In the final election, Peter Wuori received 54 votes, O. Stadius 36, and J. Wikman a solitary vote, but after this election the supporters of Stadius, who were also sympathetic to the Suomi Synod, resigned to form a new congregation, known as Our Savior Lutheran Church, while the majority which had supported Wuori the following year adopted a new name also, the Independent Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ely. This latter congregation continued to debate the question of eventual affiliation for years, and it was not until 1938 that it joined the National Church in a vote of 68 to 26. Even then, the minority considered that an injustice had occurred and took the matter to court. To understand these dissensions through the decades in the religious life of the Finns in Minnesota, and the trends behind them, it is necessary to discuss briefly the main aspects of the Finnish-American religious community and its history.

Finnish-American Religious Activity

Even before the beginning of the mass wave of Finnish immigration, some measure of religious activity had been carried on by the earlier arrivals. There might be cited, for example, the name of Uno Cygnaeus, who served as pastor in Sitka, Alaska, from 1840 to 1845. When the first permanent settlements of Finns were formed after the Civil War, their religious activity began almost from the moment of their settlement. In 1867, for example, it is known that the Finns participated in the establishment of a Scandinavian church at Quincy, near Hancock, Michigan. According to the records, about half of those who signed the document were Finns, the rest were Norwegians and Swedes. This was the church known as "The Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Quincy and the Surrounding Areas of Houghton County, Michigan."' The first pastors of the church were A. E. Fredericksen and H. Roernaes, of whom the first preached to the Finns through an interpreter, while the latter could speak a little Finnish himself. However, these early arrivals from Northern Finland, and Finns arriving from Swedish and Norwegian Lapland, were overwhelmingly adherents of the preachings of Laestadius, and they soon realized that they disagreed in many respects with their pastors in the Copper Country, and they resigned from the Quincy church in 1871 to found their own church. Simultaneously, pro-Laestadius teachings were introduced into various other communities, including several places in Minnesota. This was by no means done with any

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