Featured Image: A photo of members of the Order of Lutheran Franciscans, available on the order’s webpage.
Leadership in the church takes many forms. Some are highly visible—like the rostered ministers—and some lead with very little public recognition. This series, which first appeared in Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church’s weekly newsletter, gives an overview of many kinds of leaders in the church.
Lutheran religious orders? Yes! This comes as a shock to American Lutherans who, for the most part, never come into contact with members of Lutheran religious orders—and in the United States, there are very, very few.
Christian Monasticism
Asceticism (“exercise, training”) is not unique to Christianity. All across the world and throughout history, people have withdrawn from society to varying degrees in order to pursue a deeper spiritual connection. Ascetics practice self-imposed restraint, rejecting many worldly pleasures in order to better focus on the spiritual.
Though Christian asceticism is as old as Christianity itself, and early Christian ascetics drew on Jewish practices for inspiration, it’s usually Saint Anthony the Great of Egypt who is seen as the “father” of Christian monasticism. After hearing a sermon that preached selling one’s possessions and giving the money to the poor, Anthony did just that and moved out into the desert to live a solitary life as a hermit (“desert, solitude”). Other men and women (the “Desert Fathers and Mothers”), followed his example, and soon groups of people living near each other sprang up in the desert. These hermits gained a reputation for holiness, and they were frequently consulted for advice and prayer by ordinary and extraordinary people.
Later hermits developed Rules of Life for communities and groups to live by, and many religious orders were named after their founders: Augustinians, Benedictines, Franciscans, Clarisses, Dominicans, Bridgettines, and others. Some of these religious orders are monastic, which usually means they live and work together in one place, such as a monastery (for men, which is ironic because monastic comes from “alone”, referring to the first monastics being hermits) or convent (“convened, assembled”, for women)–monks and nuns (originally from “older women”) are monastic. Others are mendicant (“begging”), which usually means they live and work outside “in the world”, moving from place to place and relying on the charity of others rather than personal or communal wealth–friars (“brothers”) and women in consecrated religious life who aren’t nuns are mendicant. Whether monastic or mendicant, lay men in religious life are addressed as “Brother” and lay women in religious life are addressed as “Sister”.
During the Reformation, Martin Luther and his fellow reformers attacked the abuses of the Medieval monastic system in which people, young and old, could be tricked into taking permanent vows in monasteries and convents (which is why Katharina von Bora and eleven other nuns had to be smuggled out of their convent by Luther); and which elevated religious life above all other vocations. While this translated into a general disdain for and rejection of religious orders as the Reformation spread, it didn’t abolish religious life. Especially in Europe, Lutheran monasticism continued; there are Lutheran monasteries hundreds of years old.
In the United States, so heavily influenced by Puritanism and Pietism, which rejected consecrated religious life wholesale, Lutheran religious orders never gained much of a foothold. But they do exist, and two of them—the Order of Lutheran Franciscans and the Deaconess Community—are specific to our own church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (a third, the Congregation of the Servants of Christ, is the pan-Lutheran Augustinian monastic order at St. Augustine’s House in Oxford, Michigan).
Order of Lutheran Franciscans
Francis of Assisi was born in 1181 CE. Like Anthony the Great, he was inspired by a sermon to renounce worldly goods. According to legend, the conflict between his acts of charity and his father came to a dramatic head in which Francis stripped naked, literally giving up everything he had, and left. He embraced a life of poverty, wearing a rough brown tunic with a rope tied around his waist; and traveled through the countryside, preaching and teaching with a focus on care for creation, charity, and poverty. He attracted others to his example, including Claire of Assisi, and the two of them founded the Order of Friars Minor in 1209 and the Order of Poor Ladies in 1212. Franciscan spirituality proved popular, and today Francis is revered as one of the most popular saints in the church.
The Order of Lutheran Franciscans was founded in 2011 to be the first explicit religious order in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The order is open to all ELCA members, married or single, lay or ordained. Members take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and wear the habit of the order. Becoming a life professed member of the order takes at least seven years, usually more.
The habit (“dress, attire”) of the OLF is the cross worn over any clothing. Two crosses have special significance to Franciscans: the San Damiano cross, which is the cross before which Francis prayed, featuring icons within the cross; and the Tau cross, which Francis used as his own seal, shaped like the Greek letter tau, or a T. Members may also wear the traditional dark brown tunic, cowl (“hood”), and thrice-knotted rope.
Deaconess Community
The Deaconess Community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America grew out of a need to reclaim a sense and office of diakonia (see the previous article), which Lutheran churches neglected and lost. Even in places where a vestigial diaconate remained, it was restricted to men and seen only as a stepping-stone to priestly ordination. In Germany, motivated by the examples of deaconesses in the New Testament and religious sisters in other traditions, Pastor Theodor Fliedner and Friederike Münster created a new order of deaconesses in 1836 to reclaim the ancient tradition of ministry to the lost, the crushed, the poor, and the oppressed. These deaconesses lived a consecrated life together in community and served imprisoned people, the sick, orphans, the houseless, and anyone else. This new community grew quickly, organizing motherhouses in other territories and training new deaconesses to continue the work throughout the world.
The first of these new deaconesses arrived in the United States in 1884 in response to a request for staff at a hospital in Philadelphia. Seven deaconesses answered the call. They worked in the hospital, established a school for girls, built a home for the aging, and established a new motherhouse. The Board of Deaconesses Work was created in 1889 by the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of America, officially designating the deaconesses as an office of the church. The General Synod merged into the United Lutheran Church in America, which merged into the Lutheran Church in America, which finally merged into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Along with diaconal ministers and associates in ministry, the Deaconess Community was one of the three lay Word and Service rosters of the ELCA.
Today, while the three Word and Service rosters are united into one, deacons, the Deaconess Community remains a distinct separately incorporated ministry within that roster. All Deaconesses are also deacons, bridging the gap between the church and the world while fostering an intentional community for women in the church. Deaconesses are given a Latin cross bottony surmounted by a bar to wear as a mark of office.
Both the Order of Lutheran Franciscans and the Deaconess Community embody the Lutheran concept of diakonia, or “service to the world”, and do so through community life and spirituality. Both are also Reconciling in Christ communities, just like our congregation.
Living an Ecumenical Life 