Religion – Jack H. Raisanen https://www.jackraisanen.org Emerging Scholar | Writer & Editor | Freelancer Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:49:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.jackraisanen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/favicon_jr.com@3x.png Religion – Jack H. Raisanen https://www.jackraisanen.org 32 32 Forthcoming: Goodbye, Mom https://www.jackraisanen.org/goodbye-mom/ Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:07 +0000 https://www.jackraisanen.org/?p=111314

Forthcoming: Goodbye, Mom

February 10, 2026  |  By Jack H. Raisanen

My essay “Goodbye, Mom” is forthcoming. Here is an excerpt:

“I received your card in the mail just after Christmas. The envelope was covered in cute stickers and carefully chosen stamps. The blueberry stamp reminded me of one of our trips to Wisconsin when I was a child, when we picked berries by hand at a farm in Bayfield. Some of Brittany’s Finnish friends, who were living with us for the summer, came along on the trip. And, of course, you know that there are abundant bilberries in Finland, mustikka. We went cloudberry picking in a luscious and fragrant swamp when you visited me years ago in Ranua, after I finished my year at the folk high school there, sent by our church as part of their missionary work. Your great-grandparents almost certainly foraged for cloudberries and bilberries before they left Finland, Norway, and Åland for Minnesota and California.

The bright red pear stamps reminded me of the pear trees in our backyard, or your backyard. The ones between the apple trees and crabapple tree, the crabapple tree that grew so tall that we used Mike Olson’s tractor lift to pick the crabapples at the top. You would use your MehuMaija to turn the crabapples into juice and then turn the juice into crabapple jam during canning season. The raccoon and fox stamps were fitting for the rural Cokato landscape you raised me on, in the middle of fields and forest, where you moved from Plymouth as a teenager after marrying your husband, my father. Now and then we would see foxes darting across the grass and one time there was a raccoon in the culvert next to the crabapple tree where the skunks usually hid. You were so proud of us being the second family to live there, after you and dad bought the land from the Olsons. We never talked about the Dakota who lived there before 1862.

When I saw the envelope in our mailbox, I wondered if it was a Christmas card. There were no seasonal greetings on the outside, though, and you used to cover your Christmas card envelopes in winter-themed stickers. Snowmen, Christmas trees, angels. And I wasn’t expecting a Christmas card from you this year. You hadn’t responded to my last text message, when I let you know about reporting by ProPublica and Star Tribune on child sexual abuse in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Duluth. I explained how there are many similarities with child sexual abuse within Conservative Laestadianism in North America and Finland. The weaponization of forgiveness, protection of predators, and dismissal of victims, who are pushed to forget.”

]]> Forthcoming: Hello from InterCity Train 954 https://www.jackraisanen.org/intercity/ Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:00:30 +0000 https://www.jackraisanen.org/?p=111309 My essay “Hello from InterCity Train 954” is forthcoming, to be published this spring. Here is an excerpt:

“I grew up in Cokato, Minnesota within Conservative Laestadianism, a socially conservative and highly controlling religious group with sect-like and cultish traits. Represented in North America by the Laestadian Lutheran Church, the group has roots in the pietist Lutheran revival initiated by Lars Levi Laestadius (1800–1861) in Gárasavvon, Sápmi during the 1840s. Performance art and contemporary circus are avoided in Laestadianism, understood as the work of the devil. My father would not even attend a classical music concert by the Minnesota Orchestra featuring the Kullervo Symphony, Op. 7 by Jean Sibelius, with Osmo Vänskä conducting the orchestra and the visiting Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat, Finland’s leading men’s choir. After officially apostatizing from the Laestadian Lutheran Church in fall 2015, I tried to come up with something for my parents and I to do together. Given our Finnish background and their strict religious lifestyle, I thought a classical music concert would be suitable neutral ground. They initially agreed to join, but cancelled the day before, my father saying, “who knows what that might lead to.” I went with friends instead and the distance between me and my parents continued growing.

The worry my father expressed lives strong in the minds of Conservative Laestadians, concern that something like a classical music concert could function as a source of temptation and an entry — a sort-of gateway drug — into other forms of culture, eventually leading to, for the life of a Laestadian believer, exposure to something spiritually damaging like the hedonistic and sensual performance I attended in October. I distinctly remember the calls I heard as a child in Laestadianism to be watchful for the work of the Devil. “If you give him your little finger, he will take your whole arm,” we were warned. I would often go to bed afraid, feeling too embarrassed to confess my sins and ask for forgiveness, worrying that the end of the world might come while I was asleep at night, and I would be sent to hell since I carried unforgiven sin on my conscience. Even impure thoughts and doubting the truth of the movement are sin in Laestadianism.”

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