British evangelical missions to Sweden in the first half of the nineteenth century

Abstract

Early in the nineteenth century, four Christian missionaries went from Great Britain to Sweden - from one Christian country to another. The free evangelical type of Christianity which they represented was vastly different from the orthodox Lutheran Christianity in Sweden and made a lasting impact on Swedish Christians. It is the aim of this study to show, by bringing together the total efforts of these missionaries, that their work was directly involved in and in many respects led to the rise of evangelical Christianity, the revivals at the middle of the century, and to the abrogation of the Conventicle Edict, which was the beginning of religious freedom in Sweden. Basic information was available through early non-critical biographies of three of the men, while a more recent in-depth biography has been written on the fourth. Information concerning their work was found in many letters from these men and others in the archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, and the Baptist Missionary Society in London; of the United Society for Christian Literature (formerly the Religious Tract Society) in Guildford; and of the Congregational Church in Edinburgh. Minutes of the Committees of these organizations as well as their annual reports provided further information. In Sweden, the archives of the Evangelical Society, the Swedish Bible Society, the Swedish Temperance Society, the Society Pro Fide et Christianismo and the Evangelical Nativeland Society, all in Stockholm, furnished primary material. Through information gathered from these sources, together with help from various historical accounts, the vital contributions of these men to the religious life in Sweden at that time is examined and discussed. Their work is shown to have provided an impetus which sparked the early revivals into a burning movement by mid-century and which played a significant part in the development of freedom of religion in Sweden.