Things I learned while looking for something else. Interesting history up here in the North Country and our connections. Reading my mothers memoirs I was surprised how many of our relatives moved to Wisconsin and then on to Minnesota before taking the big plunge and heading for North Dakota. Many of the towns that were founded have interesting history about how they were settled and created and chartered.
I came across an interesting article written by a man named R. P. Sieving in an old doctrinal essay a book called “The Abiding Word“. Seiving is talking about how so many people who denied Jesus Christ and wanted nothing to do with him, were later in some way, found to advance the work of Christ or not live to see how the places they were close too became Christian strongholds. His first example is the printing press from which Voltaire sought to write in such a way to destroy Christianity was later dedicated exclusively to the printing of the Bible in France.
It’s even goes closer to home. He tells the story of a group of people led by John Thien who is so anti-Christian that he settled into a town which would later because Thiensville Wisconsin. The people who moved there swore they would never have a church built within their bounds. Supposedly they baptized people not according to the Scriptural commands, but in the name of the United States. They sought desperately to keep Christianity out of their town and village and according to the author it is surpassing strange that today a Lutheran theological seminary of the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod is in the town, and not far away is our Concordia Mequon University.
But the author is not done. He wants to go after Young America Minnesota which according to him was founded by atheists who swore they would not be bothered by Churches. Yet according to that author his pastor baptized the last of those who held out against the word of God and were a part of the cabal in Young America.
Lastly, Seiving talks about New Ulm, Minnesota, likewise started by people who wanted to have nothing to do with Christianity and once again what is there, but a Lutheran college and many Christian congregation’s.
I can’t find any North Dakota Townsend were set up to be atheist. We have a few started by Christians that have gone atheistic however.
The Abiding Word is a series of doctrinal essays that you can find at Concordia Publishing House –
COPYRIGHT 1960 BY
CONCORDIA. PUBLISHING HOUSE
SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURl
LIBARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD No. 47-19571
