Reverend Jonas Auren (Aureen): Jonas
Auren was sent to the colonies by King Charles XI to make record of the inhabitants and to construct maps of the country.
He departed for America with ministers Reverend Ericus Biorck and Reverend Andrew Rudman, who had been appointed by Archbishop Olaus Svebelius to take on religious matters among the Finns.
He began missionary work among the Indians as well as becoming acquainted with the Keithians of Philadelphia and became Sabbatarian,
advocating Saturday as the real Sabbath, which put him in poor respects of the other Swedish ministers. After some time, Auren
founded a new church in Maryland to serve the Swedes and Finns of the region, and would later receive invitation to minister
the Finns of western New Jersey. Their previous minister, Reverend Lars Tollstadius, was under indictment for fathering a
child with a vestryman’s daughter, but before the matters could be shown before court, he fell out of a canoe on his
way home from Philadelphia and drowned. Auren was not willing to leave his congregation so soon, therefore sending Carl Brunjen,
a young relative of his, to act as lay reader and schoolmaster of the New Jersey congregation. Auren would eventually join
Brunjen there in 1707. Reverend Auren kept his Sabbatarian beliefs, but was forbidden to press it upon his new congregation
by order of the governor of New York. Auren would however publish an almanac titled “Noah’s Dove,”
in which the Sabbatarian views were noted, causing Ericus Biorck to publish “A Little Olive Leaf Put Into The Mouth
Of That So-Called ‘Noah’s Dove” as a response of refutation. Auren presided over the Finnish parish
of New Jersey until 1713 when he died, in which Reverend Abraham Lidenius succeeded the religious affairs.
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