My Mom's Irish-Palatine ancestry had converted to Methodist (and my mom's grandmother was a strict Palatine Methodist against drinking, playing cards and dancing!). My Dad's Swedish-German side was Covenant and also against drinking and playing cards and dancing! wild.
Yes, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden and the Methodists were highly similar, and their shared opposition to playing cards stems from a common theological and cultural foundation.
[1, 2] While they belonged to different denominational lineages, both groups were cornerstone members of the 19th-century
"Free Church" movement (
frikyrkorörelsen) in Sweden. Their cultural and behavioral similarities were so deep that they eventually merged in 2011 to form the Uniting Church in Sweden (
Equmeniakyrkan).
[1, 2, 3]The two movements connected through shared spiritual goals, common leadership, and specific moral guidelines:
1. The Common Root: Radical Pietism
The opposition to card playing, dancing, drinking, and theater was not unique to one group; it was a defining trait of
Pietism, a revival movement that emphasized personal conversion, a "living faith," and strict moral holiness over formal church rituals.
[1, 2, 3]- The Methodists followed John Wesley’s strict "holiness" tradition, which viewed card playing as a gateway to gambling and a waste of God-given time. [1]
- The Covenanters (Missionsvänner or Mission Friends) grew out of a Lutheran Pietist revival. They viewed card playing as "worldly" behavior unbefitting of a person who had been spiritually reborn. [1, 2]
The connection between the Covenanters and Methodists in Sweden was highly direct. In fact, a British Methodist minister named George Scott moved to Sweden in the 1830s and sparked the very revival that gave birth to the Covenanters. He partnered with Carl Olof Rosenius (a Lutheran Pietist), and together they founded the highly influential devotional newspaper Pietisten. The early Swedish Covenant congregations adopted many of the lifestyle guidelines, small-group structures, and revivalist preaching styles that Scott and the Methodists championed
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