Nathan Söderblom

Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom, better known as Nathan Söderblom (January 15, 1866 - July 12, 1931), was a Swedish clergyman, and later Archbishop of the Church of Sweden and laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was born in Helsingia to Jonas Söderblom, a Pietistic pastor, and Sophia (Blume) Söderblom, among whose ancestors there had once been a bishop of Oslo.

Career

After being ordained a priest in 1893 and appointed chaplain to a mental hospital in Uppsala, he cast about for a post that would enable him to marry Anna Forsell, a gifted woman student - one of twenty among 1,700 men at Uppsala University - who was later to bear him thirteen children, as well as to collaborate in the preparation of many of his published works. He accepted a call to the Swedish Church and Embassy in Paris (France) from 1894-1901; that is, at the acme of the modernist crisis and the moment when the Separation Law between State and Churches was discussed, which would be enacted in 1905.

Related Topics:
Paris - France - 1894 - 1901 - Modernist crisis - 1905

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For seven years, from 1894 to 1901, Söderblom preached in Paris, where his congregation included Alfred Nobel and August Strindberg, as well as Swedish and Norwegian painters, authors, businessmen, diplomats, and visitors to the city. Summers he spent in Calais in research and writing while also serving as chaplain to Swedish seamen in the area. Meanwhile he pursued graduate studies in theology, history of religions, and in languages predating those of the classical ages, and eventually became the first foreigner ever to earn a Doctor of Theology degree at the Protestant Faculty of the Sorbonne. He was called to San Remo in 1897 to conduct the memorial service for Alfred Nobel.

Related Topics:
1894 - 1901 - Alfred Nobel - August Strindberg - Norwegian - Calais - Sorbonne - San Remo - 1897

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At that time the School of Paris, the college of Protestant theology, results from the turn-over of the faculty of theology from Strasbourg has around 20 years. Education for the Lutheran and Reformed theologians is given in only one school, a union led by Auguste Sabatier and Etienne Mennegoz. Söderblom's experience in France strengthened his youthful resolve to promote "free unity" among Christian churches. One of his biographers, Charles J. Curtis, points out that fluency in French and understanding of French and Parisian culture gave him an international outlook, that the theological currents of France merging with those from his native land solidified his theological liberalism, and that social work among the Scandinavians in France convinced him that in the life of the church right action was as important as right belief, as demonstrated by the Practical Christianity of Wilfred Monod, pastor in Petit-Quevilly, a suburb near Rouen in France.

Related Topics:
Strasbourg - Lutheran - Reformed - Auguste Sabatier - Etienne Mennegoz - Theological liberalism - Practical Christianity - Wilfred Monod - Rouen

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From 1901 to 1914, Söderblom occupied a chair in the School of Theology at Uppsala University and concurrently, from 1912 to 1914, a chair at the Leipzig University. In these productive years he wrote a series of books on religious history, religious psychology, and religious philosophy. With a group of brilliant colleagues and students at Uppsala, Söderblom led a theological revival in Sweden, giving stature to the field of comparative religion, pursuing the theme of the uniqueness of Christianity in the historical and personal character of Revelation, incorporating the study of non-Christian religions into the discipline of Christianity, and stimulating intense studies in the life and thought of Martin Luther.

Related Topics:
1901 - 1914 - 1912 - Leipzig University - Christianity - Martin Luther

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Söderblom's election in 1914 as Archbishop of Uppsala, and, in consequence, primate of the Church of Sweden, was a surprise. Customarily, the king chose the first name on a slate of the three who topped the list in the voting in the sixteen electoral colleges. In first and second place were two distinguished bishops who split eighty-two percent of the electoral vote almost evenly; in third place was Söderblom, a priest and professor, with eighteen percent of the vote. Not since 1670 had the bishops been passed over. Söderblom, a Lutheran in a church that had retained the historic episcopate, valued the liturgy and devotional tradition of traditional Catholic worship, while seeing much of worth in the writings of liberal Protestant scholars. He believed it his duty to work for a united Christendom, both catholic and protestant, and saw practical cooperation on social issues as a promising first step. His trend, at this period, is unionism.

Related Topics:
1914 - Archbishop of Uppsala - Church of Sweden - 1670 - Historic episcopate - Liturgy - Catholic - Liberal Protestant - Christendom - Protestant - Unionism

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During the next, and last, seventeen years of his life, Söderblom administered the duties of the head of the ecclesiastical establishment: visiting churches throughout the nation, raising funds to reopen old churches and build new ones, reviving the elaborate ecclesiastical rituals of the past, imbuing the work of the church with evangelistic fervor, directing conferences, advising the administration of Uppsala University as ex officio pro-chancellor -- and all the while carrying on with his own research and writing. As Archbishop of Sweden, he was concerned with deepening the channels of communication between the Church and the laboring masses, and also between the Church and the intellectuals.

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