Tuesday, May 13, 2025

It is the 13th of May 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

This show has everything: Radical Swedish pietists, a utopian community in Illinois, kidnapping, and murder!

Our story begins with Erik Jansson, born in rural Sweden in 1808, the son of a farmer and baptized into the state Lutheran Church. He believed himself to be miraculously cured and had a mystical experience as a young man that drew led him to believe he was specifically chosen for ministry. He was initially in the Swedish Läsare movement- this was a group of Lutherans who met, often illegally, to read devotional literature. These groups that resembled home churches tended to be rural and increasingly critical of the established state church, hence their being illegal. Jansson would eventually break with even the more radical “new” läsare, first in his radical claim to be the “greatest light since the apostles” and the “vicar of Christ on earth” and then to go beyond the pale of orthodoxy in teaching not only a type of Christian perfectionism (claiming that Christians could and should, in this lifetime, be free of sin) and that the children of believers were thus free of the stain of original sin on account of their sinless parents.

By the mid-1840s, Jannson’s home church was growing and attracted the ire of local officials. He sent a member to New York to inquire into where the group might emigrate. They were told that land was for sale in the Northwest area of Illinois. The group would go there and name the new community after Jansson’s birthplace of Biskopskulla (apologies to my Swedish listeners), which in English is Bishops Hill.

The initial shock was an outbreak of Cholera that took nearly a quarter of the 400 Jansonists that came over, and the second was when they were not miraculously gifted with the ability to speak English, as many of them believed.

[A quick note: these are “Janssonists” with an O, as the ones with an ‘e’ are followers of the French catholic Cornelius Jansen]

The early years were difficult, but with the development of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad, the members were given work, and then nearby Galva (named for the seaport many of them left from in Sweden) became a center for shipping and trading their surplus goods.

A group was sent out to California in 1850 to inquire about the news of gold, but tragedy back home led to the group's demise.

Jansson’s cousin, Charlotte, was his ward, and he was concerned when a Swedish immigrant who had come from New Orleans, John Root, asked for her hand in marriage. Concerned that Root was feigning piety and allegiance to the group, Jannson had a clause added to their marriage license that if he were to leave the group, she could annul the marriage.

When Root made his intentions clear that he wanted to leave the group, he attempted to take Charlotte and their newborn child. She refused and was forcibly taken by Root, only to be saved by a group of Jannsonists in hot pursuit. This was repeated a number of times with Charlotte making it clear that she wants to stay with her family in Bishop’s Hill.

For unrelated reasons, both Jansson and Root would find themselves at the courthouse in nearby Cambridge, Illinois, on this, the 13th of May in 1850. Whether premeditated or not, Root used the occasion to attack Jansson and fatally shot him with his pistol. With the death of Jansson, his followers anticipated his resurrection three days later, but this of course did not happen, and the group fizzled. It is also indicative of radical groups, increasingly cut off from others, believing in their own inherent righteousness and corruption of everyone else, that go from idiosyncratic and peculiar to outright heretical. However, the fact that Jansson did not rise again and that sin is one of our most verifiable doctrines in the “real world” led the followers to abandon his teachings; some joined the Methodists, while others found their utopian itch scratched in the nearby communes of Nauvoo and the Amana Colonies.

19th-century Utopianism was largely destroyed by the wars of the 20th century, but while it lasted, it gave us some curious colonies and characters, like Erik Jansson, who was murdered on this, the 13th of May in 1850.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Acts 9 with Peter’s ministry:

32 As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s people who lived in Lydda. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. 34 “Aeneas,” Peter said to him, “Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat.” Immediately Aeneas got up. 35 All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 13th of May 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows that Peter goes on to heal Tabitha, whose name in Greek makes him giggle; he is Christopher Gillespie

The show is written and read by a man who recently heard about the Swedish Prime Minister having difficulty putting together his cabinet - apparently, you need a little metal tool and a complicated series of pictures… I’m Dan van Voorhis 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.