Sister Elisabeth Fedde:“To do the Lord’s will.” Elisabeth Fedde and the Deaconess Movement among the Norwegians in America by Gracia Grindal (review)

As the author notes in the introduction, Lutheran church history has focused on mergers and theological controversies with few records about the lives of laity, congregational life, and especially women (10). Grindal’s biography of Elisabeth Fedde offers a window into the world of nineteenth-century women who sought to serve God as deaconesses, addressing one lacuna in Lutheran history.

The first three chapters are based on Fedde’s personal diary, kept from her arrival in New York City in April 1883 through May 1888 (7). Grindal worked from the original, described in the introduction as often difficult to read, with paper in poor condition. Still, Grindal notes the diary gives “a kind of raw and unmediated style that is very helpful to the biographer” (7).

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Norwegian Lutheranism in the upper Midwest in the 1880s and to various movements—the women’s movement, the advent of professional nursing through Florence Nightingale, the deaconess movement in Germany and Scandinavia, and the ethos of pietism. All of these provide the context for the life of Elisabeth Fedde, a Norwegian deaconess who “followed God’s call” to work among the immigrant populations in the United States.

Chapter 2, “The Brooklyn Years,” is the most rich and interesting chapter because of the abundance of sources with which Grindal worked, especially Fedde’s diary from this period. While describing Fedde’s many conflicts with pastors, board members, and sisters working under her, Grindal paints a sympathetic portrait of Fedde as a visionary founder, who within five years transforms a ministry of one into a thirty-six-bed hospital. Fedde is portrayed as a shrewd fundraiser and networker who knew how to cultivate relationships with the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of others. But Grindal also reveals Fedde as a tireless servant who ministered among poor and desperate people, helping with births, cleaning filthy rooms for sick families, providing food for the hungry and spiritual care to the dying, and arranging for the burial of indigent dead.

One sees the independent spirit of Fedde in chapter 3, “The Minneapolis Years,” when in the midst of a vacation that took her to the Twin Cities in 1888, she interprets the urging of church leaders that she stay in Minneapolis to establish a deaconess motherhouse and hospital as a call from God.

Her successful work in the upper Midwest is set in the context of the merger of Norwegian Lutherans into the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in 1890. Fedde’s eagerness to capitalize on ministry opportunities in Beloit and Chicago again created conflict with her governing board. But without the voice of Fedde’s personal diary, this and subsequent chapters lack the compelling narrative style and voice of Fedde present in chapter 2.

In chapter 5 Grindal theorizes about Fedde, “this very powerful, complicated, and deeply spiritual woman” (330), naming “an inherent clash between visionaries [Fedde] and managers [governing boards]” (331) as the primary reason for Fedde’s life of conflict. Grindal admits that gender roles may also have contributed to the conflicts, but she also sees the “background of liberal and conservative politics and pietist [Fedde] and orthodox theologies” as a major factor (333). The latter position was embodied by Pastor Everson of the Norwegian Synod, who clashed with Fedde over her “pragmatic” ecumenism (102) and who publicly opposed fund-raising “raffles and bazaars” as illegal activities (169). One puzzle for Grindal was Fedde’s resignation from the diaconate to return to Norway and marry at age 46. Research led Grindal to conclude that health issues, most likely rheumatoid arthritis, were the cause of this dramatic change.

In the brief Afterword Grindal touches on major theological issues associated with the deaconess movement: it created a “half-clerical” status (342) for these women who clearly were set apart...