Abstract
In 1924, after the death of Karl Larsen Titlestad, who had served as a Zulu missionary from 1865 to 1891, an obituary was written by his colleagues Ole Stavem and Anders A. Olsen, a former missionary to Madagascar. In the obituary, Titlestad was praised for his qualities of ‘gentleness’, ‘patience’ and ‘modesty’. However, regarding the genre of the obituary, the conclusion was somewhat surprising: ‘Except for the scruples he for a while suffered from, he was a faithful son of our Evangelical-Lutheran church.’1 What kind of ‘scruples’ did Titlestad suffer from? According to Olsen and Stavem, ‘the kindly Titlestad’ experienced a spiritual crisis at the end of the 1880s. He was exhausted after many years of hard missionary work that had resulted in almost no converts. Unexpectedly, a revival arose among Africans as well as European colonists in the north-western part of Natal, close to Titlestad’s working field. Olsen and Stavem labelled the movement very briefly a ‘Baptist Lammers-revival in miniature’.2 Some of Titlestad’s missionary friends became influenced by the religious movements and joined a ‘free mission’. To Titlestad, this period was ‘spiritually stressful’, according to Olsen and Stavem, and doubts about the Lutheran confession and the dogma of infant baptism (paedobaptism) evolved within him.
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Notes
Anders Olsen and Ole Stavem, ‘Misjonsprest Karl Titlestad. 1832–1924’, Norvegia Sacra 5 (1925): 151.
Olsen and Stavem, ‘Misjonsprest Karl Titlestad’, 150. Gustav Adolph Lammers (1802–1878), a pastor in the Church of Norway, broke with the official church in 1856 and established an ‘apostolic-Christian’ congregation in Skien, his hometown. Lammers inspired the establishment of similar congregations in several parts of Norway. It is, however, incorrect to label the Lammers movement a Baptist movement. Lammers eventually returned to the official church in 1860. The first Baptist congregation in Norway was established in Skien in 1860 by the Danish seaman Fredrik L. Rymker (1819–84), see Ingunn Folkestad Breistein, ‘Har staten bedre borgere?’ Dissenternes kamp for religiøs frihet 1891–1969 (Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2003).
Yvonne Maria Werner, ‘Kristen manlighet i teori och praxis’, in Kristen manlighet: Ideal och verklighet 1830–1940, ed. Yvonne Maria Werner (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2008)
Yvonne Maria Werner, ‘Religious Feminisation, Confessionalism and Re-masculinisation in Western European Society 1800–1960’, in Pieties and Gender, ed. Lene Sjørup and Hilda Rømer Christensen (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Olaf Blaschke, ‘Fältmarskalk Jesus Kristus: Religiös remaskulinisering i Tyskland’, in Kristen manlighet: Ideal och verklighet 1830–1940, ed. Yvonne Maria Werner (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2008).
Olav Guttorm Myklebust, ‘Sør-Afrika’, in Det Norske Misjonsselskap 1842–1942, ed. John Nome (Stavanger: Dreyer, 1949), 24–5.
Ole Stavem, Et bantufolk og kristendommen: Det norske missionsselskaps syttiaarige zulumission (Stavanger: Det norske missionsselskaps forlag, 1915), 87–94.
Olav Guttorm Myklebust, H. P. S. Schreuder: Kirke og misjon (Oslo: Land og kirke/Gyldendal, 1980), 245.
Norman Etherington, ‘Kingdoms of This World and the Next: Christian Beginnings among the Zulu and Swazi’, in Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History, ed. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (Oxford: James Curry, 1997).
Per Hernaes, ‘The Zulu Kingdom, Norwegian Missionaries, and British Imperialism, 1845–1879’, in Norwegian Missions in African History, Vol. 1: South Africa 1845–1906, ed. Jarle Simensen (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986), 117–36.
Halfdan E. Sommerfelt, Den Norske Zulumission: Et Tilbageblik paa de første 20 Aar af det Norske Missionsselskabs Virksomhed (Christiania: Wm. Gram, 1865), 345.
Olav Guttorm Myklebust, ‘Bekjennelsesspørsmålet og Det Norske Misjonsselskap i 1840-og 1850-årene’, Norsk tidsskrift for misjon 13, no. 4 (1959): 237–46.
Olav Guttorm Myklebust, ‘Bekjennelsesspørsmålet i den protestantiske misjonsbevegelsens gjennombruddstid’, Norsk tidsskrift for misjon 13, no. 3 (1959): 148–61.
Lars Dahle and Simon Emanuel Jørgensen, Festskrift til Det Norske Missionsselskabs Jubilæum i 1892 (Stavanger: Det Norske Missionsselskabs Forlag, 1892), 136
For an overview of the process, see Helge Fosseus, Mission blir kyrka: Luthersk kyrkobilding i södra Afrika 1957–1961 (Stockholm: Verbum, 1974).
Klaus Fiedler, The Story of Faith Missions: From Hudson Taylor to Present Day Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 1994).
Robert Edgar, ‘New Religious Movements’, in Missions and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 216.
Bengt Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London: Lutterworth Press, 1948)
Bengt Sundkler, Zulu Zion and some Swazi Zionists (London: Oxford University Press, 1976)
Erhard Kamphausen, ‘Unknown Heroes: The Founding Fathers of the Ethiopian Movement in South Africa’, in The Making of an Indigenous Clergy in Southern Africa: Proceedings of the International Conference held at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 25–27 October 1994, ed. Philippe Denis (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1995), 83–100
Simon Moripe, ‘Indigenous Clergy in the Zion Christian Church’, in The Making of an Indigenous Clergy in Southern Africa, ed. Philippe Denis (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1995), 102–7.
To further inform the Norwegian mission supporters about the ‘revival among the kaffirs in the colony of Natal’, translated extracts from some of pastor Turnbull’s mission pamphlets were printed in the NMT 46, no. 5 (1890): 88–92. The Dutch Reformed Church had traditionally been reluctant to do mission work among Africans and had mainly been a church for the Boer settler population. After a ‘mission revival’ in the 1860s, however, inspired by Andrew Murray (1828–1917), a first step was taken towards mission activity. Murray established a Missionary Institute in Wellington where both lay men and pastors were educated and equipped for service among indigenous groups. See Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 331.
Lars Dahle, tnspektionsreisen til Zulu og Madagaskar i 1903: tndberetning til Generalforsamlingen i Bergen 1904 (Stavanger: Det norske Missionsselskabs Forlag, 1904), 13–14.
Josaya Semes resigned from the NMS in 1925 and joined the African Congregational Church. Petros Lamula broke with the NMS in 1926 and established the United Native National Church of Christ. See Paul La Hausse de Lalouvière, Restless Identities: Signatures of Nationalism, Zulu Ethnicity and History in the Lives of Petros Lamula (c. 1881–1948) and Lymon Maling (1889–c. 1936) (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2000), 124–45.
Hale, Scandinavian Free Church Missions in Southern Africa, 42–58. See also Erik Sidenvall, The Making of Manhood among Swedish Missionaries in China and Mongolia, c. 1890–c. 1914 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009), 23–46.
The following biography on Paul Peter Wettergren is based on Hale, Scandinavian Free Church Missions in Southern Africa, 66–79; Frederick Hale, ‘Scandinavian Urban Evangelisation in Southern Africa: The Free East Africa Mission in Durban, 1889–1999’, Swedish Missiological Themes 86, no. 2 (1998): 227–50
Terje Solberg, ‘1877–1902: “Og nu staar os intet tilbage...”’ in Midt i livet: Den Evangelisk Lutherske Frikirke 1877–2002, ed. Ole Angell, Per Eriksen, and Terje Solberg (Oslo: Norsk Luthersk Forlag, 2002).
Paul Peter Wettergren, Brev til mine Venner i Anledning af min Udtr�E6;delse af Statskirken den 27 de Marts 1877 (Risor: J.G. Fryxell, 1877).
Hale, Scandinavian Free Church Missions in Southern Africa, 118–27. For a history of the Church of Sweden Mission, see Tore Furberg, Kyrka och Mission i Sverige 1868–1901: Svenska Kyrkans Missions tillkomst och förste verksomhetstid (Uppsala: Svenska Instituttet för Missionsforskning, 1962).
For a history of the Scandinavian church in Durban, see Ernst Hallen, Nordisk Kirkeliv Under Sydkorset: Festskrift i anledning Den Norsk Lutherske Kirkes 50 Aarsjubileum i Durban 14 mars 1880–14 mars 1930 (Durban: The Mission Press, 1930)
M. F. Lear, The St. Olav Lutheran Church 1880–1980: Its Origin and History Over One Hundred Years (Durban: Unity Publications, 1980).
John Nome, ‘Det Norske Misjonsselskaps Historie i Norsk Kirkeliv: Fra Syttiårene til Nåtiden’, in Det Norske Misjonsselskap 1842–1942, ed. John Nome, vol. 2 (Stavanger: Dreyer, 1943), 105–21.
Oscar Handeland, Det Norske Lutherske Kinamisjonsforbund Gjennom 50 år (Oslo: Forbundets Forlag, 1941), 35–54.
Lovise Olsen, a sickly young woman in Bergen, initiated the building of a Norwegian mission ship. She envisioned a ship at the disposal of the NMS, crewed with proper Christian seamen, and which should be like a Norwegian home for departing and arriving missionaries. The NMS ran the ship Elieser from 1864 until 1884 and Paulus from 1885 until 1893. For a history of Elieser, see Edle Solberg, I misjon�E6;rfart: Med kaptein Landmark og Elieser (Stavanger: Nomi, 1965)
Gunnar Andreas Meling, På tokt med Elieser: Pionermisjonærene og deres skip 1864–1884 (Stavanger: Det Norske Misjonsselskap, 1982).
Gunnar Andreas Meling, I fredens kjølvann: Misjonsskipet Paulus i storm og stille 1884–1894 (Stavanger: Det Norske Misjonsselskap, 1984).
John Tosh, ‘Manliness, Masculinities and the New Imperialism, 1880–1900’, in Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire, ed. John Tosh (Harlow: Longman, 2005), 192–214.
Markus Dahle, ‘Christian Oftebro’, in Hjem fra Kamppladsen: Livsbilleder af Norske Missionærer, ed. Anders Olsen (Kristiania: Steen’ske Bogtrykkeri og Forlag, 1906), 23.
Ole Stavem, ‘Lars Dahle som missionselev’, in Fra Norges indsats i verdensmissionen: Festskrift ved Lars Dahles femtiaars-jubilæum (Stavanger: Det norske missionsselskaps trykkeri, 1921), 11–12.
See Alexander Maurits, ‘Trestandläran och den lutherske prästmannen’, in Kristen manlighet: Ideal och verklighet 1830–1940, ed. Yvonne Maria Werner (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2008)
Alexander Maurits, ‘The Exemplary Lives of Christian Heroes as an Historical Construct’, Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality 3, no. 1 (2009): 4–21.
Ruth Hemstad, Fra Indian Summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og unionsoppløsningen (Oslo: Akademisk publisering, 2008), 99.
C. Strömberg, ‘Hednamissionens återverkan på hemlandskyrkans religiøsa lif’, Nordic Journal of Mission 1 (1890): 97–120.
See the recent articles: Derek K. Hastings, ‘Fears of a Feminized Church: Catholicism, Clerical Celibacy, and the Crisis of Masculinity in Wilhelmine Germany’, European History Quarterly 38, no. 1 (2008): 34–65
Tysler Carrington, ‘Instilling the “Manly” Faith: Protestant Maculinity and the German’ Jünglingsvereine at the fin de siècle, Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality 3, no. 2 (2009): 142–54.
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© 2013 Kristin Fjelde Tjelle
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Tjelle, K.F. (2013). Confessional Missionary Masculinity. In: Missionary Masculinity, 1870–1930. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336361_4
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