Johan Storm Munch (evangelist)

Johan Storm Munch (21 October 1827 – 13 August 1908) was a Norwegian minister who served as pastor to pioneer Lutheran churches in southern Wisconsin from 1855-1859 before returning to Norway and becoming a popular evangelist.

Munch was born in Kristiansand, the son of Lutheran Bishop Johan Storm Munch. The bishop died when the son was only four, leaving the family without an income. However, the Munchs belonged to the cultured social class in Norway, which meant that the younger Johan Storm was expected to get a higher education despite his family’s impoverished situation. He worked as a tutor and finished a theology degree in 1852, but continued teaching until he received a call in 1854 to serve pioneer parishes in Wiota and Dodgeville, Wisconsin. He borrowed money from his father-in-law for the trip and set off with his new bride.

The Church of Norway at the time operated as part of the National government and ministers were state employees. The church’s sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and marriage were performed on behalf of both church and state and were compulsory for every Norwegian. Munch, however, was strongly in favor of a “free” church and looked forward to his time in America where state and religion were separate.

In Wiota, Wisconsin, the Munchs lived near the church, but the pastor also served other Norwegian-speaking settlements, traveling by horse and buggy and often being gone for days at a time. He soon realized he and his parishioners had different ideas of freedom. Freedom for the Norwegian peasant pioneers meant social equality, freedom from the social differentiation conventional in Norway at the time. The presence of a Norwegian professional minister and his family, with refined manners, dress, and speech was a constant source of irritation and was felt by some to be a threat to their newly won freedom. The pioneers wanted preaching and the administration of sacraments within the church building, but any interference in their private lives was regarded as a transgression on their individual freedom.

Munch was strongly in favor of a free church but had no patience with those who confused liberty with license in moral or theological matters. He did not believe in Christianity in name only, which was a tradition some peasant settlers had brought with them from Norway, and would not relinquish his role as guardian of morals in his congregation or his responsibility as curator of the parishioners’ souls. He attempted to deny the sacraments to those who in his judgment were in living in vice and sin unless, in private confession, they showed genuine signs of repentance. This brought him into deep conflict with his parishioners. Sometimes bedridden with nervous headaches, Munch decided to return to Norway after four years in America.

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