Anders Wiberg

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

Anders Wiberg
Born(1816-07-17)July 17, 1816
Vi, Hälsingland, Sweden
DiedNovember 5, 1887(1887-11-05) (aged 71)
Stockholm, Sweden
OccupationPreacher, missionary
MovementBaptist Church

Wiberg was born in Vi in Hälsingtuna parish, Hälsingland. He was educated at Uppsala University[1] and became a priest in the Church of Sweden. He got to know several of the figures in the growing Baptist revival movement and his views on the state church became more skeptical. After a visit to preacher Johann Gerhard Oncken in Hamburg, Wiberg came to agree with Baptist teachings regarding baptism.[2]

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 and Fredrik Gabriel Hedberg made high-profile contributions.[3] The same year 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, working for the American Baptist Publication Society. While in Philadelphia, he married Caroline Lintemuth.[4] Wiberg returned to Sweden in 1855 to find his writings had contributed to the movement's growth; there were now 500 Swedish Baptists.[5] He became leader of the first Baptist church in Stockholm, which had been founded the year before.[1][6] 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 was 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.[1][3][7] 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 Baptist Union of Sweden in 1889.

Wiberg died 5 November 1887 in Stockholm.

Bibliography
  • Hvilken bör döpas och hvari består dopet? (1852, Uppsala)
  • Det kristliga dopet (1854, Philadelphia)
  • Den heliga skrifts lära om det christliga dopet (1855, Philadelphia) (an edition also printed in Stockholm)
  • Läran om helgelsen (1869)
  • De kristnas enhet (1879)
  • Svar på lektor Waldenströms skrift: Barndopets historia (1880)

References
  1. Lindvall, Magnus. "ANDERS WIBERG | VÄCKELSEMAN OCH SAMFUNDSLEDARE" (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 2012-01-19.
  2. Lindvall, Magnus (October 1987). "Anders Wiberg, Swedish Revivalist and Baptist Leader" (PDF). The Baptist Quarterly. 32.
  3. Carlquist, Gunnar, ed. (1929). Svensk uppslagsbok. Bd 2 (in Swedish). Malmö: Svensk uppslagsboks förlag AB. p. 42.
  4. Schroeder, Gustavus Wilhelm (1898). History of the Swedish Baptists in Sweden and America Being an account of the origin, progress and results of that missionary work during the last half of the nineteenth century. New York. ISBN 978-3-337-72475-7. OCLC 1189509230.
  5. Bronson Titterington, Sophie (1891). A Century of Baptist Foreign Missions: An Outline Sketch (PDF). Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society. OCLC 387528. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-10-14.
  6. Westin, Gunnar (1955). Den kristna friförsamlingen genom tiderna - Martyrer och frihetskämpar (in Swedish). Westerbergs. p. 295.
  7. Sundquist, Alfons (January 1954). "Glimpses of the Baptist Work in Finland" (PDF). The Fraternal. 91.
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