Evangelical Free Church Research Articles

Faithful Stewards of God’s Creation? Swedish Evangelical Denominations and Climate Change

Studies from the United States (U.S.) show that opposition to climate policy is strong among some Christian groups, especially White evangelical Protestants. Much of this opposition is channelled through organisations such as the Cornwall Alliance, which argue against climate measures on religious, economic and what they claim to be science-based grounds. In the present study, we investigated to what extent these convictions were present among Swedish evangelical denominations. Representatives from the Evangelical Free Church, the Pentecostal Alliance, the Swedish Alliance Mission, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church were interviewed to identify the denominations’ views on the scientific underpinnings of climate change and the moral implications of climate policy. Our data show that the denominations’ views differ markedly from those expressed by climate-oppositional evangelical groups in the U.S. The denominations held homogenous views on the legitimacy of climate science, expressed a clear biblical mandate for climate policy based on the notion of human stewardship, and believed that climate change was inextricably linked to poverty and, thus, had to be addressed. Our results point to the need for further studies on the factors behind acceptance and denial of climate science within and between faith-based and other communities in different countries.

The Faith Once for All Delivered: Liturgical Theology, Scripture, and the Evangelical Free Church Tradition

This article proposes to explain how the evangelical Free Church commitment to scripture as its primary authority affects their interaction with liturgical theology. Free Church theology is underpinned by various hermeneutical, theological, and cultural commitments—none more central than its commitment to scripture as revelation of and from God—which complicates Free Church engagement with much recent liturgical scholarship that emphasizes the ecclesiological basis for Christian worship and the corollary authority of Christian tradition. In the first part of the article, I provide an exploration of theological authority within Free Church evangelicalism, arguing that their commitment to scripture’s authority is a commitment to the ecclesial tradition of the apostolic church. In the second part of the article, I explore two additional hermeneutical considerations for evangelical liturgical theology that follow from their commitment to scripture: the priority of biblical exegesis in the theological process and the application of a trusting hermeneutic in their reading of scripture.

Dr. Harry Lindblom: Swedish Evangelical Free Churchman and Co-laborer with Pentecostal Churchman Lewi Pethrus, 1924-1939

Harry Lindblom of Chicago worked alongside Lewi Pethrus of Stockholm on both sides of the Atlantic and became Pethrus’s preferred interpreter. But who was Harry Lindblom, and how did he become a trusted colleague of Pethrus? In addition to examining Lindblom’s life and ministry with the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), this study highlights his collaboration with Pethrus, including the American’s role as the interpreter of the first European Pentecostal Conference, held in 1939. Together Lindblom and Pethrus strengthened ties between Pentecostals in Sweden and Swedish Pentecostals and evangelicals in America.

Barth's christological ecclesiology as theological resource for evangelical free church ecclesiology

AbstractThis essay argues that Barth's christological ecclesiology is worthy of consideration as a resource to fund a more robust and distinctly theological evangelical free church ecclesiology. Specifically, Barth's articulation of the church as witness, combined with his emphases on the gathering, upbuilding and sending of the church, all resonate with a distinctly free church vantage point. Additionally, I argue that Barth's theological interpretation of Matthew 18:20 (a verse of great significance for the free church tradition) further reveals his compatibility with free church ecclesiology. I conclude that while the traditional problems associated with evangelical reception of Barth need to be addressed and his doctrine of the church as grounded in Christ (and thus election) critically assessed, Barth does end up offering a resource that can inform the development of a theologically robust evangelical free church ecclesiology.

Dr. Gustav Edwards, President and Dean of the Bible Institute and Seminary of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church, 1916–1944

Dr. Gustav Edwards, President and Dean of the Bible Institute and Seminary of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church, 1916–1944

Mary Johnson and Ida Anderson

Mary Johnson (1884–1968) and Ida Anderson (1871–1964) are described in pentecostal historiography as the first pentecostal missionaries sent from America. Both of these Swedish-American missionaries experienced baptism of the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and were called as missionaries to Africa by God, whom they expected to speak through them to the native people. They went by faith and completed careers as missionaries to South Africa. But who were these two figures of which relatively little has been written? They were Swedish-American “Free-Free” in the tradition of August Davis and John Thompson of the Scandinavian Mission Society—the first Minnesota district of the Swedish Evangelical Free Mission, known today as the Evangelical Free Church of America. This work examines the lives of these two female missionaries, their work in South Africa, and their relationship with Swedish Evangelical Free churches in America, particularly its pentecostal stream of Free-Free (frifria).

Die evangelischen Freikirchen in der DDR – resümierende Bemerkungen

Summary This article summarises a number of presentations on Evangelical Free Churches in the GDR that were given at a conference under the same name at the Evangelical Academy in Thuringia in 2014. When considering the Moravian Church, the United Methodist Church, the Union of Evangelical Free Church Congregations in Germany (Baptists) as well as the Seventh Day Adventists in the GDR, there was consistent reference to greater and lesser amounts of adaptation to the requirements of the state. Building on these findings, this article encourages further methodical analysis of the relationship between the state and the Free Churches, potentially including a closer investigation of everyday life, motives and the Free Church’s individuality, together with that of their members, under the SED dictatorship.

August Davis and the Free-Free

August Davis (1852–1936) led a group of Swedish Free Mission Friends in America known as the Free-Free, an early branch of what is today the Evangelical Free Church of America. Davis and his followers were known for such phenomena as falling down in the Spirit, having ecstatic visions, uttering unintelligible sounds, communicating the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands, and teaching the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second work of grace. Such activities occurred mostly in Chicago, Illinois, and throughout western Minnesota between 1885 and 1900. Davis and the Free-Free had direct organizational ties in the Scandinavian Mission Society U.S.A. to emerging Swedish-American Pentecostals in Minnesota and South Dakota such as John Thompson, Mary Johnson, and Jacob Bakken. This group known pejoratively as the Free-Free is another of several impulses that birthed a distinctly Pentecostal form of Christianity in America.

Good Worship: An Evangelical Free Church Perspective

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91–93. Fran Tonkiss, Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 127. Tonkiss usefully summarizes de Certeau on this point. Robert R. C. H. Chia and R. Holy, Strategy without Design: The Silent Efficacy of Indirect Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 148. See foreword to Robert Byars, What Language Shall I Borrow?: The Bible and Christian Worship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), xi. “What Kind of People Are We Forming with Our Worship? An Interview with Isaac Wardell,” Resurgence, http://theresurgence.com/2011/03/10/what-kind-of-people-are-we-forming-with-our-worship, accessed September 1, 2013. Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology (New York: Pueblo Press, 1984), 74. See Bill Bryson, Short History of Nearly Everything (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), 143–44. Kathleen Norris, “The Uncertainty Principle,” in Little Girls in Church (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), 39. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMelanie RossMelanie Ross is an assistant professor of liturgical studies at Yale Divinity School and Yale Institute of Sacred Music, New Haven, Connecticut.

Affective Commitment to Congregations

This study identified four multidimensional factors that significantly influence affective commitment of church members to their congregations. The sample (N = 382) consisted of members of three congregations: Unitarian Universalist (UU), United Methodist (UMC), and Evangelical Free Church (EFC). Stepwise multiple regression—with affective commitment to the congregation treated as the dependent variable—revealed that committed members in all three congregations valued their churches as sources of spiritual experiences, but they wanted these experiences delivered to them efficiently. The importance attached to programs and services offered by their congregations appeared as a significant factor in only one congregation (UMC). Suggestions for additional research are offered.

Second chance. Seizing a sacred moment.

Jan Wilson, MSN, APRN, an RN for twenty-seven years and a nurse practitioner for the past nine, is employed by Community Substance Abuse Centers, Incorporated. Her community nursing experience includes work with homeless women and children, and people with HIV/AIDS. She attends Westfield Evangelical Free Church in Westfield, Massachusetts, and facilitates the Western Massachusetts Christian Writer's Fellowship. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: For additional insight and thoughtful questions, see www.ncf-jcn.org/jcn/archive/04sp/04sp_jwp6.html for a direct link.

A gift of tears.

Alice Teisan, BS, RN, has nineteen years' experience as an RN. She has volunteered with the Luke Society in Chicago's uptown area, teaching and mentoring lay health workers. She lives in Wheaton, Illinois, and attends Wheaton Evangelical Free Church. Alice enjoys prayer ministry.Figure

Charting Your Personal Boundaries

Ruth Snapp, RN, MSN, continuing education director and national conference director for Nurses Christian Fellowship®, has taught the Rhythms of Rest and Work course in Wichita, Kansas. Ruth's first degree was in English literature. She attends First Evangelical Free Church in Wichita.Figure

Overcoming Self-sufficiency

Jan Wilson, RN, MSN, an RN for 26 years and a nurse practitioner for the past eight, recently retired to raise two adopted children. Her experience is in the community setting with women and children and the homeless, particularly those with substance abuse and HIV/AIDS. She attends Living Gate Evangelical Free Church in Granby, Massachusetts, and has been on several mission trips, as well as providing primary care locally to migrant agricultural workers.Figure

Pilgrims in lotus land: conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917-1981

Burkinshaw traces the growth of conservative Protestantism in British Columbia from its clashes with liberal Protestants in the early twentieth century; through the post-World War II years when a bewildering variety of smaller groups, including Baptist and Pentecostal denominations as well as Mennonite, Reformed, and Evangelical Free churches, became important; to the 1970s when the majority of worshipping Protestants belonged to evangelical groups. He examines the factors that made evangelicalism more adaptable to changes in the geographic, ethnic, and social distribution of the province's population, and argues that while the evangelical movement in BC was influenced by American fundamentalism it was not simply an extension of the American campaign. He also examines the impact of evangelicals on provincial politics, most particularly their role in the rise of the Social Credit Party. Burkinshaw provides a wealth of new information on the phenomenon of twentieth-century evangelicalism and challenges us to rethink the nature of religious conservatism.