Friday, October 9, 2026

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 that 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 6-8 minute show. This is certainly the case with William Passavant, Sr., 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 PA in a curious town called Zelienople on this, the 9th of October in 1821. The castle had been built by his grandfather, who fled to Western PA after his family had been displaced from both France and Switzerland. He would name the town after his daughter Zelia, who would marry Phillip Passavant; William was their 3rd child.

 

He was a pious boy, educated at home by his mother and inspired by those early errands he was sent on to help sick and poor neighbors. At the age of 15, he attended Jefferson College in Canonsburg- a Presbyterian school- as there was no local Lutheran college. 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 with Charles Porterfield Krauth, and they would be architects of the American Confessional Lutheran movement.

 

He served parishes in Baltimore and Pittsburgh and helped the Pittsburgh Synod and eventually the General Council as the confessional alternative to the General Synod.

But he was not opposed to broad church work 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 Kaiserswerth on the Rhine north of Düsseldorf. There he observed what Theodore Fliedner had created- a “deaconess Motherhouse” and a hospital and training system for women interested in ministry. To Fliedner, 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, which would become the Pittsburgh Infirmary- a “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. While Passavant was a staunch abolitionist, he urged all of the deaconess hospitals to treat all injured, Union or Confederate.

 

He would also branch out into the creation of orphanages with a farm school in his home of Zelienople.

 

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 whom he hoped would not be swayed to abandon their Lutheran distinctive as some of the German Lutherans had done coming out of Gettysburg. He helped publish periodicals including a Lutheran Almanac and helped build more hospitals in Milwaukee and Chicago.

 

Resigning from the pastorate full-time, he spent the last half of his life helping to form institutions such as Thiel 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, whether in works and institutions for mercy and missions, for synodical affairs, publishing, or the work of a pastor.

 

William Passavant would die on June 3rd 1894- news of his death spread across the Associated Press wire service; a massive funeral was held at his onetime church in Pittsburgh. He is perhaps best remembered for the creation of the position of Lutheran Deaconess within a confessional Lutheran church body- a legacy still present today, along with the 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 and James 4

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. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
 but shows favor to the humble.”

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 9th of October 2026 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who remembers Brian Setzer’s less popular song: Grieve, Mourn and Wail- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who reminds you it was “Jump, Jive and Wail,” not the same as James… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.