The Episcopal Women's Project has proposed five women for inclusion in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. 
In addition we are recommending a change in the name of one day already in Lesser Feasts and Fasts.
We believe that the day set aside to honor the Martyrs of Lyon, is better described as the feast day of Blandina and Companions,
and this proposal will be voted on at General Convention in 2006.

The new additions, with the information that would appear in Lesser Feasts and Fasts about them is below.  Join us in supporting the addition of these women to the list of those the Church honors.

 

Harriet M. Bedell	Anna Julia Haywood Cooper	Frances Joseph-Gaudet
Vida Dutton Scudder	Maria W. Stewart	Blandina

 

Harriet M. Bedell (March 19, 1875- January 8,1969). Episcopal deaconess and missionary among American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples.. A students from the New York Training School for Deaconesses, Bedell was set apart as a deaconess in 1922, after she worked as a missionary among the Cheyenne in Oklahoma, and as a teacher and nurse in Alaska, 40 miles south of the Arctic Circle, where she traveled by dogsled to remote villages. During her last years in Alaska, Bedell opened a boarding school that was eventually closed due to a lack of funds. In 1932, she learned about the plight of the Seminoles in Florida and used her own salary to reopen a mission among the Mikasuki Indians. Though forced to “officially” retire at age 63, she continued her ministry of health care, education, and economic empowerment until 1960 when Hurricane Donna wipes out the mission. Active into her 80s, she drove an average of twenty thousand miles per year during her ministry. Deaconess Bedell was one of the most popular writers in the national Episcopal mission periodical, The Spirit of Missions. She won the respect of indigenous people through her compassion and her respect of their way of life and beliefs. While active in ministry among the Cheyenne, she was eventually adopted into the tribe and given the name “Bird Woman.” The diocese of Southwest Florida celebrates Harriet Bedell Day on January 8, the anniversary of her death.

 

O loving God, you chose your faithful servant Harriet Bedell to be a missionary among indigenous peoples and to exercise the ministry of deaconess: Fill us with compassion and respect for all people, and empower us for ministry and service throughout the world; though Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

Isa 53:4-12

Psalm 96, 1-7

Mt 5:1-12

Preface of Apostles

 

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (August 10, c1859- February 27, 1964). Educator, advocate and scholar. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina to an enslaved woman and a white man, presumably her mother’s master, Anna Julia was an academically gifted child and received a scholarship to attend St. Augustine Normal School and Collegiate Institute, a school founded by the Episcopal Church to educate African-American teachers and clergy. There she began her membership in the Episcopal Church. After forcing her way into a Greek class designed for male theology students, Anna Julia later married the instructor, George A.C. Cooper, the second African-American ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in North Carolina. After her husband’s death in 1879, Cooper received degrees in mathematics from Oberlin College, and was made principal of the only African American high school in Washington D.C.. She was denied reappointment in 1906 because she refused to lower her educational standards. Throughout her career, Cooper emphasized the importance of education to the future of African Americans, and was critical of the lack of support they received from the church. An advocate for African-American women, Cooper assisted in organizing the Colored Women’s League and the first Colored Settlement House in Washington, D.C. She wrote and spoke widely on issues of race and gender, and took an active role in national and international organizations founded to advance African Americans.  At the age of fifty-five she adopted the five children of her nephew. In 1925, Cooper became the fourth African –American woman to complete a Ph.D degree, granted from the Sorbonne when she was sixty-five years old. From 1930-1942, Cooper served as president of Frelinghuysen University.

 

Almighty God, you inspired your servant Anna Julia Heyward Cooper with the love of learning and the skill of a great teacher: Enlighten us more and more, we pray, by the disciplines thinking and teaching of faithful educations, and deepen our commitment to the education of all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

Proverbs 9:1-6

Ps: 33-18

Lk 4:14-21

Preface of a Saint III

Frances Joseph-Gaudet (1861- December 1934), prison reform worker and educator, was born in a log cabin in Holmesville, Mississippi of African American and Native American descent. She was raised by her grandparents. Later she went to live with a brother in New Orleans where she attended school and Straight College. Widowed early, she dedicated her life to prison reform. Beginning in 1894 she held prayer meetings, wrote letters, delivered messages, and secured clothing for black prisoners, and later for white prisoners as well. Her dedication to prisoners and prison reform won her the respect of prison officials, city authorities, the governor, and the Prison Reform Association. A delegate to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union international convention in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1900, she worked for the reform of young blacks arrested for misdemeanor or vagrancy. Joseph-Gaudet was the first woman to support juvenile offenders in Louisiana, and her efforts helped found the juvenile court. She eventually purchased a farm and founded the Gaudet Normal and Industrial School. The school, which eventually expanded to 105 acres and numerous buildings, also served as a boarding school for children with working mothers. Joseph-Gaudet served as principal of the school until 1921 when she donated the school to the Episcopal Church of Lousiana. Though the school closed in 1950, the Gaudet Episcopal Home opened in the same location four years later to serve African American children ages four to sixteen. The endowment fund currently supports St. Luke’s Community Center on North Dorgenois Street, where a hall honors Frances Joseph-Gaudet.         

 

O God, the comfort of prisoners: Your raised up your servant Frances Joseph-Gaudet to work for reform: Grant that we, encouraged by her example, will work for those who know no freedom; through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

 

Ex 14:10-15:1

Ps. 40: 1-10

Jn 13:31-35

Preface of a Saint II

 

Vida Dutton Scudder (December 15, 1861- October 9, 1954), educator, activist and founder of the Episcopal Church Socialist League was born to Congregationalist missionaries in India. In the 1870s, Vida and her mother were confirmed as Episcopalians by Phillips Brooks. After studying English literature at Smith College and Oxford University, Scudder began teaching at Wellesley College. Her love of scholarship was matched by her social conscience and deep spirituality. As a young woman, Scudder began the College Settlements Association, joined the Society of Christian Socialists, and began her life- long association with the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross in 1889. In 1893, Scudder took a leave of absence from Wellesley to work with Helena Stuart Dudley to found Denison House in Boston. Scudder experienced a breakdown in 1901 due to the stress of teaching and activism. After two years of recuperation in Italy, she returned renewed and became more active in church and socialist groups; she started a group for Italian immigrants at Denison House and took an active part in organizing the Women’s Trade Union League. In 1911, Scudder founded the Episcopal Church Socialist League, and formally joined the Socialist party. Her support of striking textile workers in the Lawrence, Massachuetts strike in 1912 drew a great deal of criticism and threatened her teaching position. Though she initially supported World War I, she joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1923, and by the 1930s she was a pacifist. Throughout her life Scudder’s primary relationships and support network were women; her closest companion was Florence Converse, who shared in her religious faith and political ideals. After retirement, Scudder authored sixteen books on religious and political subjects, combining her intense activism with and an equally vibrant spirituality. She was the first woman published in the Anglican Theological Review.  

 

O Gracious God. Who sent your beloved son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Raise up in your church witnesses who, after the example of your servant Vida Dutton Scudder, stand firm in proclaiming the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 

Is. 11: 1-10

Ps.25: 1-14

Jn 6:37-51

Preface of a Saint III

 

Maria W. Stewart (1803- December 17, 1879). Orator, educator, and the first African American woman to speak publicly on behalf of women’s rights. Born in Hartford, Stewart was orphaned at the age of five and received little formal education. After her husband’s death, she underwent a conversion. Active in several denominations, she settled in the Episcopal Church. Stewart opposed slavery, the oppression of women, and all exploitation. Her addresses were delivered in Boston at a time when women and African Americans did not speak in public. Though condemned, she believed that God consistently spoke through women. After her retirement, Stewart held prayer meetings in her home because she was denied funding for her Sunday School from the Episcopal Church because she was black, and from black churches because she was Episcopalian.

From Boston, Stewart moved in 1833 to New York City where she taught in public schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn. She later moved to Baltimore to teach black children, and to Washington where she organized a school, worked as a matron in the Freedman’s Hospital, and opened a Sunday school for poor children who lived in the neighborhood. To assist in the Sunday school, Stewart secured the assistance of students from nearby Howard University. In 1879, after obtaining a pension for widows of the War of 1812, Stewart published the second edition of her speeches and writings under the title, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart. She died the same year, and was buried from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Washington.

 

O holy God, you endowed your servant Maria Stewart with the gifts of an orator and prophet for her people: Grant that we also, following in her example, may use our gifts to speak out for those in need, in the name of Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

Gal 3:22-28

Ps. 85:7-13

Mt 10: 34-42

Preface of a Saint I

 

Resolution….Church Year Calendar Inclusion

Resolved, the House of _____ concurring, That this 75^th General Convention propose an additional commemoration for inclusion in the Calendar of the Church Year and authorize for trial use for the triennium 2006-2009, as follows:

January 8 – Harriet M. Bedell

February 28 – Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (one day after death date)

December __ -- Frances Joseph-Gaudet

October 10 – Vida Dutton Scudder (one day after death date)

December 17 – Maria W. Stewart (death date)

 

EXPLANATION

Based on our belief in the need for a more inclusive calendar of the church year, the EWHP recommends these women to be included for commemoration. 

 

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