9 Regional Diversity, Religious Disunity, and Agrarian Movements In Two NorwegianAmerican Communities by Steven J. Keillor It was the summer of 1881 and the twelve-year-old Lake Hanska Lutheran congregation had outgrown its meeting place, the old District 31 schoolhouse in southeastern (Section 26) Lake Hanska township, Brown county, Minnesota. Alone on the prairie with no supporting sanctuary or steeple, the church s cemetery lay half a mile east of the school. Tradition dictated that the congregation build a church at the cemetery site, but many members lived north and west of the school, and three lakes between the school and them further lengthened their journey on Sundays. They opposed moving even half a mile farther east. Linden township, like Lake Hanska township over 75 percent Norwegian American in 1880, bordered it on the east, but only a minority of the church's members lived in Linden. The congregation, a member of the Norwegian Synod, held seven special meetings within seventeen months to try to agree on a new site, but to no avail. On June 8, 1881, Christian Ahlness made a motion, "if it was thought that unity could be obtained," that the church "be built near" the school. Its conditional clause was not met - was probably not even meant seriously - for the majority had concluded that further attempts to reach a consensus were futile. His resolution passed by a 14- to-8 vote. Two months later, "many of the congregation s members" submitted a written statement of resignation "on account of the church not being built 301 302 Steven J. Keillor at the cemetery." After their reason for withdrawal was rejected as invalid, they formed Nora Church on August 21, 1881, "on the basis of it remaining independent and not entering any distinct synod in this country."1 The Norwegian- American community of Lake Hanska and Linden, later known as Hanska, was thus split between Lutheranism and Unitarianism and it later became a hotbed of agrarian protest and farmers' cooperatives. Hanska s farmers formed a suballiance , helped elect Ahlness to the state legislature, and organized a cooperative creamery and store. Did religious division aid or hinder their agrarian activism? Or perhaps it had some other effect on the latter - or maybe no effect at all. Robert Ostergren s model of separate social and economic communities for Swedish Americans in Isanti county, Minnesota, predicts that Hanska 's farmers would keep their religious and economic roles separate.2 The seceders ' move from a Lutheran to a Unitarian creed also raises the question of how deeply embedded the Lutheran confession of faith ( Trosbekjennelse ) was in the minds of many of the NorwegianAmerican congregants reciting it each Sunday. Similar division and agrarian activism marked the Norwegian- American community of Underwood in Otter Tail county, Minnesota, where another Unitarian group was formed in 1889. The Farmers' Alliance, an agrarian movement that turned to third-party politics, was also strong in the townships near Underwood and farmers formed their own mutual fire insurance company and cooperative store. The same questions apply to Underwood as to Hanska. Church and cooperative minutes have been preserved for both Hanska and Underwood - and the sub-alliance minutes for Lake Hanska - so that primary sources exist to begin to answer the questions.3 Since Lake Hanska and Linden were settled first and split first by religious controversy, we can begin there. It is not clear to what degree those who seceded in 1881 disagreed with Lutheran doctrine. They claimed that other issues besides the site for a church were also of concern. The church minutes refer only to the site-selection dispute, but four pages from 1880-1881 seem to be missing. Twenty-five years later, Unitarian leader Ole Jorgensen recalled that they separated over "certain strictly local matters" and Two Norwegian- American Communities 303 tried to call a Lutheran pastor for their new congregation. Their president, Johannes Mo, tried to contact Pastor M. Falk Gjertsen of the Conference, but Gjertsen did not respond to Mos letters. Jorgensen sarcastically surmised, "The shepherds had evidently entered into a compact not to steal sheep from each other's ranches."4 Having read in the Norwegian- American newspapers of Kristofer Janson...