Winnipeg was incorporated as a city in 1873 with a little under two thousand inhabitants. By 1881, the population had grown to 7,900 and it grew fast during the last decades of the century. A steady stream west onto the Canadian prairie kept growing well into the first decades of the 20th century, reaching 179,000 inhabitants in Winnipeg in 1921. The first Icelandic immigrants arrived in Manitoba in 1875, some remained in Winnipeg. Those settled down on the north side of Notre Dame Avenue and in a few years a small, Icelandic community had developed. Around 1885 immigrants began to settle south and west of Notre Dame, among them a few Icelanders whose number grew steadily throughout the century. Icelanders not only in Winnipeg but also the rural communities of Manitoba began to distinguish between the two communities, referring to either the North community or the South community. In the early years, social life in the north was more active as it was older but around the turn of the century, the South community had grown considerably and the population of the North community dwindled. In the beginning of settlement in the city, no Icelandic pastor was among them so readings from the Bible in someone´s home on Sunday had to suffice. Both Rev. Jón Bjarnason and Rev. Thorlakson had established congregations in New Iceland and during their visits to Winnipeg, both offered church services. Rev. Jón Bjarnason had a larger following in Winnipeg which led to the establishing of a congregation there August 11, 1878 and it was called The Trinity Congregation.
The Tabernacle Church
In his book “The Icelandic People in Manitoba” Wilhelm Kristjanson has a chapter entitled “The New Theology and the Tabernacle Church”. He writes: “The first decade of the century witnessed an important development among the Icelandic Lutherans in America, the growth of the liberal New Theology movement, under the leadership of Reverend F. J. Bergmann, and the formal secession of up-wards of one-third of the membership of the Lutheran synod. In his early years, Reverend Bergmann maintained strongly the orthodox Lutheran teachings. Arriving from Iceland at the age of seventeen, in 1875, he had received his liberal arts education at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, and his theological training in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in Norway. During the years 1886-1899, while serving as pastor in the Icelandic communities in North Dakota, he had been Vice-President of the Icelandic Lutheran Synod, and he was editor of Aldamot, a periodical maintained by the pastors of the Lutheran synod, for the 13 years 1891-1903. In retrospect, he stated, he often regretted his early uncompromisingly stand, as on the damnation teaching. He explained that when he joined the ministry in 1886, his time was fully occupied, with nine places to serve, one of these being fifty miles from home, and often three sermons to give on a Sunday. Thus he had little time for reading and thinking. By 1893, he had come to think that critical study of the Old Testament was not wrong if based on religious conviction, that it was wrong only if the object was to ridicule.”
Break with The Lutheran Synod
“Many years of thought and inner conflict marked a gradual change from the position of the Old theology to that of the New. For a long time, he said, he shrank from being called a heretic, but when fully reconciled to the move he felt himself to be a free man. An address The Letter and the Spirit, delivered by Bergmann at the synod conference in 1901 is the first marker on the road that led to his break with the synod. He contended at this time that the literal interpretation had never been a matter of creed; the thought, he said, was eternal, not the letter. Reverend Jon Bjarnason, Reverend B. B. Jonsson, and others, maintained the plenary inspiration of the Bible. Bergmann’s congregation, The Winnipeg Tabernacle congregation (Tjaldbudin), to which he had come in 1903, joined the synod in 1905, but by 1906, Bergmann’s religious views had so deviated from the orthodox position that he founded the periodical Breidablik to serve his cause. For the first two years of publication, however, he engaged but little in controversy, despite attacks from Sameiningin. (The periodal managed by the Lutheran Synod. Ins. J.Th). Reverend Bergmann’s position was briefly this. He urged freedom of thought in religion and considered that freedom of conscience was man’s greatest heritage. The creeds, he held, were but milestones along the road and should not be made a Chinese wall. Truth withers in the possession of those who think they have a monopoly on it, and there should be freedom of thot for Loki as well as Thor. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.”. The Christian church, he said, was divided into 164 branches, each considering itself right, yet their common ground was Christ’s life and teaching. God he belived to be a personal being, although more than a person; immanent and transcendant, as the author in his book, and that His image was never entirely lost in any human being. Christ, he belived to have been more than a man, and basis for this belief he found in Christ’s 0wn words, in the evidence of the disciples, and in his rile down the ages. The most conclusive evidence in the Bible he found in Mark 13:22 and in Matt. 11:27. He ruled out the necessity for belief in the Immaculate Conception as a necessary basis for belief in the divinity of Christ.”
Conflict grows
“The lines became more sharply drawn between Sameiningin and Breidablik in 1908 and 1909. Bjarnason claimed that the gulf between the New Theology and the Old was much greater than the gulf which seperated Lutherans and other Protestants from the Roman Catholics at the time of the Reformation. He held that the New Theology was an enemy of Christianity, following exactly in the same direction as Unitarianism, but more dangerous because it assumed a disguise. Bergmann felt that Bjarnason had gradually become more conservative in his theology with the passing of the years and that the synod conference in 1908 he had taken the same stand as Thorlaksson at Gimli in 1878. Bergmann noted also a tendency to conservatism in the synod itself, attributable, he thought, to the influence of the Theological Seminary in Chicago, where many of the synod theological candidates had studied. There was an open break at the synod conference of 1909, brought about by the stand of a hard core in the synod, a development which Bergmann deemed a great calamity. The majority at the conference carried through a motion, forty-nine to twenty-seven, that defined the position of the synod, ruling that the Bible in its entirety was God’s inspired word, and rejected the principle that the creeds were simply a guide, and not binding, as maintained by Bergmann. The doctrinal teaching of the Sameiningin, was upheld. The outcome of the proceeding was that while Bergmann and his followers were not formally expelled, withdrawal from the synod was inevitable. Altogether nine congregations withdrew, including the Tabernacle congregation in Winnipeg, the Quill Lake congregation in Saskatchewan, the congregation at Mountain, in North Dakota, and others. The total number of people involved was over two thousand, in a synod membership of seven thousand….The Tabernacle congregation flourished during Bergmann´s lifetime, but on his death in 1918, the lack of a minister to take his place, and financial difficulties led to its disintegration. Several members of the congregation were tradesmen who at this time moved away from Winnipeg because of the state of unemployment that prevailed in the city during the war. In 1921 the majority of the congregation amalgamated with the Unitarian congregation to form the First Icelandic Federate Church, while the minority, retaining possession of the church building, joined the First Lutheran Church.”