Historical Portrait

[These words were written by Sydney Ahlstrom, Lutheran scholar and longtime Yale professor at the dedication of Bethesda’s current church building in the fall of 1959.]

Bethesda – House of Grace
An Historical Portrait

“No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” These are the words of Our Lord (Lk. 9:62); and this congregation is not excepted from the more serious side of the judgment. Yet Bethesda may claim, for better of for worse, that at least it has not looked back with undue self-concern. No records were even ,kept of its organization meeting on January 4 th, 1883 – nor of its official proceedings during the three following years. The Rev. Dr. Gideon S. Ohslund in his “Golden Jubilee Souvenir” of 1933 could report that with the exception of a single twentieth-anniversary article in the “Augustana” for 1903, the history of Bethesda was unresearched and unwritten. The seventy-fifth anniversary has now come and gone and the situation is unchanged. The kindest thing to conclude, therefore, is that the congregation as a whole has kept its hands collectively and individually to the plough! What plough and to what effect the church has been spared that particular type of decadence born of nostalgia and excessive retrospection. A brief page in the dedication booklet will not change matters.

This congregation was first established in New Haven through the devotion and zeal of the thirty-one Swedish immigrants who signed the first constitution and a small but growing circle of early members. They belonged to a later phase of the great nineteenth-century migration from Sweden when America’s great frontier lay in its rapidly expanding cities. Unlike the preceding generation of Swedish people, who had, by and large, pushed on to the farm-lands of the West, Bethesda’s founders were involved in the sort of pioneering that brought New Haven from a city of 40,000 in l860 to nearly 110,000 at the turn of the century. They were thus beset by the special problems of urban evangelism (a predicament that at a later period made it necessary for the congregation to establish branch Sunday Schools in three different parts of the New Haven area). But from the first they were provided with excellent ministerial leadership.

The Rev. O. A. Landell of New Britain and a young seminarian associted with him, Ludvig Holmes, began the church’s work among New Haven’s Swedish Lutherans; and even before they had a regularly called pastor, the congregation had acquired their own house of worship, an unpretentious structure on the present site of Emanuel Lutheran Church on Humphrey Street. In the following year the newly ordained C. T. Sandstrom became their pastor. Though he stayed only three years, beginnings in almost every type of churchly activity were begun during his pastorate. But adversities of various sorts befell the young church during the next five years; the lack of a sustained ministry, indecision as to plans for relocation, the financial burdens. These difficulties were only deepened by the purchase in 1890 of the large and decrepit Methodist Church on St. John’s Street – though from that point forward the congregation was comforted and sustained by Herman Sodersten’s altar painting of Jesus’ rescue of the fearful Peter from the raging sea. (The painting is displayed in the narthex of the new church.)

Under its next two ministers Bethesda became a firmly grounded congregation, encouraged no doubt by the visit from Bishop K. H. G. von Schéele of Sweden in 1901 but due chiefly to the solid pastoral labors of Pastor A. J. Enstam and the foresight and determination of Pastor Augustus Nelson. Especially important was the decision made under Dr. Nelson to sell the St. John’s Street property and to build a new church at the corner of State and Franklin Streets. When dedicated in 1905, this edifice became the congregation’s third in two decades, aside from various temporary meeting places. It provided a spacious and beautiful sanctuary; and its white altar, graceful altar-ring, pulpit, and baptistry claimed the hearts of many due to aesthetic as well as sacred associations. Here the congregation probably reached the height of its development as a purely Swedish Lutheran congregation during the ministry of the Rev. Dr. Constantine M. Esbjörn, a fine Swedish scholar and a powerful preacher.

The anxieties of cultural transition that have been common to every American church of Continental heritage, came also to Bethesda during this period – most obviously in the context of the “language question.” Pastor Esbjörn’s successor, the Rev. Carl H. Nelson (1913-1923) made the first great shifts of practice by instituting English and Swedish services on alternate Sundays. He also undertook an extensive program of refurnishing and decorating. Perhaps indicatory of both the pastor’s energy and the effect of recognizing the importance of the English language, three hundred members were added to the rolls during his incumbency. The process of Americanization (if that be the word) was carried further by the eighth pastor, Rev. G. S. Ohslund (1923-1939) who served longer than any other minister in the congregation’s history. His pastorate began auspiciously with the Most Rev. Nathan Söderblom, Archbishop of Sweden, officiating at his installation, and it continued to be distinguished by the expansion of the church[s acdtivities and facilities. Under Dr. Ohslund the public services of the church came to be conducted preponderantly in the English language. With the installation of the Rev. Martin E. Carlson in 1945 Bethesda for the first time had a minister for whom Swedish was not an active second language.

During the sixteen years between the retirement of Pastor Ohslund and the installation of the present incumbent the congregation was served by three regular ministers, each of whom in characteristic ways exerted a powerful influence. Building on the work of their predecessors they have all sought to widen the interests and concerns of the parish. The responsibility to Lutheran students at Yale University has been increasingly recognized. Relationships with the other churches of New Haven and with the New Haven Council of Churches have been made more meaningful. Perhaps most important of all, the congregation was led increasingly to feel a missionary responsibility for all of the unchurched people of the city and not simply those of Swedish background. Reflecting this trend, the membership of Bethesda (like the Lutheran Church in America as a whole) has become more diverse in terms of its national or racial background. Somewhat anomalously, on the other hand, one may also note a deepened desire on the part of many to appropriate the riches of the Continental and Scandinavian church traditions; but this has been a cooperative and joint experience unaccompanied by linguistic or nationalistic overtones.

During the pastorate of the Rev. Paul Lorimer it became apparent that the impossibility of expanding the facilities at State Street and the drastically changed residential pattern of the congregation would require relocation and a building program. The project was begun with the purchase of the present property on St. Ronan Street and Whitney Avenue in 1953 and the construction of an education building in 1955-56. While this work was in progress, Pastor Lorimer accepted a call to another church; but the Rev. Luther R. Livingston, who was installed as the church’s twelfth minister in February, 1956, kept the project on schedule. All congregational activities were transferred to the new location two months later; and shortly thereafter plans for the construction of the sanctuary were set in motion. These dedication ceremonies are the culmination of this important phase in the church’s history.

The autumn of 1959 is a time of joyful thanksgiving for this congregation. It is especially a time for grateful remembrance of all the faithful Christians whose sacrifices and foresight through the vicissitudes of three-quarters of a century made our present opportunities possible. Yet the very act of dedication is a challenge. The congregation is humbled by the awesome fact that the end of one phase in its life is but the opening of another. The primary truth, therefore, is no different for the 1,020 baptized members of today’s parish than it was for the church’s thirty-one founders; faith and hope and love are the gifts of a merciful God. Bethesda’s prayer, now more than ever, is for contrition, charity, and strength – that having put its hand to the plough, it may be fit for the Kingdom and earnest in its response to that high calling.

Sydney A. Ahlstrom
1959