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In this post, we are going to discuss the History of the Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church centralized in four states in India – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bengal, and Jharkhand. There are five Dioceses – Dumka, Bagsarai, Suri, Grahampur, and Bongaigaon in this Church.
The History of Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church
The Church Founder Missionaries
a) Rev. A. Lesley
The Indian Home Mission to Santal originated from the Baptist Missionary Societies to the Santal’s work. One of the BMS missionaries Rev. A. Lesley stationed in the Raj Mahal Hills was the first missionary; known to have attempted to work among the Santal.
He studied their language, custom, and manners and visited Santal villages, and made some young convert. Unfortunately, Lesley compelled to leave India for health reasons in the year 1841.
b) Rev. R. J. Ellis
After 13 years, again BMS came in conduct with the Santals. Rev. R. J. Ellis of Suri did some preliminary work among the santal of Birbhum District, in the Southern part of Santal Pargana.
He had a strong wish to take up regular work among them. But in the year 1864, suddenly he transferred to another district.
c) Mr. E. C. Johnson
E. C. Johnson is the founder of the Baptist Mission to Santals. Johnson was an old military family, who choose the military profession as a career.
He took part in the Crimean War and later sent to India where he fought in the Sepoy Rebellion. Having undergone a Spiritual change in his life. He resigned from the military service and joined the BMS as a missionary.
So, the BMS sent him to Suri, as a missionary where Rev. R. J. was working at the beginning of 1865.
Johnson too became interested in the Santals and having studied their languages and made his headquarters at Belbuni, a Santal village lying some 14 miles north of Suri in the District of Santal Pargana.
There established a school for Santal Children and began touring the nearby village and preaching the Gospel. Johnson did not stay long in the Santal work.
A lion attacked him in the Amchua village of Nankar District on the 10th of February 1869. The lion injured him and brought him to the hospital at Rampur hat. His left arm had amputated and after that his missionary work ended.
d) Hans Peter Boerresen
He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1825. Shortly after his confirmation, he became an apprentice in a blacksmith shop. In 1852, he left Copenhagen, and settle in Berlin, where he found a well-paid job in a locomotive factory.
He spent all his spare time in further studies and became a very able mechanic. His wife, who was from a strict religious family, brought him in contact with the Rev. Gustava Knak of the Bethlehem Church in Berlin.
This Church, which was foreign-mission-minded, and inter-denominationally evangelical in creed; became Boerressen’s Spiritual home and the center for his religious activities. Though Boerressen always remained a member of the Lutheran Church, he declares himself to be a “no party man”, who was ready to co-operate with people of different church bodies.
Boerressen does not seem to have felt a particular missionary call. His wife, could not suppress her strong wish to go to the mission field, and after they had lost their three children in succession, her great sorrow again forces upon her the thought of becoming a missionary. Finally, in 1863, they offered themselves to the General Meeting as missionary candidates and were sent to India at the end of 1864, arriving in Barrakpur on the 6th of April, 1866.
e) Lars Olsen Skrefsrud
He was born on 5th February 1840 in Norway. His father was an efficient blacksmith and carpenter but spent most of his earnings on liquor. The family lived in great poverty, and the children sometimes even had to beg for their bread from well-to-do neighbors.
Lars had been trained as a mechanic in a local mechanical factory in Lillehammer, planned to go to Oslo, the capital, for further training, when things happened which threw a shadow over his forever.
He fell into bad company and was led astray. Soon he developed the drinking habit and became involved in several thefts, followed by imprisonment in Lillehammer and Oslo from the first of June, 1858, to the twelfth of October, 1861.
Lars Olsen Skrefsrud’s Christian life
In prison, he experienced a spiritual revival that led him to personal Christian faith. There he also made up his mind to become a missionary. After being released from prison, he applied to the Norwegian Missionary Society for Stavanger.
His application was rejected on the ground that the Society could not accept a man with a prison record. On the advice of an old leader of the Moravian brethren in Stavanger, Mr. S. Due, he left Norway and went to Germany, trusting that God who had called him would also eventually open the door to the missionary field for him.
He was accepted as a missionary candidate by the Gossner Mission, and after a short training program, he left for India in the month of November 1863. One and a half years later, his fiancée, Anna Onsum, the daughter of a well-known farmer in Faaberg, joined him in Purulia, and they were married on the twenty-third of May, 1864. Anna Onsum Skrefsrud died at Benagaria on May 5, 1870.
The Missionaries’ works of Northrn Evangelical Luthern Church
While Johnson was occupied with the establishment of the Santal work in Belbuni, he became acquainted with the Danish missionary, Mr. Hans Peter Boerresen, and his Norwegian colleague, Lars Olsen Skrefrud. They had both come out as missionaries in the Gossner Mission and had worked a short time in Purulia among the Coles and Hindus. Certain divergences between them and the senior missionary in Ranchi, the Rev. Fr. Batsch, had forced them to leave the Gossner mission at the end of 1865. They were now in search of a new field for missionary work and when Johnson invited them to come and work with him among the Santals, they readily agreed.
Though Johnson was very eager to secure the services of Boerressen and Skrefsrud, it also had its difficulties. Johnson was a Baptist missionary of BMS, while Skrefsrud and Boerressen were Lutherans. Johnson immediately wrote to the BMS, proposing that the Society should accept them even if they had not received adult baptism. His intention was that they should work only as an evangelist under his direction and that all Church matters should be left to him to decide. He also anticipated that both of them even would soon receive adult baptism. Though Skrefsrud changed his view regarding adult baptism and was re-baptized in the Lower Road Chapel on April 5, 1868, the BMS found it impossible to accept them as missionaries in their work, mainly because of financial difficulties.
Inauguration of Santal Mission
Johnson and his two colleagues have decided to work together among the Santals, set about to find a suitable place from which they could work. After a long search, Johnson and Skrefsrud selected a side twelve miles west of Rampur Hat, a station on the Loop Line of the East Indian Railway.
It was the top of a sloping hill where the three villages Chitragadia, Benagaria, and Kuamul joined. The countryside around was scattered with Santal villages.
Skrefsrud and Johnson, who on finding and determining the place erected on it a memorial of heaped stones, consecrated it with prayers, and sang: “Here, I raise my Ebenezer: Hither by thy help I come.” Thereupon they named the plateau Ebenezer, the name later given to the station itself.
Foundation of buildings
On September 26th, 1867, they started to dig trenches for the foundation of the first buildings, and this date has since been celebrated as the birthday of the Mission. At the end of 1868 two fairly large-sized bungalows, a Schoolhouse which also was used for service, a boarding house for school children, and a house for School teachers were ready.
From the very beginning, regular Sunday service was held in the Santali and the Bengali languages. The audience consisted of school children, school teachers, the workers hired to erect the boardings, and occasional visitors.
First covert members
In November 1868, the first coverts for baptism were four boys in the boarding school. Three of them were baptized on Easter Sunday, March 28, 1869; they were Raghu, Jogot, and Siram.
On December 19, 1869, Sunday the other four were baptized, three young boys, and one old man. In the afternoon the same day, the small congregation gathered around the Table of the Lord for the first time, and thereafter a congregational meeting was held.
The first Santal Church was formally established. Skrefsrud accepted the pastorship of the Church for the time being until a suitable Santal pastor could be appointed and several visitors were present on this occasion.
Baptism of Matru Pargana and Narayan
Up to 1874, the work progressed slowly, because there were opposition leaders Matru Pargana and his brother Narayan, who was the village master (manjhi) of Benagaria. Matru called a meeting and they decided in council that they would meet on a certain day and drive the missionaries away. They would also expel the Christian Santal converts and make them out-cast. But before this took place, the Magistrate arrived and arrested Matru Pargana on charges brought against him or earlier offenses. Matru returned from jail some eight months later in broken health. He sought several Santal medicine men in order to regain his health, but to no avail.
Finally, he was brought back to Benagaria only to await death. Then Skrefsrud went to him, prayed for him, and gave him some medicine. Shortly afterward Matru became well, and then his attitude towards the missionaries and the Christian changed completely. On January 19th, 1873, he received baptism and some days later also his brother Narayan became a Christian. Until 1st January 1873; the Christian community numbers was 285 and was organized into seven small congregations.
Skrefsrud’s work during the Famine
There was a famine in 1874. People were not getting food and drinking water. This year Skrefsrud dug the ponds in Benagaria by santals people. The workers had got money because of work. Skrefsrud preached Gospel daily one hour before the work. At the end of this year, 1592 people were baptized and Christianity spread to more than 144 Villages. So, Skrefsrud appointed several part-time evangelists among them Surju, Hindu, Jogot, Bunsing, Ragda, Chand, Kuar, Siram, Dukhia. On April 9, 1876, there was first two pastor ordinate in Benagaria Church; one was Siram Soren who went Assam for his ministry and passed way there, another was Surju Murmu from the village of Dhorompur passed way in 1914.
At the close of 1877, the church numbered some seven thousand members baptized and nominal, that is including the children of Christian families. The majority of these lived in Nankar, but after the mass movement, considerable numbers lived in the Sultanabad district, and scattered Christian families also found in Jubdi and other Districts.