Friday, October 9, 2026

Dan van Voorhis (0:06)

It is the 9th of October, 2026 Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

I'm Dan van Voorhis.

I will admit there are some characters in church history who are so prolific in their life's work. It is a challenge to fit everything into a six to eight minute show. This is certainly the case with William Passavant Senior, one of the more energetic and underrated figures in Christian and Lutheran history on the American frontier in the 19th century. William Passavant was born in a castle in rural Western Pennsylvania, in a curious town called Zeeland-Nopal on this, the 9th of October in 1821 The castle had been built by his grandfather who had led to Western PA after his family had been displaced from both France and Switzerland. He would name the town after his daughter, Zeelia, who would marry Philip Passavant. William was their third child. He was a pious boy, educated at home by his mother and inspired by those early errands he was sent on by her to help sick and poor neighbors. At the age of 15, he attended Jefferson College in Cannonsburg, a Presbyterian school as there was no local Lutheran school. Here he began his struggles with the broad Protestant tradition, but his fidelity to the Lutheran confessions he was raised with. Desiring to go into the ministry, he attended Gettysburg Seminary and studied under Samuel Schmucker, then experimenting with American and revivalist influences. While he was partially attracted to this broad vision of the church, he would ultimately become one of the staunch Lutherans in Western PA and to the West. He would become close friends with Charles Porterfield Crouth, and they would be the architects of the American confessional Lutheran movement. He served parishes in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, helped for the Pittsburgh Synod to develop, and eventually the General Council as the confessional alternative to the General Synod.

But he was not opposed to broad churchwork in the service of the sick and the poor. He accepted an invitation to go to Europe in 1846 to attend the Evangelical Alliance. This afforded him time to travel around the continent securing missionaries for the New World.

But most importantly, he visited the small town of Kaisersworth on the Rhine just north of Dusseldorf. There, he observed what Theodore Fleedener had created. A deaconess mother house, as well as a hospital and a training system for women interested in ministry. To Fleedener and then Passavant, the office of deaconess was as old as scripture itself and offered a path for women who wanted to serve in the church.

Back home in Pittsburgh, he would help found a deaconess hospital, what would become the Pittsburgh infirmary, a, quote, porch of mercy for anyone in need. Little did he know how important this and institutions modeled after it would be with the coming of a cholera outbreak and then the Civil War. And while Passavant was a staunch abolitionist, he urged all the deaconess hospitals to treat all injured, Union or Confederate. He would also branch out into the creation of orphanages, first with a farm school in his home of Zillianople. Passavant had a similar concern for those rapidly growing cities around him, from Minnesota and Wisconsin to Illinois and beyond. He worked especially with the Scandinavian Lutherans, who he hoped would not be swayed to abandon their Lutheran distinctive as some of the German Lutherans had. He helped publish periodicals, including a Lutheran almanac, and helped build more hospitals in Milwaukee and Chicago. Resigning from the past, at full time, he spent the last part of his career helping to form institutions such as Teale College, now in Greenville, Pennsylvania, as well as the Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary. Today, the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. He was tireless in his work, other works and institutions of mercy and missions for synodical affairs, publishing, and the work of a pastor. William Passavant would die on June 3, 1894 News of his death spread across the Associated Press wire service. A massive funeral was held at his one-time church in Pittsburgh. He is perhaps best remembered with the creation of the position of the Lutheran deaconess in America within a confessional Lutheran church body. A legacy is still present today, along with hospitals, schools, and orphanages. Born on this day in 1821, William Passavant was 73 years old.

The last word for today comes from the Daily Lectionary in James Chapter 4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell within us? But he gives us more grace. That is why scripture says, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.