illustration
- All Saints
Episcopal Church, Northfield Minnesota, a church built on a lot
purchased by the Ladies Social Circle
Image courtesy of All Saints Episcopal Church
Background:
The Episcopal Church had declared that the
whole church was the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.
Missionary efforts overseas and on the frontier were planting new
parishes and working with indigenous peoples.
The church faced controversy and
competition between evangelicals and anglo catholics.
Women are serving
as missionaries on the frontier and overseas.
Episcopal women had joined with others in
numerous reform movements, including women's rights.
Women continued to teach and lead prayers
at home, attend church, serve as organists and choir directors, form
local guilds that supported mission and raised funds for local
projects, found and run schools, hospitals, and orphanages, teach and
run Sunday Schools, and write religious materials.
Women's efforts have invented a rich parish
life filled with picnics and suppers, bazaars and rummage sales,
holiday parties, church outings, plays, concerts, and teas, and they
start reconstructing the church to include spaces and facitilies for
these activities.
In many parishes, women provide the
majority of parish funds, and control how they are spent through their
local societies.
Women served as parish visitors - going
door to door to look after those in need.
Ann Ayres had become the first professed
sister of the Holy Communion
The first groups of deaconesses appear in
dioceses and begin their ministry.
Women begin trying to vote in local parish
annual meetings, but are blocked.
