[COPY] FINNS: An Oral History- Keeping Services - Toivo Kangas

New Ipswich Historical Society

FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region

Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.

Toivo Kangas 

 Before the time of the splits in the 1930s, the Apostolic church was on Poor Farm Road, in  “Finn District.” We had guest ministers frequently because all Apostolic groups were still together.  There was diversity but enough harmony to keep the place going. There were a few disagreements, but  nothing bad. Then the Apostolics sold that building and bought the Baptist church, the white church.  That might have been in 1937.  

My parents attended regularly and ministers came to preach from the Midwest. The Elders  didn't come from Finland and Sweden too often. We also had our own lay ministers within the  congregation like Emmanuel Aho, who baptized me. He had a good gift of preaching and went out to  the Midwest to preach. He’d be gone perhaps for a month. He had a farm but did mostly preaching for  a living. He was a carpenter and worked on the Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough.   When the Apostolic congregation bought the Baptist church, my father took the janitor’s job  and wound the town clock and oiled it and maintained it for quite some time. My parents would not  allow any harmonicas in our house. That was considered to be the devil’s ideas. My mother burned  every harmonica we brought home. She played a little on it out of curiosity to see what kind of a noise  it made, but then it went into the wood stove.  

 After my parents and others split off from the main Apostolic church (Michaelson group) to  form the Independent church, the two congregations were still sharing the same church building. But  there were disagreements on maintenance and financial contributions. Of course, the main group were  two-to-three times bigger than the Independents, so we let them have the whole building and held our  own services in our homes.  

What they called the “splits” among the Apostolic congregations already started in the 1920s  in the Michigan Copper Country and out in Minnesota. The splintering spread and resulted from  differences in interpretation of the Biblical message. The more orthodox Apostolics emphasized the  Law: don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t go there, don’t play with that, don’t associate with outsiders.  We in the Independent group were sort of in accord, but then we felt they went overboard.   The Independents made a complete split from the Apostolics in the 1930s. But sometimes  members of the more orthodox group would come listen to our ministers. We did go to theirs off and on, but being that they were more on the side of preaching the Law at that time, we dropped off from  attending. The orthodox group had to become more independent from the influence of Elders during  the war. Sometimes there would be controversy over interpretation of the Bible or doctrine. So they   used to write to this place in Lapland and the Elders would send interpretation back by letter. There  was another group that split off, the Heidemans, whose beliefs were similar to the main Apostolics.  One man decides he wants to lead and the other claims he’s the only spiritual authority, and a  feud develops. Some of these divisions are genuine doctrinal differences and some are simply a power  struggle. In some cases, having an education was suspect. If you were too educated, you were drifting  away from the spiritual path because you were getting amongst worldly people and influenced by  them. This type of thing was not always the case with the Evangelicals [state church of Finland], the  church which my folks originally belonged to. But at that time even, seeds were sown that caused  division within the Evangelicals out in Minnesota and Michigan. Somebody wanted to be big chief  and the congregation split in half as people followed one leader or the other.

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