Spring/Summer 2016

Volume XXXI, Number 1

In This Issue

• The diversity of God’s children by C.O. Rosenius and translated by Mark Safstrom

  We repeat once again, that the differences among God’s children, which we have just been considering, come from God and are not at all something bad, but instead quite the opposite, something rich and beautiful.

• A perfect storm by Mark Safstrom

  When it rains, it pours. This year is a perfect storm of anniversaries and commemorations, of traditions and institutions that have meant something in my life and perhaps many of yours. It is the 200th anniversary of preacher Carl Olof Rosenius’s birth, the 125th of North Park University in Chicago, the 90th of Covenant Point Bible Camp in Upper Michigan, the 40th of the North Park-SVF exchange program between Chicago and Jönköping, Sweden, and the 30th of this fine publication, Pietisten.

• Rosenius at Johannelund by Mark A. Granquist

  Faithful readers of this publication might not necessarily have taken notice of Feb. 3, 2016. Perhaps you didn’t, although thinking back you might felt your heart strangely warmed, or found yourself inexplicitly humming an old pietist hymn, maybe “With God And His Friendship.”

• Rosenius at North Park by David M. Gustafson

  An event at North Park Theological Seminary in late February celebrated 200 years since the birth of Carl Olof Rosenius (1816–1868). In a lecture about the life and work of Rosenius, Mark Safstrom highlighted Rosenius’s impact on the Pietist movement in Sweden and America in the 19th century.

• With God and His Friendship by Gracia Grindal

  When I was appointed to the hymn text committee that compiled the “Lutheran Book of Worship” (1978) I asked my pastor father, who grew up speaking Norwegian and who learned to love the hymnody of the Scandinavian tradition, which hymns should I push for inclusion.

• A salute to Augustana by Maria Erling

  One more time, on June 24-26, the Augustana Heritage Association will sponsor a gathering, this time in Philadelphia, this time for good.

• Sightings in Christian Music Glimpses of Glory by Glen Wiberg

  Can you recall a first time when you felt jubilation in a service of worship? Perhaps it was unexpected, a moment when it seemed that the Lord himself breathed on you, turning to radiance where the moment before you felt like a burnt out cinder.

• Defining ‘ecstasy’ by Tom Swanson

  Words are tools for thinking and communicating. Words define words. Wordsmiths fuss and struggle to get it “just right.” The serious authors and translators keep reworking their words with the skill and desire of a highly specialized surgeon.

• Taste and See Kladdkaka by Bonnie Sparrman

  What is it that causes a person to return time and again to a certain coffee shop, friend’s home, park bench, library table or even to a specific corner of the airport? Why do we feel more welcome in one place, and less so in another?

• ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’: Parties in the church by Tom Tredway

  Over a half century ago, as the winter sun slanted through windows slightly opaque with Chicago grime, Professor Donald Frisk lectured in a Nyvall Hall classroom at North Park Seminary. The subject in his Systematic Theology course that day was less systematic than historical: the range and variety of Christian experience and thought over 2,000 years. One of the most important of the persistent distinctions among Christians, Frisk said, fell between those who usually tended to speak of “Jesus” and those who did so of “Christ.”

• A Pietist’s Bookshelf by John E. Phelan Jr.

  During a recent stay in Jerusalem I heard the following bit of proverbial wisdom more than once in varying forms: If you come to Israel for a week, you go home and write a book. If you stay for a month, you go home and write an article. If you live in Israel for a year, you no longer know what to write.

• Pietism and confessionalism by Shawn Barnett

  In the first issue of The Baptist Pietist Clarion, the explicit purpose of which is to defend the pietist heritage of the Baptist General Conference (aka Converge Worldwide), the late G. William Carlson provided a theological manifesto for the project entitled “What is Pietism?: ‘In Essentials Unity, in Non-essentials Diversity, In Everything Charity.’” This motto, printed on the masthead of every issue of the Clarion, can be summed up in a word: irenicism (from the Greek word for peace).

• Tributaries of faith by Craig E. Anderson

  A theme that weaves its unambiguous way throughout any story of those Swedish Pietists that emigrated from Sweden to America is the role of Christian faith in their lives. In my own family it is impossible to rightly understand my grandparents, John and Frida (Carlson) Anderson and Charles and Hilma (Lindstrom) Peterson, who immigrated to Rockford, Illinois in the late 1800s, apart from this steadying belief that animated their lives. It was a faith nourished by two important tributaries.

• Poetry Poetry Corner by Arthur Mampel

  A while ago, when I was composing a poem about spring, I thought about William Wordsworth and his verse, “The World Is Too Much with Us.”

• Focusing on the main distraction by Mindi Bach

  Recently transplanted to Boise, I decided to attend my first Boise State football game and join the throng of blue-and-orange clad fans, cheering on the only collegiate athletes to carry the pigskin across a field of artificial blue turf. This town loves their football.

• Why not a memorial service ahead of its time? by Arvid Adell

  Last September I became an octogenarian. No big deal.

• Poetry Turning by Chrissy Larson
• Post: Readers Respond
• Tributes Tommy Carlson by David Hawkinson

  David Hawkinson's tribute to Tommy Carlson (1938 – 2015).

• Tributes Lorraine Johnson

  Tribute to Lorraine Johnson (1918 — 2016).

• Tributes Jean Nelson

  Tribute to Jean Nelson (1918 — 2015)