Thursday, November 28, 2013

Gustav Adolph Lutheran Church in New Sweden, Maine

New Sweden, Maine
(Photo taken on June 21, 1942, by Carl Nelson)

While a student at Augustana College Seminary in Rock Island, Illinois, my dad did an internship at Gustav Adolph.  He graduated from the Seminary in 1943, accepting a call at Messiah Lutheran Church in Auburn, Washington.

And here he is -- ready to make his way from Rockford, Illinois.  Dad was always up for a road trip.  Like father, like son, in that regard.


From the Augustana College timeline.    During the first half of the 1940s, Augustana felt the effects of World War II as it lost some students to the armed services and gained others through a cadet training program organized by the Department of War. Thanks to the G. I. Bill, enrollment increased significantly after the war's end, as it did at colleges and universities throughout the United States. The biggest change Augustana experienced in this decade, however, was to the structure of the school itself: in 1947, the Augustana Synod voted to separate the college and theological seminary. President Bergendoff lamented the synod's decision as going counter to Augustana's premises and strengths; the united college and seminary, he wrote in his president's report of 1947-1948, had been "testimony to an academic world, all too split into unrelated parts, that our Church believed that all truth is of God and all learning is related to the Word." 

Photo source  Maine: An Encyclopedia (New Sweden)
Gustav Adolph Lutheran Church in 2003

Speaking of 2003......

Church poisoning may never be solved.  (ABC News, 4/27/2003)
Back to church in New Sweden, Maine.  (CBS News, 5/2/2003)

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