Sverdrup and Oftedal who lost their influence on the wider Norwegian
community. Sverdrup, whom Warren Quanbeck named as the most trenchant and brilliant mind of all
the Norwegian American Lutheran theologians of his day, was left with enormous influence on a tiny
remnant. Christensen’s congregation in Porterfield joined the LFC in 1898 when Pastor Martin B.
5
Rufsvold (1866‐1914) arrived.x We can see that the Marinette District produced many of the pastors and
leaders in the church: F. Melius Christiansen, M. B. Michaelson, Paul Sonnack, Sr., Lawrence Sateren,
and of course Christensen.
One of the effects of being a minority and having lost a fierce battle is that the members of that
group remember their wounds deep in the quick. The Twelve Principles of the Free Church, which I
would commend to all of you today in the midst of renewed ecclesiastical turmoil, were burned into the
minds of most who found themselves part of this new little group. The last principle of the Twelve
seems to be Christensen’s credo:
“Every free and independent congregation, as well as every individual believer, is prompted by the Spirit‐of God and has the right of love to do good and to work for the salvation of souls and for the quickening of spiritual life as far as its abilities and power admit. In such free spiritual activity it is limited neither by parish nor synodical bounds."xi
These principles were not just printed in dusty old scholarly tomes that no one read. They were the
mother’s milk of the LFC and the ecclesiastical world into which Christensen was born. Given that the
hurt was so fresh—only four years before his birth—he surely began to learn them from his pastors, if
not his parents who were, by his testimony, active in their congregation.xii When as a young sixteen year
old he came to Augsburg he frequently received letters from both his parents, who were well aware of
what was going on in the church and school. This bright young man who may have wondered why he
was connected with such a small remnant could only have been impressed and edified by the spiritual
and intellectual qualities of the pastors he knew, and the Augsburg professors he met at the Young
People’s Societies he attended. Later in a letter to George Sverdrup, Jr., whom Christensen addressed
once as his “soul’s friend” he reported that Michaelson, probably aware that this promising young man
might find greener pastures elsewhere, had admonished him “to be true to the Free church.”xiii
While Christensen refers but little to his own life and experience in his many speeches and
writings, we have a few hints of his spiritual searching when he was about confirmation age. In one
6
speech we catch a note of distress typical of a young Lutheran after he had heard an enthusiastic
convert at a revival meeting ask him if he had the Spirit. It must have worried him because he wasn’t
sure.
“In my own room at home, I had come upon a little pamphlet or tract entitled “The Life that Wins,” written I believe by Charles Gaulladet Trumbull. While phrased far less dramatically than what I had heard in the holiness hall, its mental teaching regarding the possibility of a higher level of spiritual achievement had much the same emphasis, and it stirred my heart with a new vision which gave the possibility of ethical and spiritual achievement.”xiv
This stirring of the heart is evidence of Christensen’s spiritual searching, and worry
about the journey of his own soul. Here we glimpse the formation of the young man as he read
this tract by Trumbull, one of the leaders in the Sunday School Union, and found courage to
continue. Christensen was probably confirmation age when he read it. He is clearly embarked on
his Christian pilgrimage, and is already yearning for more. That he had the tract in his home
shows the concern of his parents for spiritual life, and also the ecumenically open mind that was
shared by many pious Lutherans in this country who gladly read the works of many Protestant
main line leaders. We get another hint of his spiritual life as an adolescent in his little booklet,
The Altar Flame, where Christensen recalls a Sunday School started in a little country
schoolhouse near his childhood home when he was about fourteen.
“Many things about it, as I look back now, were far from what they ought to have been. But the leaders taught us to read the Bible. And I believe that what I learned during those impressionable years has been the richest influence in shaping my life toward Christ and His Gospel. I shall remain forever thankful to the little Sunday School for not only giving me my first Bible, but for inspiring me to read it.”xv Along with his home instructions in the faith, and his confirmation instruction, this spiritually
thirsty young man would have attended the Young People’s Society meetings that were frequent
throughout the Lutheran Free Church. If one reads through the reports in Folkebladet, the Norwegian
journal of the LFC, from the outlying districts of the LFC, one can see the many visits of the younger
George Sverdrup to the Bible camps and young people’s societies of the day. When Christensen was
7
leaving for Augsburg, Pastor M. B. Michaelson moved to Marinette to serve the LFC congregation there.
His wife was George Sverdrup’s sister, so the trips to Marinette by Sverdrup increased in frequency and
brought the young Christensen to the attention of Sverdrup even before the young man left home for
Augsburg. Clearly he impressed Sverdrup from the first. John Haukom, the chairman of the board of
trustees, reported after Christensen was named president of Augsburg in 1938 that Sverdrup had once
pointed to the young man as the “next president of Augsburg.”xvi
George Sverdrup, the younger, a distinguished scholar in his own right, with an MA in Semitic
languages from Yale, and time at Beirut University in Lebanon, proved to be a worthy successor to his
father, Georg Sverdrup. While no evangelist, as Christensen himself said in a speech commemorating
the tenth anniversary of Sverdrup’s death, he was a “strong and wise teacher of the evangelist.”xvii We
get a glimpse into his piety from Christensen’s eulogy for Sverdrup, “In order that he might help lead
men to the Truth, which is also Life, George Sverdrup chose to be a teacher.”xviii In Sverdrup who
mentored him wisely, Christensen found an intellectually stellar model that he could imitate in his own
life and work as president of Augsburg. I don’t think his importance to the young Christensen, as a father
figure and example, has been made enough of. It’s very significant.
II
Wrestling with his Call
Intellectual integrity and perfect freedom
I have briefly drawn a line from Hauge through the Sverdrups to Christensen—especially their
belief in personal spiritual transformation and Christian engagement in society, much of which can be
found in Luther’s tract The Freedom of a Christian, a favorite of Christensen’s. In 1926 the young man
left Augsburg for study at Princeton and Columbia University, the University of Berlin and Göttingen,
with time in Scandinavia, especially Norway and Denmark, where he met Ole Hallesby, the writer of the
classic Prayer and Sverre Norborg, who would later become his colleague and rival, and was able to
8
converse with the Danish theologian Professor Eduard Geismar, one of the first great Kierkegaard
scholars. While he very much enjoyed his time in Berlin where he found a freer intellectual climate than
he had at Princeton, he returned feeling that he would be unprepared to teach systematic theology
because he “lacked a ‘system of his own.’”xixDuring his graduate studies we can see him struggling to put
his own spiritual proclivities into the theological framework of the day. His call, however it took shape,
was urgent. In a brief apology to Sverdrup for pestering him, he noted, “I feel the call of the eternal
within me—and sometimes I see visions.”xx He knew what both he and Augsburg were called to do:
study to defend the faith in such a way that students would be helped through the difficulties of higher
learning that were made especially stressful by the claims of Darwin and historical criticism of the Bible.
In one of his letters to Sverdrup he remarks on a biography of a man who has lost his faith after studying
Darwin:
To prevent such shipwrecks by tiding the soul over the swirling rapids of doubt ought to be the high calling of a school like Augsburg.xxi
During his graduate studies these questions continued to engage him but we see him pick up another
set of themes: the necessity for freedom in one’s intellectual inquiry and the importance of Christian
fellowship. Trying to integrate his experience of a personal decision for Christ with Lutheran orthodoxy
was a stretch for him and for us, although Lutheran Pietists took conversion as a given. We see it in his
thesis which begins with a quote from Archbishop Nathan Söderblom of Sweden:
“If German thought and scholarship could be warmed by the fervor of Scandinavian piety and then be allowed to express itself through the American genius for practical Christian activity, the result might justly be expected to be a well‐balanced and fruitful type of spiritual life.”xxii
Clearly, we can see in his thesis that he is most interested in spiritual life, and practical activity, which is
not to say that he cannot inhabit the highest ether of intellectual pursuit. Following Söderblom’s
suggestion he searches for a solution in the work of Norwegian theologians.xxiii Maybe because he knows
he is in some ways out of joint with the theological consensus of the day with its endless production of
9
theses, merger documents, and theological controversies, he speaks so often of the need for
freedom.xxiv
In his thesis one hears the two sides of the debate hovering in almost every page: the formalistic
liturgical side, and the orthodox side, (the ecclesiological debate was not as pressing at the time),
neither of which warmed his soul. He wants to find a place for Christian experience in the Lutheran
debate even as he wants to be intellectually rigorous. In addition to being intellectually rigorous, the
young man also gives evidence of wanting to live a holy life, and spurn worldly security. As the Great
Depression deepened and the Augsburg faculty had to go out and raise their own salaries, he wrote
Sverdrup that he had $1000 he could either donate or live on himself. Part of the reason was he wanted
to learn how to live simply.xxv
Most of all he yearns for integrity. We see that in his financial decisions, but most of all in his
struggles with the issues of historical criticism of Scripture and evolution so pressing in the intellectual
and theological world of his day. Not surprisingly, he comes out on the liberal side of the debate, keenly
aware it could jeopardize his future at Augsburg, but he must be honest.xxvi One senses, however, that
he is confident that his positions will be defended by his community because he had seen such freedom
worthily represented in his own experience of his pastors and George Sverdrup. In a poignant note to his
mentor, Christensen, after being attacked for his view of Scripture by Asmund Oftedal, son of Sven
Oftedal, and a pastoral colleague at Trinity in Brooklyn, takes refuge in his teacher’s credo: “Nothing was
more constantly emphasized in your teaching than the necessity of perfect freedom of thought.”xxvii
While he was engaged on this pilgrimage, he worked in the Brooklyn congregations, Trinity and
Bethany where he met his good friend George Aus, who was later to come to Luther Seminary, and his
future wife, the young Lily Gunderson. Although he was never ordained, nor were the Sverdrups, as a
matter of fact, his work in these congregations while he was studying made him more certain of the
need for personal transformation even as he was coming to grips with what he could see was the
10
encroaching secularism of the university.xxviii For that there was one remedy: Christian fellowship. It is
odd to hear this accomplished scholar and first class intellectual make a learned Scriptural and
theological argument for the old testimony meetings (samtalemøter) which those of us in the second
generation too often dreaded and scorned.xxix In a brief article among his writing, he asks “Why not Have
Samtalemøter”, or fellowship meetings, (now we call them small groups) arguing for them on the basis
of Malachi 3:16‐17 and Colossians 3: 16, because they provided a “deep blessing.”xxx It is only through
spiritual sharing, he argued, that one gains strength to live one’s life in freedom. He concluded his
“Prolog” to The Inward Journey with the sentence “For spiritual truth is most fully possessed only when
it is passed on.”xxxi It was the relationship with the truth that created life. This cannot be taught, it can
only be caught. Christian fellowship where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name was crucial.
While he worked with the young people in the Brooklyn congregation he and George Aus led
something of a spiritual writing workshop.xxxii Some of these essays became chapters in a book The
Presence: A Little Treasury of Testimony.xxxiii Two are by Christensen, two by Aus, and one by his future
wife whom we call Gracia.xxxiv One can read in them the full throated life and mind of the intellectual
Lutheran pietist. They are together on a journey in which they want to, as the phrase has it, practice the
presence of God and grow in holiness, or sanctification. While it is not a classic, it shows us an earnest
group of young Christians thinking together. Christensen’s chapters are on the home and the
communion table. In it we can see again Christensen’s concern for the personal transformation of the
Christian and the need for the mutual consolation of the saints, to use Luther’s words and his almost
mystical appreciation of the Lord’s Table, somewhat different from what his LFC confreres would think.
For us to understand these emphases in Christensen’s life, we have to return to the Pietist
movement which he warmly embraced. Pietism began as a revolt against the decadence of the church
after the Thirty Years War in Europe. Pious Desires (Pia desideria) published in 1675, by Philip Jakob
Spener, Pastor in Frankfurt, Germany, became the manifesto of a generation weary of religious wars and
11
the moral and economic squalor caused by them. Spener’s question was basically one of how to live the
Christian life: why are we fighting for pure doctrine when it is obvious that people’s lives have not been
changed by it? The faith was being represented by officious pastors with concern for right belief, but not
spiritual life. To revive the churches and individual Christians Spener proposed a set of reforms that
Christensen warmly embraced: 1) more extensive use of the Scriptures; 2) exercise of the priesthood of
all believers (or fellowship); 3) more stress on practices, in contrast to knowledge of Christianity; 4) the
conducting of religious controversies in the spirit of love, penitence, and prayerfulness; 5) a reform of
schools and universities with more emphasis on spiritual life, and 6) preaching for the purpose of
edification. Spener used Luther’s theology of the mutual consolation of the saints to establish small
groups for the purposes of prayer, Bible study and edification. His book caught on and changed
Lutheranism for generations, really until the middle of the last century. Albert Ritschl’s massive three
volume work Die Geschichte des Pietismus (1880–6) History of Pietism dismissed the movement. Ever
since, its heirs have had to play defense, even Christensen in an article in the Lutheran Messenger
discusses the perils of the movement. He concludes, however, without dismissing its gifts: “It is because
we love this movement, with its unwavering insistence upon spiritual life, that we raise these
questions.”xxxv Without any doubt, Christensen’s life and piety can be seen to be directly connected with
the core ideas of Spener, even the legalism for which Pietism has frequently been pilloried.xxxvi
Thankfully, new research is finally beginning to reinterpret Pietism for a new day.
Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf (1700‐1763), one of Pietism’s heirs, developed Spener’s thought,
especially of ecumenism—that we are one in Christ, not our agreements or documents—so that he,
Zinzendorf, found Christian brothers and sisters in all the courts of Europe and in the wilds of America.
One did not need a rule, such as the Galesburg Rule, or document such as CCM, to find fellowship with
other Christians—one found it wherever Christ dwelt. This is ecumenism from below, rather than from
the top with its theological debates that shave away at core doctrines until agreement is found.xxxvii
12
The Moravians also worked to improve society everywhere they sent their missionaries—the
story is told when the Moravians decided to evangelize the slaves on St. Croix, Zinzendorf’s followers
proposed to become slaves themselves so they could minister to the African slaves harvesting sugar
cane there.xxxviii It is a matter of record that the Pietists, like their English counterparts, the Methodists,
were the leaders in many reform movements in society, abolition of slavery, temperance, women’s
rights, among other causes. Christensen inherited that reforming zeal in his own life as well.
Zinzendorf also took up Bride Mysticism about which Luther speaks approvingly in his Freedom
of a Christian. To be united with Christ is as intimate a thing as the relationship of bride and groom, only
in this case Christ the groom takes on all our sins, for our sake, so he can give us all his good. This theme
of mysticism is also there in Christensen’s life and thought, but except for this tract, he found little
mysticism in Lutheran thought.xxxix In his brief mention of his visions to Sverdrup we do get a sense that
he experienced mystical events in his life. His student and friend Paul Holmer told me once that
Christensen spent his life looking for some mysticism in Luther’s thought and finally gave up with a wry
comment on the book Luther and the Mystics—the only true thing about that book, he reportedly told
Holmer, was its title. Once again the idea of Christian freedom gave him some warrant to explore his
own mysticism. If he had not been from Augsburg and the LFC, especially Sverdrup’s emphasis on
personal Christianity and The Freedom of a Christian, I wonder if he could have remained a Lutheran.
His teaching of the historical critical method to my father’s generation may have spared
Augsburg from the fierce battles that raged at many of our sister schools in the 1960s over historical
critical approaches to the Bible. It did get him into trouble with a member of Augsburg’s board, Asmund
Oftedal, who had sniffed out Christensen’s modernism and made trouble for him when he was being
considered for an appointment to Augsburg. Thinking Christensen’s view of Scripture was not in keeping
with what was needed in a theological professor at Augsburg, and that the historical critical method
would lead to modernism, Oftedal’s misgivings forced Christensen to write a statement on his view of
13
Scripture defending historical criticism as one might expect him to do—intellectual pursuit and
scholarship in the search for truth should be rigorous, but what was important is that the Scripture
contained the “record of the historical revelations of God to the people of Israel, culminating in the
perfect revelation in his Son….it is so clear that for the purposes of the practical Christian life it
constitutes a sufficient guide in all matters of faith and conduct.”xl
III Teaching
“..To drawen them to hevene”
There is a time when every student needs a teacher, and for me that teacher was Dr. Christensen. Professor Ann Pederson at Christensen’s retirement
As he began his life teaching and then as president, he was ever the teacher as was his hero,
Sverdrup. In his eulogy for President Sverdrup he makes the comment that Jesus did not rail against the
political corruption of his day, but against false teaching. What most moved Christensen, in the words of
Sverdrup, was his call to teach the younger generations with the authority of the truth. His parish and
classroom were the entire church and its environs. People knew him well from his myriad presentations
at meetings, Bible camps, young people’s societies, and articles in the Lutheran Messenger. He did not
create sycophants, but sent students on their way into the world eager to explore it and serve it with
joy.xli And his class was wide—it included anyone whom he met on his journeys throughout the church.
When it became clear that Christensen would not be a shoo in as president of Augsburg—he
had to be elected by the Annual Meeting of the LFC the summer in 1938 in Thief River—Dr. T. O.
Burntvedt, the president of the LFC, and by now a good friend, got on the phone and urged people he
knew would favor Christensen to come to the meeting to vote for him. Anyone with sympathy toward
the Twelve Principles of the LFC was allowed to attend and even vote at the meeting, so one had to pack
the convention to win. A group of students, under the leadership of Abner Batalden noisily favored
Sverre Norborg, Christensen’s colleague and worthy rival at Augsburg.xlii The victory was not
14
overwhelming, and not by quite enough to convince Christensen to accept it without some soul
searching.
My mother told of sitting on the porch, overlooking Lake Charlotte near Morris, Minnesota,
when her grandfather and uncles returned from Thief River with a blow by blow account of how
Christensen had won. There they sat, long time Augsburg loyalists, in the steamy hot June evening of
rural Minnesota knowing something about Christensen’s witness, voting for him to be president of the
school they had supported since they had arrived in America because they really did believe in Christian
freedom. This anecdote shows the kind of impact he had on those he met in the church. They knew and
trusted him, even if they disagreed with him politically, because he practiced Christian fellowship at
every level. This heritage of regard for, and interest in, fellowship and Christian dialogue made him I
think capable of enjoying, for example, the most simple layman or woman, both the young and old, from
any part of the church and world. I think he enjoyed these travels when he could meet with and share
with all kinds of people. In our mythology we fret that he ruined his health traveling in cheap seats
through the night in his work to keep Augsburg afloat. While there are cruelties there, they are the
cruelties of poverty; you can’t imagine how poor we all were!
His interest in fellowship, construed as broadly as you can possibly imagine it, made him
intellectually curious about everyone he met. He delighted in the lives and stories of others across the
wide spectrum of society.xliii This brings us to his wide ranging commitment to international and
ecumenical relationships—don’t forget his tenure on the Minneapolis Human Rights Commission with
Hubert Humphrey—from the farthest corners of the earth. His was no parochial mind or faith. His
positive talk about Catholics worried many before Vatican II.xliv We see him mentioning naturally and
comprehensively the many people from around the world that he had met and supped with and
enjoyed in his reading and travels. His discovery of the beloved scholar Mario Colacci, professor of Greek
and Latin, long before Vatican II, and his appointment to the Augsburg faculty, while irritating many, did
15
not surprise them. That was who Christensen was. He practiced diversity easily, not because it was a
duty for him, as we often make it today, but because it was a delight—to find Christ in people of every
kind and culture and either bring them to Augsburg or have students travel to them. It was this capacity
to find brilliant teachers who came and stayed at Augsburg for very little compensation that really
distinguished his presidency.xlv His ecumenism and openness to diversity applied to inter‐faith
relationships as well. He was no stranger to the other great faiths of the world and could listen intently
to the speech and prayer of each because he was so confident of the truth he found in Jesus Christ.
All those who still remember him can recall moments with him, like his visits on behalf of
Augsburg teaching Bible camps and speaking at young people’s societies or Luther Leagues when we
saw him at his best, enjoying encounters with all kinds and ages—not only his high toned eloquence, but
his really good sense of humor. When I was about 9 he came to our home where he stayed before going
to Lake Metagoshe, probably the most wretched excuse for a Bible camp on the face of the earth. As he
was sitting at table with us—my mother had a full spread, china, silver, linen, a good meal—he looked at
me and said, holding up two fingers under his elbow, and asked,” Gracia, do you know what this is?”
“No,” I said, shyly wondering at the great man. “Two crooks holding up joint!” When he came out to
Luther Land Bible Camp near Tacoma, WA, to our LFC gathering there, always recruiting future students,
even as young as 13. As the chief admissions officer, he took me aside and we talked politics and the
crisis in Lebanon. He gave every evidence of enjoying it which filled me with wonder: the President of
Augsburg would talk to me a thirteen year old!
We also remember his voice, his capacity for eloquent and moving speech, always and ever the
preacher, even in his teaching. It was a gift he honed in the most humble places, to audiences of bible
campers, Sunday schools, congregations, faculties, etc. When you heard him, you knew you were
standing in the presence of something rare. He taught us devoutly in order to “drawen folk to hevene.”
What he said and how he lived he believed had eternal significance and moment for all whom he met.
16
We can teach about him and pass on his thought, but not the person, which drove his mission: the sense
that in his life with students, especially, he wanted to lead them to a living faith in Jesus Christ. More
than all this, anyone who came in contact with him left him thinking they had been in the presence of
something holy, someone connected to the divine.
Furthermore, he was humble before the great intellects of the tradition. I’m struck as I think
about the academic life, with its expectation that teachers make an original contribution to their field in
order to get tenure, how little he was interested in originality. His books are well wrought and
interesting, but not original. Their great achievement is that they are clear. By teaching clearly and
passionately, he showed his regard for his students, whether out in the church, or at school. In being
clear and insisting we be serious, he forced us to learn, to think, to struggle with the issues that faced
the modern Christian and not retreat into comfortable pieties; he helped us grow up. Paul Sonnack in his
piece on Christensen tells how in writing a paper on whether David wrote the Psalms he concluded with
the pious answer that if Jesus thought David had written them, that was good enough for him.
Christensen was outraged and would not accept the cop out. He made him go back and rethink his
paper because he devoutly cared about the development of a prospective scholar.xlvi It’s hard work to be
a demanding teacher and confront your students with their failures and expect them to improve. But it
was his calling, as it should be ours.
I remember when I first came to Augsburg, the fall of 1961, I was a bit peeved by the fact that I
had to go to this small denominational college no one had ever heard of in Oregon. Imagine my surprise
when the college president lectured during Freshmen Week on Plato’s dialogue on The Death of
Socrates. His eloquence as he presented for us the dilemma of Socrates and his followers facing
Socrates’ death made me a convert! It was his gift to teach so we could understand and grapple with the
material and do it devoutly so that we saw before us a man both able to understand the deepest things
of the tradition, as well as one who lived a holy life of simple devotion to his Lord. He was a holy man.
17
Such people are unique and gifts to those blessed enough to have been in their presence and we know it
when we are with them.
HIS LEGACY
“But Cristes loore and his apostles twelve/ He taught, but first he folwed it himselve.”
Christianity, he said in his inaugural address at Augsburg, “is not primarily the religion of reason,
but the religion of a broken heart,” or in Rudolf Otto’s language, a deep sense of unworthiness.xlvii This
raises the dilemma before us as we consider how to honor his legacy: not only must we be, as he was, at
the top of our intellectual game, but also able to treat the broken heart. His life work and thought
centered around these few ideas which he kept to all his life. 1) He believed in conversion, spiritual
transformation. This was not to be forced, but presented to students and all others in 2) perfect
freedom. 3) Spiritual life could be experienced and enhanced by Christian fellowship, and fellowship
with 4) ecumenical openness to all traditions and peoples. 5) Finally the calling of Augsburg was to
absolute academic excellence and openness. These were the characteristics of a great teacher, and
school, and he above all lived it because these things had eternal consequence.
Rudolf Otto’s book The Idea of the Holy lurks in the back of Christensen’s thesis. What causes
the young today to bend their knees in awe and a sense of either sin or unworthiness? That is the
question Augsburg in its education of students in their vocations needs to answer, and Mary has been
called to help with that. Our students are hungry for the holy, for integrity, but the project of the past 50
years has been one of desecration, of transgression, caused ironically by the hunger for the holy. Many
are now returning to the old practice of pilgrimages, especially in Europe, where the old roads on the
way to Canterbury, St. James, Rome, Jerusalem, Trondheim, Vadstena, etc. are being retraced by tens of
thousands, tourists looking to see what is new or exotic, or health, a good walk, but also for religious
reasons. In a month or so, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and her husband Andrew will report on their walk from
Wittenberg to Rome, and in their report one will hear much about their meetings with the most
18
mundane to the most spiritual. Their journey, like those of Chaucer’s pilgrims, while mixed with many a
motive, may lead them, as they experience the journey together, to an encounter with the holy.
Chaucer’s pilgrims show that one can hold even the sail of Peter’s boat and be utterly unmoved, at the
same time something can happen in these experiences, and there may be a way the tradition of
pilgrimage is speaking again to us. Christensen showed us the goal of all pilgrimages, an inward
pilgrimage, to follow the truth in our own lives, as he leads us clearly through the spiritual classics as
pilgrims on the way from here to there, as Bunyan’s pilgrim has it.
All pilgrimages seem to begin with a sense on the part of the pilgrim something is missing, that
all is not right, that they do not measure up, that eternity hangs in the balance. Even though the
Reformers mercilessly pilloried the idea of pilgrimages as a way to earn merit, they did, however not
abandon the image. On the contrary, they began to imagine their lives as a spiritual pilgrimage. The
Protestant pilgrim, most clearly exemplified in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress begins the same way, in
grief and repentance: Christian realizes that he is in mortal danger and must flee, abandoning his family,
and everything from his old life. It is a spiritual, inward pilgrimage made vivid by Bunyan’s allegory. In
the pilgrimage, N. H. Keeble says, the pilgrim must be valiant, have courage. “To recount the Protestant
pilgrimage is hence to tell an adventure story.”xlviii The Christian life is a thriller, something I’m not sure
we’ve made clear to our youth who need a good adventure story in which they discover that they are
not able on their own to reconcile themselves to the creator of all and need to get their lives set right. I
think that is what Christensen would challenge us to today. Near the end of his chapter on Bunyan,
Christensen writes,
“The pilgrim way is long and rugged, often full of danger. But the resources of God are ever at hand. To overcome and arrive safe at home at last, it is only necessary that we be willing to make the decisive choice, to set forth, to continue in the way.”xlix
In Christensen’s life and work we have seen the constant focus on a personal transforming experience of
the faith, his love of Christian fellowship, his warm ecumenical openness to all Christians and other
19
faiths and his devotion to the mysteries, and struggles, of the faith, which he held within his person.
These are exactly what young are searching for today: commitment, freedom and a sense of the holy.
Add to that his fierce devotion to the truth, whom he knew to be Jesus Christ—the Word made flesh—
and he could make his way through any academic thicket with ease and understanding.
We know that the main line churches are sidelined and declining rapidly, and Lutherans are in
that group. But Augsburg’s tradition has always been a bit on the edge of the main line, and more sect
like, which has made us better able to understand the American context where sects have flourished.
Given our particular intellectual and spiritual heritage in Lutheran pietism, which Christensen ardently
defended, and which excepting the name, is what most American Christians are today, we are living in a
world grown weary of denominations that have become rather like the territorial churches from which
the founders of Augsburg fled. By establishing this lectureship and this chair, Augsburg has continued to
grapple with Christensen’s legacy as it meets all the others pressing around us. He has taught us not to
be fearful because we believe the Word has been made flesh and dwells among us. For this reason we
can be hospitable to all comers. I applaud the work of Mark Tranvik, David Tiede and Paul Pribbenow,
and now Marty Stortz, in seeking to understand this legacy and how to teach the bracing and exciting
life to which we have been called by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even if you are not moved by his spiritual
legacy and piety, think about his devotion to teaching, which had as great an influence as his piety. Even
those of his students who did not share his pietism, could be brought to tears by his first rate intellect,
devotion to teaching and commitment to the freedom he found in Christ. Raising up the next generation
through one’s devoted teaching is a pilgrimage any professor and any college of the church should
embark on, and I commend it to you, Marty, as you begin this pilgrimage and work to devoutly teach,
pass on and renew this tradition. It will bring you joy and untold richness. In an interview twenty five
years after he left Augsburg, Christensen said in language that included the main themes of his life as a
devoted teacher. “To be able to alternate between academic work, Christian fellowship, and worship,
20
then to have a real opportunity to participate in the larger world—the city and beyond—there is nothing
better in the world.”l
21
Footnotes i At his retirement from Luther Seminary George Aus his old friend, in a lovely encomium to Christensen noted that for him, “the Free Church was for you a cause—a cause without whose testimony the Church at learge would be the poorer—and so you chose to stay.” George Aus, “A Tribute to Bernhard M. Christensen,” Luther Theological Seminary Review, October 1967, p. 8. ii B.M. Christensen, “The Idea of the Lutheran Free Church: An address delivered at the Pastors’ Institute held at Augsburg in September 1944.” Here he clearly noted that he was not defending the small church body, but the “dynamic idea which lies as a seed at the root of that Church’s existence.” p. 46. iii Sverdrup in his article “Minder fra Norge,” writes with admiration that Johnson and Caspari would gather students together for small groups on Saturday evenings for devotions which they led. Georg Sverdrup, Samlede Skrifter i Udvalg, vol. I, p.193. iv Ibid. v Dag Kullerud, Hans Nielsen Hauge:Mannen som vekket Norge. (Forum, Aschehoug, Oslo, 1996.) vi Bernard Christensen, “The Word Became Flesh,” Christensens’ Inaugural Address, The Lutheran Messenger, V. 21, No. 21, November 1, 1938), p. 8. vii Sverdrup, p. 168. viii Bernard M. Christensen, “The Idea of the Lutheran Free Church:” ix Søren Kierkegaard, For Self‐Examination, ed. and tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; with intro. And notes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). x Rufsvold baptized Christensen and during his ministry showed great interest in ministry with the young. He was also Vice President of the LFC. xi See the Twelve Principles appended here. xii One can read this in the district reports in Folkebladet. Inger, his mother, is recorded as having played for a young people’s society meeting. xiii Letter from Bernhard Christensen to George Sverdrup, September 6, 1927. Augsburg Archives. xiv Bernhard M. Christensen, “Levels of Spiritual Living.” (n.d. Collection of miscellaneous papers Augsburg College Archives Section 26, Box 6. Trumbull had delivered the address in 1911 before the National Convention of the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Later, The Life That Wins was published as a pamphlet by The Sunday School Times, of which Dr. Trumbull was at one time its editor. He was one of the founders of America's Keswick. The speech can be found here: http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Jehovah/The‐Life‐That‐Wins.html xvxv Bernard M. Christensen, The Altar Flame (Minneapolis, The Lutheran Free Church Publishing House, 1933), pp. 19‐20. xvi John Haukom, Messenger Press, November 1, 1938. xvii Christensen, “Ten Years After George Sverdrup’s Death.” Ibid xviii Bernhard Christensen’s Eulogy on George Sverdrup, November 1937. xix Letter to Sverdrup, January 25, 1928. xx Letter to Sverdrup, December 3, 1928. xxi Letter from Christensen to Sverdrup, June 14, 1927. Augsburg Archives. xxii Christensen, The Reconstruction of Theological Principles in Norway (A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1929), p. 1. xxiii George Aus, in his speech at Christensen’s retirement, expressed his regret that Christensen’s thesis had been more widely read since it did offer both of these evangelists a place at the Lutheran table. xxiv Christensen could speak of these agreement with knowledge and understanding but thought them sometimes to be unhelpful, for example the Minneapolis Agreement of the American Lutheran Conference in its statement on the Galesburg rule of Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran pastors only, and Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicates only, as not being in accord with the LFC fundamental principles since he agreed with Dr. Emil Swenson that the “rule” was meant to be not a command but rather a statement of what is commonly practiced. “But to refuse to extend the hand of brotherhood and fellowship upon proper occasions to our fellow Protestant pastors, in order
22
not to offend certain Lutheran groups, may well involve a denial of the essential unity of the whole Body of Christ.” The Idea of the Lutheran Free Church, p. 43. xxv For his faculty, who on the whole worshiped him, this had a darker side. Gerald Thorson, Professor of English, told me once because he took such a low salary, the faculty had to live in penury. Gerda Mortenson, his long time colleague on the faculty, part of the triumvirate that governed the college, remarked to me once toward the end of her life that she had complained to him about the low salaries which kept her retirement funds sparse. xxvi In a letter from Christensen early in his eastern sojourn he reports to Sverdrup that he has written a paper on evolution and the Christian faith, concluding that “Evolution is but the present generation’s excuse for its agnosticism.” April 11, 1927. xxvii Christensen to Sverdrup, November 29, 1928. xxviii Oftedal had warned him on many occasions, apparently, and it troubled the young man that his espousal of the method of historical criticism of the Bible, might keep him from being ordained. Given his call to be professor and then president, he really had no reason to be ordained because he would not be serving a congregation. I have heard reports that he did have, however, a mystical experience in which he did come to feel a presence which confirmed in him his call. xxix The fund of jokes and humorous stories about these meetings, both for the clash of pieties between the pietists and the orthodox, and the mixing of Norwegian and English has disappeared with the older generation, but it made for some of the most fun evenings in parsonages throughout the LFC—not scornful, just plain funny. xxx Bernard Christensen, “Why Not have Samtalemøter?” (Collection of miscellaneous papers Augsburg College Archives Section 26, Box 6.) xxxi Bernhard M. Christensen, The Inward Pilgrimage. (Minneapolis, Augsburg Publishing House, 1976), p.8. xxxii There’s a poignant letter to Sverdrup remarking that he needed to get to know people better and so working in a congregation was necessary for his development. xxxiii The Presence: A Little Treasury of Testimony, ed. B. M. Christensen and George Aus (Fitch Publishing Company, New York, 1929). xxxiv There is a sweet letter near the end of the collection in which Christensen, trying to avoid teaching English because of the endless number of themes to correct, commends to Sverdrup a young friend of his who will receive her B. A. in English in a year. It is of course Lily Gunderson whom he will marry. Gracia became his most trusted colleague throughout his long life, and took her place in the governing of Augsburg as well. Gerda Mortenson told me of her frequent frustrations when Christensen, Martin Quanbeck, the Dean of the College, and she would have decided something together and in the morning Christensen would come back with a completely different take on the issue, and that would be what they did. It may be that he had one of the political curses of very brilliant people who always can see the worth of a better argument and will change their mind on hearing the better argument. Gracia would have been capable of such better arguments! Without a doubt, the influence of Gracia on the government of Augsburg is deeply intertwined in the love story of Gracia and Bernhard. xxxv Bernhard Christensen, “The Perils of Pietism,” Lutheran Messenger, xxxvi Christensen’s rage on seeing empty beer bottles on campus, or other evidence of youthful dissolution was legendary. His speech the Ashram goes on about sexual permissiveness and the abuse of liquor that showed the church’s failure to commend the Christian life, “a continuing struggle with enemies within and without—but a struggle that issues in victory and in life eternal.” p. 23. It is easy to forget what this generation knew: one mistake could ruin your life for good. xxxvii See George Forell’s book on this. Nine public lectures on important subjects in religion, preached in Fetter Lane Chapel on London in the year 1746 [by] Nicholaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf. Translated and edited by George W. Forell. (Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1973). In a private conversation with me Paul Holmer noted that Christensen and he himself preferred this kind of ecumenism to the other. xxxviii I misremembered this anecdote in my lecture saying that Zinzendorf had asked the Danish King, Fredrick for permission to evangelize the slaves on St. Croix, from which Denmark was profiting handsomely through the sugar, rum, slave trade of the time. It is part of Christian lore that Moravians offered to sell themselves into slavery for the purposes of saving souls. More correctly, but this is still a thicket the historians are not in agreement about, Zinzendorf on hearing from a slave in the Danish court that there was real opportunity to bring the Gospel to St. Croix, returned home to Herrnhut where he encouraged some of the Brethren to go as missionaries. Some in the
23
Danish court, especially the Queen, approved of this, others did not. Two Moravians did go to St. Croix and offered to become slaves if it would be helpful to the gospel. Historians have been less certain of the lore and say it is difficult to prove that, although their offer is probably fact, whether any actually did serve as slaves beside the African slaves is sharply contested. The Moravians mission movement to all parts of the earth was considerable, and if one goes to Herrnhut, the home of Zinzendorf and the Moravians, one sees in the museum astonishing depictions of missionaries marrying natives in what was an attempt to say that the missionaries did not think of themselves as superior to the natives. There is also very complicated Danish history in regard to slavery. There is no question the Danish regime profited from the slave trade and the sugar/rum triangle, about which much can be said. All told, however, the Pietists were much more likely to be involved in projects to improve society than orthodox Lutherans were, with their reform movements such as Abolition, Temperance, Women’s rights, etc. xxxix In an address to the 1950 Ashram of the Lutheran Student Association of American, “I am Rooted in the Truth,” Thy Word is Truth, Christensen records how important it was for him to receive Evelyn Underhill’s book The School of Charity at the first Ashram years before, p. 19. xl Christensen to Sverdrup, November 29, 1928. Sverdrup papers, Augsburg College Archives. xli Everyone has their story of how he inspired them to go forth and serve. The oral history on Christensen by Paul Sonnack is rich with student’s recalling a moment with him and then they are off on their own journey. One finds out less about Christensen than about them. This is a mark of a good teacher. xlii Sverre Norborg came to Augsburg on Christensen’s recommendation to Sverdrup that he would be a good teacher for Augsburg to call. He was a gifted thinker and teacher. The Batalden group may have suspected rightly that Norborg would have been a better administrator than Christensen who very soon after his presidency began found It necessary to hire business administrator on the advice of nearly everyone. My mother, in our conversation about her grandfather and uncles on returning from Thief River and the election of Christensen, hinted that Norborg, however, had something of a clouded reputation in regard to his relationship with women. Those rumors, whether true or not, did not help his candidacy. He became an American citizen and worked for the OSS during WWII and then became pastor of the Norwegian Memorial church in Chicago. xliii In “I Am Rooted in the Truth,” Christensen recalls his experiences with people from all around the world from scholars in Copenhagen, to a friend of Gracia’s from Harlem, to a Japanese Nisei woman, plus references to a wide variety of authors and thinkers, from Ignazio Silone, Richard Wight, Arthur Koestler, Andre Gide on communism, the God that failed, and then the suffering of Bonhoeffer, Hanns Lilje, Bishop Ordass and Kagawa for their faith. xliv In the 1960 election with Jack Kennedy on the ballot some LFC members were convinced that Christensen’s, and Augsburg’s, favorable view of Catholics had actually elected Kennedy because Wisconsin went for Kennedy by a very narrow vote. xlv It is noteworthy in his letters to President George Sverdrup he is always on the lookout for a good teacher or scholar who could come to Augsburg and either teach or lecture. If Augsburg could not call the person, Christensen realized that but still made suggestions about lectureships that could be shared with other institutions such as the University of Minnesota. xlvi Paul G. Sonnack, “A Perspective on Dr. Bernhard M. Christensen,” given at the first Christensen symposium, September 1988. xlvii Bernard Christensen, “The Word Became Flesh,” Excerpts from the Inaugural Address by Dr. Bernhard Christensen. The Lutheran Messenger, (Vol 21, no 21, November 1, 1938, p. 3.) I am a bit surprised that Christensen does not make more reference to Otto’s book which he included in the bibliography to his thesis. Much of what he is looking for could be found there, and one hears Otto behind especially his summation of Ihlen’s theology. xlviii N. H. Keeble, ”Constructing the Protestant life in Early Modern England,” Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. Colin Morris and Peter Roberts. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), pp. 238‐256. xlix Inward Pilgrimage, p. 90. l Kathy Yakal, “Bernhard Christensen reflects on the challenges and Possibilities of Augsburg College,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 28, 1978, p. 3.