C. M. Seehuus
Carl Magnus Seehuus, commonly known as C.M. Seehuus was a pioneering Norwegian Pentecostal pastor. Seehuus was initially a Baptist pastor of the Baptist church in Skien, Telemark, Norway. He later broke away from the Baptists and founded a new church,, which became the first Pentecostal congregation in Norway and the Nordic countries.
Life, beliefs, education, and work
Carl Magnus Seehuus was born 20 May 1864 in Kristiansund, Norway. As a 16-year-old, Seehuus became a Baptist and was baptized. He later studied at Baptist Union Theological Seminary in Morgan Park, Chicago from 1885 to 1888. In Norway he was employed as a travel secretary in the Norwegian Sunday School Union where he worked from Kristiania, now Oslo, and Moss.Seehuus came to Skien in 1895, where he became pastor of Norway's first Baptist church, which later became known as Skien Baptist Church, in 1899.
In the early 1900s, the Christian revival in Wales was at a peak. Building on the earlier dissenter revival in the Skien area sparked by Gustav Adolph Lammers and inspired by the Welsh revival, a revival began in Norway, including Skien, in 1905. Some of the church's members began to speak in tongues, a new and unknown phenomenon. Seehuus' wife also began to speak in tongues while in private prayer. Many were skeptical, including Seehuus himself initially. After reading the supernatural reports of Norwegian-British Pentecostal pioneer Thomas Ball Barratt and studying the Bible, he was convinced otherwise. Seehuus addressed the topic at a meeting on 10 March 1907. The notes from the meeting stated, "never before has a more serious issue been addressed and at the same time a strongly awakening movement; for us a new direction of the Spirit has manifested, which in connection with a visible filling of the Spirit, is a phenomenon like in the 14th chapter of Paul's letter to the Corinthians describing speaking in tongues, about which the congregation has had differing opinions." There was a divide in the church over the issue and there were suggestions to forbid speaking in tongues.
Church split
On 27 January 1908, Seehuus gave his resignation, to take effect on 1 February. His reasoning was stated to be "a disagreement between him and a number of church staff and members regarding the spiritual gifts and their use in the service." The Seehuus family and approximately 25 other people left Skien Baptist Church. On 14 April 1908, Seehuus founded a new church in Skien, Menigheten i Totalen; it was later renamed Tabernaklet and is now known as. It was the first church in what was to become the Norwegian Pentecostal movement.Family
Seehuus' first wife Inga Johanne Aasen, with whom he had daughter Esther Karoline Elisabeth, died when their daughter was young. He later married Ida Berthea Hanson, who was born in 1868 in Concord, Wisconsin, USA, and died in 1928 in Skien; she was baptized in a Baptist church in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, as a teenager. Together they had daughters Inga Marie Hansen née Seehuus and Aida Margaret Seehuus, as well as son . Carl Rein was also a well-known pastor in the Norwegian Pentecostal movement, speaking at the Filadelfia Oslo church at 12 years of age and later leading the church.Seehuus died 4 April 1951 in Skien.