Anders Wiberg

Anders Wiberg
Anders Wiberg c. 18 November 1895. Credit: E. Rosén
Born	(1816-07-17)17 July 1816 Vi, Hälsingland, Sweden
Died	5 November 1887(1887-11-05) (aged 71) Stockholm, Sweden
Occupation(s)	Preacher, missionary
Movement	Baptist Church

Anders Wiberg (17 July 1816 – 5 November 1887) was a preacher, missionary, and leader of the early Swedish Baptist movement.

Life

Early life and influences

Wiberg was born on 17 July 1816 in Vi in

He developed his teachings on baptism in the book Vilken bör döpas och varuti består dopet? ('Who should be baptized and what does baptism consist of?') in 1852, which sparked a fierce debate in which Lars Anton Anjou, Lars Landgren [sv] and Fredrik Gabriel Hedberg made high-profile contributions.^[6] The same year, on his journey to the United States, he was baptized by F. O. Nilsson in Copenhagen.

Wiberg spent three years in the United States to learn more about the Baptist movement there. He was ordained in New York in the Baptist Mariner's Church and then worked for the American Baptist Publication Society. While in Philadelphia, he married Caroline Lintemuth.^[7] He also wrote Det kristliga dopet ('The Christian baptism') and Är du döpt? ('Are you baptized?'), the first Swedish Baptist publications in the United States.^[8] Wiberg returned to Sweden in 1855 to find his writings had contributed to the movement's growth; there were now 500 Swedish Baptists, with 800 to 1000 formal conversions a year.^[9][5] He became the leader of the first Baptist church in Stockholm, founded the year before.^[1][10] He began intensive work to strengthen the new movement throughout the country. Among his collaborators were brothers Johannes, Per, and Gustaf Palmquist. A confession of faith written by Wiberg was adopted, a training course for preachers was begun, and from 1856 the new movement had its own publication, Evangelisten, edited by Wiberg. The publication and Wiberg's colporteur work were to play a large role in the spread of Baptist churches in Norway and Finland as well; his writings were brought to Åland and contributed to the start of the early Finnish Baptist movement. He also baptized some of the early founders of Baptist churches in Finland, siblings Viktor and Anna Heikel.^{[1][6][11][12]}

In 1858, the Conventicle Act, which outlawed religious meetings other than those of the Lutheran Church of Sweden, was overturned. By the following year, the Baptists had grown to a total of 4,311 members in 95 churches, and almost 6,000 members in 1863.^[13]

Baptist Union and seminary

Wiberg was one of the leaders who worked to gather the Swedish Baptist churches for their first general conference in 1857; this was to become the

• Radical Pietism

• Oscar Broady – contemporaneous Swedish Baptist missionary
• John Alexis Edgren – contemporaneous Swedish Baptist missionary

References