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Reviewed by:
  • Conrad Bergendoff’s Faith and Work: A Swedish-American Lutheran, 1895–1997 by Thomas Tredway, and: Preaching from Home: The Stories of Seven Lutheran Women Hymn Writers by Gracia Grindal
  • Mark Safstrom
Thomas Tredway. Conrad Bergendoff’s Faith and Work: A Swedish-American Lutheran, 1895–1997. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Historical Society, 2014. Pp. 407.
Gracia Grindal. Preaching from Home: The Stories of Seven Lutheran Women Hymn Writers. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011. Pp. 363.

The challenge of the biographer, particularly of prominent figures within religious denominations, is to avoid a number of pitfalls, including hagiography and filiopietism (the reverence for saints and ancestors), as well as the teleological view that often accompanies the chronicles of founding fathers and mothers of institutions. Two recent examples of authors who navigate these hazards brilliantly are Thomas Tredway and Gracia Grindal, who each demonstrate in their different ways that one can be both a “member of the choir” and a clear-eyed critical historian. Both authors present thematic discussion of their subjects, and integrate them well into their cultural, literary, and historical contexts: Tredway does this by placing clergyman and academic Conrad Bergendoff into dialogue with modernity in twentieth-century Sweden and Swedish America, Grindal by juxtaposing the varied experiences of seven women poets from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and placing them [End Page 85] against a 500-year history of women’s gradually increasing participation in congregational and public leadership. The resulting comparisons and conclusions of each work contribute to an expanded understanding of the way in which these specifically Lutheran figures interacted with their respective secular, denominational, and ecumenical contexts.

For anyone investigating the history of the former Augustana Lutheran Synod or its remaining congregations and colleges (Augustana, Gustavus, Bethany), it is not long before the name of Conrad Bergendoff emerges as a consequential figure who gave shape and definition to this large segment of Swedish America. Beginning his career as a pastor, and transitioning during the 1920s into the role of educator and college president (Augustana College and Seminary, Rock Island), Bergendoff spent a majority of his career exploring and seeking to bridge “the great gap [that] existed in American universities between religion and education,” as Tredway explains it (p. 52). Seeking out a secular education in history at the University of Chicago, Bergendoff demonstrated a desire to emerge from the enclave of the Swedish American Lutheran community and engage with the more “mainline” American society. At the same time, Bergendoff represented a last generation of synod leaders who were able to move fluidly between American and Swedish circles. During his doctoral studies, Bergendoff found his way to Sweden and into the tutelage of none other than Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, under whose guidance Bergendoff wrote an enduring classic of Reformation Era studies, Olavus Petri and the Ecclesiastical Transformation in Sweden (Macmillan, 1928). In his evaluation of Bergendoff’s prolific career, Tredway draws from this and the fourteen other books written by him, in addition to unpublished papers and well over 400 articles, reviews, and pamphlets, to give a full perspective on Bergendoff’s thoughts on a host of topics (the staggering number of primary sources synthesized by Tredway likely ranks this among the more thorough biographies ever written on a Swedish American subject). For Tredway, this intensive research was clearly a labor of love; he himself served as a history professor and college president at Augustana, and there is evident respect in his voice as he examines the larger-than-life footprint of his predecessor and parses out the range of ideas and factors that shaped the college and one of its chief architects.

This 360-degree-view of the man and his times presents an often conflicted picture of Bergendoff’s evolving opinions on complex issues such as the relationship of the Augustana Synod to the Church of Sweden, the Young Church Movement in Sweden, the Social Gospel movement, secularization in the United States and Sweden, modern science, the Pietist heritage within Augustana, and ecumenical movements like the Lutheran [End Page 86] World Federation and the World Council of Churches. Tredway charts the role that Bergendoff played in defining how Lutherans interacted in...

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