Background
Claus Lauritz Clausen was born on November 03, 1820 on the island of Aero, Denmark. He was the son of Erik and Karen Pedersen Clausen.
Claus Lauritz Clausen was born on November 03, 1820 on the island of Aero, Denmark. He was the son of Erik and Karen Pedersen Clausen.
Clausen was destined for the law, but abandoned it for theology after he had fallen under the influence of the Grundtvigian (Lutheran) awakening.
About 1840 Clausen went to Norway where he hoped to qualify as missionary to Africa. Failing in this, he undertook to go to Muskego, Wisconsin, as a teacher. There he was ordained to the American Lutheran ministry on October 18, 1843. He lost no time in entering upon the strenuous duties of his ministry. On the day after his ordination he “conducted the first of fifty-four funerals in a period covering the four last months of 1843. This terrible toll of death was taken from the small Muskego settlement alone”. His field covered practically all of Wisconsin, and, later, much of northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.
In spite of severe headaches from which he suffered constantly, he was a minister in every sense of that word; he could draw a deed or draw a tooth; he was as good a judge of land as of human nature; yet he always remained a worthy and democratic man of God. Clausen remained at Muskego less than three years; at Luther Valley, seven years. In 1851 he joined Reverend H. A. Stub and Rev. A. C. Preus in forming a synod of which he was elected “superintendent. ” Forced to undo this work, he took a perfunctory part in organizing the so-called Norwegian Synod in 1853. In the same year he led a party of immigrants to St. Ansgar, Iowa, serving as pastor to this group which expanded into a settlement fifty miles wide and two hundred miles long.
From 1856 to 1859 he served as immigrant commissioner of Iowa. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted as chaplain for the 15th Wisconsin Regiment, but had to retire in 1862 after suffering shell shock in the bombardment of Island No. 10. Estranged from the Norwegian Synod over questions of Sabbath observance, he left it in 1868, and helped to form the Norwegian-Danish Conference in 1870, being elected first president.
Frequent strokes and hemorrhages in the head forced him to resign his pastorate at St. Ansgar in 1872. After three years of complete mental rest in Virginia, he preached for two years in Philadelphia, and then took up active work at Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, where he served until his retirement from the ministry in 1885. His last years were spent at Austin, Minnesota, or in travel, of which he was very fond. He died on a visit to his son at Paulsbo, Washington.
Clausen established and edited the religious journal Maanedstidende (Monthly Times) and the secular paper Emigranten, and was a lifelong contributor to the secular and religious press. He wrote two brochures, the so-called Cjenmdle (Rebuttal) to the church council of the Norwegian Synod in the slavery controversy, and his Tilsvar (Reply) to Prof. Sverdrup’s attack in the struggle between the “old” and “new” tendencies in the Conference.
Clausen was a member of the Lutheran Church.
Claus Lauritz Clausen was married to Martha F. Rasmussen who died in 1846. Within a year he married Mrs. Bergette Hjort (nee Brekke). She died in 1887.