Deaconess - Modern History

Modern History

The modern deaconess movement began in Germany in 1836 when Theodor Fliedner and his wife Friederike Münster opened the first deaconess motherhouse in Kaiserswerth on the Rhine. Fifty years later, there were over 5,000 deaconesses in Europe. William Passavant is credited with bringing the first deaconesses to the United States. During a trip to Germany he came in contact with Pastor Theodor Fliedner, who had opened a hospital and training school for deaconesses in Kaiserswerth. At Passavant's request, in 1849 Fliedner brought four German deaconesses to Pittsburgh to work in the Pittsburgh Infirmary (now Passavant Hospital).

In 1884, John Lankenau, a business owner, brought seven sisters from Germany to run the German hospital in Philadelphia. Other deaconesses soon followed and began ministries in several United States cities with large Lutheran populations. By the 1963 formation of the Lutheran Church in America, there were three main centers for deaconess work: Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Omaha. These three sisterhoods combined and form what became the Deaconess Community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or ELCA. The history of the office of Deaconess in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) is thoroughly documented in the 2009 book 'In The Footsteps Of Phoebe'. LCMS Deaconesses affectionately trace their roots back to Phoebe, a woman mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Romans 16.1 as a member of the church of Cenchrea (a Greek city near Corinth).

The spiritual revival in the Americas and Europe of the nineteenth century brought rapid social change. Women who began to seek new roles for themselves turned to deaconess service. On the 18th of July, 1862, Elizabeth Catherine Ferard received Deaconess Licence No. 1 from Archibald Tait, the Bishop of London, making her the first deaconess of the Church of England. On 30 November 1861 she had founded the North London Deaconess Institution and the Community which would become the (Deaconess) Community of St. Andrew. The London Diocesan Deaconess Institution also trained Deaconesses for other dioceses and some served overseas and began deaconess work in Melbourne, Lahore, Grahamstown South Africa and New Zealand. In 1887, Isabella Gilmore oversaw the revival of the Deaconesses not living in a Community. In the Victorian era, for women with a calling to serve God, the role of Deaconess was socially acceptable at the time. Allowed to function as ministers or servants, women filled the traditional societal role of caregivers and teachers.