Deaconesses Gather for a Setting ApartWhat would women be doing in the
Episcopal Church in 1925?

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                                                   illustration - Deaconesses gather for the setting apart of Hariett Bedell
                                             Image Courtesy of the Episcopal Women's History project.

Background:
  • The Episcopal Church reorganized in 1919, creating an executive council, limiting vestry duty to males, and declining to allow women to serve in General Convention. Women's Auxiliary becomes auxiliary to the national Church. Women are appointed to standing commitees.
  • Episcopal church has consecrated African American suffragen bishops for "Colored Work."
  • Women can vote in all states of the Union, and have served in Congress.
  • The Lambeth Conference of 1920 recognized deaconesses as a valid order of the church.
  • Despite favorable recommendation from Commission, General Convention declines to authorize women as licensed lay readers.

  • Women's Auxiliary continues funding foreign and domestic missions, especially supporting women mission workers. Almost 200 women are serving as missionaries for the church.
  • Women continue in parish ministries, altar guild, the Women's Auxiliary, schools, Sunday Schools, settlement houses, hospitals, religious orders, orphanages, and retirement centers.
  • Bishop Tuttle Training School begins educating African American women as church workers.
  • St. Margaret's House is training both deaconesses and lay workers.
  • Women have become professional Christian education leaders and church administrators.
  • Women serve as delegates to a number of diocesan conventions.
This web page is maintained by Webster Joan R. Gundersen
for the Episcopal Women's History Project.