"laestadian, apostolic, gay, lgbtq, ex-oalc, ex-llc, llc, oalc, bunner" LEARNING TO LIVE FREE: Do Laestadians Love Sects?

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Do Laestadians Love Sects?

At age 15, I went to confirmation classes in the OALC. Granted, I was paying more attention to boys than to my uncles who taught the class, but I don't remember any history lessons. If I thought about Laestadius at all, I suppose I considered him to have existed "back then" -- WAY back then, in Biblical days. Years later I was surprised to discover, in an exhibit in Seattle's Nordic Heritage Museum, a likeness of Lars Levi Laestadius with a long face and high collar, a postilla and a placard identifying him as a botanist and leader of a Finnish religious sect. Wow. There are many times in my life when I've realized how little I know about a subject, and that was an important one.

Thank you to the reader who posted the Laestadius links (click on title above to go that informative site).

And just for fun, here are some of LLL's contemporaries, born between 1800 and 1810.

Brigham Young
Victor Hugo
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert E. Lee
Charles Darwin
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Edgar Allan Poe
P.T. Barnum

1 comment:

  1. What an interesting discussion! I'm trying to gain some insights into the OALC as I am in an intimate relationship with someone who lives in fear of who he is and of anyone finding out. I understand a little better now why he doesn't want his family to know he is gay, and why he won't take me to meet any of them.

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