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| Eric Jansson (1808-1850), his family and others left Sweden for freedom in America. |
I asked our seminarian to visit Bishop Hill, near Moline, Illinois, which netted me a book called the Wheat Flour Messiah. The parallels with Bishop Martin Stephan are striking. Jansson was a wheat flour salesman.
Both men were poorly educated but charismatic leaders who attracted hundreds of followers and the hostility of the state officials. Stephan was a weaver.
Both were Pietists with extreme views about their holy lives. Their promiscuity was known by their followers but overlooked. Jansson traveled the Swedish countryside and pursued women in the style of Rasputin. Advocating holiness, his followers concluded his mind was pure but his body was adulterous. Traveling with some of his disciples, staying here and there, he became quite notorious.
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| Walther did not suddenly discover his bishop's adultery. The Stephanites left Europe because their leader was under house arrest. The outbreak of syphilis among the young women was the cause for rioting, robbing, and deposing Stephan. |
Martin Stephan was so active that he contracted syphilis, finding relief from his symptoms by walking late at night with young women and going to spas for medicinal baths. At one he stayed with his mistress but sent his pleading wife home. He installed one young woman in the parsonage and took his favorite mistress along when the Stephanites left for America. The Walther circle knew this but enforced his rigid and often bizarre rule over the followers.
Jansson considered himself the exemplar of the holy, the preacher, the teacher, the hymn-writer, and the catechism author.
Stephan's people had to agree with his exalted notion that the bishop was the Means of Grace, that Europe no longer had the Means of Grace when he left for America. Dissent from that position was punished.
- Jansson founded Bishop Hill, Illinois, in 1846. He forced celibacy on everyone but soon allowed marriage. Cholera and financial troubles set back their "New Jerusalem" and Jansson was shot dead by an angry husband.
- Bishop Stephan took his group to St. Louis and Perryville in 1839. Walther organized a riot, taking the bishop's land, gold, books, and personal possessions. Stephan was forced at gunpoint to cross over to Illinois. His mistress followed. He died in 1846.
Both men left behind historical landmarks, but the Missouri Synod has fabricated its history to hide the cult behavior, the extreme Pietism, and the complicity of the Walther circle. Perryville-Altenburg site is a shrine to the Great Walther. I was shown the chest that held the bishop's gold, with no thought of shame about it being stolen. In fact, the cult accused the bishop of getting away with some of his own gold hidden in his cane, which was false.
Walther was an expert at photoshopping his own history, confessing that Stephan was "a bit of a Pietist." He said that Stephan's marital problems were the fault of his long-suffering wife, who died with all of her children but one, of his disease.
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| Walther carried out the plan of Jansson and Stephan, creating his own dogmatics. Jansson burned Luther's works. Walther buried Luther under his pile of publications. |
