A. P. Førster
Danish Baptist missionary (1819–1889)
Andreas Peter (A. P.) Førster (1819–1889) was a pioneer Danish Baptist pastor and missionary who contributed to the early growth of the Baptist church in Denmark as well as to its establishment in Sweden.
Life
Andreas Peter Førster was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1819. As a young man in 1837, Førster traveled to Hamburg, Germany. His exposure to the growing Christian revival came when he met Johann Gerhard Oncken, a German Baptist preacher known as "the father of Continental Baptists."
Førster went to the Primitive Evangelical Baptists in London, who baptized him in 1843. There he studied Calvinist theology and stayed for several years as a member of the Buttesland Street Chapel. With the support of the church, as part of the Strict Baptist Convention, he later returned to Copenhagen as a missionary with his English wife.
On 21 September 1848, in Vallersvik in Norra Halland, Sweden, Førster performed the first Baptist baptisms in Sweden. Swedish Baptist pastor F. O. Nilsson, who had been baptized by Oncken the previous year, invited Førster there to baptize his wife, brothers, and two others. The ceremony was followed the same evening by the founding of the first Swedish Baptist congregation (and first free church in the country) in Nilsson's brother's home, Borekullastugan.
Førster remained in Denmark for some time, serving as a missionary to the new, struggling Baptist churches there.
“A. P. Førster” enters the record as danish Baptist missionary (1819–1889). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Førster, Danish and Baptist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 23, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q5748408. VIAF identifies the subject as 72903321. The Library of Congress control number is n87132494. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1819, 1889, 1837 and 1843.
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This entry incorporates text from “A. P. Førster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.