Religion: The Protestant Sisters

Men can join the ministry, but how can Protestant women give their lives to serving God? One way is to join a sisterhood. Today, although few laymen are aware of it, more than 60,000 women, mostly in Europe, have taken up the religious life within Protestantism, in organizations that range from convents of veiled nuns to mother houses of deaconesses devoted to public service.

Like Roman Catholic sisters and nuns, Protestant women seeking the religious life have a wide range of vocations to choose from. There are cloistered Benedictine convents in the Church of England whose nuns attend daily Mass and recite the monastic Divine Office in English. U.S. Methodist deaconesses, on the other hand, take no vows, dress in the latest fashions (if they care to), follow no rule, and work at such chores as teaching Sunday school and visiting the sick. Coming somewhere in between are the majority of Lutheran and Reformed deaconesses: most wear some sort of distinctive garb halfway between that of a nurse and a nun, promise to remain single as long as they are in the service of the church, and in their life strike a balance between prayer and service.

“A Helper of Many.” Religious life for women has a long tradition in the Christian church. The Apostle Paul, in a letter to the Christians of Rome, commended “our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae . . . for she has been a helper of many and of myself as well.” Out of that beginning grew orders of deaconesses for service and of conventual nuns for contemplation. The great Protestant reformers of the 16th century rejected the ascetic ideal of post-Renaissance convents; serious thought of establishing some form of Protestant sisterhood is scarcely 150 years old.

Within the Anglican Communion, the Rome-admiring Oxford movement led, in mid-19th century, to a revival of both monks and nuns. The modern deaconess movement began with the Rev. Theodor Fliedner (1800-64), pastor of a Lutheran parish in the German town of Kaisers-werth. Inspired in part by the Roman Catholic order of nursing sisters established by France’s St. Vincent de Paul, Fliedner in 1836 drew up plans for a Protestant Association of Christian Nursing; by 1849 he had brought Lutheran deaconesses to France, Britain and the U.S.

The 25,000 deaconesses associated with the Kaiserswerth movement still serve primarily in hospitals, but other Protestant sisters undertake almost every ministerial duty short of celebrating the communion service. In Germany, Darmstadt’s Ecumenical Sisters of Mary do missionary work among the poor, perform religious plays for pilgrim audiences, run a retreat house. Organized in 1946 to serve penance for Nazi crimes against world Jewry, the sisters eat breakfast standing up in commemoration of concentration-camp routine, recite special prayers on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath. Another German sisterhood, the Casteller Ring of Schloss Schwanberg, has an intellectual apostolate: teachers all, the sisters of this order wear street clothes instead of habits, but make promises of chastity and recite community prayers in their own chapel.

Near to the Ministry. France’s most famous religious center for Protestant women is a bustling combination of hospital, school, medical training center and convent at Reuilly in Paris. Best known as nurses, the Reuilly sisters run their own hospital, have a home and school for delinquent girls. A well-known Anglican sisterhood is the 100-year-old Order of St. Andrew, which runs a convalescent home and assists parish priests in West London. The ladies of the order are ordained both as deaconesses and sisters, and Mother Clare, their superior, says: “We are as near to being in the ministry as it is possible for women to be.”

Although Pastor Fliedner himself escorted four Lutheran deaconesses from Germany to Pittsburgh in 1849, religious organizations for women never grew in the U.S. as prosperously as they have in Europe. The Methodist Church has only about 800 deaconesses, the various Lutheran groups fewer than 700. There are about 800 Protestant Episcopal sisters in 15 orders — most of them offshoots of English convents. Why the slow growth? “It’s probably because American women have greater opportunities for education and a variety of vocations are open to them,” says Sister Eleanor Falk, president of the Lutheran Deaconess Conference of America. “It’s always been acceptable for women to work, and the marriage possibilities are much higher here.”

Ecumenical Women. Many Anglican nuns are frank to admit their debt to Roman. Catholic orders. Says one mother superior: “There’s hardly any difference, fundamentally, between Anglican and Catholic nuns except that they are under the Pope and we are not.” Most Lutheran deaconesses, even those who wear habits, are quick to emphasize the differences between their own work and that of Catholic sisterhoods. Says Sister Falk: “We are similar and different. But when some one asks me, ‘Is it like being a Catholic nun?’, my standard answer is, ‘I really don’t know. I’ve never been a Catholic nun.’ ” Individually, many of the Protestant sisters have ecumenical leanings, and some Protestant mother houses have close and cordial relations with nearby Catholic convents. With ecclesiastical per mission, Catholic nuns have visited Darm stadt to undertake retreats.

Although Protestant sisterhoods are now a permanent part of the church, only a handful of orders and mother houses require candidates to take permanent vows. The Kaiserswerth deaconesses, for exam ple, are asked only to serve a minimum of three years, and many sisters do leave to marry or take jobs as laywomen. But thousands of others are permanently enthralled by the call of community, and spend their lives in Christian service.