In the last decades of the 19th century, North American society grew rapidly, immigrants from all over the world flocked to the United States and Canada. They soon found out that there was no state church in these nations, the immigrants had to take matters into their own hands. From this, many religious movements and churches were born, a concept which was actually not completely foreign to many European immigrants because free churches worked in Europe. Such currents reached Iceland and caused many people to think about religion. Right at the beginning of the Western migration period in the 1870s, Icelandic immigrants became familiar with this upon arriving in the United States, and Reverend Páll Þorláksson is the most familiar with them. He got to know a Norwegian church in Wisconsin and their church partner the Norwegian Synod and became a pastor in it. His disputes with Reverend Jón Bjarnason are mentioned elsewhere on this website, but their disagreements opened the eyes of many who moved west loyal to the Icelandic National Church. Thus, e.g. Magnús J. Skaptason, a pastor from Iceland where he was ordained, served congregations there, but then moved to Canada in 1887 and settled in New Iceland, where he served Lutheran congregations until 1891. Then he became opposed to various teachings of the Lutheran Church, and it led to the fact that four of his congregations left the Lutheran Synod and formed a new church synod, which was called the Free Church Association of Icelanders in America. As a result, Magnús became somewhat controversial, but just at that time, Björn Pétursson stopped farming and started a mission for the Unitarians in Winnipeg.
Unitarians and other religious organizations
In 1891, the first Icelandic Unitarian congregation was founded in Winnipeg. A decade later, the Unitarian movement had spread rapidly in Icelandic settlements and the number of congregations had increased so much that there was an opportunity to form a single religious association of Icelandic Unitarians in the West. Jóhann Pétur Sólmundsson comes to the West in 1888 and becomes a Unitarian pastor in Winnipeg in 1902, but then moves to Gimli a year later and serves a liberal congregation there as well as the congregations or a fraction of the congregations that followed Reverend Magnús J. Skaptason when he resigned from the Lutheran church. Reverend Magnús, who at the time was pastor of the Icelandic congregation in Roseau, Minnesota, hears news of Reverend Jóhann and has no doubt been in contact with him, because in the spring of 1901 Reverend Magnús announces that a meeting will be held in Gimli. The purpose was to unite Icelanders in New Iceland who were interested in Unitarian religious beliefs into one association. It was on June 16-18 that about three dozen people gathered in Gimli to form the Unitarian Free Church Society of Western Icelanders. This is considered to have been the first assembly of Icelandic Unitarians in North America, and its main members were Reverend Rögnvaldur Pétursson, Reverend Jóhann Sólmundsson and Einar Ólafsson from Mjóafjörður. This church association worked until the First World War. At the association’s meeting in 1910, members from congregations in Winnipeg, from Gimli, Mary Hill (Lundar settlement), Grunnavatn (Shoal Lake) settlement, and Hnausa participate. A total of 23 pastors and members attended.
English version by Thor group.