Laestadianiam

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Laestadianism, a Nordic religious revivalist movement bearing the name of its founder Lars Levi Laestadius (1800 1861) which began about 1875. Continuing the tradition of Pietist popular revivals, the movement, which was originally known in Sweden as the Readers (läsare), worked within the Evangelical-Lutheran churches in the Nordic countries, and it also spread to North America along with emigration.

The popular revivals that led to the movement began in 1844 with Laestadius preaching. He had experienced a radical change in his life as a result of illness, the death of his son Levi, his reading of Luther (see his pastoral thesis Crapula mundi, 1843) and his meeting with Mary of Lapland on his visitation to Åsele in the winter of 1844. In Karesuando in 1845, the new awakening was heralded with profound ecstatic experiences which were signs of grace , so-called movements (lihkadusat). Such ecstatic states were characteristic of other revivalist movements that had emerged in the Nordic countries from the eighteenth century on, such as the Readers , the Viklundists (a Pietist movement that was started along the border between Finland and Sweden in the 1770s by Pastor Nils Wiklund of Ylitornio) and the C*uorvut ( Shouters ) movement of the Finnmark Saami.

Laestadius found himself so at home among the Readers as a young man that he prayed for a bride from the milder ecstatic movement , by which he meant the more moderate branch of the Readers movement led by the Pastor of Nora, P. Brandell. Belonging to this branch was a Saami woman called Milla Klemensdotter, who was the Mary of Lapland that Laestadius later named as his spiritual mentor.

The pre-Laestadian religious unrest in northern Scandinavia partly explains the rapid spread of the movement and its ecstatic emphasis. People whose spiritual habitat was formed by these popular religious revivals were carried away with it, and in fact for a long time the disciples of Laestadius were also known as Readers . As a consequence of the nomadic way of life of the reindeer-herding Saami, the revival spread over the whole of northern Fennoscandia from the Torne (Tornio) River Valley to the fjords of Finnmark within a few years. The Saami dissemination of the initial revival was most marked in the years 1845 1852. The Kautokeino Revolt of 1852, an uprising of the Finnmark Saami in which a local police chief and a storekeeper were killed, led to the Saami popular movement being criminalized, and at the same time it ended the spread of the revivalist movement by the Saami. Lars Hætta and Anders Bær, who were arrested in connection with the revolt, wrote in their memoirs (published 1993) in Oslo Prison about this first popular uprising of the Saami people; the revolt was a protest against the closure of the border between Norway and Russia (to which Finland then belonged), which blocked the migration routes taken by the reindeer. Since Laestadianism was at that very time spreading into the Finnmark region, Laestadius became associated with the revolt, and for the rest of his life he had to defend himself against accusations of stirring up the people. He was arraigned before both lay and religious courts, although he had been made Rector of Pajala in northern Sweden in 1849 before the Kautokeino Revolt. The criminalization of revivalism led to a rejection of Laestadianism by the local people, although the religious background of the leaders of the uprising lay in the Cuorvut movement and not in Laestadianism, as Hettaand Baer make clear in their memoirs.

As the revival continued, Laestadius himself became a mythical figure, and myths were created about him within the movement. At first they existed within the framework ofSaami culture, but as the movement expanded they spread to the Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian populations of Lapland. The form taken by the Laestadius myth in its initial phase (in the 1850s and 1850s) seems to have followed Saami models. The initial religious revival from 1840 to 1852 helped to reinforce the Saami identity. The doctrine of Laestadianism, the order of grace , is one of its distinctive characteristics. A central element in Laestadius Postillor Sermons and in the preachings of his followers is the doctrine of the unbroken influence of the Holy Spirit in the chain of holy persons on earth. The legend begins with Jesus Christ, who before His ascension gave the keys to St. Peter, and through him to the whole of the pure early church. When St Peter, who was recognized as the first Pope and ruler of the Holy See of Rome, suffered a martyr s death, the early Catholic church became corrupted, and the true legacy of Christianity was passed on by persecuted underground churches until Luther initiated the Reformation in Germany. Subsequently, during the age of strict Lutheran orthodoxy and the Enlightenment, his message, too, had become obscured in Sweden into a dead doctrine . It was reawakened by Lars Levi Laestadius into the painfully delivered 1st Parish of Swedish Lapland . The difficult duty of this parish in the eschatology of Laestadianism was to undergo the final struggles and trials described in the Book of Revelation. The eschatological doctrine brought to a head a conflict between the northern revivalist movement on the one hand and the official Church of Sweden and Swedish society on the other. According to Laestadian teaching, there had always been, and still was, a small core congregation within all churches (ecclesiola in ecclesia), from the disciples of Jesus to the awakened Christians of the time. The holy duty of those of the true faith was to broadcast the word of God about the forgiveness of sins. According to Laestadius, every person who was born was redeemed through Christ by the Grace of God, and this was confirmed by the sacrament of baptism. A person who had broken the covenant of baptism might by the Grace of God return to fold by receiving an oral absolution from the congregation of the faithful according to the following formula: Thy sins are forgiven in the name and blood of Jesus. Laestadius was thus the last in a mythical chain of the order of grace that had proclaimed the truth from the times of the Apostles down through Martin Luther and Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf of the Moravian Church to Laestadius himself. His Saami identity was reinforced by a Saami link in the chain, the woman he called Mary of Lapland. The periodical Ens ropandes röst in Öknen The Voice of One Calling in the Wilderness - the name indicates Laestadius identification with John the Baptist - tells of his rebirth in Åsele in 1844: I shall remember the impoverished Mary as long as I live, and I hope that I shall meet her beyond the grave. In literary biographical works about Laestadius, his historic meeting in Åsele with Mary of Lapland has been given a mythical colouring. From the point of view of the Saami myth, the important thing is that he needed a Saami woman as his spiritual mother, and that this legend became part of the tradition recorded by his followers. In the mythical prototype of Mary of Lapland there merged the ideals of four biblical characters: the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdelene, Mary of Bethany (the sister of Martha and Lazarus; Luke 10:38 42; John 11:2, 12:3) and the sinful woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and dried them with her hair (Luke 7:37 38). The myth emphasizes the Saami orientation of the early Laestadian movement: the last link in the sacral chain of grace before Laestadius was an unlearned Saami woman. At thesame time, the myth also explains the initial success of the revival among the Saami, which was so great that one can speak of the period from 1845 to 1852 as its Saami phase. The Saami preachers who were among the catechists and ambassadors of temperance sent out by Laestadius included, H. Helander (1838 1914, aka Abba-Hansa ), a fisherman on the Teno River; P. A Nutti (1825 1898, aka Antin-Pieti ), a Fell Saami from Karesuando; P. Vasara (1815 1896, aka {{Artikkelilinkki|91| Ies-Pieti</A><) and H. Unga (1819 1898, aka {{{2}}}