The First Norwegian-American Foreign Missionaries: John and Oline Hogstad

Abstract

10 The First Norwegian- American Foreign Missionaries: John and Oline Hogstad by James B. Vigen "Pray ... for all the Tanosi people, that the door to their hearts may be opened for the Gospel" - John and Oline Hogstad, the first Norwegian -American foreign missionaries, Í887-Í9ÍÍ.1 America sent thousands of its sons and daughters abroad as foreign missionaries during the years that the church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette called "the Great Century" (1800191 4). 2 While Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists were the major senders, Lutherans also made their contribution.3 The role of Norwegian Americans in this vast movement is, however, largely untold. The following is the story of the first Norwegian Americans to go out in foreign missions: John and Oline Hogstad. Jon Peder Hogstad was born on 2 December 1858, on the Hogstad farm in the northern portion of the diocese of Trondheim.4 John's parents were Ole Pedersen Hogstad and Anne Martha Hogstad (née Melhus). Apparently Ole Pederson inherited a portion of the farm in 1857 upon the death of his mother. The sale of his land holdings may have financed the family's emigration to the United States in the summer of 1866. John Peter Hogstad was then eight years old.5 The Hogstad family settled first in the town of Lyons, in Goodhue county, Minnesota, southeast of Minneapolis along the Mississippi River about fifteen miles from the city of Red 271 272 James B. Vigen Wing. After only two years there, however, they purchased a farm in the town of Camp, in Renville county, about one hundred miles southwest of the Twin Cities. The Hogstad farm was ideally situated for young John in terms of what were probably the two most important institutions during his youth: the local Norwegian church and the local school. The church of the pietist Hauge Synod was on the next quarter to the east of the farm, an easy walk. The school of district number 10 was located just slightly northeast of the Hogstad farm. Both institutions would be essential in the formation of the young man who was to become the first Norwegian-American foreign missionary: the school, because without the proper education he could not have attended Augsburg College, whence the impetus for foreign missions came most strongly, through the influence of Georg Sverdrup; and the church, because it was the Haugean revivalist-type churches that became most involved in foreign mission work. At the time of the Reformation, Lutheran or Evangelical churches became preeminently occupied with establishing Evangelical churches in Europe and defending the territory thus claimed against attack. Foreign missions were not at the forefront of the Reformers' efforts, and later Roman Catholic theologians used the lack of foreign missionaries as proof that the Lutheran churches were merely "sects" and not the true Church. This led Lutheran orthodox or scholastic theologians such as Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) to respond defensively that the apostolic age was clearly over, and that therefore Jesus' injunction to his disciples in Matthew 28 no longer applied in the sense of a spirit-called apostolate. The cause of propagating the faith was entrusted to the Church and to the proper preaching of the Gospel. This task was the responsibility of each local congregation. Thus, as James Scherer has put it, "in the course of defending Lutheranism against polemical charges, Gerhard tended to make missionary activity both unnecessary and theologically suspect."6 It was not until the era of the pietist revivals in Europe and Scandinavia that Lutherans began aggressively to pursue foreign missions.7 In Norway a The First Norwegian- American Foreign Missionaries 273 direct link exists between the Haugean revival and the founding of the Norwegian Missionary Society (. Det Norské Missionsselskap ) in 1842. The Haugean revival in Norway itself did not spring sui generis from the Norwegian soil. It was influenced greatly by the broader pietist/evangelical revivals in Europe, especially the influence of the Moravian Herrnhut community. One of the few Norwegian bishops to give early support to the Haugean revival, Peter Olivarius Bugge of Trondheim, was deeply affected by the "Unitas Fratrum" of Herrnhut, and this led him to found the first Norwegian missionary journal in...