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Near to the Ministry. France's most famous religious center for Protestant women is a bustling combination of hospital, school, medical training center and convent at Reuilly in Paris. Best known as nurses, the Reuilly sisters run their own hospital, have a home and school for delinquent girls. A well-known Anglican sisterhood is the 100-year-old Order of St. Andrew, which runs a convalescent home and assists parish priests in West London. The ladies of the order are ordained both as deaconesses and sisters, and Mother Clare, their superior, says: "We are as near to being in the ministry as it is possible for women to be."
Although Pastor Fliedner himself escorted four Lutheran deaconesses from Germany to Pittsburgh in 1849, religious organizations for women never grew in the U.S. as prosperously as they have in Europe. The Methodist Church has only about 800 deaconesses, the various Lutheran groups fewer than 700. There are about 800 Protestant Episcopal sisters in 15 orders — most of them offshoots of English convents. Why the slow growth? "It's probably because American women have greater opportunities for education and a variety of vocations are open to them," says Sister Eleanor Falk, president of the Lutheran Deaconess Conference of America. "It's always been acceptable for women to work, and the marriage possibilities are much higher here."
Ecumenical Women. Many Anglican nuns are frank to admit their debt to Roman. Catholic orders. Says one mother superior: "There's hardly any difference, fundamentally, between Anglican and Catholic nuns except that they are under the Pope and we are not." Most Lutheran deaconesses, even those who wear habits, are quick to emphasize the differences between their own work and that of Catholic sisterhoods. Says Sister Falk: "We are similar and different. But when some one asks me, 'Is it like being a Catholic nun?', my standard answer is, 'I really don't know. I've never been a Catholic nun.' " Individually, many of the Protestant sisters have ecumenical leanings, and some Protestant mother houses have close and cordial relations with nearby Catholic convents. With ecclesiastical per mission, Catholic nuns have visited Darm stadt to undertake retreats.
Although Protestant sisterhoods are now a permanent part of the church, only a handful of orders and mother houses require candidates to take permanent vows. The Kaiserswerth deaconesses, for exam ple, are asked only to serve a minimum of three years, and many sisters do leave to marry or take jobs as laywomen. But thousands of others are permanently enthralled by the call of community, and spend their lives in Christian service.