The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2003, Qupperneq 12

54
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 58 #2
later, Stephansson
wrote to a friend,
“You understand
that Magnus as
vice president
could, in the
absence of the
president, become
president, or
bishop. I could
have been in his
position but I was
so much to the
left that two life-
times separated
me from the bish-
op’s chair.”12 He
was then nomi-
nated for secre-
tary but refused
that position as
well. In the end,
he was elected
assistant secretary
of the synod. “I
stated the obvi-
ous,” he later
wrote, “that I was
too lazy to refuse such a meaningless
office.” By the time the synod met for its
second annual conference, Stephansson had
left the Lutheran church and he never again
belonged to any church.
Influenced by their reading of
American freethinkers like Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Robert Ingersoll,
Stephansson and a half dozen other men
from the Gardar and Mountain districts in
Pembina County organized the Icelandic
Cultural Society (Hins Islenzka
Menningarfelags) during a meeting at the
poet’s home on February 4, 1888.
Stephansson was the first secretary and
leading spokesperson for the group, which
included CMafur Olafsson of Espiholi,
Jonas Hall, Bjorn Petursson, the pioneer
Unitarian missionary among the
Icelanders, and two of the Brynjolfsson
brothers, Magnus and Skapti, the latter
being president of the society. The society
quickly grew beyond thirty members and
counted several prominent pioneers among
its small membership.13
According to
its bylaws, which
were written by
Stephansson, “the
objectives of this
society are to sup-
port and promote
culture and ethics,
that ethics and
those beliefs which
are based upon
experience, knowl-
edge and science. In
place of religious
sectarianism, it
seeks humanitari-
anism and fellow-
ship; in place of
unquestioned
creeds, reasonable
and unfettered
inquiry; in place of
blind faith, inde-
pendent conviction;
and in place of
ignorance and prej-
udice, spiritual free-
dom and progress
upon which no fetters are placed.”14
The Cultural Society was patterned on
Felix Adler’s Society for Ethical Culture in
New York, which Stephansson had
become aware of through the Free
Religious Association.15 It sponsored pub-
lic addresses, debates and group study on a
wide variety of subjects, including litera-
ture, religion, ethics, natural history and
human psychology. Its most tangible effort
was the establishment of a community
library, the cost of which was underwritten
by levying dues of one dollar per year.
The leadership of the Icelandic
Lutheran Synod was not pleased with this
development in Dakota, seeing it as a thin-
ly veiled threat to the church and its teach-
ings. Given that a literary society already
existed in the area, which was dominated
by influential churchmen, the Synod’s sus-
picion was not without foundation. Jon
Bjarnason, the president of the Synod and
editor of its periodical, Sameiningin
(Unity), waged a bitter public feud with
Stephansson.16 Having been the champion
Stephan G. Stephansson, at back of photo