Description

Georg Sverdrup (1848-1907) served as professor and president of Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis during the latter part of the great Norwegian migration to America. This book serves an introduction to his life and thought, exploring his vision for Lutheranism among the Norwegian immigrant population in America. Along the way, it summarizes the history of Norwegian Lutheranism from the Reformation up to Sverdrup’s day, with a particular focus on Erik Pontoppidan’s Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed, (Truth unto Godliness), as this became a de facto confessional standard for Norwegian Lutheranism, alongside the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism. After presenting a brief biographical sketch of Sverdrup’s life, the book examines how he believed the Christian life was to be lived out by individual believers, by members of a congregation, and by congregations and individual believers interacting with the broader community. Through it all, Sverdrup is shown to be a biblical theologian who represented the best of what G. Everett Arden called “Confessional Pietism,” that is, the tradition of Orthodox Lutheran Pietism.