The congregation was now threatened with a serious disruption. And some said the pastor himself had caused this.
— 2—
After the visit to Dr. Farnley in Stillwater Karl Oskar saw to it that Kristina followed the doctors orders. She took her medicine, avoided the heaviest chores, and lay down to rest for a time each day. Already after a few weeks she began to feel stronger. The bleedings diminished and soon stopped entirely, while her appetite and strength returned. And when the sun again began to feel warm after the coldest winter they had ever experienced, she quickened for every day. Never had she been so glad to hear the first dripping from the eaves, never had she felt such joy at seeing the first blades of grass sprouting, never had a spring brought her such fresh renewal.
One day in Easter week when she was busy with spring cleaning, Manda Svensson came to call.
Kristina had not seen their neighbor woman for many weeks and had wondered about this.
Manda had completely changed. Her eyes were wild and roaming and her mind disturbed: “I don’t know what to do! Can you help me, Kristina?”
Manda had helped them many times during the winter. Today she herself needed help.
“What in all the world. .? What is the matter?”
“Trouble in my soul.”
“In your soul. .?”
Kristina stopped still with the broom in her hand. Manda had always been neat and clean, but today she looked dirty and sloppy, her hair hung in strings down her cheeks.
“Kristina!” It came like a wail. “I doubt the Lutherans have got it right. If I should die I’m afraid I’ll be lost.”
Now Kristina could guess what had happened; her neighbor had listened to Fredrik Nilsson, who said that a person must experience a new baptism in order to earn salvation. And Manda had felt that every word he said was true and right. Immersion seemed to her the only, the glorious, the true religion. She had started to doubt and worry. Should she leave their church and be baptized? For several weeks she had been unable to sleep nights, she only turned and twisted and suffered.
“What does Algot think?”
“He doesn’t want to go through another baptism. He wants to remain a Lutheran.”
“That isn’t good. A couple should not separate in religion.”
“Exactly what Algot says! I want to become a Baptist and he wants to remain a Lutheran. Who must give in?” And she looked expectantly, questioningly at Kristina.
“Have you talked to our pastor?”
“Yes, but he only condemns me. He calls Nilsson a false prophet, a seducer who should be put in jail. But he is really a martyr, like St. Stephen.”
What Kristina heard depressed her. Must difference in religion now part married couples also, whom God had joined together?
“Pastor Stenius doesn’t leave us in peace a moment, he wants so to baptize our little son.”
Algot and Manda had a boy about six months old. He should have been christened long ago but it had been delayed because of the intense cold when babies couldn’t be taken outside. And since the mother had begun to doubt the Lutheran tenets, she didn’t want her son baptized in that faith. But Pastor Stenius gave her no peace. She actually had to hide the child from him.
“You mean he wants to christen him by force?” asked Kristina in surprise.
“The pastor says it is his duty to christen the child. He would rather see a mother throw her offspring right into a fire than leave it to the Anabaptists.”
“But he can’t christen him against the will of the parents?”
“It’s his duty as pastor, he says.”
And Manda told how Pastor Stenius, the day before, in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Olausson had come to their house; empowered by his office he was going to baptize their heathen child. Olausson and his wife, known as upright Christians, were to be the witnesses. Algot was out in the forest and she was alone at home. The pastor walked out into the kitchen and took down her fine soup tureen from its shelf, the one with blue flowers and leaves. Then he had ordered her to put on a kettle of pure water and when it was lukewarm pour it into the soup bowl which he wanted to use as a font. The Olaussons aided the minister and tried to frighten her: God’s doom would be upon her if the child were lost because she refused to have it baptized.
But she didn’t put on any water, nor did she swaddle the little one in christening-veil — she refused to hand him over for baptism.
She had been so upset she didn’t know what to do, but when Mrs. Olausson poured the water into the tureen and Pastor Stenius opened his book, she had picked up her lastborn from his crib, wrapped a shawl around him, and run outside. She had run as fast as she could, a long way into the forest. There she had hidden in some bushes for a whole hour while the child cried to high heaven. At last she discovered why he hollered so — he was covered with ants and his whole body was red. Then she had gone home to put something on to ease the itch, and by that time the uninvited guests had left.
But now she was afraid they might come back sometime when she was out, and Algot would let them baptize the boy in the Lutheran religion.
“But they can’t do it by force,” Kristina comforted the worried mother. “Not here in America.”
“The minister says I’ve forgotten my duties, and he must christen the child because God has ordered him to.”
“In the old country they could do as they pleased, they were that mighty, but not here.”
Kristina recalled that the minister at home in Ljuder had forcibly christened one of the Akians’ children many years ago. It was her Uncle Danjel’s father in Kärragärde who had thus been baptized while the parents were away. The minister had feared the Akians would themselves christen the child and he had wanted to save the newborn from the sectarians. The parents had been in the field haying and had left the boy at home with an old feeble-minded woman. The minister knew this and had used the opportunity. The Akians had been greatly incensed, but the minister had only replied: While the negligent parents harvested fodder for the cattle — which seemed to them more valuable than their child’s salvation — he had harvested a soul for God’s kingdom.
“But I don’t believe a forced baptism is holy and just,” said Kristina. “I think the pastor should leave the child alone until you and Algot agree about the christening.”
Manda Svensson rocked her body back and forth on the chair, her eyes red, her mind befuddled.
“But I’m worrying about my own salvation.” She wailed like a child. “Lutheran sermons don’t comfort my soul any longer. What shall I do?”
Kristina had not been ordained, she was no pastor — how could she help another person in spiritual trouble? But she could not let her neighbor leave without some comfort; she would tell her what she herself believed, she would share her own convictions:
There were said to be more than a hundred religions in America. But there was only one God. In her heart she felt there could only be one. Yes, she was absolutely sure of it! Those hundred religions could therefore be nothing but people’s inventions which God didn’t pay any attention to. God could never have meant that the teachings of the Prince of Peace should cause strife and disunity and quarrels among people. And he surely did not intend that ministers should start fighting about a human soul as soon as it was born into the world. The ministers were wrong in fighting with each other for innocent babes in their cradles.
Nor did she believe a person’s eternal salvation depended on membership in one congregation or another. Each one must seek God until he or she found him, and then she would know what was right; then she need no longer worry about eternity.