SHCT 153 Green - Responding To Secularization - The Deaconess Movement in Nineteenth-Century Sweden PDF

Responding to Secularization
Studies in the History of

Christian Traditions
General Editor
Robert J. Bast
Knoxville, Tennessee
In cooperation with
Henry Chadwick, Cambridge
Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee
Eric Saak, Liverpool
Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York
Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen
John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana
Founding Editor
Heiko A. Oberman
VOLUME 153
Responding
to Secularization
The Deaconess Movement in
Nineteenth-Century Sweden
By
Todd H. Green
LEIDEN BOSTON
2011
On the cover: A parish deaconess administers medicine to a widow, by Priscilla hln Sundqvist
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Todd H.
Responding to secularization : the deaconess movement in nineteenth-century Sweden / by
Todd H. Green.
p. cm. (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; v. 153)
Based on the author's dissertation (Vanderbilt University).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-19479-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. DeaconessesSwedenHistory19th century. 2. SecularismSwedenHistory19th
century. 3. SwedenChurch history19th century. I. Title. II. Series.
BV4423.G74 2011
271'.98dc22
2010048232
ISSN 1573-5664
ISBN 978 90 04 19479 3
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Chapter One. The Secularization Debate: An Introduction to the

Problematic Relationship between Religion and Modernity . . . . . 1
A. Problems of Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
B. The Secularization Debate in Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
C. The Secularization Debate in Modern European Religious
History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
D. The Secularization Debate in Swedish Religious History . . . . 14
E. The Place of the Present Work in Secularization Scholarship 19
F. Gender and Religion in Modern Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
G. Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
H. Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter Two. The Female Diaconate in Nineteenth-Century

Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
A. The Origins and Formation of the Female Diaconate . . . . . . . . 32
B. Leadership and Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
C. The Calling of a Deaconess .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
D. A Profile of Deaconesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
E. Deaconess Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
F. The Work of Deaconesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
G. The Difficulties of Recruiting and Retaining Deaconesses . . . 76
H. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Chapter Three. Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

A. Popular Education in Medieval and Early Modern Europe . . 90
B. Educational Reforms in Nineteenth-Century Sweden . . . . . . . 93
C. The Deaconess School for Poor Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
D. Deaconesses as Teachers in Provincial Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
E. The Discontinuation of Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
F. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
vi contents
Chapter Four. Health Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

A. Health Care in Medieval and Early Modern Europe . . . . . . . . . 117
B. Origins of the Modern Nursing Profession in
Nineteenth-Century Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
C. The Deaconess Hospital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
D. The Nursing Home and the Polyclinic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
E. Private Home Care and Provincial Hospitals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
F. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter Five. Poor Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

A. Poor Relief in Medieval and Early Modern Europe . . . . . . . . . . 144
B. Poor Relief Reform in Nineteenth-Century Sweden . . . . . . . . . 148
C. Indoor Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
D. Outdoor Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
E. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Chapter Six. The Social Significance Of Swedish Deaconesses .. . . . . 166
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who

made this book possible. I began this project as a dissertation at Vander-
bilt University, and the four professors who served on my dissertation
committee provided incredible guidance and feedback to me, including
many useful suggestions for revisions beyond the dissertation. To these
four professors, I am most indebted: Dale A. Johnson, Joel F. Harrington,
James Hudnut-Beumler, and Paul J. DeHart.
At an early stage of the research process, e-mail correspondence and/or
telephone conversations with several scholars enabled me better to focus
my ideas. In particular, Professors Gran Gellerstam of Lund University,
Pirjo Markkola of the University of Tampere, and Carter Lindberg of
Boston University provided me with helpful insights into my topic.
The most challenging aspect of researching this book was getting
access to the deaconess archives at the Ersta Diaconate Society in Stock-
holm. Ersta lacks a professional archivist, and most of its full-time em-
ployees know little of the archives (including the location!). I am there-
fore indebted to two retired deaconesses, Gudrun Persson and Birgitta
Wendt, for finding the sacred key, orienting me to the archives, and shar-
ing with me their own perspectives on the history of their profession.
Many of the secondary sources were not to be found in the stacks of
Vanderbilts Central and Divinity Libraries. I was heavily dependent on
Vanderbilts Interlibrary Loan Service for securing much of this literature,
particularly books written in Swedish. Their invaluable assistance made
it possible to complete the book in a timely fashion.
Finally, I am thankful for the support of my family. My parents, Jerry
and Suzanne Green, spared no expense in making sure that I received an
excellent education. My brothers, Mike and David Green, have expressed
their pride in my accomplishments, and this has meant more to me than
they will ever know. My wifes parents, Olle and Birgitta hln, graciously
opened their home in Stockholm to me while I was doing much of the
research. My daughter, Rebecka, scarcely remembers a time when I was
not a graduate student or a professor. Colleagues used to remark that
it must be difficult to be working on a Ph.D. while trying to be a good
parent, but I do not think I suffered from wearing both hats. If anything,
Rebecka helped me keep my sanity and reminded me that there is more
viii acknowledgements
to life than research. My wife, Tabita, gave me so much support while I

worked on this project. When someone who is both a spouse and parent
returns to graduate school, many burdens are placed on other family
members. Tabita bore these with grace, and without a doubt, I could not
have researched and written this book apart from her faith in me and my
vocational calling.
LIST OF TABLES
Table
. Educational External Work Stations, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
. Number of Sisters, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
. External Work Stations, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
. Health Care and Poor Relief External Work Stations, . . 48
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Swedish English
EDA Ersta Diakonisllskaps arkiv Ersta Diaconate Societys
Archives
JCBRB J.C. Brings rundbrev J.C. Brings Circular Letters
LHA Louise Heimbrgers Louise Heimbrgers Notes
anteckningar
MCD Marie Cederschilds dagbok Marie Cederschilds Diary
SBDAS Sllskapet fr beredande af en Society for the Preparation
diakonissanstalt i Stockholm of a Deaconess Institution in
Stockholm
SDAS Svenska Diakonissanstaltens Swedish Deaconess Institutional
Styrelse Board
SDSFU Svenska Diakoniss-Sllskapets Swedish Deaconess Societys
Frvaltningsutskott Administrative Board
chapter one
THE SECULARIZATION DEBATE:

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMATIC
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION
AND MODERNITY
Religious historians and sociologists of religion have participated in a

vigorous debate since the s over how to explain the apparent decline
of religion in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. I will engage
this debate from a historical perspective by studying the social signifi-
cance of deaconesses in late nineteenth-century Sweden. Swedish dea-
conesses acquired, maintained, and expanded their influence in impor-
tant social functions during this period. They did so even though more
secular, specialized institutions and professionals were increasingly as-
suming formal responsibility in Sweden, as in much of Europe, for many
of the social functions carried out historically by religious institutions.
The influence of deaconesses in the public sphere demonstrates that the
adoption of social functions by more specialized institutions and profes-
sionals did not necessarily push religious institutions and professionals to
the margins of society. Religious organizations and personnel continued
in many instances to carry out essential social functions, both in compe-
tition and cooperation with other specialized institutions. Swedish dea-
conesses had to overcome obstacles that their male religious counterparts
did not face in carrying out these social functions. For this reason, my
study will also address the ways in which gender enabled deaconesses to
wield public influence at a time when women were often limited in the
work they could perform outside the home. I will argue that the female
diaconate succeeded in alleviating some gender-based concerns with its
work by extending the domestic sphere and the qualities deemed most
suitable for women into the public sphere. The female diaconate gained
access to the public sphere by organizing, interpreting, and carrying out
its work in accordance with the traditional religious construction of gen-
der that was prevalent in the nineteenth century.
Given the focus of my study, I will devote much of this chapter to
a discussion of the secularization debate between and among sociolo-
gists and historians, as well as to how my study fits into this debate. I
chapter one
will subsequently address the relationship between gender and religion

in contemporary Swedish historical scholarship and how recent develop-
ments in Swedish gender history have aided my study of the female dia-
conate. My study differs from much of the Anglophone historical schol-
arship on secularization in modern Europe in that its primary focus is
not on the decline of religious beliefs and practices among individuals
and particular social groups over the past several centuries.1 My main
concern is secularization at the societal level, in conjunction with what
sociologists of religion term functional differentiation. Functional dif-
ferentiation is the process in which social functions historically carried
out by religious institutions and personnel are absorbed by more secu-
lar, specialized institutions and professionals in the modern era. To take
one example, in medieval Europe, poor relief was largely the preserve of
parish clergy, religious orders, and confraternities. In the early modern
and modern periods, social workers and welfare boards gradually assume
formal responsibility for this work.
Prominent sociological defenders of the secularization thesis argue
that functional differentiation, as part of the process of modernization,
inevitably led to a decline in the social significance of religion in the
public sphere, that is, in that domain of society in which essential social,
political, and economic functions are carried out on societys behalf.2
When social functions such as poor relief or education began to be
adopted by more secular, specialized institutions, religious institutions
not only experienced general decline in their influence in the public
sphere, but they became marginalized in the social order, with their
influence and activities relegated to a more private realm.
Since many religious historians of modern Europe have emphasized
the decline of religious beliefs and practices in their studies on secular-
ization, very little historical work has been done on exploring the socio-
1 In certain regions of Europe, historians who study secularization do not emphasize

the decline in religious beliefs and practices. French historians, for example, typically give
little attention to the decline in traditional Christian beliefs or church attendance in their
studies of post-Revolutionary France, focusing instead on church-state relations and/or
the decline of religions influence in the public sphere. On the other hand, historians from
the United States who study modern French religious history are much more likely to
devote considerable attention to the beliefs and practices of individuals and social groups.
See Thomas Kselman, Challenging Dechristianization: The Historiography of Religion
in Modern France, Church History (), .
2 The definition of secularization as a decrease in the social significance of religion
can be traced to the work of the sociologist Bryan R. Wilson. See Wilson, Religion in
Secular Society: A Sociological Comment (London: C.A. Watt & Co. Ltd., ), xiv.
the secularization debate
logical claim that functional differentiation necessarily leads to secular-

ization in the public sphere. I intend to compensate for this gap in the his-
torical research through a study of the deaconess movement, a religious
movement that arose in response to increasing functional differentiation
in nineteenth-century Sweden. The female diaconate specialized in the
areas of education, health care, and poor relief. Many sociologists point
to these same three social functions as areas in which religious institu-
tions and personnel became marginalized in the social order once these
responsibilities were taken over by more specialized institutions and
professionals. For this reason, a study of the female diaconate seems quite
appropriate.
The challenge with such a study is that the causal link between func-
tional differentiation and secularization appears difficult to refute. One
noted sociologist, Jos Casanova, has even argued that the latter, at least
from a theoretical perspective, should be defined primarily in terms of
the former.3 And much of the evidence from the past century appears
to confirm the causal connection. Particularly in the twentieth century,
functional differentiation has taken its toll on European religious insti-
tutions through the emergence of modern welfare states. Few would
argue that religious institutions possess the same degree of social sig-
nificance in contemporary Europe as they did two or three centuries
ago.
But from a broader historical perspective, functional differentiations
effects on religious institutions cannot be understood only as secular-
izing, even if secularization has been one outcome. In the context of
the nineteenth century, functional differentiation is best understood as
the continuation of a process dating from the early modern period
that redefined the roles played by religion and religious institutions
in society. This redefinition process certainly posed challenges to reli-
gions public influence as churches and church representatives lost their
monopolies on social services and were forced to compete or cooperate
with more specialized providers, both religious and secular. In plenty of
instances, the established churches of Europe simply were not up to the
task, and the increasing marginalization of religious institutions was one
result.
But where some doors closed, others opened. Functional differen-
tiation also created opportunities for religious communities to wield
3 Jos Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, ).
chapter one
influence in the public sphere that otherwise might not have existed.
Deaconesses are a case in point. The female diaconate arose in mid-
nineteenth-century Sweden to specialize in those areas subject to sig-
nificant functional differentiation. The very founding of the female dia-
conate was a reaction to functional differentiation and its potentially sec-
ularizing effects, and the fact that the deaconess movement survived and
even expanded its influence in the late nineteenth century reflects its suc-
cess in responding to modernization and particularly to the increased
demand for specialized providers in areas such as nursing and social
work. Ironically, functional differentiation gave the female diaconate its
raison dtre. To focus only on the secularizing outcome of functional
differentiation is therefore to overlook the overall success of religious
communities such as the female diaconate and to fail to appreciate what
Yves Lambert calls the diverse and contradictory effects of modernity
on religion.4
A. Problems of Definition
Because the concept of secularization has multiple dimensions, and be-

cause different scholars sometimes mean different things when they refer
to it, it is necessary to explain how I will use the term.5 Before doing so, let
me discuss briefly how the term has been commonly understood over the
past several centuries. Until around the mid-nineteenth century, secular-
ization typically referred either to the transfer of ecclesiastical property
from the church to secular persons or bodies (as was the case during the
Reformation or the French Revolution), or to the relinquishing of orders
by monks and nuns. A related use of the word in the nineteenth century
referred to the transferal of control of a particular public institution, such
as a university, away from religious bodies.6
4 Yves Lambert, New Christianity, Indifference and Diffused Spirituality, in The

Decline of Christendom in Western Europe , eds. Hugh McLeod and Werner
Ustorf (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, ), .
5 For a discussion of the problems involved in defining the term secularization, see
C.J. Sommerville, Secular Society/Religious Population: Our Tacit Rules for Using the
Term Secularization, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (), .
6 Brief discussions of how the term secularization has been used historically can be
found in Hugh McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, (New York: St.

Martins Press, ), ; Kevin M. Schultz, Secularization: A Bibliographic Essay, The
Hedgehog Review (), .
In recent decades, scholars have attempted to delineate more clearly

the different senses in which the term can be used. The sociologist Jos
Casanova argues that secularization has three different connotations: a
decline in religious beliefs and practices, a differentiation of secular from
religious spheres, and a privatization of religion. The validity of each
of these three connotations, he maintains, should be studied indepen-
dently.7 The social historian Hugh McLeod also argues that the term has
three different senses that must be studied separately: a decline in reli-
gious beliefs and practices, a separation of religious and public institu-
tions, and a weakening in the power of religion to shape the identity of
the majority in a given society.8
For the purposes of this study, secularization refers to a decline in
the influence of religion in a given society. In the context of modern
Europe, particularly before the late twentieth century, the religion in
question is typically some form(s) of Christianity. Moreover, this decline
can be studied on one of two levels. First, the scholar can study the
extent to which there has been a decline in the religious beliefs and
practices of individuals or social groups (i.e., men, the working class,
etc.). The primary indicators of such a decline include church attendance,
church membership, church rituals (baptisms, marriages, funerals, etc.),
and traditional Christian beliefs. Second, religious decline can be studied
in terms of the larger social significance of religion. The scholar in
this case attempts to uncover the extent to which religious institutions,
organizations, and professionals have lost their influence in the public
sphere.9
I am focusing on this second aspect of secularization, particularly
as viewed in conjunction with the process of functional differentiation.
My concern is with whether or not functional differentiation adversely
affected the social significance of one particular religious group, the
Swedish deaconessate. I do not wish to confuse this second sense of
the term with the first. Several historians, including Hugh McLeod,
C.J. Sommerville, and Jeffrey Cox, have rightly pointed out that there
is no necessary connection between these two levels of secularization.
7 Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, ; Rethinking Secularization: A
Global Comparative Perspective, The Hedgehog Review (), .

8 McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, .
9 The separation of ecclesiastical and sociopolitical institutions, which can be defined
as secularization in a classic use of the word, is not synonymous with secularization as the
term is being used here. Secularization in this work will refer to a decline in the influence
of religion in a given society and not, in its stricter sense, to a process of differentiation.
chapter one
Religion in a given society can have social significance even when levels
of religious beliefs and practices are low, and vice versa.10 I share their
views, and for this reason I will not attempt to ascertain whether a
connection exists between levels of religious beliefs and practices on the
one hand, and the larger social significance of religious institutions and
professionals on the other.11
B. The Secularization Debate in Sociology
The debate between and among sociologists and historians has to do with
much more than definitional issues. The secularization debate is first and
foremost a debate over what can be termed the secularization thesis
or secularization theory.12 The secularization thesis, which at its core
asserts that modernity and modernizing processes lead to a decline in
the influence of religion in contemporary societies, can be traced back to
the work of seminal nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sociolog-
ical thinkers, including Max Weber and mile Durkheim. Weber sug-
gested that rationalization and the advance of science would increas-
ingly make religious beliefs and behavior more untenable. He insisted
that with modernity there would be an increasing disenchantment of
the world.13 Durkheim argued that history was progressing in such a
way that religious institutions, which once permeated European society,
10 Hugh McLeod, Secular Cities? Berlin, London, and New York in the Later Nine-
teenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, in Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and
Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis, ed. Steve Bruce (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
), ; Sommerville, Secular Society/Religious Population, Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion (), ; Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society:
Lambeth, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), .
11 The sociologist Steve Bruce believes that in many cases a decline in the social sig-
nificance of religion leads to a decline in the religious beliefs and practices of individuals
and social groups. Consequently, in studying secularization, the scholar must look for
the connections between the two. In this assessment, he differs from fellow sociologist
and defender of the secularization thesis Bryan Wilson, who makes a greater effort to
treat the social significance of religion separately from the issue of whether or not peo-
ple hold religious beliefs or participate in religious rituals. See Steve Bruce, God is Dead:
Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, ).
12 For a fuller exposition of the secularization debate, see Todd Green, Religious
Decline or Religious Change? Making Sense of Secularization in Europe, Religion Com-

pass (), .
13 Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, in The Vocation Lectures, eds. David Owen and
Tracy B. Strong (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company), .

would continue to be pushed to the margins of the social order as more

specialized institutions and professionals emerged in the modern process
of differentiation.14
Some of the ideas of these early sociological thinkers were expanded
upon and systematized by sociologists in the s, and it is from this
point that we can talk about a theory of secularization. The most promi-
nent advocates of this theory in the s were Bryan Wilson and Peter
Berger, though many other sociologists followed suit. Their work con-
tributed to giving the secularization thesis the status of sociological
orthodoxy in the s and s.15 There were skeptics even in this
period, but the number of critics would not become significant until the
s and s. The more recent trend within sociology is to criticize or
even reject the theory of secularization, but the thesis continues to have
its defenders, most notably Steve Bruce.
While defenders of the secularization thesis differ on some points,
most of them agree on the essentials. These advocates of the ortho-
dox model of secularization contend that modernization creates prob-
lems for religion in contemporary societies, problems that ultimately
undermine the traditional influence of religion both on individual beliefs
and practices and on the functioning of society.16 With modernity, life
becomes organized societally instead of locally. Science and technology
reduce the occasions for which people have recourse to religion. The
greater centrality of reason demythologizes the world. Functional dif-
ferentiation renders the social services of religious institutions and pro-
fessionals unnecessary. Religious pluralism challenges the plausibility of
an absolute system of truth and morality that is able to give cohesion to
a given society.17
Defenders of the secularization thesis are not suggesting that modern-
ization will lead to the disappearance of religion from modern societies.
But what modernization has done, and will continue to do, is relegate
14 mile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. W.D. Halls (New York: The
Free Press, ).
16 Bruce, God is Dead, .
17 For detailed discussions of how modernization contributes to secularization accord-
ing to defenders of the secularization thesis, see Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, Seculariza-
tion: The Orthodox Model, Religion and Modernization, ; Bruce, God is Dead, ;
Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
), ; Religion in Secular Society, ; and Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy:
Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday & Company, ),
.
chapter one
religion to a more private realm. To the extent that religion survives, it

does so only on the margins of the social order and without having much
significance for society as a whole.
The most prominent sociological assault on the secularization thesis in
recent decades has come from Americans who defend what is variously
referred to as rational choice or supply-side theory. Representatives of
this position include Rodney Stark, Roger Finke, and Laurence R. Ian-
naccone. Rational choice theorists believe that most theories of secular-
ization fail because they attribute the cause of secularization to a lack of
demand for religion in various modern societies, particularly European
ones. But rational choice theorists assume that the demand for religion is
relatively constant, and that an inadequate supply of religion best explains
the seemingly high levels of secularization in some societies. This is par-
ticularly true in many parts of Western Europe where there is a tradi-
tion of state churches having a monopoly on religion. State monopolies
discourage competition among religious institutions, and if there is no
free marketplace of religion, state churches have little incentive to meet
the diverse religious demands of a given population. The failure to meet
these demands results in many segments of the population distancing
themselves from the established religion. Much of Europe suffers from
low levels of religious participation because of a tradition of religious
monopolies and limited choices in the religious marketplace. Conversely,
the United States has witnessed much higher levels of religious partici-
pation because historically the American religious marketplace has been
more open, with greater competition and choice.18
Other sociologists have also come out in recent decades against the
secularization thesis. In her study of post-World War II Britain, Grace
Davie argues that even though there has been a decline in church mem-
bership and participation in church rituals, some form of religious beliefs
has persisted. For Davie, it is more accurate to describe Britain, and
18 For an overview of rational choice theory and its criticisms of the secularization
thesis, see Roger Finke, The Illusion of Shifting Demand: Supply-Side Interpretations
of American Religious History, in Retelling U.S. Religious History, ed. Thomas A. Tweed
(Berkeley: University of California Press, ), ; Rodney Stark, Secularization,
R.I.P., Sociology of Religion (), ; Rodney Stark and Laurence R. Ianna-
cone, A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the Secularization of Europe, Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion (), . For an application of the supply-side the-
ory to the Swedish context, see Eva Hamberg, Christendom in Decline: The Swedish
Case, in The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, , eds. Hugh McLeod
and Werner Ustorf (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, ), .
Western Europe in general, as unchurched as opposed to secular; that

is, Europeans largely believe without belonging.19
Davie has elsewhere described Europe as an exceptional case when
it comes to religiosity. Religion continues to have a place in modern
Europe, but its forms and functions have no clear analogues either in
pre-modern Europe or in other parts of the world today. One example
of this is the concept of vicarious religion, defined by Davie as religion
performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number,
who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but, quite clearly, approve
of what the minority is doing.20 Church leaders and members believe on
behalf of others, perform rituals on behalf of others (such as funerals),
and so forth. More importantly, churches are expected to do even if most
Europeans rarely step foot inside a church, much less adhere to church
teachings.21
In Public Religions in the Modern World, Jos Casanova observes that,
contrary to the secularization thesis, what we are witnessing in recent
decades are new historical developments that point to a significant de-
privatization of religion in many global contexts. Religious traditions
throughout the world are refusing to be restricted to the private sphere
and are increasingly returning to the public sphere. It is therefore likely
that religion will continue to play important public roles in the ongoing
construction of the modern world.22
Increasing attention has been given to gender in recent sociological
challenges to the secularization thesis. For defenders of the thesis, mod-
ern processes such as urbanization, industrialization, and rationalization
undermined religious belief and behavior, but Linda Woodhead insists
that women did not respond to modernization in the same way as men.
She argues that the older theory does nothing more than explain male
disaffiliation from religionfor the labourer who leaves the shelter of
the sacred canopy is a man not a woman. Women experienced indus-
trialization as exclusion from the public world and confinement to the
19 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since : Believing Without Belonging (Oxford:
Blackwell, ).
20 Grace Davie, Vicarious Religion: A Methodological Challenge, in Everyday Reli-
gion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, ed. Nancy Ammerman (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, ), .
21 For a fuller exposition of Europes religious exceptionalism, see Grace Davie, Europe:
The Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World (London: Darton, Long-
man and Todd, ).
22 Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, .
chapter one
home and/or low-paid domestic labour and piecework, resulting in the

reinforcement of ties to churches.23 Only in the s did the connection
between churches and women begin to show significant signs of fractur-
ing.
Even Peter Berger, one of the most prominent defenders of the secular-
ization thesis in the s, has reversed some of his earlier assessments.
The revised Berger now rejects the claim that modernization necessar-
ily leads to a decline in the influence of religion. Modernization may
have secularizing effects, but it can also contribute to potent counter-
secularization movements. Berger admits one of the mistakes he made in
his earlier work was to conflate secularization with pluralization. Moder-
nity certainly contributes to pluralism, and pluralism leads to a multipli-
cation of choices and worldviews in a given society, but it does not follow
that pluralism necessarily leads to secularization. Pluralization can even
lead to greater religious participation and to more people embracing reli-
gious worldviews.24 Bergers recent critiques of the secularization thesis
are in keeping with other developments in the sociology of religion that
challenge the secularization thesis.
C. The Secularization Debate in

Modern European Religious History
Historians of religion in modern Europe have followed these sociological

debates. They have even attempted to foster greater dialogue with soci-
ologists on the secularization thesis, most notably in the volume edited
by Steve Bruce titled Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Histo-
rians Debate the Secularization Thesis (). Important historical stud-
ies in the s appealed to key aspects of the secularization thesis to
explain religious decline,25 but since the s historians of religion in
23 Linda Woodhead, Gendering Secularization Theory, Social Compass (),

.
24 Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview, in The
Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed. Peter Berger
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), ; Charles T. Mathewes, An Interview with Peter
Berger, The Hedgehog Review (), . See also Peter Berger, Grace Davie,
and Effie Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Burlington:
Ashgate, ).
25 For example, see A.D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church,
Chapel and Social Change, (London: Longman, ); Stephen Yeo, Religion

and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis (London: Croom Helm, ).
modern Europe have become as skeptical of the thesis as many of their

sociological counterparts. This skepticism, most common among Anglo-
phone historians of European history, largely rests on what is perceived
to be the poor historical foundations of the theory. These historians do
not reject the contention that secularization is an important part of mod-
ern European history. What they reject is the more orthodox theory of
secularization that posits an inevitable link between modernization and a
decline in religions influence. The most prominent historians to embrace
this position are Thomas Kselman, Jeffrey Cox, Hugh McLeod, and Cal-
lum Brown. What follows is a brief treatment of the contributions of each
to the secularization debate.
In his study of religious change in Frances Third Republic (
), Thomas Kselman challenges the tendency of historians to embrace
the concept of secularization as the central theme of modern Euro-
pean religious history. Pluralism, he argues, and not secularization best
describes the types of religious changes taking place in modern Europe,
particularly in urban areas. He points out that not only did Catholi-
cism remain far more resilient during Frances Third Republic than many
French historians have suggested, but other forms of religiosity emerged
in the period to meet the various religious needs of the French nation,
including socialism, nationalism, and the occult. Many of the un-
churched constructed religious systems that borrowed elements from
both Catholicism and some of these nontraditional religions. Kselman is
careful not to deny the reality of secularization in Frances Third Repub-
lic, but in his emphasis on the importance of emerging religious pluralism
and new forms of religiosity, he dismisses the notion that secularization
is the central theme of this period.26
Jeffrey Cox agrees that [i]t is pluralism which most clearly distin-
guishes the present from the past in matters of religion.27 He believes
that the religious decline that began to occur in late Victorian England is
best explained by the competition that arose in a free market of ideas, a
26 Thomas Kselman, The Varieties of Religious Experience in Urban France, in

European Religion in the Age of Great Cities , ed. Hugh McLeod (London:
Routledge, ), . Kselman has also studied the changes that have taken place in
modern French history in the religious ideas and rituals pertaining to death. He concludes
that the Christian religion, even if at times in an inchoate form, continued to inform
the attitudes and rituals pertaining to death in France throughout the twentieth century.
See Thomas Kselman, Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, ); The dechristianisation of death in modern France, Decline of
Christendom, .
27 Cox, English Churches in a Secular Society, .
chapter one
market that the modern state created after centuries of suppressing reli-
gious pluralism and competition. Religious decline in late nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century England took place largely because religious
institutions and thinkers failed to adapt to this situation of increased plu-
ralism and competition.
Cox does not deny that social changes arising out of modernity, such
as industrialization and urbanization, also contributed to the decline
of the influence of religion in modern English history. The problems
that these social changes caused for religion must still be understood in
the context of greater pluralism and competition. It is this context that
sets the parameters within which religious institutions in the modern
period respond to the social changes in question. The themes of plural-
ism and competition are thus the keys to understanding the degree to
which religious beliefs, practices, and institutions lost significance in late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English society.
In Secularisation in Western Europe, , Hugh McLeod agrees
with Kselman and Cox that pluralism is the key to the religious situa-
tion in later nineteenth-century Europe, and that trends towards secu-
larisation have to be seen in the context of intense religious competition,
whether between rival branches of Christianity or between religious and
secular views of the world.28 The effects of this competitive situation for
religion varied according to the social role of religion in question and
the particular geographical context (England, Germany, or France). Sec-
ularization was most prominent in the area of religious beliefs and prac-
tices, and this was true for all three of the countries he studied. In terms
of the power of religion to convey a sense of identity to a given society,
secularization occurred to a much lesser degree in all three contexts. As
for the influence of religion on public institutions, the degree of secular-
ization falls somewhere in between the other two areas just mentioned,
with secularization being most prominent in France and least prominent
in Germany. Secularization, then, is a question to be put to the [histor-
ical] evidence, rather than a preconceived conclusion, and any explana-
tion of religious decline as an inevitable, coherent process arising out
of modernity should be questioned, even if the evidence points toward
greater or lesser degrees of secularization in late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century Europe.29

29 Ibid., , .
Callum Brown does not stress the importance of pluralism as do Ksel-

man, Cox, and McLeod, though he shares their criticism of the secu-
larization thesis. In The Death of Christian Britain, Brown argues that
secularization has not been a long, ongoing process dating back to the
Industrial Revolution. It began, rather, quite suddenly through the cul-
tural revolutions of the s. Brown concedes that trends toward a
decline in church attendance reach back to the end of the nineteenth
century, but many other forms of religiosity, including church member-
ship, church rituals like baptisms and marriages, Sunday School atten-
dance among children, etc., declined significantly only in the s. The
s also marked a significant decline in the pervasiveness of a Chris-
tian culture in British society. Brown attributes the primary causes of this
decline not to social changes stemming from modernity, such as indus-
trialization and urbanization, but to various manifestations of the cul-
tural revolutions of the s, including the rise of a rebellious youth
culture and the overturning of traditional models of sexuality and fem-
ininity rooted in an evangelical Christian tradition. Brown believes that
because the traditional secularization theory and narrative have failed to
explain adequately the nature of religious change in modern European
history, what is needed is a postmodern analysis that questions tradi-
tional approaches to the study of secularization, such as the use of statis-
tics to measure the strength/weakness of religion and the tendency to
employ definitions of religion that exclude diverse expressions of piety
and religiosity.30
When comparing the views of these four historians, several common-
alities are noteworthy. First, for three of them, pluralism and competi-
tion are more apt descriptors than secularization for the changes tak-
ing place in modern European religious history.31 Their views are similar
to those sociologists who support rational choice theory and its empha-
sis on the importance of competition (or lack thereof) in describing the
religious changes of the past few centuries. Second, all four historians
30 Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (London: Routledge, ). See also
his essay, The secularisation decade: what the s have done to the study of religious
history, in Decline of Christendom, .
31 While technically not a historian, Charles Taylor can also be included in this
group. In his philosophical analysis of modern religious history, Taylor maintains that
the emergence of pluralism marks the transition from a pre-modern West, in which
practically everyone believed in God or the supernatural, to a modern West, in which
faith is only one possible means among many to make sense of reality. See Taylor, A
Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ).
chapter one
accept the reality of secularization in modern European history, though

they do not accept the secularization theory that has been used to explain
religious decline. As Brown puts it, [t]he theory of secularisation may
be a myth, but secularisation is not.32 Finally, while all four historians
acknowledge that secularization was occurring in the nineteenth century,
they contend that religious beliefs, practices, and institutions were also
far more resilient in the face of modernity than many scholars tradition-
ally have assumed. Significant secularization did not begin to take place
until the end of the nineteenth century, and, from Browns perspective,
the late twentieth century.
D. The Secularization Debate in Swedish Religious History
Few Swedish historians have been deeply influenced by the revisionist

efforts of historians such as Hugh McLeod or Callum Brown. Most
Swedish scholars have relied quite heavily on the secularization theory to
make sense of religious decline in Sweden over the past several centuries.
Two kinds of historical scholarship on secularization in Sweden have
been prevalent since the s.33 Representatives of the first approach,
mainly church historians in the s and s, have focused primarily
on the decline in particular religious beliefs and practices in nineteenth-
and twentieth-century Sweden. The second approach, which developed
in the late s but became dominant particularly in the s, has
been employed by a broader range of historians, including social and
economic historians. This school of thought has concentrated on the
degree to which a unified religious worldview and culture in the early
modern period gave way to an individualized (and thus secularized)
approach to religion in the modern era.34
32 Brown, The secularisation decade, Decline of Christendom, .

33 Other studies address the topic of secularization but do not fall into the two cate-
gories discussed here. These studies typically define secularization in a more restricted
sense, such as a separation of church and state, and are not really engaged with the sec-
ularization thesis. See Lennart Tegborg, Folkskolans sekularisering . Uppls-
ningen av det administrativa sambandet mellan folkskola och kyrka i Sverige (Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell, ); Bengt Thelin, Exit eforus. Lroverkens sekularisering och stri-
den om kristendomsundervisning (Stockholm: Libris, ).
34 Olle Larsson also notes that there have been two basic approaches to the study
of secularization in Sweden. His categories largely coincide with the ones used in this
The pioneer of modern historical studies of secularization in Sweden,

and the most prominent representative of the first approach, is Carl Hen-
rik Martling. In his study of Eucharistic participation in the Karlstad
diocese in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Martling argues that
the religious fracturing of the diocese beginning in the second half of the
nineteenth century contributed to a Eucharistic crisis by the s. Bap-
tists, Methodists, Swedish Mission Covenanters, and low-church revival-
ist movements contributed to greater questioning and criticism of the
established Lutheran church, the Church of Sweden.35 Their criticisms
undermined the doctrinal unity and religious authority that had tradi-
tionally existed in Sweden, giving people greater permission to ques-
tion the validity of the Church of Swedens teachings and rituals. Martling
concedes that social changes such as urbanization and industrialization
contributed to a decline in Eucharistic participation, but the importance
of these changes is secondary, at least as they apply to church practices in
the late nineteenth century.
In a follow-up study of patterns of church participation in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, Martling arrives at similar conclusions
for the dioceses of middle Sweden. Free churches were most prominent
in middle-Swedish dioceses in the late nineteenth century. These dioce-
ses also witnessed the largest decline in church attendance and Eucharis-
tic participation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Martling concludes that the greater the religious fracturing and divi-
sion in a given region, the greater the decline in certain church prac-
tices.36
discussion, though I have chosen to characterize the second approach by the definition
of secularization employed by its representatives, that is, the transition from a unified reli-
gious culture to religion as an individual matter. Larsson describes this second approach
primarily by its tendency to view popular and revivalist movements as the culprits in
secularization. See Olle Larsson, Biskopen visiterar. Den kyrkliga verhetens mte med
lokalsamhllet (Vxj: Vxj Stiftshistoria Sllskap, ), .
35 The designation Church of Sweden (Svenska kyrkan) was first used in a legal sense
in the Dissenter Law. For the sake of consistency, I will use the designation Church
of Sweden throughout, even in discussions pertaining to the period before .
36 Carl Henrik Martling, Nattvardskrisen i Karlstads stift under -talets senare
hlft (Lund: Gleerups, ); Kyrkosed och sekularisering (Stockholm: Sveriges Kristliga

Studentsrrelses Bokfrlag, ). In the latter study, Martling notes that the marked
decline applies only to church attendance and Eucharistic participation. One-time church
rituals, like baptism, confirmation, and marriage, continued to witness a high degree of
popular observance up until the time of his study.
chapter one
Martlings work inspired similar studies in the ensuing decades.

Anders Gustavssons study of churching in Sweden reaches conclusions
that parallel Martlings.37 Churching declined the most in those regions
of Sweden that witnessed a strong free church presence in the late nine-
teenth century.38 Kjell Petersson drew similar conclusions concerning
baptism. Dioceses that witnessed the largest decline in the frequency of
baptism beginning in the late nineteenth century also experienced the
highest level of free church activity. This trend held true at least until the
mid-twentieth century.39
Since the s, the dominant historical approach has focused not so
much on particular church rituals but rather on the separation of religion
from culture. This separation is understood as a transition from a once-
unified religious culture in which practically everyone belonged to the
one true Lutheran faith and interpreted the world around them according
to this faith, to a society in which religion becomes a private matter, an
individual choice.
The Danish historian Hanne Sanders is perhaps the most influen-
tial representative of this approach. In her study of revivalism in early
nineteenth-century Denmark and Sweden, Sanders draws on the work
of C.J. Sommerville. She argues that secularization refers not so much
to a decline in certain doctrines or practices but rather to a loss in reli-
gions significance for a societys worldview. From once providing the
background for much of the culture and knowledge in society, reli-
gion becomes a matter of individual, existential faith. Sanders believes
that while the early nineteenth-century revivalists held a presecularized
worldview to the extent that they believed that there was only one true
faith, they also contributed to secularization by advocating an individ-
ualized interpretation of that faith and of the Bible. This individualized
37 Churching was a purification ritual that reintegrated a mother into the parish
community after giving birth. Approximately one month after childbirth, the mother fell
on her knees either inside the church door or in front of the altar rails. The priest would
then pray for her and give thanks to God for her health. In some cases, churching could
take place in the home, and in the nineteenth century it became more common for it to
occur in conjunction with baptism. It began to disappear toward the end of the nineteenth
century, though in some dioceses, such as Gothenburg and Kalmar, it continued into
the early twentieth century. In addition to Gustavssons work, see Oloph Bexell, Sveriges
kyrkohistoria . Folkvckelsens och kyrkofrnyelsens tid (Stockholm: Verbum, ),
.
38 Anders Gustavsson, Kyrktagningsseden i Sverige (Lund: Folklivsarkivet, ).
39 Kjell Petersson, Kyrkan, folket och dopet. En studie av barndopet i Svenska kyrkan
(Lund: CWK Gleerup, ).

approach to religion is thus a necessary precondition for a secularized

society, for it is a step toward the differentiation between religion and
culture.40
Other historians echo Sanderss conclusions, even if there is no con-
sensus on the timing of this process. In his study of eighteenth-century
Stockholm, Brje Bergfeldt adopts Sanderss interpretation of secular-
ization, but he pushes the beginning of this process back one century.
He notes that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the
religious and profane were still tightly intertwined. Sweden was still a
presecularized society. By the late eighteenth century, the evangelical
Lutheran religious tradition began to lose its function as the glue hold-
ing society together. As evidence for this initial phase of secularization,
Bergfeldt points to several eighteenth-century developments, including
a decline in the appeal to religious sanctioning when imposing civil pun-
ishments, functional differentiation, and the individualization of reli-
gious faith that was already surfacing in Pietistic and Moravian-inspired
revivals.41
Olle Larsson dates the beginning of secularization even earlier in his
study of bishop visitations in the diocese of Vxj in the late seven-
teenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the mid-seventeenth century,
the identification of religion with the culture of Swedish society was
still quite strong. One hundred years later, clear signs of the dissolution
between the two had manifested themselves. Larsson points in particu-
lar to the development of individual Bible reading in this period. In the
s, religious instruction in the diocese of Vxj consisted primarily
of urging parishioners to learn the catechism. The s onward saw an
increasing emphasis on using the Bible in religious instruction. By the
mid-eighteenth century, parishioners in the diocese were encouraged to
acquire Bibles of their own so that they could study them in their homes.
Larsson believes that this development toward more individual study and
reading of the Bible led to an individualization of religious faith, and
this in turn opened the door to more secularized patterns of thought.
40 Hanne Sanders, Bondevkkelse og sekularisering. En protestantisk folkelig kultur i
Danmark og Sverige (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, ). For earlier

studies that emphasize the role played by early revival movements in secularization, see
Arne Jarrick, Den himmelske lskaren. Herrnhutisk vckelse, vantro och sekularisering
i -talets Sverige (Stockholm: Ordfront, ); Tom Eriksson and Brje Harnesk,
Prster, predikare och profeter. Lseriet i vre Norrland (Gide: Vildros, ).
41 Brje Bergfeldt, Den teokratiska statens dd. Sekularisering och civilisering i -
talets Stockholm (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ).

chapter one
Ironically, the Church of Sweden encouraged this development and

thereby contributed to the conditions from which secularization would
arise.42
One noteworthy attempt to nuance this second approach has been
made by Stefan Gelfgren. Gelfgren also understands secularization as
a process in which religion transitions from being a collective act, car-
ried out under the auspices of one church, to an individual and volun-
tary commitment. But Gelfgren differs from these other historians in
two ways. First, he argues that while secularization is synonymous with
the individualization of religion, he does not believe that secularization
necessarily involves the privatization of religion. Religion can become
individualized and yet continue to be a public matter, such as when reli-
gious representatives continue to play an active role in politics. Second,
Gelfgren affirms the role that religious pluralism and diversity played in
the individualization of religion, but his thoughts on this relationship
are much more informed by British scholarship, particularly the work
of Hugh McLeod. He agrees with McLeod that late nineteenth-century
European history is largely characterized by pluralism, and it is plural-
ism that leads to a situation of greater competition for religious ideas and
institutions. He also agrees with McLeod that significant secularization
did not set in until the late nineteenth century. Still, Gelfgrens interpre-
tation of the effects of pluralism differs little from that of other histori-
ans of secularization in Sweden. The competition that revivalist move-
ments in late nineteenth-century Sweden gave to the Church of Sweden
inevitably led to a relativization and subjectification of the traditional
religious worldview as religious convictions became subject to personal
choice among a plurality of religious and nonreligious ideas.43
This second approach to the study of secularization as articulated by
scholars such as Sanders and Gelfgren differs from the first in several
important ways. First, these scholars move beyond studies of seculariza-
tion that focus primarily on popular participation in church rituals. Sec-
ond, aside from Gelfgren, they typically push the timing of secularization
back to an earlier period, anywhere from the late seventeenth century
to the early nineteenth century. Finally, they are much more willing to
include inner-church revival movements as culprits in the secularization
42 Larsson, Biskopen visiterar. Den kyrkliga verhetens mte med lokalsamhllet
(Vxj: Vxj Stiftshistoria Sllskap, ).

43 Stefan Gelfgren, Ett utvalt slkte. Vckelse och sekulariseringEvangeliska Foster-
lands-Stiftelsen (Skellefte: Artos & Norma, ).

process, which is why many of them view the secularization process as

beginning in an earlier period.
Whatever the differences in the two approaches, one important com-
monality should not be overlooked. Martlings interpretation that reli-
gious fracturing and dissent led to a decline in religions influence in
Swedish society has continued to hold sway among historians even in
more recent decades. For all of the historians mentioned above, religious
pluralism is a major factor in the decline of the influence of religion (that
is, the traditional evangelical Lutheran religion) in Sweden. The common
assumption is that pluralism inevitably undermines the influence of reli-
gion by relativizing religious truth and creating the conditions in which
religion becomes an individual matter and thus not the glue holding soci-
ety together. Therefore, while representatives of the two approaches may
differ on the timing of secularization or on the extent to which inner-
church movements contributed to a decline in religions influence, they
agree that religious pluralism and secularization go hand in hand, an
assumption that they share with defenders of the secularization thesis.
E. The Place of the Present Work in Secularization Scholarship
This work falls into the category of Anglo-American scholarship that is

skeptical of the secularization thesis. Like Kselman, Cox, and McLeod,
and even to some degree like the rational choice theorists, I argue that
pluralism, and the competition arising from it, is the key to interpreting
the extent to which religion lost and/or maintained influence in Euro-
pean society in the late nineteenth century. To be sure, the theme of plu-
ralism also occupies a central place in Swedish scholarship, but I do not
assume that pluralism necessarily leads to secularization. Rather, plural-
ism creates the conditions for increased competition, and it falls upon
the religious historian to determine whether religious institutions and
professionals responded successfully to these circumstances. My purpose
is to study the extent to which one group of religious professionals, the
Swedish female diaconate, successfully competed or cooperated with a
growing plurality of specialized providers of social services in the late
nineteenth century.
Even though I share the views of Anglo-American historians con-
cerning the importance of pluralism and competition for interpreting
secularization in late nineteenth-century Europe, the difference here is
that the focus will be on exploring the potential connection between
chapter one
pluralism/competition and secularization on the societal and institu-

tional level as opposed to the level of individual beliefs and practices. The
tendency to place primary emphasis on the latter is still dominant among
Anglo-American historians. Moreover, few of these historians are willing
to test the sociological claim that functional differentiation leads to sec-
ularization. One notable exception is Jeffrey Cox. In English Churches in
a Secular Society, Cox devotes significant attention in his study of late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lambeth to functional differen-
tiation. Cox concedes that functional differentiation often leads to secu-
larization, but the connection between the two is not a necessary one.
Functional differentiation can sometimes contribute to an increase in
religions social significance, as was the case in the area of education in
mid-nineteenth-century Lambeth.44
I follow Cox in maintaining that the connection between functional
differentiation and secularization is not as straightforward as some de-
fenders of the secularization thesis insist. The deaconess movement in
nineteenth-century Sweden was certainly not a victim of functional dif-
ferentiation. If anything, the movement survived and expanded in the
late nineteenth century largely because it responded so well to this mod-
ernizing process.
I will sustain this argument in two ways, both of which relate to
demand for the services of deaconesses. First, I will point to a number of
situations in which the female diaconate offered essential social services
that otherwise might not have been available, or at least not adequately
available, to those who needed them. Deaconesses provided health care
at hospitals and poorhouses, distributed food and clothing to the urban
poor, helped working-class housewives earn extra income, and served as
elementary school teachers in rural districts, among other things. There
were plenty of cases in which deaconesses provided these services to
recipients who needed them but who otherwise would have had few, if
any, other opportunities to receive them, perhaps because there was a
44 Callum Brown also critiques the assumption that functional differentiation neces-
sarily translates into a decline in the influence of religion in society, though he does not
devote as much attention to the topic as Cox. Brown notes, for example, that the appar-
ent government takeover of traditional church functions in Victorian Scotland should not
be confused with secularization. Both the withdrawal of poor relief from the Church of
Scotland in and the establishment of the state system of education in represent
successful efforts by religious dissenters to remove these social functions from the abso-
lute control of the Church of Scotland so that evangelicals could have more influence and
control over these functions. See Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland Since
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ), .
shortage of potential providers in a given location, or because some of

the recipients could not afford the services in question. Deaconesses thus
competed successfully for a place in the public sphere by meeting the
demand for essential social services among people and in locations not
adequately reached by other institutions or professionals.
I will also support the main argument by reference to the demand
for the services of deaconesses among potential employers. Demand for
deaconesses consistently outweighed supply throughout the nineteenth
century. One obvious reason for this was a supply problemit was diffi-
cult to recruit and train deaconesses at a rate that kept up with demand.
But other factors contributed to this demand, including government
reforms in social services, the professionalization and medicalization of
health care, the shortage of specialized professionals in some contexts,
the relatively low cost of employing deaconesses, the general content-
ment among employing institutions and organizations with deaconess
job performance, and the desire to employ specialized professionals who
would perform the desired services in an overtly religious manner. Gen-
der also contributed to employer demand, as the work in question was
often deemed more appropriate for women to perform.
Demand for deaconesses among potential beneficiaries and employ-
ers is particularly relevant because defenders of the secularization thesis
argue that the theory at its heart focuses on a decrease in the demand
for religion, whether it is a demand for religious rituals and worldviews
or a demand for the social services of religious institutions and profes-
sionals.45 But in the case of deaconesses in late nineteenth-century Swe-
den, it is clear that their services were very much in demand. As for the
inability of the female diaconate to meet this demand due to difficulties
with recruitment, it is possible to argue this in itself reflects seculariza-
tion. Bryan Wilson, for example, argues that the decline in the number
of clergy in modern Britain corresponds to a decline in religions social
significance.46 Steve Bruce maintains that the number of clergypersons,
particularly in a state-supported church such as the Church of England, is
an indication of the social power of religion, and if this number declines
considerably in a given period, religion has lost much of its social signif-
icance.47
45 For example, see Bruce, God is Dead, .

46 Bryan R. Wilson, Reflections on a Many Sided Controversy, Religion and Modern-
ization, .
chapter one
I do not deny that a connection exists between lower supplies of reli-

gious professionals and secularization. When religious professionals are
in shorter supply, the range of influence that they have in society is nec-
essarily limited. A small number of religious professionals may also indi-
cate that modern people are not as religious as their pre-modern prede-
cessors, and therefore a religious profession has less appeal and prestige.
But small numbers of religious professionals do not necessarily indicate
that these professionals (or religion in general) lack social significance,
or that their services are not in demand, any more than a low supply of
police officers or school teachers today amounts to a lack of social sig-
nificance or low demand for these professionals. The heart of the secu-
larization thesis deals with the demand for religion, and that is why my
argument for the social significance of deaconesses depends primarily on
demand for their services.
The social significance of deaconesses also cannot be explained away
by the argument that in carrying out essential social functions, they failed
to do so in a particularly religious manner. Bruce argues that even when
religious institutions and professionals continue to carry out what may be
considered secular functions in the modern era, they do so only within
a secular framework. While [s]piritual values may inspire the Churchs
involvement in social work . . . there is very little in the expression of
that inspiration that distinguishes it from secular provision.48 Perhaps
this argument rings truer for the late twentieth century. I will show that in
the late nineteenth century, deaconesses performed social functions in an
overtly religious manner. Those who came into contact with deaconesses
had no doubt that the sisters were engaged in religious work.
Despite my skepticism toward the secularization thesis, I agree with
sociological defenders of the theory on a couple of important points.
First, I do believe that functional differentiation often led to a decline in
the social significance of religious institutions and professionals. In many
instances over the past two centuries, religious institutions and profes-
sionals did not respond adequately to the more competitive conditions
generated by increasing functional differentiation. I am not attempting
to refute the connection between functional differentiation and secular-
ization altogether. I am simply arguing that secularization is not the only
possible outcome of functional differentiation. After all, the female dia-
conate of Sweden is a product of this same modernizing process.

Second, Wilson notes that many critics of the secularization thesis

are so keen to undermine the theory by recourse to data on church
membership, church attendance, and participation in church rituals that
they fail adequately to address the issue of the larger social significance
of religion. Wilson is right to criticize skeptics of the secularization thesis
for placing too much emphasis on individual beliefs and practices.49
By focusing primarily on the larger social significance of religion, I am
addressing some justifiable concerns of defenders of the secularization
thesis.
F. Gender and Religion in Modern Sweden
But how, given their gender, were deaconesses able to wield any influ-
ence in the public sphere and to engage in such public work as nurs-
ing? It is an important question considering the prevailing gender norms
of nineteenth-century Sweden and the expectation that women (and
womens work) were to be confined to the domestic, private sphere. I will
answer this question by arguing that the female diaconate gained access
to and influence in the public sphere by reconciling its work with the tra-
ditional Lutheran construction of gender. According to this construction,
a woman lived out her calling within the household estate as a mother,
daughter, sister, servant, etc. She did this according to the gifts and qual-
ities that God had given particularly to her sex, including meekness, ten-
derness, obedience, and humility. Female diaconal work was interpreted,
organized, and carried out as an extension of the household sphere, with
its attendant feminine responsibilities and characteristics. As a result,
both deaconesses and the institutions leadership alleviated many gender-
based concerns over diaconal work, thereby gaining greater access to and
influence in the public sphere.
My argument concerning the importance of the traditional Lutheran
construction of gender for justifying diaconal work takes its inspiration
from the scholarship of several Swedish historians of gender from the
past two decades. In particular, Inger Hammars work on the impor-
tance of the traditional Lutheran understanding of gender for the pio-
neers of the womens emancipation movement in Sweden has proven
49 Wilson, Reflections on a Many Sided Controversy, Religion and Modernization,
.
chapter one
most fruitful for the gender analysis at work in this study. According
to Hammar, these nineteenth-century pioneers justified their demands
for greater freedoms not by overturning or ignoring traditional religious
understandings of the place of women in society, but by reinterpreting
them so that the private (i.e., domestic) sphere to which women were
called was extended.
Hammars work departs significantly from that of Swedish historians
of gender since the s. The latter typically depicted the early womens
emancipation movement as being driven by economic or psychologi-
cal motives. To the extent that these scholars addressed religion, they
did so one-dimensionally by portraying the Church of Sweden, repre-
sented by the clergy, as uniformly hostile to the emancipation move-
ment.50 This failure to understand the role played by religious ideol-
ogy in the movement leads Hammar to deem this research religion-
blind, in the same way that historical scholarship prior to the s was
gender-blind. Hammar contrasts the situation in Swedish gender his-
tory with that of Anglo-American scholarship. She notes that in Britain
and the United States, considerable work has been done by scholars
such as Lyndal Roper and Rosemary Radford Ruether on the implica-
tions of the Lutheran (and more generally, the Reformation) construc-
tion of gender for the place of women in society in early modern Europe.
The reasons why Swedish historians have not followed in the footsteps
of Anglo-American gender studies are several, according to Hammar,
including the tendency in contemporary secularized Swedish society
to view religion as a private matter, and the trend of s historical
scholarship toward viewing material needs as the driving force in his-
tory.51
50 Hammar points to two influential works as examples of earlier studies that portray
religious authorities only as hostile to the womens emancipation movement: Gunnar

Qvist, Kvinnofrgan i Sverige . Studier rrande kvinnans nringsfrihet inom de
borgerliga yrkena (Gteborg: Akademifrlaget-Gumperts, ); Eva sbrink, Studier i
den svenska kyrkans syn p kvinnans stllning i samhllet ren (Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell, ).
51 Inger Hammar, Emancipation och religion. Den svenska kvinnorrelsens pionjrer i
debatt om kvinnors kallelse ca (Stockholm: Carlsson, ). For an overview in

English of Hammars conclusions concerning the relationship between religious ideology
and the womens emancipation movement, see Inger Hammer, From Fredrika Bremer
to Ellen Key: Calling, Gender and the Emancipation Debate in Sweden, c., in
Gender and Vocation: Women, Religion and Social Change in the Nordic Countries,
, ed. Pirjo Markkola (Helsinki: SKS, ), .
Hammars work inspired other Nordic gender historians to devote

greater attention to religion as a catalyst for womens participation in the
public sphere in the nineteenth century.52 In her study of the involve-
ment of deaconesses in poor relief in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century Finland and Sweden, the Finnish historian Pirjo Markkola comes
to a conclusion similar to Hammars. The apparent public work of the
women in question was possible in part because this work could be inter-
preted as an extension of the household sphere. Markkola also agrees
with Hammar that the reason Nordic gender studies have largely ignored
religious interpretations of womens participation in the public sphere
primarily has to do with the secularized worldviews of contemporary
Nordic societies. Deaconesses, on the other hand, provide historians
with an excellent example of just how important religion was to inspir-
ing womens involvement in the public sphere in the nineteenth cen-
tury.53
In her study of rescue work among prostitutes in late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Sweden, Anna Jansdotter also accepts Hammars
interpretation that womens philanthropic work was, in effect, an exten-
sion of the private sphere. Jansdotter argues that those engaged in rescue
work attempted to rehabilitate prostitutes by privatizing these public
women. Rescue workers sought to do this by attempting to convert pros-
titutes to an evangelical, revivalist worldview and way of life. Without
converting fallen women to evangelical Christianity and getting them
to conform to a traditional religious construction of gender, there could
be no true rehabilitation.54
My work is clearly indebted to these Nordic gender historians in its
emphasis on the importance of the traditional Lutheran construction of
gender for justifying the work of the female diaconate in nineteenth-
century Sweden. But one important point of divergence between my
52 An important precursor to Hammars work which has also helped to inspire greater
attention in the past decade to the role that religion played in womens social involvement
in the nineteenth century is Ingrid bergs Revivalism, Philanthropy and Emancipation.
Womens Liberation and Organization in the Early Nineteenth Century, Scandinavian
Journal of History (), .
53 Pirjo Markkola, Promoting Faith and Welfare. The Deaconess Movement in Fin-
land and Sweden, , Scandinavian Journal of History (), . See

also Pirjo Markkola, The Calling of Women: Gender, Religion and Social Reform in Fin-
land, , Gender and Vocation, .
54 Anna Jansdotter, Ansikte mot ansikte. Rddningsarbete bland prostituearde kvinnor
i Sverige (Stockholm: Brutus stlings Bokfrlag Sympoion, ).

chapter one
study and the studies mentioned above should be addressed. In much

of the Nordic scholarship, the dichotomy of private sphere versus public
sphere is prominent, even though some of the historians attempt to
problematize this dichotomy. I will certainly make plenty of references
to this dichotomy, and my definition of the public sphere has much in
common with the way the concept is used by these historians. But when
these Nordic historians refer to the private sphere, they are typically
associating this sphere with the family or household alone, that is, the
domain historically assigned to women. When scholars of secularization
allude to a private sphere, on the other hand, the concept is not limited to
the household, but rather includes any aspect of society, or activity within
society, that does not directly affect or influence the social, political, or
economic functioning of society at large. Nevertheless, there is obviously
a gender component even to this usage of the term, particularly as
the term is applied to nineteenth-century European history, given the
obstacles that women have had to overcome in order to carry out essential
social functions in the public sphere.
In order to avoid confusing the different connotations of the term
private sphere found in gender history on the one hand, and in many
historical and sociological studies of secularization on the other, I have
chosen to use the term in accordance with secularization scholarship. The
terms domestic sphere or household sphere will be employed in many
of those cases where Hammar and other gender historians would use
private sphere. The difference lies primarily in semantics. The choice
of different terminology should not conceal the fact that I am making
an argument similar to Hammars concerning how particular groups of
women justified their activities in the public sphere.
Finally, it is important to note that the increased scholarly attention
to the relationship between gender and religion in nineteenth-century
Sweden has also led some historians to give greater consideration to
deaconesses in their studies.55 While not all of the studies in question
55 Until recently, much of the historical work on the deaconess movement was written
by insiderspeople connected directly to the Swedish Deaconess Institution. Historical

surveys written by directors, or former directors, of the Swedish Deaconess Institution are
prime examples of such work. See Yngve Iverson, Tro verksam i krklek. En bok om Ersta
(Stockholm: Verbum, ); Ernst Lnegren, Minneskrift till Svenska Diakonissanstaltens
femtiorsjublieum (Stockholm, ); and J. Norrby, Minnesblad frn diakonissanstalten
i Stockholm (Stockholm: Diakonissanstaltens Bokfrd, ). Some older
studies of the nineteenth-century deaconessate also examined the contributions that
deaconesses made in Swedish society through carrying out particular social functions,
focus exclusively on deaconesses, deaconesses do comprise an impor-

tant strand in the scholarship. Two studies mentioned earlier in this sec-
tion are examples of this increased interest in the deaconessate. Pirjo
Markkolas study of deaconesses involved in social welfare in late nine-
teenth- and early twentieth-century Finland and Sweden examines the
important contributions that deaconesses made to poor relief in the late
nineteenth century, a time in which many people in need of such relief
were falling through the cracks of an overextended government-based
welfare system. Anna Jansdotters study of rescue work among prostitutes
in the nineteenth century devotes significant attention to the pioneering
work of deaconesses in the field. In addition to these two studies, sa
Anderssons examination of the how the idea of calling shaped the devel-
opment of the nursing profession in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century Sweden devotes considerable attention to deaconesses.56 What
these three studies share is an interest in highlighting the role that reli-
gion played in motivating and even empowering deaconesses to partici-
pate in the public sphere.
These recent trends in Swedish gender history have even influenced
the most important scholar of the nineteenth-century Swedish deacones-
sate, Gunnel Elmund. Elmund has written the two most important schol-
arly studies of the female diaconate. Her first book, published in ,
focused on the origins of the deaconessate and the first decade of its
work. It provided a general introduction to female diaconal work in the
mid-nineteenth century, and it pointed to the ways in which continen-
tal deaconess institutions, particularly those at Kaiserswerth and Stras-
bourg, influenced the deaconess institution in Stockholm. What this first
book lacked was any detailed gender analysis. Her most recent book,
published in , picks up where the first one left off chronologically.
It analyzes how the director of the Swedish Deaconess Institution from
to , Johan Christoffer Bring, understood the doctrine of call-
ing in relation to the deaconess vocation. Unlike her first work, this
second study devotes plenty of attention to gender analysis, including
such as education or child welfare. See Einar Ekman, Diakonien och folkskolan. En
minnesvrd insats i svensk folkbildningsarbete under frra seklet (Stockholm: Freningen
fr svensk undervisnings historia, ); Diakonala insatser i svensk socialpedagogik ren
i belysning av den allmnna utvecklingen p omrdet (Stockholm: Freningen
fr svensk undervisnings historia, ). The first of these will serve as an important
resource for chapter three.
56 sa Andersson, Ett hgt och delt kall. Kalltankens betydelse fr sjukskterskeyrkets
formering (Ume: Ume institution fr historiska studier, ).

chapter one
attention to the Lutheran doctrine of a womans calling, and has clearly

been influenced by the developments in Swedish gender history over the
past decade.57
G. Sources
The primary sources that I have relied on the most are nineteenth-
century deaconess publications and letters. The main deaconess periodi-
cal published in this period was the Olivebladet (The Olive Leaf). It began
as a quarterly publication in , becoming a monthly by the turn of the
century. Its contents included sermons, ceremonial addresses, and arti-
cles on diaconal work, as well as the deaconess institutions annual reports
containing information on the work stations to which deaconesses were
assigned, the changes made in work station assignments, and employer
requests for deaconesses that had to be rejected.58 Toward the end of the
century, the Olivebladet published excerpts from deaconess letters con-
cerning their work. This periodical offers abundant information concern-
ing the extent of diaconal involvement in the public sphere and the ways
that deaconesses and the Swedish Deaconess Institution sought to make
this work conform to the traditional Lutheran constructions of gender.
Another periodical, Febe (Phoebe), was an annual Christmas periodical
that began publication in . Because Febe began much later in the
period under examination here, and because it contained information
that on the whole could also be found in the Olivebladet, its use in my
study is much more limited.
The letters cited in my work come from a variety of sources. Some are
from the hands of deaconesses themselves and provide insight into the
working conditions that they experienced as well as how their work was
received by those who were recipients or beneficiaries of their services.
Other letters were written by employers (or prospective employers) and
prove most helpful in gauging both the extent to which deaconesses
were in demand and how satisfied employers were with the work of
deaconesses.
57 Gunnel Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin i Sverige . Uppgift och utformn-
ing (Lund: CWK Gleerups, ); Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall. Johan Christoffer
Brings syn p diakonissverksamhetens uppgift och form (Skellefte: Artos & Norma, ).
58 The annual reports before contain much of the same information and will also
be cited frequently, though obviously they were published separately and not included in
another publication.
In addition to these two important sources, I have made use of other

primary sources in illuminating both the work of deaconesses and the
character of the women who undertook this work. Such sources include
hiring contracts, diary and journal excerpts, personal faith narratives,
and minutes from meetings of the administration board of the Swedish
Deaconess Institution.
While the above-mentioned sources have proven most helpful, three
problems pertaining to their use should be noted. First, the letters pre-
served from deaconesses derive mostly from the s and s, when
diaconal work was predominantly geared toward education. We have
far fewer letters from deaconesses involved in health care or poor relief,
though by the s the Olivebladet did publish some such letters anony-
mously. Second, some letters sent to the Swedish Deaconess Institu-
tion from employing institutions have signatures that are often illegible.
When such a letter is cited, as much identifying information as possible
will be provided, including the name of the employing institution send-
ing the letter and where in the deaconess archives the letter can be found.
Finally, many of the articles published in the Olivebladet are unsigned,
though it is likely that most were written by the director of the Swedish
Deaconess Institution from to , J.C. Bring. Nevertheless, cita-
tions of these articles contain no information concerning authorship.
Concerning all primary and secondary sources, translations from the
original Swedish and German are my own unless otherwise noted.
H. Outline
The book is organized thematically. The second chapter will provide an

overview of the deaconess movement in late nineteenth-century Swe-
den. I will discuss the continental and revivalist inspirations behind the
movement as well as its organization, composition, and operation. Two
themes that will emerge in the discussion are the religious orientation of
the female diaconate and the challenges and obstacles that deaconesses
faced in their quest to wield influence in the public sphere. As for the
first theme, I will argue that the diaconate maintained a strong reli-
gious profile in its activities even as it expanded its work in the course
of the late nineteenth century. In terms of the obstacles encountered
by deaconesses, I will address two in particulargender and recruit-
ment. I will maintain that by organizing and interpreting its work accord-
ing to the motherhouse system, the diaconate successfully reinforced its
chapter one
connection to the household sphere and thereby affirmed its fidelity to

the Lutheran construction of gender. As for recruitment, I will point out
that while the diaconate could not recruit enough deaconesses to keep
up with demand for diaconal services, its social significance far exceeded
the number of women in its service.
In each of the three chapters that follow, I will focus on one of three
social functions and the extent to which deaconesses exerted influence
in the public sphere in carrying out each function. In chapter three, I
will address diaconal work in the field of education. Service as teachers
for private schools, particularly in rural areas but also in one Stockholm
parish, dominated diaconal work in the formative period of the move-
ment. The diaconates participation in teaching was significant for two
reasons. First, because the nurturing and instruction of small children
were tasks associated traditionally with mothers in the household sphere,
deaconesses were able to reinforce their connection to that sphere in their
work as teachers by extending these motherly duties into a public setting.
Teaching helped deaconesses gain entry into the public sphere because in
carrying out this work, they demonstrated a conformity to the Lutheran
construction of gender, something that would have been important to
some of the rural religious communities that hired them.
Female diaconal participation in teaching was also significant because
it helped to meet a demand for teachers that was created after an
statute that required all parishes to set up an elementary school and hire
a teacher. Demand for deaconesses as teachers in some provincial areas
was high in the s and s. By the s, the Swedish Deaconess
Institution had largely abandoned this work. I will argue that while func-
tional differentiation contributed to the leaderships decision to discon-
tinue teaching, this process did not force the diaconate out of educa-
tion. A lack of commitment to education on the leaderships part must be
taken into account when explaining why the diaconate shifted its focus
away from education and toward health care and poor relief from the late
s.
In chapter four, I will examine the work of deaconesses as nurses
and health care professionals. Evidence for the influence of deaconesses
is strong in this sphere of work, particularly once nursing became the
primary focus of diaconal work in the late s. The modern nursing
profession in Sweden owes its origins to the pioneering efforts of dea-
conesses. I will argue that deaconesses were very much in demand among
employers at health care institutions, such as hospitals or nursing homes,
and among poor and working-class patients in Stockholm. This demand
persisted even in the face of significant competition from nurses trained

at other institutions by the turn of the century. I will also make the case
that deaconesses gained access to the public sphere via health care in
part because they embraced the contemporary religious understanding
of women as particularly gifted at showing compassion and tenderness
to their fellow human beings.
In chapter five, I will study the contributions of deaconesses in the
field of poor relief, giving attention to their work in indoor relief (such as
in poorhouses) and outdoor relief (as parish deaconesses). Deaconesses
devoted more and more attention to poor relief throughout the period
and were employed not only by religious organizations, such as parish
councils, but also by secular institutions, such as municipal poor relief
boards. I will argue that the demand for deaconesses in the field of poor
relief, particularly among employers in need of outdoor relief workers,
was fairly strong from the early s onward, in spite of the various
specialized institutions and professionals that had arisen to carry out this
work. I will also maintain that deaconesses used their gender as an asset
and reinforced their connection to the domestic sphere by concentrating
their poor relief work among women, children, and families.
In chapter six, I will draw on the evidence presented in the previous
chapters in order to assess the impact of functional differentiation on the
social significance of Swedish deaconesses in the late nineteenth century.
I will argue that the high demand for its services in the three areas
under examination demonstrates that the female diaconate successfully
responded to increasing functional differentiation. This success is all
the more remarkable in light of the considerable obstacles deaconesses
faced and overcame in their work, particularly with regard to gender.
The case of the female diaconate in Sweden clearly shows that religious
organizations and personnel were not always victims of modernization;
sometimes, they were beneficiaries of it.
chapter two
THE FEMALE DIACONATE IN

NINETEENTH-CENTURY SWEDEN
My main purpose in this chapter is to orient the reader to what is likely an

unfamiliar topic, the history and work of the nineteenth-century female
diaconate in Sweden. In the first section, I will present a chronological
account of the diaconates history until the turn of the twentieth century.
The overall picture that will emerge is of a religious organization whose
work and influence in society were expanding in a period of increasing
functional differentiation.
In the remaining sections, I will offer a closer look at the diaconates
organization, composition, and operations. Two themes that will recur
in these sections are the diaconates religious profile and the challenges
deaconesses faced beyond functional differentiation in their quest for
social significance. As for the former, I will emphasize the religious
nature of the diaconates organization and education. This is important
to highlight, given the assumptions of some secularization theorists that
in a context of functional differentiation, a religious organization cannot
wield influence in carrying out secular functions unless it tones down
the religious elements of its work.
Two particular challenges faced by the diaconate as it sought to wield
influence in the public sphere are gender and recruitment/retention. I
will argue that the diaconate successfully addressed many gender-based
concerns to its activities by organizing and interpreting female diaconal
work as an extension of the household sphere and thus in conformity
with the Lutheran construction of gender. I will also maintain that while
the diaconates struggles with recruitment limited the range of its public
influence, demand for the services of deaconesses among prospective
employers and clients was not adversely affected by these challenges.
A. The Origins and Formation of the Female Diaconate
The deaconess movement in nineteenth-century Europe originated in

Kaiserswerth, Germany, in response to a combination of socioeconomic
the female diaconate in nineteenth-century sweden
and religious factors. The Napoleonic wars created impoverished con-

ditions for many in Germany, and those who lived under such condi-
tions, including a large number of widows and orphans, could not ade-
quately be cared for by government poor relief. The end of the wars
also marked the onset of industrialization and mechanization, with the
result that many who had been dependent on the traditional econ-
omy, including single women of higher social classes, were displaced
and forced to find other ways of supporting themselves. Industrializa-
tion and significant population growth also brought with them urban-
ization and congested cities, and the people who flocked to the cities
in the first half of the nineteenth century to better their lot in the new
emerging economy often encountered diseases such as cholera. Hospi-
tals were in no position to help the afflicted, as they were little more
than poor relief institutions at which patients largely were responsible
for their own care, in some cases with the assistance of poorly trained
servants.1
Leaders of the early nineteenth-century revival movements in Ger-
many felt that a combination of social action and evangelization was the
best way to improve these harsh conditions, since this approach would
address both physical and spiritual needs. Some revivalist leaders sought
to implement this approach through a renewal of the diakonia. The most
prominent example of revivalist-inspired diaconal work was Johannes
Wicherns program of Inner Mission. Wichern began his work of Inner
Mission in with the establishment of Das Rauhe Haus, a home in
which vagrant boys were supervised by Brder, later to be designated as
deacons. In , Wichern established a Bruderhaus to train men for dia-
conal work in a variety of settings, including prisons, halfway houses, and
hospices.2
1 Tuulikki Koivunen Bylund, Diakonissornakyrkans rdstrumpor?, Kyrkohisto-
risk rskrift (), ; Gunnel Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin i Sverige .

Uppgift och utformning (Lund: CWK Gleerups, ), ; Nicholas Hope, German
and Scandinavian Protestantism (New York: Oxford, ), ; Jeannine
E. Olson, Deacons and Deaconesses Through the Centuries (St Louis, Concordia, ),
.
2 Erich Beyreuther, Geschichte der Diakonie und Inneren Mission in der Neuzeit
(Berlin: C.Z.V. Verlag, ), ; Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism,

; Olson, Deacons and Deaconesses, . In , the Wittenberg Kirchentag
formally adopted Wicherns Inner Mission program and implemented it in the German
Evangelical Church.
chapter two
Another pioneering effort in diaconal work was led by Amalie Sievek-

ing of Hamburg. In , Sieveking recruited twelve Christian women to
provide material and spiritual assistance to invalids and their families in
poor households. This benevolent society became known as the Female
Association for the Care of the Poor and the Sick. Its purpose was to pro-
vide both material and spiritual assistance to invalids and their families
in poor households. Sievekings society went on to inspire others in Ger-
many, and within sixteen years there were forty-five societies affiliated
with hers. These societies provided an outlet both for women of upper-
class means and for married women to engage in a type of diaconal work
without themselves becoming deaconesses.3
The establishment of the female diaconate in Germany paralleled
these revivalist-inspired engagements in social work. The founder of the
deaconessate at Kaiserswerth, Theodor Fliedner, shared Wicherns and
Sievekings conviction that a combination of social action and evangelism
was the best way to alleviate the sufferings of others. Fliedner was a
Lutheran clergyman who in was assigned to a Union parish (i.e., a
combined Lutheran and Reformed parish) in the predominantly Catholic
town of Kaiserswerth. His parish was underendowed and in desperate
need of financial assistance, so in and Fliedner made trips
to the Netherlands and England to raise funds. On his journeys, he
studied how urban Christian charity was being conducted in hospitals,
orphanages, and elderly homes, hoping to learn how he could better
address the harsh socioeconomic conditions afflicting people back in
Germany.4
Further visits to England, in particular a journey in in which
he met the likes of Thomas Chalmers, Robert Owen, and Elizabeth Fry,
along with his own experience of the work conducted by the Sisters of
Charity in Germany, inspired him to organize Christian charitable activ-
ities and institutions as well as to involve women in such work. In ,
Fliedner and his first wife, Friederike, established an asylum for released
3 Ursula Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland bis
(Frankfurt: Campus, ), ; Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Olson,

Deacons and Deaconesses, ; Catherine M. Prelinger, Prelude to Consciousness:
Amalie Sieveking and the Female Association for the Care of the Poor and Sick, in
German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History, ed. John C. Fout (New York:
Holmes & Meier, ), .
4 Martin Gerhardt, Theodor Fliedner: Ein Lebensbild, vol. (Dsseldorf-Kaiserswerth:
Buchhandlung der Diakonissen-Anstalt, ), ; Hope, German and Scandina-

vian Protestantism, .
female prisoners. Fliedner opened a sewing school for poor children in

, and in he formally established the female diaconate through
the opening of the deaconess institution at Kaiserswerth.5
While the deaconess institution envisioned training women to par-
ticipate in various types of social work, its primary task in the early
years was to train nurses. Womens participation in social work was still
something of a novelty when Kaiserswerth opened its doors, but Flied-
ner believed that there would be less opposition to women working as
nurses than as teachers, particularly given the appalling state of hospi-
tals and the high demand for better-trained health care professionals. By
mid-century, Fliedner would succeed in making teaching an important
sphere of diaconal work, though nursing education would continue to be
required. The field of diaconal work expanded in the second half of the
century to orphanages, asylums, mental hospitals, and poorhouses.6
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Kaiserswerth became a
model of diaconal work not only throughout Germany but in Europe and
America as well. Particularly after the revolutions, motherhouses
based on the Kaiserswerth model began opening their doors.7 Fliedner
established the General Conference in as a means of uniting the
growing number of deaconess motherhouses under the banner of mutual
support for diaconal work, and by there were fifty motherhouses,
including the one in Stockholm, and just under , deaconesses
connected to the General Conference.8
The socioeconomic and religious factors that led to the creation of the
German deaconessate have parallels in early nineteenth-century Sweden.
While industrialization and urbanization did not fully materialize until
the second half of the century, significant economic and demographic
changes were already manifesting themselves in the first half of the cen-
tury. The manufacturing and textile industries gradually began to assume
5 Gerhardt, Theodor Fliedner , ; Hope, German and Scandinavian Protes-
tantism, ; Olson, Deacons and Deaconesses, .

6 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Olson, Deacons and Deaconesses, , .
7 Olson, Deacons and Deaconess, .
8 Friedrich Thiele, Diakonissenhuser im Umbruch der Zeit: Strukturprobleme im
Kaiserswerther Verband deutscher Diakonissenmutterhuser als Beitrag zur institutionel-

len Diakonie (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, ), . Not all deaconess moth-
erhouses were members of the General Conference. The list of motherhouses provided
in the Swedish deaconess publication, Olivebladet, in , lists seventy-five. See fver-
sikt fver de evangeliska diakonissanstalternas utveckling och nrvarande stndpunkt,
Olivebladet (), . See also Olson, Deacons and Deaconesses, , n. .
chapter two
production of goods that traditionally had been produced in the house-

hold or within the guild structures. At the same time, the population
grew from . million to . million between and . With the
shift in economic production away from households and guilds, com-
bined with improvements in cultivation techniques and the population
increase, many people who had been able to support themselves in the
traditional agrarian economy were finding it more difficult to do so in
the emerging market economy.9
Women in particular struggled, in part because the household was
increasingly becoming a unit of consumption rather than production,10
and in part because the population increase resulted in larger numbers
of unmarried women.11 A series of legislative initiatives in the s gave
unmarried women new possibilities to support themselves. These initia-
tives included the abolition of compulsory guild membership, increased
access to trade, and the expansion of the right of inheritance to include
women. Nevertheless, before mid-century, women did not have access
to formal occupational education, so the new legislative measures did
not immediately solve the problem of the growing number of unmarried
women struggling to earn a living.12
Neo-evangelical revival leaders of the early nineteenth century were
concerned with addressing the social problems of the day. Neo-evangeli-
calism was a movement with pietistic and Moravian tendencies that arose
in the s under the leadership of the lay preacher C.O. Rosenius.13 By
the end of the s, individuals influenced by neo-evangelicalism would
9Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Stefan Gelfgren, Ett utvalt slkte. Vckelse och
sekulariseringEvangesliska Fosterlands-Stiftelsen (Skellefte: Artos & Norma,
), .
10 Eva sbrink, Studier i den svenska kyrkans syn p kvinnans stllning i samhllet ren
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ), .

11 Gunnar Qvist estimates a percent increase in the number of unmarried women
in Sweden between and . See Qvist, Kvinnofrgan i Sverige . Studier

rrande kvinnans nringsfrihet inom de borgerliga yrkena (Gteborg: Akademifrlaget-
Gumperts, ), , .
12 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Qvist, Kvinnofrgan i Sverige, .
13 There were a number of revival movements in the first half of the nineteenth century
in Sweden that either preceded or coincided with neo-evangelism, including Hoofian-

ism, Schartauism, the neo-readers movement, and the shouters movement. Most of these
movements were also influenced by eighteenth-century pietism and Moravianism, and,
like the neo-evangelical movement that followed, they were all inner-church (i.e., non-
separatist) revivals. For an overview of these various strands of inner-church revivalism
in early nineteenth-century Sweden, see Anders Jarlert, Sveriges kyrkohistoria . Roman-
tikens och liberalismens tid (Stockholm: Verbum, ), , , .
be the leaders in promoting a solution to the social question based on a

program of Inner Mission in the spirit of its German counterpart, which
sought to improve the social conditions of the day through a combination
of works of Christian love and evangelism.14
The person most responsible for creating initial awareness among
Swedish revivalists about Wicherns Inner Mission was Emilie Petersen.
Petersen and her husband Johan came to Sweden from Hamburg during
the Napoleonic wars. They settled on Herrestad estate in the province of
Smland in . Petersen traveled back to Hamburg in and became
acquainted with Wicherns work there. In , she and her husband set
up a school for the children of the estate, a school that she continued to
operate after Johans death in .
Petersen began exchanging letters with Wichern in . Inspired by
Wicherns Rauhes Haus, she transformed her estate school one year later
into a rescue home and school for poor and neglected children from both
the estate and the parish. By the end of the s, she was describing her
work as a form of Inner Mission.15
Some of the neo-evangelical revivalists instrumental in establishing
both a program of Inner Mission in Sweden and the Swedish deacones-
sate were people who had spent time on Petersens Smland estate, includ-
ing Per Magnus Elmblad, his wife Emilia, Peter Fjellstedt, and the first
director of the Swedish Deaconess Institution, Marie Cederschild. The
Elmblads were among the founding members of the Swedish Deaconess
Society in , and Per Magnus was also the driving force behind the
creation of the Association for Inner Mission in .16 Peter Fjellstedt
served on the administrative board of the Swedish Deaconess Society
from to , and he worked some as a chaplain for the Swedish
Deaconess Institution.17 Marie Cederschild, the daughter of a clergy-
man from the nearby Forsheda parish, actually lived and worked on
Herrestad estate for two years, helping Petersen with both the rescue
home and the womens society. In her time there, she became acquainted
14 Anders Bckstrm et al., Fr att tjna. En studie av diakoniuppfattningar hos kyrkliga
befattningshavare (Uppsala: Diakonistiftelsen Samariterhemmet, ), ; Elmund, Den

kvinnliga diakonin, , .
15 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, .
16 Ibid., .
17 Olaus Brnnstrm, Peter Fjellstedt. Mngsidig men entydig kyrkoman (Uppsala:
Svenska institutet fr missionforskning, ), ; Elmund, Den kvinnliga dia-

konin, , .
chapter two
with the above-mentioned figures, all of whom would eventually play

a role in her decision to accept the directorship of the new deaconess
institution in Stockholm.18
While Petersen and her circle of friends clearly were instrumental in
establishing a Swedish deaconessate, one tradition states that the actual
idea to establish a female diaconate originated from the circulation of an
annual report of the deaconess institution in Strasbourg that had made its
way to Sweden. A prominent family from one of the provinces received
a copy of this report. During their stay in Stockholm in , they
shared a translated copy of the report with various family members and
friends connected with the neo-evangelical revivals in the city.19 Among
those who saw the report was Oscar Carlheim-Gyllenskjld, the divi-
sion head in the governments Ministry of Justice who would eventu-
ally become one of the original founders of the Swedish Deaconess Soci-
ety as well as its first chairman. Carlheim-Gyllenskjld reportedly was
inspired by the Strasbourg report and wanted to create a similar insti-
tution in Stockholm.20 This tradition of the origins of the idea behind a
Swedish deaconessate has some support in sources from the time, but
it is also clear that there was familiarity with the German deaconessate
among neo-evangelical leaders even before the Strasbourg annual report
was being circulated. Most likely, the idea of creating a Swedish deacones-
sate was fueled from both Petersens circle and those inspired by the Stras-
bourg annual report. What brought these two streams together was the
neo-evangelical revival in Stockholm at the end of the s.
On April , a meeting of those interested in creating a deaconess
institution took place in Stockholm. At this meeting, the Society for the
Preparation of a Deaconess Institution in Stockholm, later to become the
Swedish Deaconess Society, was established. Among the sixteen people
who participated were Carlheim-Gyllenskjld, the Elmblads, Fjellstedt,
and Rosenius.21 According to the minutes, the Societys purpose was to
create a deaconess institution after the pattern of similar institutions that
already exist in other Protestant countries. This institution would then
train Christian-minded women to work as nurses both at a hospital that

19 Frken Marie Cederschild, Olivebladet (), ; Elmund, Den kvinnliga
diakonin, ; Ernst Lnegren, Minneskrift till Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femitors-
jublieum (Stockholm, ), ; J. Norrby, Minnesblad frn diakonissanstalten i Stockholm
(Stockholm: Diakonissanstaltens Bokfrd, ), .
21 SBDAS minutes, April , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
would be established in Stockholm and in private homes.22 In a public

announcement of the Societys intentions published a couple of weeks
later, the Society elaborated on the reasons why a deaconess institution
was necessary. The announcement stated that the deplorable spiritual
and physical condition of many Stockholmers, the lack of trained nurses,
and the inadequacy of hospitals and government poor relief to care for
peoples physical and spiritual needs were the main reasons behind the
Societys creation.23
The Societys administrative board took steps later that year toward
realizing its goal of a deaconess institution in Stockholm. The board
turned to Theodor Fliedner at Kaiserswerth to explore its options. One
idea it considered was to send students to Kaiserswerth to receive a
deaconess education so that they could return to Stockholm to help
begin the institutions work. Another idea was to see if Fliedner would
be willing to send a German deaconess to assist with the establishment
of the Stockholm institution. Fliedner was in North America when the
board made its inquiry concerning the second idea, and so it was his
wife, Karoline, who responded to the request for assistance. She did not
believe it was possible to send a German deaconess and advised the
board to send Swedish women to train at Kaiserswerth. Emilia Elmblad
contacted Marie Cederschild on behalf of the board to inquire whether
she would be willing to travel to Kaiserswerth, and the latter accepted the
invitation.24
Cederschild arrived in Kaiserswerth on April . In the begin-
ning, she had a difficult time adjusting to the work and living conditions
there. She was initially assigned to work in the childrens ward of the hos-
pital. In her diary, she complained that she was not used to caring for
small children. She was also frustrated by her inability to perform rou-
tine household tasks, such as sweeping, scrubbing, and washing.25
These frustrations were compounded by the sleeping arrangements.
Cederschild had to share living quarters with twelve probationary sis-
ters. She complained that the sleeping situation was so bad that she had
to lie in the same bed with one who appeared to me to be a maid.26
The sleeping arrangements improved, as she was soon allowed to move

23 Anmlan, April , AA (vol. ), EDA.
24 MCD, October , October , FX, EDA; Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin,
.
25 MCD, April , FX, EDA.
26 MCD, April , FX, EDA.
chapter two
to a separate room with only three other women. Nevertheless, her initial
experiences of frustration over her sense of incompetency in her duties
and of struggling to adjust to living in close quarters with women from
diverse social classes caused her to spend much of her first week at Kaiser-
swerth in tears.27
Despite these initial difficulties, in the end Cederschilds work was
positively evaluated. Fliedner, whom she described as red-haired and
ugly, but lively, warm-hearted, and brilliant,28 told her at one point that
[i]f they do not want to have you in Stockholm, we want you here.29
During her one year at Kaiserswerth, she not only successfully completed
her nursing education at the hospital, she also gained practical experi-
ence serving in other divisions, including the orphanage and grammar
school. Although she was not consecrated as a deaconess, both Fliedner
and his wife deemed her ready to return to Stockholm to direct its dea-
coness institution. On April , she left Kaiserswerth to return to
Sweden.30
On July , the first institution in Sweden to provide women with
an occupational education, the Swedish Deaconess Institution (Svenska
Diakoniss-Anstalten), was formally dedicated, with Cederschild as its
director. The Institutions first home, a two-story house that the admin-
istrative board rented in the Kungsholmen section of Stockholm, was
ready to accept both its first sisters and its first patients.31 From this point
to the end of the nineteenth century, the deaconessates history can be
divided into three periods: a formative period (), a transitional
period (), and an expansion and consolidation period (
).
The formative period () began with the opening of the
Swedish Deaconess Institution. The two-story institution doubled as a
deaconess home and a hospital. The hospital portion of the institution
had twelve beds spread out in three different rooms. At first, only female
patients were admitted to the hospital, along with children, but within a
27 MCD, April , FX, EDA; Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Gunnar
Stenvall, Marie Cederschild. Sveriges frsta diakonissa (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerups, ),

.
28 MCD, June , FX, EDA.
29 MCD, June , FX, EDA.
30 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, , .
31 Yngve Iverson, Tro verksam i krlek. En bok om Ersta (Stockholm: Verbum, ),
; Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum, , ; Stenvall, Marie

Cederschild, .
few years men would also be treated. In addition to the hospital facili-
ties, the institution had living quarters for the director and the sisters, a
kitchen, an eating room, and a room for devotionals and other gather-
ings.32
Between the opening of the institution in the summer of and the
end of that year, six sisters entered the institution to begin their training
as deaconesses. Most of these did not continue with their education,
except for two: Ebba Zetterstrm and Charlotte Ljungberg. They became
the first probationary sisters on April . Both would eventually
become the first deaconesses on June .33
Although the intention behind the opening of the institution was to
train deaconesses to work as nurses, in the next few years the institution
gradually expanded its work to include other areas. In the summer
of , a school for poor children from the Kungsholmen region of
Stockholm was opened at the institution. One year later, the institution
established an orphanage. By the end of the decade, the institution had
taken over the Magdalene Home in Stockholm and had established a
rescue home for young, neglected children. By this time, the work of the
hospital and school had already grown enough that the institution was
forced to relocate in to another part of Kungsholmen.
The institution began sending sisters to external work stations in .
As the number of stations grew, it became clear that the demand for
the services of deaconesses was primarily from private schools in rural
areas, and in many cases the organizations behind hiring deaconesses
in this period were various societies connected with Inner Mission. The
clear focus of this period was on education, with deaconesses serving as
teachers in twenty-five schools by .34
The fact that many deaconesses in this period were being hired by
revivalist organizations reflects the independent status of the institution
vis--vis the Church of Sweden as well as the strong identity that the
founding members of the Swedish Deaconess Society continued to have
with Inner Mission. While the Swedish Deaconess Society would remain
an independent religious society throughout the late nineteenth century,
32 Iverson, En bok om Ersta, ; Norrby, Minnesblad frn diakonissanstalten, .

33 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Iverson, En bok om Ersta, ; Lnegren,
Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum, ; Stenvall, Marie Cederschild, .
34 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, , ; Thorsten Levenstam, Kyrklig diakoni
och samhllets sociala omsorgsarbete, omkring omkring (lvsj: Skeab Ver-

bum, ), .
chapter two
the formative period witnessed a greater distance between the institution

and the leadership and organization of the Church of Sweden than would
be the case in subsequent decades. There were no Church of Sweden
clergy on the administrative board when the institution was first estab-
lished, nor was there initially any funding from the Church.35 The rela-
tionship between the Church of Sweden leadership and the institution
was nevertheless cordial, and in the course of the formative period the
ties between the two grew. This can be seen both through the inclusion of
some prominent clergymen as members of the Swedish Deaconess Soci-
ety and through the authorization in of a collection from the Stock-
holm parish churches to help the institution.36
Marie Cederschild was the director and housemother of the insti-
tution throughout this period. Toward the end of the s, her health
began to fail, and she expressed feelings of being overwhelmed by her
responsibilities at the growing institution. In , the administrative
board considered the possibility of hiring a chaplain to assist her. This
plan was modified when she communicated to the board that her health
had deteriorated so much that she could no longer continue to serve as
the director. She formally stepped down in the spring of . The insti-
tution she left behind had by the time of her departure grown not only in
terms of its onsite facilities, but also in terms of the total number of sisters
and external work stations, which in April numbered seventy-one
and thirty-four, respectively.37
The transitional period () witnessed not only new leader-
ship but also a shift away from the strong focus on training teachers.
Cederschilds successor in was Johan Christoffer Bring, a Lutheran
priest from the diocese of Lund. As a clergyman from a distinguished
line of priests dating back to the seventeenth century, Bring brought a
greater degree of legitimacy to the deaconess institution in church cir-
cles. Whereas the administrative board during the formative period was
35 Archbishop Carl Fredrik af Wingrd was asked to become a member of the Swedish
Deaconess Society in , and though he did accept, he died shortly thereafter. See
Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, . Even so, he was not asked to serve as a member
of the administrative board, and the decision not to invite him to serve on the board was
likely a conscious effort to maintain some distance between the new institution and the
authoritative structure of the Church of Sweden.
36 Ibid., .
37 Ngra drag ur Svenska Diakonissanstaltens historia, dess uppkomst och utveck-
ling, Febe (), ; Frken Marie Cederschild, Olivebladet (), .

hesitant to connect itself too closely to the Church of Swedens organi-

zation and structure, Bring was an active participant in this structure
throughout his career. During his tenure as director, which ended with
his death in , Bring would serve as a court chaplain, a vice-chairman
in Stockholms clergy society, and a member of the Church of Swedens
mission board.38
Bring held a skepticism toward the neo-evangelical revival that largely
had not existed among the leadership of the institution in its formative
period. While he certainly respected revivalist leaders, he was opposed
to lay preachers and to any association or organization that in his view
possessed separatist tendencies.39 His concern about separatism was
undoubtedly magnified by the birth and growth of the free churches,
some of which arose out of neo-evangelicalism and which gathered
strength in the wake of legislative measures that granted a larger degree of
religious liberty from the late s onward.40 Bring further believed that
the societies and associations connected to the neo-evangelical revival
within the Church of Sweden, while perhaps necessary given the lack of
faith that characterized the times, were not the ideal means for carrying
out the work of churches, and this included the Swedish Deaconess
Society. In the Olivebladet (The Olive Leaf), the deaconess periodical
that Bring inaugurated in , he published articles and transcripts
of speeches in which he advocated that under ideal circumstances, the
proper sphere for female diaconate work was the parish church, not a
free-standing society.41
Another change in the leadership of the institution occurred around
the same time that Bring assumed the directorship. Oscar Carlheim-
38 Gunnel Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall. Johan Christoffer Brings syn p
diakonissverksamhetens uppgift och form (Skellefte: Artos & Norma, ), .

39 Ibid., .
40 Several noteworthy legislative measures concerning the extension of religious lib-
erty took place around the beginning of Brings tenure at the Swedish Deaconess Insti-
tution. In , the Conventicle Decree that prohibited religious gatherings apart
from the supervision of a member of the clergy was eliminated. The Dissenter Law
allowed people to leave the Church of Sweden in order to form a non-Lutheran Chris-
tian community, provided that they first were admonished by the parish priest and in
some cases by the cathedral chapter. The Dissenter Law modified the previous
law so that those leaving the Church of Sweden did not have to go through a process
of admonishment by Lutheran church authorities. See Oloph Bexell, Sveriges kyrkohisto-
ria . Folkvckelsens och kyrkofrnyelsens tid (Stockholm: Verbum, ), , ;
Jarlert, Romantikens och liberalismens tid, .
41 Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, , .
chapter two
Gyllenschild, chairman of the administrative board since , stepped

down from his position.42 During his tenure, the administrative board
played a very prominent role in the leadership and decision making
at the institution. The administrative board would continue to serve
as the highest authority of the institution, but under Brings leadership
there was a clear shift in de facto authority toward the position of the
director.
In the formative period, Cederschild served as both the director
and housemother of the institution. When Bring took over the director
position, the administrative board found itself in need of someone to
assume the duties of housemother. In , Clara Eckerstrm became
the institutions second housemother. Like Cederschild before her, she
was never consecrated as a deaconess, but she did apparently wear the
deaconess uniform.43
With Bring and Eckerstrm in place, the administrative board decided
that due to its recent expansion, it was necessary to relocate once again. In
, the institution moved its facilities to Ersta in the Sdermalm region
of Stockholm. The move to Ersta would be the last, as the institution
remains there to this day.44
The transitional period is so designated because there was a shift away
from the concentration on education that had dominated the deacones-
sates efforts in the formative period, at least outside the institution. The
decision to cease its training of deaconesses as teachers did not come
immediately with Brings directorship. In fact, the number of teaching
work stations reached its peak in the middle of this period, with approx-
imately thirty-three sisters working in thirty-three schools from
to .45 Once the administrative board made the decision to stop
42 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , .

43 Ibid., .
44 In time, the institution became commonly referred to by those outside and inside
of it as Ersta. In , the Swedish Deaconess Society changed its name to the Ersta
Diaconate Society (Ersta diakonisllskap). See Iverson, En bok om Ersta, .
45 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; SDSFU Berttelse och redovis-
ning , ; SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , . One prob-

lem in citing statistics for sisters assigned to schools outside the institution in the s
and s is the issue of what counts as a school. Some orphanages had schools, and
some schools were primarily oriented toward teaching girls household skills like sewing.
In some cases, sisters served part-time in a school and part-time in another area, such as
health care. In the numbers cited here from to , the decision has been made not
to include stations that were primarily orphanages but that also had school instruction
for the orphans.
fulfilling new requests for teachers in , the number of sisters

and stations within the field of education began to decrease sharply.
By there were only eleven sisters assigned to eleven schools.46 In
the same year, the administrative board formally disbanded the teacher
seminary at the institution and the institutions school for poor children,
marking the end of an era in which diaconal work had been largely
synonymous with teaching.47
Table Educational External Work Stations,

Number of Number of
Year Stations Sisters Assigned

The institution began devoting its energies to its original goal of training
deaconesses as nurses. In addition to its own hospital, which in its new
location in Ersta had forty-six beds, the number of health care work
stations outside the institution, as with the number of sisters assigned
to them, began to increase. From a total of five health care stations with
nine sisters in , by there were twelve stations with eighteen
sisters.48 This focus on health care would strongly characterize the work
of the deaconessate for the remainder of the nineteenth and throughout
the twentieth century.

47 Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, ; Iverson, En bok om Ersta, , .
ning , .
chapter two
Along with health care, diaconal work in orphanages was also an area
of focus throughout the transitional period, though this work would
never be dominant. In addition to the work carried out at the institutions
own orphanage, there were nineteen sisters working at twelve orphanages
outside the institution in .49 These nineteen sisters contributed to a
total of sisters in the service of the institution in . Just over half
of these sisters were assigned to external work stations.50
The two preceding periods witnessed the expansion of the institution
in several ways, including the number of sisters, the number of external
work stations, and the number of divisions of work within the institution
itself. In the expansion and consolidation period (), the insti-
tution not only experienced significant growth in all of the above areas,
it also consolidated its focus on the work of health care and poor relief,
the two social spheres within which the female diaconate would wield
the most influence in the late nineteenth century.
The growth of the female diaconate continued with the creation of
important new divisions within the institution that were established
alongside those already in existence. A household school was established
in to prepare girls who had already been confirmed for domestic
service in private homes. In , the institution created an elderly home
for the growing number of sisters who, having worked many years in the
service of the institution, were in need of a retirement home. One year
later the institution set up a nursing home in order to care for chronically
ill patients. In , a free polyclinic was established at Ersta to provide
outpatient care for the poor.
These new divisions, along with the building of other new facilities,
paralleled the growth that was taking place in the total number of sisters
and external work stations. When Bring first took over as the institu-
tions director in , there were deaconesses and external work
stations. In , these numbers were and , respectively, and by
the end of , the year of Brings death, there were sisters and
external work stations.51
The increase in external work stations in this period came largely
in the fields of health care and poor relief. In , seventeen sisters
worked in eleven health care stations outside the institution, but by

50 Ibid., , .
51 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), , ; SDSFU rsberttelse
, Olivebladet (), , .
the number of sisters working in such stations had doubled, and the
number of stations had increased to eighteen.52 The growth in poor relief,
particularly once parish deaconess stations were instituted, was even
more significant. A parish deaconess was first hired in Stockholms Adolf
Fredrik parish in . In there were seven sisters working in seven
parishes or poor relief institutions. By those numbers had risen to
thirty-eight and thirty-six, respectively.53
The growth in poor relief work is particularly noteworthy given the lit-
tle attention this area received in the previous two periods. This increased
interest in poor relief, particularly through work as parish deaconesses,
had several motivators, including the famines of the late s, the
changes in poor relief legislation in that limited the extent to which
the poor could have recourse to government poor relief, and Brings per-
sonal interest in connecting the diaconate more closely to the parish
church structure. The growth in the number of parish deaconesses indi-
cates that Bring was largely successful in the expansion and consolidation
period both in bringing the diaconate closer to the Church of Swedens
organization and structure and in increasing cooperation between the
diaconate and the secular authorities.
Table Number of Sisters,

Probationary
Year Inquirers Sisters Deaconesses TOTAL

52 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse
, Olivebladet (), .
53 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; SDSFU rsberttelse ,
Olivebladet (), .
chapter two
Table External Work Stations,

Total Number of Number of
Year External Work Stations Sisters Assigned

Table Health Care and Poor Relief External Work Stations,

Year Health Care Poor Relief
Number of Number of Number of Number of
Stations Sisters Assigned Stations Sisters Assigned

Bring died in the summer of after thirty-six years of leadership,
and he was succeeded in by another clergyman from the diocese
of Lund, Ernst Lnegren. Lnegren would be joined two years later by a
new housemother and the first deaconess to occupy the position, Louise
Heimbrger.54 Lnegren led the deaconessate into the twentieth century
and helped it to celebrate its fifty-year anniversary in . In reflecting
on the deaconessates fifty-year history, Lnegren noted that a total of
54 Iverson, En bok om Ersta, .

women had at one point or another entered the institution to train

and work as deaconesses. While many of these women did not serve
the institution for an entire lifetime, Lnegrens observation, combined
with the growth in both internal divisions and external work stations,
suggests that deaconesses were not a marginalized group of religious
professionals operating on the fringes of society.55 Their numbers were
perhaps modest, but in a half-century they still managed to expand their
work and sphere of influence considerably, particularly in the areas of
nursing and social work.
B. Leadership and Organization
The Swedish Deaconess Society was the organization responsible not

only for the creation of the Swedish Deaconess Institution but for its over-
all operations. This independence vis--vis the Church of Sweden meant
that financial support for the institution came from the Society. The Soci-
ety funded diaconal work in several ways, including membership fees,
fees for diaconal services (such as health care at the institutions hospital),
collections from various parish churches or dioceses, and private dona-
tions. In the last quarter of the century, even the Stockholm municipal
government contributed financially to certain aspects of the work. Pri-
vate donations in particular would prove to be a significant source of rev-
enue, as the establishment of new divisions and the building of new struc-
tures were funded largely in this manner. Those making such donations
often came from the upper echelons of Swedish society and included the
royal family, persons from the nobility, and famous Swedes ranging from
the Nobel family to the renowned opera singer Jenny Lind.
The Society delegated the actual decision making for the affairs of
the deaconessate to an administrative board. This board consisted of
twelve to sixteen members from the Society, representing both women
and men. The board was responsible for selecting members and other
board members for the Society, for hiring professionals to lead or manage
the work of the institution, such as the director, housemother, doctors,
55 Lnegren notes that of the women who had at one point in the previous fifty
years entered the institution to train and/or serve as deaconesses left its service for one
reason or another. See Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum,
. A discussion of some of the challenges that the institution faced in retaining sisters
in its service can be found in a later section of this chapter.
chapter two
and auditors, for overseeing larger financial matters, and for making final
decisions concerning changes in or the expansion of diaconal work.56
The administrative board delegated the day-to-day administration of
the institution to another body, the institutional board. This board con-
sisted of the director and several female members chosen by the adminis-
trative board, though none were deaconesses. Once Bring became direc-
tor, both he and the housemother were members of the institutional
board. The institutional board made decisions concerning the admis-
sion of students, the promotion of students to probationary sisters and
deaconesses, work assignments for the sisters, and the establishment of
hiring contracts with employing institutions. In some cases it served as
a preparatory body for the administrative board on matters such as the
expansion of diaconal work.57
While the administrative and institutional boards were the highest
decision-making bodies, de facto authority in many cases rested with
one personthe director. He or she oversaw much of the day-to-day
operations of the institution, conducted negotiations with employing
institutions on behalf of the institutional board, made many of the deci-
sions concerning deaconess work assignments, maintained regular con-
tact with deaconesses in external work stations through letters and per-
sonal visits, and supervised the theoretical instruction of sisters. Because
Bring was also a Lutheran priest, his duties as director included the super-
vision of pastoral care and worship life at the institution.58
The authority of the director vis--vis the administrative board was
not clearly defined in the formative period. On several occasions, Ceder-
schild encountered resistance from board members. One significant
controversy was her decision to establish a school for poor children in
without first seeking approval from the board. This controversy
will be covered in more detail in chapter three. Despite such contro-
versies, Cederschild was often successful in implementing her ideas,
largely because the boards chairman, Carlheim-Gyllenskjld, was her
close ally.59
56 Stadgar fr Svenska Diakoniss-Sllskapet, June , , AA (vol. ), EDA;
Stadgar fr Svenska Diakoniss-Sllskapet, November , , AA (vol. ), EDA;

Stadgar fr Svenska Diakoniss-Sllskapet, June , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
57 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens
femtiorsjublieum, .
58 Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum, .
During Brings tenure, the administrative board ceded more and more
authority to the director in the day-to-day leadership of the institution.
Bring never experienced the sorts of struggles with the board that Ceder-
schild had to endure. This was likely due to Brings church office (along
with the authority connected to it), and to reservations held by some
board members concerning whether a woman had the authority to make
independent decisions on behalf of the institution.
In the formative period, Cederschild assumed the roles of both direc-
tor and housemother. In the latter role, Cederschild was responsible for
the supervision of household matters at the institutions deaconess home,
including the budget for household items, the work of servants, and the
practical instruction of students in household tasks.60 When Bring took
over as director, the institution found itself in need of someone who could
assume the housemother responsibilities. For this reason, Clara Ecker-
strm was hired in , and for the remainder of the period under study
here, the positions of director and housemother were separated, though
both worked together in the supervision of the day-to-day affairs of the
institution.
Brings hiring also solved a problem that had plagued the institution
in its formative periodthe need for a permanent chaplain. Several men
served the institution as chaplain in the first decade, but none was able to
give full attention to the position. With Bring, the institution had a full-
time, in-residence chaplain in addition to a director. The expansion of the
institution and the growth in the number of sisters led the administrative
board to hire an assistant chaplain in to help Bring in his pastoral
duties.
It is clear that the deaconesses themselves had no formal leadership
role in the institution. Even the two women who served as housemother
throughout this period were not deaconesses. But deaconesses were
not without influence in the decisions made by the higher governing
bodies or the director. For example, each division at the institution (the
hospital, the orphanage, etc.) was under the supervision and leadership
of a deaconess, and this person clearly had influence in decisions made by
one of the boards or the director pertaining to that particular division.61
Deaconesses also possessed the same rights as their counterparts at the
Kaiserswerth and Strasbourg institutions in that a majority of them

61 SDSFU minutes, February , , AA (vol. ), EDA; Om diakonissanstalten
i Stockholm, Olivebladet (), .
chapter two
had to give their approval before a probationary sister could become a

deaconess.62 These privileges notwithstanding, it was not the place of
a deaconess to wield authority on behalf of her surrogate family. Her
responsibility was to carry out works of love on behalf of the poor, the
sick, and the suffering, and to do so in obedience to the heads of the
household.
C. The Calling of a Deaconess
The observation concerning the responsibility of every deaconess on

behalf of those in need, as well as her responsibility to show obedience
to those in authority over her, touches on the larger issue of calling.
Much attention was devoted in the educational program of the institu-
tion and in deaconess publications to the nature of a deaconesss call-
ing.63 But what did this calling entail, according to the institutions lead-
ership? More importantly, how did the leadership reconcile the apparent
public nature of the deaconess vocation with the traditional Lutheran
construction of gender and its relegation of women to the household
sphere?
According to lecture notes taken in by Louise Heimbrger,
then a student at the institution and later the institutions housemother,
those studying to become deaconesses were taught that the calling or
vocation of a deaconess, irrespective of her particular work assignment,
was [t]o serve the Lord in His parish by means of caring for its sick,
poor, prisoners, children, and others in need.64 This phrase, or minor
variations of it, was repeated often in deaconess publications.65 In his
62 Elmund notes that since it was difficult to get responses from those serving outside
the institution concerning the potential promotion of probationary sisters, it was decided
in that only a majority of those deaconesses stationed at the institution had to give
their approval. See Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, .
63 Gunnel Elmunds most recent book, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall. Johan Chris-
toffer Brings syn p diakonissverksamhetens uppgift och form (), is an analysis of

Brings beliefs concerning the calling of a deaconess.
64 LHA , Diakonissans kall, III b, EDA. Heimbrgers notes were based
on lectures that Bring gave to students who were beginning their training as deaconesses.
65 For example, see SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonissorna , I, AA (vol. ), EDA;
Om det heliga och tjenandet. VI. Diakonissans tjenande, Olivebladet (), ;

Diakonissans kall, Olivebladet (), .
This phrase expands upon the groups of people to be cared for according to the
initial stated purpose of the Swedish Deaconess Society. The Societys original expressed
lectures to new students, Bring expounded upon the phrase by dividing

the objects of a deaconesss service into three categories: the Lord, the
parish, and those in need.
In serving the Lord, she served the One who had saved her from the
power of sin and given her new life. In dedicating her life to the Lords
service, she was not to be motivated by the expectation of earthly reward
or honor but rather by the love of Christ. She was to look to the grace that
Christ had poured upon her heart through the forgiveness of sins as her
source of strength in carrying out the Lords work.66
This calling to serve the Lord was to be fulfilled in the parish and
for the parish.67 The emphasis on serving the parish did not exist in
the formative period but developed during Brings tenure, a reflection
of his particular interest in bringing the deaconessate closer to the orga-
nization of the Church of Sweden as well as closer to how the diaconate
functioned in the early church.68 Bring insisted so strongly on connect-
ing a deaconesss service to the parish that he once claimed that all dea-
conesses are parish deaconesses, since all deaconesses are servants of the
parish.69
A deaconess was called not only to serve the local parish but to serve
the larger church to which it was connected, the Church of Sweden. She
was to be a faithful servant of this church because it was into this church
that she was born and baptized, and it was within this church that she
received both instruction in the true Christian faith and the means of
grace to sustain and strengthen her in that faith. In serving the Church
intention was to train deaconesses to care for the sick and the poor, though other possible
avenues for future diaconal work were not excluded. See SDSFU minutes, April ,
, AA (vol. ), EDA; Anmlan, April , AA (vol. ), EDA.
66 LHA , Diakonissans kall, I A, III b, EDA.
67 Om det heliga och tjenandet. VI: Diaknoissans tjenande, Olivebladet (),
.
68 An illustration of this increasing emphasis on the parish and on the importance
of the Church of Sweden in general to the calling of a deaconess can be seen in the
statutes of the Swedish Deaconess Society. According to the statutes, the purpose
of the Society and the deaconess institution was to train Christian women for the care
of the sick, those in need or . . . others who require help. In , the altered statement
reads that the purpose of the Society is to foster and educate Christian women of the
evangelical Lutheran confession in the service of the parish for the care and instruction
of the sick, those in need and otherwise those who require help [emphasis added]. SDS
Stadgar, June , , AA (vol. ), EDA; SDS Stadgar, November , , AA
(vol. ), EDA.
69 Till frsamlingsdiakonissorna!, Olivebladet (), .
chapter two
of Sweden through its parishes, a deaconess was not to limit her works
of love only to those who belonged to it. All people in need, regardless of
religious affiliation, were to be the objects of her care.70
Representing her Lord and her church, a deaconess was ultimately
called to serve the poor, the sick, prisoners, children, and others in need,
for just as the Lord served such people, so should she.71 As the Lord
showed compassion on these people in order to save them from their
sins and offer them forgiveness, so a deaconess was to perform acts of
love to open their hearts to the Word, and ultimately to give them an
opportunity to find forgiveness and salvation with the Lord.72 Through
addressing the physical needs of her fellow human beings, deaconesses
were in a position to bring Gods kingdom close to people, particularly
since those in need were more open to receiving it.73 During both
Cederschilds and Brings directorships, this missionizing component
of a deaconesss calling was emphasized. A deaconess did not care for
people simply to address their physical condition and/or suffering. Her
greater purpose was to address their spiritual needs. Her works of love
prepared the way for evangelization, which she in turn might carry out
herself or leave for another to do.74 The importance of evangelization can
be seen particularly in the conversion accounts of patients, children, and
others that were published. Such accounts were published frequently in
the institutions annual reports in its formative period and occasionally
in the years following.
On the surface, the deaconess vocation may not have seemed that
unique. Bring recognized this when he stressed that serving the Lord
in the parish by caring for those in need was not the responsibility of
deaconesses alone. Every Christian was obligated to care for others. What
made deaconesses unique was that to serve the poor, the sick, etc., on
behalf of the Lord and the parish was a deaconesss particular calling:
Because this work is the calling of a deaconess, she can exclusively
devote her time and energy to this work.75 Other Christians could devote
70 LHA , Diakonissans kall, I B, III b, EDA.

71 J.C. Bring, I Jesu namn, Olivebladet (), .
72 LHA , Diakonissans kall, II A, III b, EDA.
73 Diakoniss-saken ssom en Christi frsamlings sak, Olivebladet (), .
74 LHA , Diakonissans kall, II B, III b, EDA; Om det heliga och
tjenandet. VI: Diaknoissans tjenande, Olivebladet (), .

75 Om det heliga och tjenandet. VI: Diaknoissans tjenande, Olivebladet (),
.
their lives to serving others only to the extent that it did not interfere with
their specific vocation. Deaconesses, on the other hand, could expend all
of their energy on caring for those in need because this was the particular
calling God had given them.
Because a deaconesss responsibilities to care for the sick and the poor
often carried her into the public sphere, the potential for opposition
to her work was great, particularly among many church leaders and
members of the clergy who felt that the calling of a woman was to live
as wife and mother and to carry out the responsibilities associated with
these roles within the household. For this reason, the leadership of the
deaconessate devoted considerable energy to justifying the calling of
a deaconess by attempting to reconcile this calling with the Lutheran
construction of gender that prevailed in Swedish society for much of
the nineteenth century. To understand how the leadership did this, it
is necessary to take a closer look at the doctrine of a womans calling
that existed in the theology of Martin Luther and that contributed to
the subsequent development of a Lutheran construction of gender in
Swedish society.76
Luther believed that society consisted of three estates: the church
(ecclesia), the state (politia), and the household (oeconomia). The church
represented Gods spiritual rule, whereas the state and the household
represented the worldly order. It was within these three estates that a
person was to live out his/her calling. Ones calling was not to be limited
to specific occupations, nor was one occupation or manner of living a
higher calling than another. Luther took particular aim at the medieval
churchs belief that monks and nuns possessed a higher calling and thus
exhibited the Christian life in a manner superior to other Christians.77
He rejected celibacy in favor of marriage both because of the need to
channel the sex drive after the Fall and Gods institution of marriage in
Paradise as a means to perpetuate the species. On the latter point, Luther
believed that procreation was the primary reason that God created Eve,
76 I am indebted in the following discussion of the Lutheran construction of gender
and calling to the work of the gender historian Inger Hammar. See in particular Inger
Hammar, Emancipation och religion. De svenska kvinnorrelsens pionjrer i debatt om
kvinnans kallelse ca (Stockholm: Carlssons, ); see also Inger Hammar,
Ngra reflektioner kring religionsblind kvinnoforskning, Historisk Tidskrift (),
; Den problematiska offentligheten. Filantropi, kvinnokall och emancipation, Scandia
(), .
77 Hammar, De svenska kvinnorrelsens pionjrer, .
chapter two
and for this reason, a womans purpose, and thus her calling, could
be realized most fully only within the context of marriage and in her
capacity as wife and mother.78
Luther clearly connected the particular calling of woman to her bio-
logical order, so that in carrying out her duties as a mother and wife, she
was embracing the calling that God had given particularly to her sex. The
proper sphere to live out this calling was the household estate. Luther cer-
tainly believed that a woman could wield influence beyond the household
estate, but she could do so only through another man, such as her father
or husband.79
Considerable scholarly debate in the past several decades concerns
the extent to which Luthers understanding of the calling of women
and his rejection of celibacy and the monastic lifestyle led either to a
greater subordination of women or greater freedom for women.80 It is
not my purpose to engage this debate or to determine the extent to which
Lutheran theologians and church leaders in nineteenth-century Sweden
were faithful to Luthers teachings on the calling of women. What is
important to stress is that when many church leaders in the nineteenth
century expressed reservations on expanding occupational opportunities
for women outside the domestic sphere, they were doing so largely
because they were concerned that endorsing such opportunities might
violate the traditional religious understanding of the calling of women
that they believed was rooted both in scripture and in the Lutheran
theological heritage. These church leaders felt that it was important for
a woman to live out her calling within the household estate through her
78 Excerpts from Martin Luthers essential writings on marriage and celibacy can be
found in the fifth and sixth chapters of Susan C. Karant-Nunn and Merry E. Wiesner-
Hanks, eds., Luther on Women: A Sourcebook (New York: Cambridge University Press,
).
79 Hammar, De svenska kvinnorrelsens pionjrer, .
80 The scholarship on the issue of whether women received greater or lesser freedom
as a result of the Lutheran Reformation, and the Reformation in general, is extensive.

A detailed bibliography is not necessary here, but the basic representative positions
in this debate are worth noting. For a view of the Reformation as providing women
with more freedom in society, see Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in
Reformation Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ). The belief that
the Reformation led to the greater subordination of women can be found in Lyndal Roper,
The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, ). A mediating position is expressed in Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender
in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, ).
roles as mother, wife, daughter, and so on, and in accordance with the
gifts and characteristics God had given to her particular sex.81
In the nineteenth century, church leaders and other male elites often
connected the household estate to a distinct private sphere. With the
emergence of a market economy and the beginnings of industrialization,
a sharper dichotomy between private and public spheres developed than
had existed for much of the early modern period.82 Women did enter
public space at times to support themselves through trade or to manage
property.83 But a womans presence and work in the public sphere still
would have been looked upon by many with suspicion for much of the
nineteenth century. For a woman to leave the sphere to which God had
assigned her was dangerous not only because she would be neglecting, if
not abandoning, her duties to her family, but also because she could be
exposed to the dangers of the public sphere, including the possibility of
being associated with public women.84
In the course of the nineteenth century, church leaders were faced
with the pressing issue of how a growing number of unmarried women,
particularly of the middle and upper classes, could support themselves
financially without forsaking either their calling to live within the house-
hold estate or their God-given feminine qualities. The leadership of the
deaconess institution sought to address these concerns head-on because
it desired to establish better financial and organizational ties with the
church as a means of supporting and expanding the diaconates work.
The leadership also wanted to address these concerns because some
81 sbrink, Studier i den svenska kyrkans syn p kvinnans stllning i samhllet ren
, .
82 Hammar, De svenska kvinnorrelsens pionjrer, . Ulrike Strasser notes a trend
in the scholarship on early modern Europe in favor of interpreting the household of the
time period as part of the public sphere. Households, she observes, were still public and
political spaces in the early modern period, and women were able to participate in the
political process through the household. See Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender,
Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, ), .
83 Hammar, De svenska kvinnorrelsens pionjrer, ; Qvist, Kvinnofrgan i Sverige
, .
84 Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, ; Inger Hammar, Alma maters sedliga
dttrar. Kvinnornas intg p den akademiska arenan, in Rummet vidgas. Kvinnor p

vg ut i offentligheten , eds. Eva sterberg and Christina Carlssson Wetter-
berg (Stockholm: Atlantis, ), ; Yvonne Svanstrm, Policing Public Women: The
Regulation of Prostitution in Stockholm (Stockholm: Atlas Akademi, ), ,
.
chapter two
families of potential recruits struggled with the issue of how women

could support themselves in a manner that was fitting for their gender.
Articles published in the Olivebladet proclaimed fidelity to the Luther-
an doctrine of a womans calling and insisted that the vocation of a
deaconess was fully in line with the Lutheran doctrine. Several articles
stressed the importance of a womans calling as a wife and mother. One
article on church-based poor relief reminded those women who were
wives and mothers that they should not sacrifice their responsibilities
toward their families in order to carry out works of love on behalf of
the poor. Such women must first and foremost care for their own. Only
if time permitted should they devote themselves to helping the poor.85
In another article, written by Brings older brother and fellow clergyman,
Sven Libert Bring, women were charged to remember that their specific
calling is to live as a wife and a mother in the household sphere and
to be faithful in carrying out the responsibilities associated with these
roles. In particular, S.L. Bring admonished wives to be submissive to
their husbands and to respect the divine order in which husbands had
been given authority over wives.86 These articles were intended to convey
the institutions support for the traditional Lutheran view of a womans
calling as a wife and mother and to encourage women who were already
living out this calling to continue to do so faithfully.
In recruiting women who were not already married and/or mothers,
J.C. Bring sought to reassure church leaders that those who became
deaconesses would not be contradicting the calling or forsaking the gifts
that God had given particularly to women. Bring adamantly rejected the
womens emancipation movement because he believed it posed a threat to
a womans God-given calling. He insisted that the kind of women needed
for diaconal work were real women, not emancipated [women], not
women who have been liberated from their proper place and calling.87
These real women, he maintained, are what the institution needs to
carry out its mission to care for the poor, the sick, and the suffering,
because it is the woman who in particular is called to and gifted for
85 Kyrklig fattigwrd, Olivebladet (), . This article, like most unsigned
articles in this periodical, was very likely written by Bring. The article is a summary of
the arguments and helpful points that Bring found in a Norwegian book that had been
published in entitled Kirkelig Fattigpleje, by H. Krogh-Tonning.
86 S.L. Bring, Den swenska qwinnans stllning till de andliga rrelserna i wr kyrka,
Olivebladet (), .
this work.88 Women possess natural gifts such as tenderness, meekness,

stillness, and compassion, all of which qualify them more than men for
works of love among the poor and sick.89 To embrace the vocation of
a deaconess was to embrace ones calling as a woman and to utilize the
natural gifts that God had bestowed upon women.
In addition to these assurances, the leadership sought to bring the call-
ing of a deaconess into conformity with the Lutheran understanding of
a womans calling through recourse to both the motherhouse system and
the rules governing the behavior of all deaconesses connected to it, irre-
spective of their particular work assignment. The institution adopted the
motherhouse organizational model found at German deaconess institu-
tions such as Kaiserswerth and Strasbourg. In this system, deaconesses
related to one another as sisters and to the director and housemother as
children to parents. Marie Cederschild was the sole parental figure in
the motherhouse in the first decade of its existence. Unlike Kaiserswerth,
where the designations of Father and Mother were given to the Flied-
ners, Cederschild was only on occasion referred to as Mother. More
often than not, the sisters referred to her as Miss (Frken). But it is clear
from letters written by the sisters to Cederschild that they viewed her
as a motherly figure. In the same way, the sisters did not typically refer
to Bring as Father once he took over the directorship, but there is no
doubt that he was a fatherly figure among the deaconesses throughout his
tenure. In his time as director, there were two parental figures at the insti-
tution, with Clara Eckerstrm serving as housemother. The administra-
tive board felt the need to hire a housemother when the directorship was
taken over by a man because [t]he same absence that makes itself known
in a house that has no housemother has therefore made itself known in
the deaconess house.90
To reinforce a deaconesss connection to her surrogate family and to
the motherhouse, the leadership of the institution established rules con-
cerning the behavior of all sisters in its service. One rule involved the
deaconess uniform. Cederschild introduced the common uniform at
the first deaconess consecration in , and from the beginning it was
met with resistance from the sisters. This resistance continued under
88 Diakoniss-saken ssom en Christi frsamlings sak, Olivebladet (), .

89 J.C. Bring, I Jesu namn, Olivebladet (), , ; Kyrklig fattigwrd, Olive-
bladet (), ; Huru skall kyrkan bst tillgodose de andliga behofwen hos de
lekamliga ndstlda, Olivebladet (), .
chapter two
Brings directorship.91 Objections to the uniform centered on its simplic-

ity and unattractive appearance.92 Both directors refused to yield on the
matter. The uniform was a mark of equality, an external reminder that
no one daughter was privileged above another in this spiritual house-
hold, regardless of her social-class background.93 Moreover, the uniform
closely resembled the dress of a middle-class housewife, and this resem-
blance was no coincidence.94 In their outward appearance, deaconesses
were branded as members of a particular household. Their dress signified
to those with whom they came into contact out in the public sphere, par-
ticularly men, that they were by no means public women or women of
ill repute; rather, they were off limits for any man who might consider
making sexual advances upon them.95
Another rule that reinforced a deaconesss connection to the mother-
house stipulated that any woman in the service of the institution had to
remain celibate. To enter the institutions service, a woman could not be
bound . . . to marriage or to service in some other way, and this was
because [a] deaconess must be free from such connections in order that
her work may not be hindered.96 On the surface, this statement seems
to contradict traditional Lutheran concerns about celibacy, and with-
out a doubt, some tension existed between the female diaconate and the
Church of Sweden on this rule. But the above statement is consistent with
the leaderships other views concerning the calling of women, that some-
one who was already a wife and/or mother could not leave this calling to
devote herself full time to helping the poor or working as a deaconess.97
91 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall,

.
92 Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, .
93 The administrative board supported the uniform from an early stage because it too
felt it best in a spiritual family such as the deaconessate to downplay differences based on
social class or family of origin. See SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , .
95 Ernst Lnegren defends the deaconess uniform in along these lines, argu-
ing [w]hat good protection the deaconess uniform provides for a woman, who because
of often working late in the evenings is required to walk along dark streets and in less
well-known areas [emphasis mine]. See Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens fem-
tiorsjublieum, . In the statutes for deaconesses, the same paragraph that admon-
ishes deaconesses to dress simply also warns them to be careful in their interactions
with those of the opposite sex. These statutes, then, make a connection between out-
ward appearance and appropriate behavior with men. SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonis-
sorna , I , AA (vol. ), EDA.
96 Ngra upplysningar fr dem som vilja bliwfa diakonissor, Olivebladet (), .
97 Diakoniss-saken ssom en Christi frsamlings sak, Olivebladet (), ;
To be a wife or mother meant that one had to uphold the responsibilities

attached to these roles within her own household.98 The reason for pro-
hibiting marriage for deaconesses was not rooted in the idea that celibacy
was a higher spiritual calling, but in the belief that a woman could not
serve two households. A womans calling was to serve the one household
to which she belonged. A deaconess had to commit herself to the spiri-
tual household of the motherhouse and to carry out the responsibilities
and duties associated with it. If she decided to marry, she was compelled
to leave the motherhouse so that she could devote all of her energy to
fulfilling the responsibilities of her new household.
A third rule stated that a deaconess was to demonstrate obedience to
the leadership and statutes of the institution. The same obedience that
a sister had shown to her birth parents, masters, etc., before entering
the institution was to be shown to the leadership of the institution once
she entered it.99 The only vow she was to make upon entering the ser-
vice of the institution was to submit to the institutions statutes and ordi-
nances.100 Included in the statutes was the command to show the direc-
tor and the housemother of the institution reverence and willing obedi-
ence, and to accept whatever work assignment the director gave her.101
If she encountered instructions from employers outside the institution
that conflicted with instructions given by the director, she was first and
foremost to maintain her fidelity to the leadership and ordinances of the
motherhouse.102 This insistence on obedience clearly was meant to rein-
force a deaconesss loyalty to the spiritual household. She was to obey the
parental figures of the institution and to submit to decisions that these
and other authoritative figures made on her behalf in the same way she
would as a daughter in any other household.
A fourth rule was the prohibition against receiving gifts. While dea-
conesses received a salary from the institution, they were prohibited from
accepting gifts, monetary or otherwise, from patients, families, or others
Kyrklig fattigwrd, Olivebladet (), ; Huru skall kyrkan bst tillgodose de

andliga behofwen hos de lekamliga ndstlda, Olivebladet (), .
98 Kyrklig fattigwrd, Olivebladet (), .
99 Ngra upplysningar fr dem som vilja bliwfa diakonissor, Olivebladet (), .
100 Om diakonissanstalten i Stockholm, Olivebladet (), .
101 The statutes for deaconesses indicate that a deaconess must give this obedience
to the director, but in its version, this same section states that this obedience is to be
given to both the director and housemother. See SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonissorna ,
III , AA (vol. ), EDA; SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonissorna , AA (vol. ), III ; see
also untitled article, Olivebladet (), .
102 SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonissorna , III , AA (vol. ), EDA.
chapter two
whom they may have helped in fulfilling their diaconal duties.103 One rea-
son given for this prohibition was that their work was voluntary in nature
and was not to be an avenue for making money. This justification was
meant to express fidelity to the Lutheran construction of gender and the
notion that women do not earn a living or a salary as do men.104 Because
their work is an extension of the household sphere, it must be voluntary
in nature.105 Another reason for the prohibition was that it would create
differences among the sisters, as some would inevitably receive more gifts
than others.106 It is also clear that by receiving no gifts, deaconesses had
to rely on the motherhouse to provide them with all of their daily needs,
such as food, clothing, and shelter. For those sisters assigned to stations
outside the institution, it was the director who as the parental figure and
head of the household negotiated contracts with employing institutions
and made sure that the sisters had their daily needs met. If a sister was
struggling to make ends meet, she was to rely on the motherhouse and
her surrogate parents to provide for her needs and not seek to support
herself independently by doing her work in the hope of receiving extra
payment.
The motherhouse system thus provided deaconesses in many respects
with a surrogate family, a spiritual household. In this household, they
would be looked after and cared for as daughters. In their dress, their
sexual mores, their commitment to remaining unmarried, and their
obedience to their parents they would reaffirm their connection to
this household. They would be educated and trained for their work in
this household, they would support one another in their tasks as family
members, and when they grew old and needed to be taken care of, they
would be able to return to their home at the institution.
The motherhouse system, with its rules of conduct for all deaconesses,
was not the only practical measure taken by the institution and its leader-
ship to reconcile the calling of a deaconess with the Lutheran doctrine of
a womans calling. In the three chapters that follow, attention will be given
to some of the particular feminine tasks that deaconesses were expected
to carry out in their roles as teachers, nurses, and poor relief workers,
tasks that also extended the household sphere into the public sphere.
For the present discussion, it is important to stress how the concept of
103 SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonissorna , II , AA (vol. ), EDA.

104 LHA , Hwad r betydelsen af en Diakonissanstalt?, III b, EDA.
105 Hwarfre mottaga diakonissorna inga gfwor?, Olivebladet (), .
106 Ibid., .
a motherhouse functioned for the leadership of the institution in terms

of reconciling more generally the calling of a deaconess with the calling
of women, regardless of a deaconesss particular work assignment. A dea-
coness belonged to the household of the Swedish Deaconess Institution.
Whatever work she performed, wherever she performed it, she did so as
a member and representative of this particular household, and she did so
in obedience to those who headed the household and in accordance with
the rules of that household. To be sure, the work of a deaconess appeared
to be public work, but, as Bring stressed, in fact it was not, for a deaconess
did not enter into such work on her own initiative: She is sent, she goes
out from a home, the deaconess house, the deaconess home, to which
she will always belong.107 Inger Hammars argument that nineteenth-
century women who engaged in philanthropic work were not so much
entering the public sphere as extending the domestic sphere thus applies
to deaconesses as well.108 The calling of a deaconess was portrayed as
consistent with the calling of a woman because it was viewed as an exten-
sion of her calling within the domestic sphere and not as an infringement
upon a mans calling in the public sphere.
Was the institutions leadership successful in convincing church lead-
ers, not to mention the families of potential recruits, that the deaconess
vocation did not contradict a womans calling? Given the attention the
topic received in periodical articles, and given the fact that even in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century some parents refused to allow their
daughters to become deaconesses because they believed it to be inappro-
priate work for a woman, it appears that the leadership did not elimi-
nate as many of the gender-based concerns to female diaconal work as it
would have liked.
On the other hand, the stronger connections that the deaconess insti-
tution forged with the Church of Sweden over the course of the late nine-
teenth century suggests that the efforts of the institutions leadership did
alleviate the concerns that many church leaders and clergy members may
have had regarding a potential conflict between the two callings. The
gradual increase in the number of women entering the institution, par-
ticularly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, suggests that the
institutions efforts may also have helped recruits and their families over-
come the stigma attached to women engaged in public work.

108 Hammar, Den problematiska offentligheten, ; Den svenska kvinnorrelsens
pionjrer, .
chapter two
It is reasonable to conclude, then, that the institutions efforts did

contribute to a general acceptance of female diaconate work both in
church circles and among families of potential recruits, even if some
resistance remained. This acceptance in turn opened more doors for
deaconesses in the public sphere, particularly in the area of poor relief, as
the Church of Sweden partnered increasingly with the diaconate through
the establishment of parish deaconess positions. But in its efforts to
assuage one set of concerns about the work of deaconesses in the public
sphere, the institution created another set of concerns with regard to
the affinities of the deaconessate with Catholic female religious orders.
Objections to these similarities, and the problems they appear to have
caused for recruitment, will be addressed later in this chapter.
D. A Profile of Deaconesses
Who were the women who joined this spiritual family and pursued the
calling of a deaconess? Information concerning these women can be
found in the application documents, particularly the autobiographies
(lefnadsbeteckningar) required in the admissions process. This informa-
tion is unfortunately incomplete, since application documents were pre-
served only for those eventually consecrated as deaconesses, and even in
these cases there are some missing documents. Enough material exists to
provide a general profile in terms of social class, educational, and occupa-
tional backgrounds. This material also sheds light on why these women
chose to pursue this calling in the first place.
Gunnel Elmund has examined in detail the archival material for the
formative period and into the beginning of the transitional period (
). She notes that of the fifty-three women who became deaconesses
in this period, twenty-one came from the middle class, with fathers hold-
ing occupations primarily as craftsmen and tradesmen. Twenty came
from the peasantry, with fathers working primarily as freeholders and
crofters. Only seven deaconesses came from working-class families. The
social-class backgrounds of five deaconesses from this period are un-
known.109
It is more difficult to conduct a similar examination of social-class
backgrounds for the later periods due to a larger number of missing

application documents and the number of documents with no explicit

reference to social-class background. But it appears that even in these
later periods there were no significant changes in the social-class back-
grounds of those entering the institution, leading Bring to complain as
late as the s about a certain contempt among the higher social classes
for the deaconess vocation. In the autobiographies from these later peri-
ods, numerous applicants continued to identify their parents as farmers
and freeholders. By the s, there was a slight increase in the number
of applicants whose fathers or guardians worked in occupations not well
represented in the formative or transitional periods, such as the teach-
ing profession. Even so, the number of applicants who came from fam-
ilies with teachers, clergy, or even military professionals was quite small
in comparison to the much higher proportion of those who came from
farming or artisan families.110
Deaconesses in the formative period often had little formal education.
This is not surprising, given the fact that elementary schools and teachers
were in short supply in the s and s, particularly in rural areas.
Fortunately for those seeking admission, requirements for prior formal
education were low. Applicants could be admitted if they were able to
demonstrate a rudimentary ability to read from a book, write, and do
arithmetic, regardless of how much schooling they received in their
childhood. These basic educational prerequisites did not change much
throughout the late nineteenth century. What did change was the number
of applicants with formal educational backgrounds. By the s, many
of the applicants had attended all grades of elementary school and, in
some cases, beyond.
The occupational experience of the applicants reflected their educa-
tional backgrounds. Elmunds examination of applicants from the first
decade reveals that twenty-four of the fifty-three women who became
deaconesses by had worked as maids or servants. Many of these
came originally from the peasantry or working classes. The small amount
110 Ernst Lnegren attempted to categorize the occupations of the fathers/parents of
the applicants from to . Of the women who became deaconesses over

the course of the first fifty years, information on occupations for the parents/guardians
of of these was lacking. But for the applicants who did make note of these
occupations, Lnegren stated that of them identified their fathers or guardians as
freeholders, while came from artisan families, from crofters or working-class
families, and from the families of tradesmen, factory owners, etc. The remaining
applicants came from clergy, civil service, and military families. See Lnegren, Svenska
Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum, .
chapter two
of formal education, combined with the difficult financial circumstances

of their families of origin, explains why so many deaconesses from this
period had supported themselves as maids or servants. Other previous
occupations from this period include positions as teachers and seam-
stresses. Fourteen of the deaconesses from this period had no prior occu-
pation but rather had lived at home with parents or relatives before enter-
ing the institution.111
As was the case with social-class background, the number of missing
application documents also makes it more difficult to conduct an analy-
sis of prior employment experience for the remainder of the nineteenth
century. From what has been preserved, it appears that there were no sig-
nificant changes. Many who became deaconesses beyond the formative
period also had work experience as maids or servants. A much smaller
number worked in professions such as teaching or health care, and others
lived with their parents or relatives prior to entering the institution.
The autobiographies provide some indication of why these women
chose to pursue the deaconess calling. One reason was that it offered
a viable solution to difficult financial circumstances, particularly given
their unmarried status. Many women, particularly those from the peas-
antry, came from families under great financial stress. In some cases,
the father and/or mother had died during an applicants childhood, forc-
ing her to seek employment in order to support herself. In other cases,
there were too many siblings for the parents to support the applicant
adequately. For others, the family members simply had trouble making
ends meet, particularly if they were farmers. The deaconess vocation was
thus an attractive option for women from these backgrounds, particu-
larly in the s and early s, when there were still limited educa-
tional and occupational opportunities for women. Many of these women
would have experienced the calling of a deaconess as a step up the socioe-
conomic ladder from the work of a maid or servant.112
An applicant might also pursue the deaconess calling for psychological
reasons. Given the fact that many applicants came from homes in which
one or both parents had died, often resulting in the dissolution of the
home and the separation of siblings, the deaconess institution provided
a surrogate family to replace the one that had been lost. The same was
true even for women who had been sent from the parents home because

112 Ibid., .
of strained finances.113 At the institution, their fellow deaconesses would

be their new siblings, while the director and/or housemother would care
for them and their needs as their birth parents would have, including see-
ing to it that they had a place to live, food to eat, clothing to wear, and
a home that would care for them if they became sick or incapacitated.
The psychological motivation is difficult for the historian to access, and
the applicants do not explicitly state in their autobiographies that they
were looking to the deaconessate to fulfill their need for a family. But
the prominence given in some of these documents to the death of one or
more parents, as well as the instances in which applicants note the diffi-
culty of having to leave home at a young age in order to support them-
selves, suggests that many applicants may have seen in the deaconess
vocation an opportunity to become part of a family once more. There
are also instances in which applicants express gratitude for a God who is
a parent to the parentless, or who protects those who are forced to leave
the comforts of home at an early age. Such statements suggest a longing
for family and home that the motherhouse and spiritual sisterhood of the
deaconessate could fulfill.
Whatever the economic or psychological reasons for pursuing the call-
ing of a deaconess, the most commonly stated reason for choosing this
vocation was religious. The admission requirements stated that an appli-
cant must articulate an experience of being convicted through the grace
of God of her sins and accepting the atoning death of Jesus Christ for
her salvation.114 This requirement reflected the neo-evangelical revival-
ist orientation of the Swedish Deaconess Society and the administrative
board of the mid-nineteenth century. Applicants consistently attempted
to conform to this requirement by articulating stories in their autobiogra-
phies of their personal conversion experiences and by appealing to these
experiences as ways of authenticating their calling to serve God and their
fellow human beings.
113 Catherine M. Prelinger makes a similar argument about the nineteenth-century
German deaconessate, maintaining that the family model adopted at Kaiserswerth was
crucial in attracting women who had suffered the loss of one or both parents, or whose
families of origin could no longer support them financially. See Prelinger, The Nine-
teenth-Century Deaconessate in Germany: The Efficacy of a Family Model, in German
Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History, eds.
Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ),
.
chapter two
Many of the conversion narratives contained common elements. First,

the applicant typically expressed a prior condition in which she had not
been convicted of the severity of her sinful condition and her need for
salvation. Sometimes the applicant explained that this condition was a
result of her willful disobedience. Maria Svensson believed that even
though her loving Savior called me both in my childhood years and
throughout my entire life . . . I unfortunately did not listen to His voice
but rather stood against Him until she finally was able to become con-
vinced of the depths of her sinfulness and her need for salvation.115 Olivia
Paulsson wrote that [a]lready in my childhood years, the Lord worked
upon my heart with His spirit, but she through disobedience hindered
this work.116 This condition was often explained as resulting from igno-
rance of what God was doing or had done prior to the conversion experi-
ence. Mathilda Westerberg explained that [f]or years, I lived without
knowing what Jesus had done for my soul before realizing that she was
a lost sinner.117 Hilda berg noted that the works of grace from Gods
Spirit have been with me since my early childhood years, though she
would not receive the grace that leads to salvation until she was twenty-
seven.118
After articulating a condition of being lost to the power of sin, it was
common for an applicant to relate a conversion experience in which she
had been convicted of her sinfulness and brought to salvation through an
act of Gods grace. Sometimes the occasion for conversion arose from a
trying life experience. Oliva Paulsson recounted how Gods grace awoke
her at the age of twelve while she was bedridden due to a serious illness.
Through the illness, she was able to experience the justifying and born-
again grace of the Lord that led her ever since on the path to eternal
life.119
In many cases, the conversion experience was connected to hearing
revivalist preaching. Maria Svensson recalled how God once sent a faith-
ful teacher to the town of Helsingborg where she lived. Through his
preaching, Gods grace enabled her to realize that it was not well between
her and her God. Eventually, God, who was at work in this preacher, illu-
minated the truth for her that Jesus had suffered and died for my sake,
115 Maria Svenssons Lefnadsbeteckning, September , E Va (no. ), EDA.

116 Olivia Paulssons Lefnadsbeteckning, April , E Va (no. ), EDA.
117 Mathilda Westerbergs Lefnadsbeteckning, , E Va (no. ), EDA.
118 Hilda bergs Lefnadsbeteckning, March , E Va (no. ), EDA.
119 Olivia Paulssons Lefnadsbeteckning, April , E Va (no. ), EDA.
and that He had paid for all of my debts and now wanted to forgive all
of my sins.120 For Mathilda Westerberg, it was one sermon in particular
that was the catalyst for conversion. On a Sunday evening in June ,
the preacher in question delivered a sermon on the seventh chapter of
Matthew in which he stressed that the path to eternal life was narrow
and few were willing to take it. Upon hearing the sermon, Westerberg
came to realize that she was a lost sinner who had never been on the
path that led to eternal life.121
Toward the end of the century, some applicants even connected their
conversion experiences to confirmation. While going through confir-
mation instruction in the Klara parish in Stockholm, Alma Castelli ex-
plained that the Lord opened my eyes, that Jesus was the only way and
the only one who could satisfy my souls longing.122 Anna strm like-
wise expressed her belief that it was primarily through her preparations
for confirmation in the parish of Nederlule that she came to experience
through faith in Jesus Christ the peace [that comes from] the forgiveness
of sins and Gods great love for sinners.123
After relating her conversion experience, an applicant sometimes
would connect it to her sense of calling to pursue the deaconess voca-
tion. Applicants making such a connection typically expressed a desire
to offer their lives to serve Christ and their fellow human beings as an act
of gratitude for the forgiveness and salvation they had experienced. Hilda
berg wanted to become a deaconess because of Him who has called me
from darkness to His wonderful light.124 Emelie Toll expressed that her
desire to serve the poor, sick and vulnerable was a result of wanting to
show my love and gratitude to my dear Savior, [though] not as some pay-
ment or replacement for what he has done for me.125 Emma Gustafsson
noted that ever since the Lord saved me by grace for Christs sake, I have
begun to think of how I would best be able to serve him who has given
his life for me.126
A final element commonly found in these conversion narratives was
a statement of unworthiness and/or inability to carry out the duties of
a deaconess, and indeed the duties of a Christian, apart from Gods
120 Maria Svenssons Lefnadsbeteckning, September , E Va (no. ), EDA.

121 Mathilda Westerbergs Lefnadsbeteckning, , E Va (no. ), EDA.
122 Alma Castellis Lefnadsbeteckning, May , E Va (no. ), EDA.
123 Anna strms Lefnadsbeteckning, , E Va (no. ), EDA.
124 Hilda bergs Lefnadsbeteckning, March , E Va (no. ), EDA.
125 Emelie Tolls Lefnadsbeteckning, September , E Va (no. ), EDA.
126 Emma Gustafssons Lefnadsbeteckning, , E Va (no. ), EDA.
chapter two
grace. Augusta Ketscher believed that it was only Gods mercy [that] has
allowed me to see that I am a weak and evil thing who is unable to do
anything good apart from grace.127 Carin Jnsdotter maintained that I
do not feel that I have the ability on my own to carry out the deaconess
calling, and for this reason, she believed that she would have to depend
on the power of God to perform her deaconess duties.128 Mimmi Sethlin
likewise explained that while she felt called to serve my sick and suffering
fellow human being, she confessed that on my own, I am not capable
of [this calling]. Nevertheless, she believed that the Lord helps his weak
children to carry out this work.129
It is not necessary to argue that one of the above-mentioned motiva-
tionseconomic, psychological, or religiousis more important than
the others when determining why women chose to become deaconesses.
But for those who chose this vocation, religious motivations played a
prominent role in the decision to apply to the institution. It was noted in
the first chapter that some sociologists maintain that even in those cases
in which private religious convictions motivate religious professionals to
carry out social functions in the modern era, there is little in the actual
performance of these functions that distinguishes them from secular
providers. But I will argue in subsequent chapters that deaconesses did
not push aside or suppress the private religious motivations discussed
above when they performed their duties as teachers, nurses, and poor
relief workers. Their work bore the unmistakable signs of their religious
convictions.
E. Deaconess Education
A woman did not automatically become a deaconess simply because she

believed she was called to serve the poor, the sick, and others in need.
Whatever her motivations for wanting to devote her life to diaconal work,
including the desire to show gratitude to Christ for the forgiveness of sins
and the promise of eternal life, a woman wishing to pursue the deaconess
vocation first had to apply to the institutional board of the deaconess
institution, and if accepted by this board, she had to undergo a period
of training that could take as long as three years.
127 Augusta Ketschers Lefnadsbeteckning, April , E Va (no. ), EDA.

128 Carin Jnsdotters Lefnadsbeteckning, March , E Va (no. ), EDA.
129 Mimmi Sethlins Lefnadsbeteckning, Februrary , E Va (no. ), EDA.
Throughout the late nineteenth century, the prerequisites for admis-

sion to the institution were basically the same. An applicant had to
be between the ages of twenty and forty. She should be able to read
from a book fairly well, as well as write and do arithmetic, though
she need not be as proficient in the latter two. She should have basic
competency in performing everyday household tasks, such as cooking,
sewing, cleaning, etc. She was expected to have a good knowledge of
the Christian faith, particularly as expressed in prominent biblical pas-
sages. As for her motivation, she was expected to have the desire to
become a deaconess primarily because Christs love compelled her to do
so.130
Much of the above could be attested to in the autobiographies that
applicants were required to submit. As discussed earlier, these auto-
biographies also included faith narratives and information concerning
parentage, upbringing, and previous occupations. In addition to her
autobiography, an applicant had to include five other pieces of informa-
tion or documentation in her application. First, written approval from
either her parents or guardians had to be provided, since [a] deaconess
must be free of [those] connections [of marriage, family obligations, etc.]
in order that her work may not be hindered. Second, a doctor had to
give her a certificate of good health. The board felt that since the physical
demands of diaconal work were fairly strenuous, [s]ick, weak, or melan-
choly persons may . . . see in this a sign that the Lord has not called them
to the work of a deaconess. Third, she had to include a certificate from
her parish priest indicating her standing and residence in that parish.131
Fourth, in order to demonstrate to the institution that she has a quiet,
humble spirit . . . and has proven this through obedience to parents, mas-
ters, etc., an applicant must include a letter of recommendation from
anyone for whom she had previously worked. Finally, if for some rea-
son an applicant who was admitted to the institution was later deemed
unsuitable for the deaconess calling, or if she herself chose to sever her
connection with the institution, the board required her to include the
130 Ngra upplysningar fr dem som vilja bliwfa diakonissor, Olivebladet (),
.
131 While the designation of pastor for a member of the Protestant clergy is common
in the context of American religious history, in Sweden, the word priest (prst) has
typically been used to refer to a member of the Lutheran clergy. Clergy in free church
traditions are typically referred to as pastors, though this designation was sometimes
given to Lutheran clergy as well.
chapter two
written attestation of someone (parent, relative, etc.) promising to take

the applicant into his or her home.132
If the institutional board accepted the applicant, she was admitted
as an inquirer. This was the first of two preparatory stages in becom-
ing a deaconess. Implemented at the institutions opening in , it
signaled a departure from the practice at Kaiserswerth, where, at least
until , all entering students automatically became probationary sis-
ters before becoming deaconesses.133 At the Stockholm institution, a stu-
dent remained in the inquiry stage typically from six months to one
year, during which time the leadership determined whether she demon-
strated the gifts and calling of a deaconess. Inquirers did not receive a
salary, nor did they wear the uniform. Inquirers also did not take educa-
tional or occupational coursework but instead participated in the various
household duties at the institution, such as cooking, sewing, and laundry.
Inquirers did receive basic religious instruction as well as weekly lessons
on the calling of a deaconess. After six months to one year, inquirers
were eligible to be promoted to the probationary stage, under the condi-
tion that both the institutional board and the other sisters (deaconesses
and probationary sisters) approved. If this approval was not given, the
inquirer remained in the first stage for a longer period, though the insti-
tutional board might decide that she did not possess the qualities needed
for a deaconess and thereby terminate her relationship with the institu-
tion.134
After an inquirer was promoted to a probationary sister, she began her
formal coursework and occupational training over the course of one to
three years, depending on her prior educational and occupational expe-
rience.135 In addition to weekly instruction in biblical studies and the
132 Ngra upplysningar fr dem som vilja bliwfa diakonissor, Olivebladet (),
. Many of these requirements can be found as early as , before the first students
were accepted. See Fordringar af blifande sjukvrds diakonissor, November , AA
(vol. ), EDA.
133 Gunnel Elmund believes it is likely that Marie Cederschild was influenced by the
deaconess institution at Strasbourg in adding this inquiry stage. Cederschild was indeed
critical of the length of education and training at Kaiserswerth, feeling that it was too
short. Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, .
134 Diakonisshuset ssom bildningsanstalt och hem fr systrarne, Olivebladet
(), ; Om diakonissanstalten i Stockholm, Olivebladet (), ; Lne-

gren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum, .
135 The trend throughout the late nineteenth century was toward a longer probationary
period within this time frame.

Lutheran catechisms,136 a probationary sister took courses on subjects

taught in the elementary schools, including arithmetic, writing, gram-
mar, biblical history, church history, Swedish history, and geography.137
The probationary period also marked the beginning of her theory-based
coursework in health care, after which she received practical health care
training either in the deaconess hospital or in another hospital in Stock-
holm.138 Once probationary sisters completed these requirements, they
were assigned to various positions either within or outside of the insti-
tution, under the supervision of experienced deaconesses. In this way,
the institutions leadership was able to discern in which area of work a
probationary sister was particularly gifted.139
Once a probationary sister completed coursework and worked in var-
ious capacities in the service of the institution, she became eligible for
promotion to a deaconess. Those deaconesses who knew the probation-
ary sister would then vote on whether to promote her, though again the
final decision remained in the hands of the institutional board, particu-
larly the director.140 If a probationary sister was promoted, she vowed to
remain in the service of the deaconess institution for at least five years.141
This educational process for deaconesses was extensive and at times
rigorous, and many students dropped out along the way, particularly in
the inquiry phase. Nevertheless, the institution played an important role
in helping women wield more direct influence in the public sphere than
had previously been possible. It provided women with both generalized
education and specialized training as teachers, nurses, and poor relief
workers, among other professions. In doing so, it gave these women the
136 Catechetical instruction was irregular in the formative period, since there was
not a regular clergy presence at the institution. Once Bring took over as director, this
instruction became integral to the religious education of deaconesses. Elmund, Den
kvinnliga diakonin, .
137 Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, . Toward the end of the nineteenth century,
inquirers might be required to take some preliminary education courses if there were
significant gaps in their prior schooling. Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens fem-
tiorsjublieum, . These courses were initially intended to help prepare those sisters who
were interested in serving as teachers. Once the institution abandoned the training of
teachers in , all sisters underwent general coursework simply to improve their over-
all educational foundation. Lnegren, Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum, .
138 The health care component of the curriculum remained obligatory for all sisters
until the mid-twentieth century. Iverson, En bok om Ersta, .

141 SDSFU Stadgar fr Diakonissorna , II , AA (vol. ), EDA.
chapter two
skills and qualifications that would make them attractive to potential

employers and thereby enable them to carry out essential social func-
tions in the public sphere. The household duties that all students had to
gain competence in also made it clear that in training to become dea-
conesses, the women at the institution were pursuing a calling appropri-
ate to their sphere and gender. Finally, in a period in which a growing
number of non-religious professionals and specialists were performing
social functions, such as education and poor relief, the deaconess insti-
tution, through its religious instruction, trained and educated a group
of religious professionals to carry out these same social functions in a
manner that addressed the temporal and spiritual needs of Swedish soci-
ety.
F. The Work of Deaconesses
Once a student had undergone enough coursework and practical training

at the probationary stage, she was assigned a work station, as were all
sisters who had become deaconesses. Work stations were located either
in one of the divisions of the deaconess institution in Stockholm (internal
work stations) or outside the institution with an employing organization
or institution (external work stations). The majority of deaconesses were
assigned to external work stations. Because sisters assigned to these
stations were usually outside the direct supervision of another deaconess
or the institutions personnel, their working conditions were governed
by a hiring contract established between the institutional board and
the employing organization or institution.142 Most contracts contained
four common elements. First, the employer was required to pay the
institution a fixed fee for the services of the deaconess in question. The
institution would use this fee to pay the deaconesss salary.143 Employers
were not to pay her salary directly, nor were they allowed to give her
142 This contract system was used at Kaiserswerth. Fliedner got the idea for this system
from the Sisters of Charity. Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, .

143 Both probationary sisters and deaconesses received a cash salary in addition to other
benefits, such as room and board, medical coverage, etc. For this reason, it is difficult to
compare a deaconesss salary with the salaries of other social service providers. According
to Gunnel Elmund, if one calculates a deaconesss salary based on all of the benefits she
received beyond the cash salary, she earned an income that was slightly higher than most
maids and was on the same level as the lowest-paid elementary school teachers in the rural
gifts. Second, the employer was to arrange free room and board for the
deaconess. The room was to be furnished, and the deaconess was also to
be provided wood and light. Third, in case of illness, the employer was
to provide for the deaconesss medical care and medicine, and in case
of death, the employer was to cover her funeral expenses and arrange-
ments. Finally, the employer was reminded that the deaconess insti-
tution ultimately reserved the right to reassign deaconesses as it saw
fit.144
Most internal and external work stations fell within one of four major
spheres of work carried out by the deaconessate in the late nineteenth
century: education, health care, poor relief, and child welfare. More will
obviously be said about the first three of these areas in subsequent chap-
ters, but a brief sketch of all four areas is provided here. In the area
of education, a deaconess might be assigned to the institutions own
school for poor children in Stockholm. Otherwise, she was assigned
externally to a rural school out in the provinces that was typically oper-
ated by an Inner Mission society or a wealthy individual influenced
by the evangelical revival. As stated earlier, in the institution for-
mally shut down its school for poor children and ceased its training
of deaconesses as teachers, though it would not be until that the
last teaching station was terminated. Sisters assigned a health care posi-
tion at the institution could work either at the institutions own hospi-
tal or at one of the other health care divisions that came to be added
at the institution over the course of the nineteenth century, such as
the nursing home or the polyclinic. The health care stations outside
the institution were mainly hospitals in other cities, though for much
of the period deaconesses also provided health care in private homes
in Stockholm. In the area of poor relief, all assignments were outside
the institution. Most of these from the s onward were as parish
deaconesses, though a smaller number of deaconesses were assigned
to poorhouses, poor farms, and workhouses. As for child welfare, the
provinces. Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, . On the other hand, the nurses trained
at the Sophia Home received not only the same benefits as deaconesses but a higher cash
salary. Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, .
144 In , the deaconess institution in Stockholm abolished the contract system and
the system of assigning deaconesses to work stations. Deaconesses were free to search for
positions on their own once they completed their education. Iverson, En bok om Ersta,
.
chapter two
institution had several internal divisions in this field, including an or-

phanage, a household school, and a rescue home for delinquent girls.
Deaconesses could also be assigned to orphanages, shelters, or nurseries
outside the institution.
These were the four primary areas of specialization in the late nine-
teenth century. Education was the main focus in the first two decades,
whereas health care and poor relief became the dominant fields of work
from the s to the turn of the century. Child welfare never dominated
the work of deaconesses as did these other three areas, but the diaconate
maintained a consistent involvement in this field throughout the fifty
years being studied here. It should also be noted that there was consid-
erable overlap with these stations when it came to the kinds of duties
deaconesses were expected to perform. For example, a sister assigned
to a poorhouse or parish was often expected to carry out nursing tasks,
whereas some schools also doubled as orphanages.
There were other areas besides these four to which a deaconess might
be assigned, even if the number of sisters assigned to them was much
smaller. These stations included rescue homes for prostitutes, prisons,
and, toward the end of the period, the mission field. The social functions
performed by deaconesses in the late nineteenth century were therefore
extensive, and the potential for wielding influence in the public sphere
through these functions was great.
G. The Difficulties of Recruiting and Retaining Deaconesses
Even though female diaconal work covered many important social func-
tions, the institutions leadership repeatedly expressed its frustration that
the deaconessate was not living up to its full potential in terms of influ-
ence in the public sphere. Demand for diaconal services was relatively
high, but time after time the leadership had to deny requests from em-
ploying institutions and organizations for deaconesses because there
were not enough to send. The number of deaconesses certainly grew
considerably in the course of fifty years, but this growth did not keep
up with demand, and for this reason, annual reports and the Olivebladet
frequently addressed the challenges faced by the institution in recruiting,
and to some degree in retaining enough deaconesses to meet the demand
for diaconal services. But what were these challenges, and what do they
tell us about the social significance of deaconesses in the late nineteenth
century?
One of the main purposes of the Olivebladet was to serve as a recruiting

tool both by making female diaconal work better known among poten-
tial recruits in the country and by clarifying misunderstandings and mis-
conceptions about this work.145 Through this and other publications, the
leadership consistently complained that female diaconate work remained
unknown in Sweden. But given the fact that deaconess services were in
relatively high demand, such statements should not be taken at face value.
Potential employers certainly knew of the work of deaconesses, as did the
recipients of their services (patients, paupers, etc.).
Complaints about unfamiliarity with diaconal work, rather, were
directed at Christian-minded people. Many of the frustrations were
directed at the clergy and the church leadership. The institutions lead-
ers believed that some of the best potential recruits, the daughters of
the clergy, were the ones who knew the least about diaconal work. The
leadership repeatedly renewed its calls for daughters of the clergy to con-
sider the calling of a deaconess.146 The leadership also enjoined the clergy
to make female diaconate work better known among its parishioners by
teaching children and youth about the vocation and by promoting it in
other venues or public-speaking occasions. Even the church hierarchy
was asked to do its part by better educating clergy candidates at the uni-
versities about the significance of diaconal work. The deaconess institu-
tion certainly understood that the novelty of female diaconate work in
Sweden also explained its unfamiliarity among potential recruits, but on
the fiftieth anniversary of the female diaconate, the leadership was still
complaining that unfamiliarity with diaconal work was creating prob-
lems for recruitment.147
Problems with recruitment cannot simply be traced to a lack of knowl-
edge concerning female diaconal work. The growing number of parishes
employing deaconesses in the last quarter of the nineteenth century sug-
gests that there must have been more familiarity with female diaconal
145 J.C. Bring, Anmlan, Olivebladet (), . The institutions annual Christmas
publication, Febe, can also be viewed in part as a recruiting tool. In its first edition from
, Febe also addressed the need to make the work of the deaconessate better known in
Sweden so as to attract more recruits. See Om diakonissanstaltens uppgift, Febe (),
.
146 Hwad r diakonissanstalten?, Olivebladet (), ; Till wra prestdtrrar,
Olivebladet (), ; Huru skall kyrkan bst tillgodose de andliga behofwen hos
de lekamliga ndstlda?, Olivebladet (), .
147 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; Hvad kunna diakonissanstal-
ten och diakonissakens vnner gra fr att draga allt flere goda krafter till barmhr-
tighetens tjnst, Olivebladet (), .
chapter two
work among Christian-minded (i.e., Lutheran) circles than the dea-

coness publications indicated. The institutions leadership also realized
that its problems with recruitment could not be attributed to unfamil-
iarity with female diaconal work alone, even if the leadership believed
this was the primary obstacle. For this reason, the Olivebladet and other
deaconess publications devoted significant attention to clarifying mis-
understandings concerning the purpose and work of the deaconessate,
misunderstandings the leadership felt also adversely affected recruit-
ment.
One set of misunderstandings pertained to the educational purpose of
the deaconess institution. Some women applied because they felt it was
an opportunity to receive an education that would help them support
themselves or find better work opportunities. The answer given by the
leadership in these circumstances was that the deaconess institution did
not accept students simply because they needed somewhere to go in
order make a better life for themselves financially or because they no
longer had a family to support them. An applicant must be perceived
as having a particular calling to the deaconess vocation, and this calling
must be driven first and foremost by her desire to serve Christ and to
provide physical and spiritual assistance to those in need.148
Other women applied because they believed they could receive train-
ing for a much more specific profession, such as teaching.149 Confusing
the deaconess institution with a teaching seminary was particularly com-
mon in the first two decades of the institutions existence. The autobiogra-
phies of applicants reveal that some women primarily saw in the insti-
tution an opportunity to become teachers. For its part, the leadership
insisted that while deaconesses did work as teachers, and while some-
one entering the institution might eventually be sent out to work as a
teacher, the deaconess institution was not a school for training women
for the teaching profession. The deaconess institution trained women as
deaconesses, and those applicants who wanted to be educated as teach-
ers were reminded that deaconesses must be prepared to work wherever
and however they were needed. If a prospective student was not willing
148 Hwad r diakonissanstalten?, Olivebladet (), , ; Diakoniss-saken s-
som en Christi frsamlings sak, Olivebladet (), .

149 Identifying the deaconess institution with a nursing school was a misperception
that the institutions leadership faced during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
See Om diakonissanstaltens uppgift, Febe (), .
to participate in all areas of diaconal work, then the deaconess institution

was not the place for her.150
Another misunderstanding pertained to the appropriateness of wom-
en carrying out diaconal work. In some cases, parents or guardians of
women who wanted to become deaconesses refused to give their per-
mission because they felt that such work would bring disgrace or shame
upon the family.151 It was noted earlier how the deaconess institution
attempted in its publications and in the manner in which it organized
its work to reconcile the calling of a deaconess with that of a woman.
Particularly under Brings directorship, the institutions leadership inter-
preted and organized its work in accordance with the Lutheran doctrine
of a womans calling because it wanted to alleviate potential gender-based
concerns among the clergy or church hierarchy in order to establish bet-
ter financial and organizational ties with the church. These efforts also
appear to have been aimed at those families that refused to grant permis-
sion for one of their own to enter the institution because of the belief
that the public nature of diaconal work rendered it inappropriate for
respectable Christian women.
The institution also had to combat the perception that its work and
organization were too Catholic. Many outside observers felt that the
institution resembled a convent because of the special uniforms dea-
conesses had to wear, the vows of chastity, and the familial designations
given at the institution. The leadership sought to address these concerns
by arguing that deaconess oaths were not unconditional and that dea-
conesses could leave the service of the institution at any time to marry
or to return to their family of origin to care for parents or relatives. And
whereas Catholics believed that the life of a nun was holier and had more
merit than other callings, deaconesses did their work not to gain merit
but, in the spirit of Luthers Reformation, in response to the freedom of
the Gospel and to demonstrate gratitude for what Christ had done for
them.152
The leadership went even further by warning its readers of the dangers
of Catholic female religious work in Sweden. It argued that the health care
work of the St Elizabeth Sisters in particular, while appearing to be similar
150 Hwad r diakonissanstalten?, Olivebladet (), .

151 En bn, Olivebladet (), ; Om diakonissanstaltens uppgift, Febe (),
.
152 Om Diakoniss-verksamheten, Olivebladet (), ; Hwad r diakonis-
sanstalten?, Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU Berttelse och Redovisning ,

; Om diakonissanstaltens uppgift, Febe (), .
chapter two
to that of the deaconessate, in fact threatened the religious truths and

principles upon which Sweden was established.153 According to Bring,
the real purpose of this work was to spread Catholic propaganda and
to bring Sweden back into the Roman Catholic fold. In this assessment,
he was in agreement with many of the Lutheran clergy in Stockholm,
including the pastor primarius of the city, Fredrik Fehr.154 Swedens fore-
most representative of Ritschlianism and the highest-ranking clergyman
in Stockholm, Fehr called a gathering of Stockholm clergymen in to
address the Catholic threat. He argued that the work of the St Elizabeth
Sisters was meant to prepare the way for Jesuits and Catholic priests to
persuade the Swedish people to embrace Catholicism. Bring was in atten-
dance, and he was among the clergymen who overwhelmingly approved
a resolution condemning the Catholic propaganda spread by the St Eliz-
abeth Sisters and encouraging members of the Church of Sweden to give
their support to evangelical women who carried out health care work.155
The attention given by deaconess publications to combating Catholic
interpretations of diaconal work reflects the leaderships concern with
how these misconceptions affected recruitment. The female diaconate
may have encountered more outright objections to its work based on
its similarities to Catholic religious orders than it did based on gen-
der. Nevertheless, neither gender-based objections nor affinities with
Catholic female religious orders were considered by the leadership to
be the main reasons for the lack of women entering the institution.
The most commonly cited reason was the lack of familiarity with or
153 The St Elizabeth Sisters first came to Sweden in in order to oversee the
household of a Catholic priest and to operate a boys home in the Sdermalm region
of Stockholm. But from the beginning, they devoted themselves to nursing. At first, they
cared primarily for other Catholics, but they eventually began caring for non-Catholics
as well. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the St Elizabeth Sisters established
themselves in other Swedish cities: Malm (), Gvle (), and Gothenburg ().
Yvonne Maria Werner, Vrldsvid men frmmande. Den katolska kyrkan i Sverige
(Uppsala: Katolska Bokfrlaget, ), .
154 The city of Stockholm did not belong to a particular diocese in the nineteenth
century. The parish churches in the city were governed by a consistory led by the pastor
primarius, that is, the priest of the Great Cathedral. The diocese of Stockholm was created
in .
155 Ett gif akt, Olivebladet (), . The clergy meeting called by Fehr in
was in response to a bazaar being held in Stockholm in order to raise money to support
the work of the St Elizabeth Sisters. Even though Fehrs resolution was passed almost
unanimously, the bazaar raised a considerable sum, , crowns, over the course of
three days. The condemnation of the Stockholm clergy still may have had some effect on
the bazaar, as the amount raised was , crowns less than the money raised at a similar
bazaar seven years earlier. See Werner, Den katolska kyrkan i Sverige, .
knowledge of diaconal work. The institution was certainly right to view

this as a major challenge for recruitment, but it should be noted that
other likely obstacles, beyond the ones already mentioned in this section,
received little attention, including the strict rules that deaconesses had to
follow, the relatively low pay they received in comparison with elemen-
tary school teachers or other nursing professionals later in the century,
and the increased educational and occupational alternatives that existed
for women by the last quarter of the nineteenth century.156
The deaconess institution struggled to meet the growing demand for
its services not only due to challenges with recruitment but, to a lesser
degree, due to difficulties in retaining students. On the occasion of the
institutions fiftieth anniversary, Ernst Lnegren, the director, wrote a
history of the female diaconate in which he discussed retention rates.
Between and , women entered the institution for deaconess
education. Of these, at some point left the service of the institution.
Approximately percent of these left during the inquiry stage. A smaller
percentage, percent, left during the probationary period, and per-
cent left after they had become full deaconesses. Lnegren noted that
a lower percentage of women left the institutions service in the second
twenty-five years of its existence than in the first quarter century.157 What
is clear from this is that retention was primarily a problem in the first year
of service. Once a student was promoted to the probationary level, and
particularly to full deaconess status, retention was actually quite good.
Lnegren listed several categories to indicate why women left the
institutions service. Accordingly, women left because they were not
suited for the calling, for relatives or on their own request, due
to illness, for no stated reason, because they got engaged, and
according to an agreement with institutions leadership.158
156 According to some periodical articles, one reason why some women either did not
pursue the deaconess vocation or chose to leave the institution during their training was
a desire for the freedom that was characteristic of the age. This observation certainly
suggests that some potential candidates for the deaconessate harbored reservations about
the strict rules and codes of conduct that they would have to follow at the institution.
See SDSFU Berttelse och Redovisning , ; Diakonissanstaltens rsfest,
Olivebladet (), . On occasion, Bring did try to defend the institution against
accusations that deaconess salaries were too low, though he did not appear to view in these
accusations the possibility that the salaries of deaconesses posed a significant obstacle to
recruiting, particularly among middle- and upper-class women. See Diakonisshemmet,
d.. diakonissanstalten ssom Hem, Olivebladet (), .
158 Ibid., .
chapter two
Some of these categories are self-evident and need little elaboration,

such as those who left the institution in order to help aging or sick
parents and relatives, or those who left because of illness. That some
women left because they got engaged is also self-evident, though this
reason at times appears to have bothered Bring and other leaders of the
institution. Bring had nothing against marriage as such. After all, when
Bring remarried after his first wifes death, he married a deaconess. But he
felt that deaconesses who were considering marriage should hold off on
their engagements as long as possible. In doing so, they would not only
be able to test the idea and the new relationship that they were about to
enter, but they could also continue to carry out their diaconal duties while
taking the time to fully consider whether marriage was the step they were
being called to take.159
The other categories are too vague to provide a clear picture of what
motivated so many to leave. Studying both the board minutes and the
published materials of the institution adds a little clarity to this pic-
ture, though not much. These materials suggest several likely reasons for
the retention rates noted above. First, some found the work more diffi-
cult or strenuous than they expected. For this reason, deaconess publi-
cations occasionally reminded prospective candidates that because dia-
conal work was difficult, women should think about what it was that
really inspired them to pursue it.160 Second, despite the attempts of the
institutional board to weed out applicants who misunderstood the kind
of education or occupational training they would receive, some women
still entered the institution to receive a general education to supplement
their previous schooling or to train for a specific occupation, like teach-
ing.161 When some of these women realized that a deaconess education
or vocation did not conform to their expectations, they left the insti-
tution.162 Third, some left because they found the institutions rules too
159 JCBRB, December, B I (no. ), EDA.

160 See, for example, untitled, Olivebladet (), ; Beriktigande, Olivebladet
(), .
161 In some cases, women entered the institution simply to receive an education. The
institutions director of pedagogical training from , Betty Ehrenborg, was in

fact dismissed from her post because she saw to it that some students were accepted who
had no intention of becoming deaconesses. Both Cederschild and the administrative
board found this practice unacceptable, though during Brings tenure, there was more
openness to women entering the institution to explore the deaconess vocation even if
they were not sure they wanted to be deaconesses. See Iverson, En bok om Ersta, .
162 A number of sisters left the institution in the early s. It appears that they did
so in response to the decision of the institutions leadership to terminate its training

strict. In some cases, women were dismissed from the institutions service
because they broke one or more of the rules. In other cases, deaconesses
left on their own initiative.
Related to this third reason was the fact that some women left the dea-
conessate because they had broken the rule concerning participation in
non-Lutheran religious meetings or groups. While there were not many
instances of sisters leaving the deaconessate for this reason, when this
did happen, it typically received considerable attention in the meetings
of the administrative board and, to a lesser extent, in deaconess publica-
tions. In , four sisters left to join the Baptist movement.163 One of
these was Carin Wiman, a deaconess stationed at the hospital in mme-
berg in the province of Nrke. Early in , Wiman informed Ceder-
schild that she and a probationary sister also stationed at mmeberg
were joining the Baptist movement. Cederschild wrote to Wiman in an
attempt to convince her that the Baptist movement was heretical. Wiman
responded that she was determined to join the movement and that it was
not heretical, it is in accordance with Gods Word.164 The institutional
board recalled Wiman to the institution, subsequently dismissing her. A
few weeks later, the other probationary sister at mmeberg was also dis-
missed.
A much more publicized case of a deaconess going over to a heretical
movement came in . Johanna stling, stationed at a nursery
in Ladugrdslands parish in Stockholm, was reported by the parish priest
to Bring because she had been attending meetings of the Salvation Army.
Bring wrote to her and gave her a choiceshe could either stop attending
Salvation Army meetings altogether, or she could leave the service of
the institution.165 stling responded that I cannot force my conscience
to obey Pastor Brings command to cease from receiving nourishment
for my individual spiritual life from those places where I most clearly
hear Gods voice. She believed that by placing the ultimatum before
her, Bring had indirectly dismissed her from the institution. stling
maintained that if this were the case, she needed to be compensated with
an annual stipend, since the dismissal was made against her wishes and
of deaconesses as teachers. Obviously, the association of the deaconess vocation with

the teaching profession was strong even in the minds of some who had become full
deaconesses. Ibid., .
164 Carin Wiman to Marie Cederschild, March , E Va (no. ), EDA.
165 J.C. Bring to Johanna stling, April , AA (vol. ), EDA.
chapter two
without her having committed any wrongdoing in carrying out her duties
at the nursery.166 Bring and the administrative board found her request
unfounded, but they did not dismiss her immediately, perhaps because
she had served the deaconessate for twenty-five years.167 She was given
one year to decide whether or not to abide by the original directive.168
stling ultimately chose to leave the institution in order to maintain her
affiliation with the Salvation Army.169
While decisions like stlings created anxiety among the leadership,
it does not appear that there were many cases resembling hers.170 The
minutes and periodicals contain few accounts of such departures. It is
possible that more sisters left the institution due to free church influences
than the records indicate, particularly given the vague categories used to
describe reasons for leaving.171 It is also possible that some sisters left for
this reason without being forthright with the leadership about why they
were leaving.
Despite these challenges in recruitment, and to a lesser degree reten-
tion, the female diaconate did grow in the course of the late nineteenth
century, and it more than doubled its numbers between and
(see Table ). But in a period in which so many unmarried women were
in need of an occupation, the question still remains as to why the insti-
tutions leadership did not succeed in building up an even larger corps
of deaconesses. One underlying explanation involves the priority Bring
placed on establishing closer financial and organizational ties with the
Church of Sweden. He strove to make the female diaconate conform as
closely as possible to the Bible and the Lutheran construction of gender.
His efforts paid dividends in that opportunities for deaconess participa-
tion in the public sphere, particularly in parish poor relief, opened up as
166 Johanna stling to SDSFU, November , AA (vol. ), EDA.

167 Although the administrative board rejected stlings request for an annual stipend
upon leaving the institution for the Salvation Army, the board did grant another sister
who left to join the Salvation Army, Charlotta Svensson, a one-time stipend of
crowns. It is likely that she was given this stipend both because she had served the
institution for a long time (twenty-two years), and because she suffered from rheumatism.
SDSFU minutes, May, , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
168 SDSFU minutes, December , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
169 SDSFU minutes, May , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
170 Elmund describes a few other cases of sisters leaving for free church movements.
See Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, .
171 The case of Charlotta Svensson illustrates this possibility. She left to join the Salva-
tion Army in , but the institution indicated that she left according to an agreement.
SDSFU minutes, May , , AA (vol. ), EDA; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olive-
bladet (), .
a result. But these efforts also hampered the deaconessates ability to be

more competitive in terms of recruitment.
One example that illustrates the more detrimental effects of Brings
push for closer ties to the Church of Sweden concerns salaries. Despite
complaints by some critics concerning the low salaries of deaconesses,
Bring repeatedly defended the level of compensation by reference to the
Lutheran construction of gender. As women, deaconesses did not work
to earn a living as men did, because their work was an extension of the
household sphere.172 Bring saw no need to compete with other social
service providers in terms of compensation because deaconesses were
not employees as such, but rather members of a spiritual household.
But the lower salaries almost certainly would have made the female
diaconate less appealing for unmarried women than those institutions
or professions that carried out similar tasks but paid better salaries. For
example, both elementary school teachers and the nurses associated with
the Sophia Home (Sophiahemmet), an institution established in to
train nurses, were better compensated than deaconesses.
To be sure, teachers and nurses also had to contend with the reality
of prevailing gender expectations. The Sophia Home adopted the moth-
erhouse model of the deaconessate, incorporating its nurses into a sur-
rogate family and requiring them to wear a uniform, in order to con-
nect them more clearly to the household sphere. And pretty much all
nurses and female elementary school teachers were prohibited from get-
ting married. Nevertheless, the teaching and nursing professions offered
freedoms that the female diaconate did not. Teachers could negotiate
their salaries directly with school boards, and they could apply for the
positions they wished. Nurses at the Sophia Home did not have to worry
about being reassigned to a Magdalene Home or orphanage; wherever
their assignment, it would be in their chosen professionnursing.
These freedoms could not be found in the deaconessate. Bring did not
want to abandon the practice of negotiating contracts with employers on
behalf of deaconesses because he felt it would violate the Lutheran doc-
trine of a womans calling in the household sphere. He refused to allow
deaconesses to specialize in only one profession, like nursing, because
he needed to make the deaconessate conform to the biblical and early
church model in which deaconesses were called to help all in need. In
172 LHA , Hwad r betydelsen af en Diakonissanstalt?, III b, EDA;
Hwarfre mottaga diakonissorna inga gfwor?, Olivebladet (), .

chapter two
both cases, Bring had a vested interest in maintaining an organization

that would be acceptable to the Church of Sweden, particularly its more
traditionalist elements. Because he was so beholden to the institutional
church, competition for recruits was often secondary to church loyalty,
and for this reason, the female diaconate struggled to meet its full poten-
tial, particularly when it came to recruitment.173
Whatever the challenges faced by the female diaconate in building
a larger corps of deaconesses, its services were still in high demand.
One of the most common refrains found in the Olivebladet and annual
reports is the complaint that while many institutions and organizations
were requesting deaconesses, the institution had no one to send due
to the lack of personal resources. It was noted in the first chapter that
some sociological defenders of the secularization thesis maintain that
with lower numbers of religious professionals comes a corresponding
lower degree of social significance. It is difficult to deny that there is
a connection between the two. The fact that there were not enough
deaconesses to meet the demand for their services certainly placed limits
on the extent of their influence in the public sphere.
On the other hand, too much can be made of the connection between
the low supply of a group of religious professionals, such as deaconesses,
and secularization. Low supply does not necessarily mean that there is
a lack of demand for the services of religious professionals, and it has
been noted that deaconesses were very much in demand. If the secu-
larization thesis ultimately has to do with demand for religion, includ-
ing the demand for the services of religious professionals, then the fact
that deaconesses were in demand indicates that they were considered sig-
nificant by numerous individuals, institutions, and organizations. More
importantly, the social significance of religious professionals cannot be
easily quantified. The Finnish historian Pirjo Markkola rightly points
out that while the deaconess movement in Sweden (and Finland) never
became a mass movement, the influence of deaconesses in these coun-
173 Even with its recruitment challenges, the Swedish Deaconess Institution was still
one of the largest deaconess institutions in Europe throughout the period of study. In
, with sisters, it ranked fifth out of about forty deaconess institutions in Europe.
Only Kaiserswerth, Berlin, Neuendetteslau, and Strassburg hosted institutions with larger
numbers. By , the Stockholm institution had dropped to twenty-fourth place out of
seventy-five deaconess institutions, though with sisters, it still ranked in the top one-
third of all institutions. See Om diakoniss-sakens tillwext de sista ren (),
Olivelbadet (), , ; Meddelanden frn diakonissanstalten, Olivebladet
(), .
tries extended well beyond their numbers.174 One deaconess often had
responsibility for many patients, poor families, school children, or or-
phans in her particular work station. In the following chapters, I will
argue that Swedish deaconesses made a significant and sometimes life-
changing difference in the lives of many people who benefited from their
teaching, nursing, and poor relief work.
H. Conclusion
The nineteenth-century Swedish deaconessate never comprised a large

number of women, but this chapter has demonstrated that it was never-
theless a socially significant group of religious professionals. The Swedish
Deaconess Institution in Stockholm was the first institution at which
women could receive occupational and nursing education. The number
of sisters in its service grew steadily over the second half of the nineteenth
century, as did the number of external work stations. The divisions at the
institution also expanded. From initially hosting only a small hospital,
the institution grew to include a school for poor children, an orphanage, a
rescue home, a household school, a Magdalene Home, a polyclinic, and a
nursing home, among other divisions. In expanding its work in the public
sphere, the deaconess institution and its sisters did not abandon their reli-
gious profile in order to compete with the other specialized institutions
and professionals arising at the time. The women who entered the insti-
tution articulated a strong sense of Gods presence in their lives. In many
cases, they expressed a desire to pursue the deaconess vocation in order
to demonstrate gratitude for Christs atoning work and the promise of
salvation they had been given. The education they received at the institu-
tion also reinforced the religious identity of their vocation as they learned
the biblical, confessional, and theological justifications for their work.
The female diaconate had recourse to these religious justifications as it
faced a potentially significant obstacle to its work in the public sphere
gender. The Lutheran construction of gender was still quite influential
for much of the nineteenth century. Women were expected to fulfill their
callings as wives and mothers in the household sphere. The calling of
a deaconess dictated that deaconesses serve the poor, the sick, and the
suffering in society, meaning that much of their work would take place
174 Pirjo Markkola, Promoting Faith and Welfare. The Deaconess Movement in Fin-
land and Sweden, , Scandinavian Journal of History (), .

chapter two
in public spaces and among people to whom they were not related. The
institutions leadership sought to address potential concerns, especially
in church circles, that the deaconess vocation contradicted the Lutheran
understanding of a womans calling. The leadership did so by professing
its allegiance to this doctrine. The institution also organized female
diaconal work according to the motherhouse system, and in doing so,
it was able to reinforce the connection of deaconesses to the household
sphere.
Another significant obstacle for the deaconessate was recruitment and
retention. While the number of deaconesses at the Swedish Deaconess
Institution was comparably high in relation to other European deaconess
institutions in the late nineteenth century, the leadership consistently
complained that it could not keep up with demand for the services of
deaconesses because there were not enough women choosing to pursue
the deaconess vocation. The low supply of deaconesses obviously limited
the range of influence that the deaconessate could wield in the public
sphere. But the diaconates influence extended well beyond its numbers.
The deaconessate was a socially significant group whose services were
valued and sought after by those in need (the poor, the sick, etc.) and
by private and government-based institutions and organizations. In the
following three chapters, I will demonstrate just how socially significant
deaconesses were in carrying out three specific social functions in the late
nineteenth century.
chapter three
EDUCATION
The female diaconate concentrated its work initially on education. In this

chapter, I will examine the social significance of deaconesses as teach-
ers in primary and elementary schools in the nineteenth century. The
first two sections will address the development of popular education in
Europe and Sweden from the early modern period through the nine-
teenth century. Particular attention will be given to the role that reli-
gious institutions and professionals historically played in providing pop-
ular education. The extent to which functional differentiation affected the
influence of religious institutions and professionals in popular education
will also be discussed.
The remaining sections will analyze the role that deaconesses played
in popular education. Because of a very limited supply of teachers in
the decades following the elementary school legislation of , dea-
conesses helped to meet the educational needs of a number of rural
parishes and communities by working as elementary school teachers in
the s and s. The deaconess institutions own school in Stock-
holm also provided much-needed education to poor children in one
of the citys parishes in these decades, not to mention that this school
also doubled as the first teaching college for women in Sweden. By the
late s, the diaconate was abandoning its involvement in education,
despite the fact that there was still a demand for its services. This was
due in part to the feeling among the institutions leadership that the dia-
conate could not effectively compete in the future with the larger supply
of teachers educated at teaching colleges. More importantly, the decision
to discontinue teaching reflected the leaderships lack of commitment to
and interest in education. J.C. Bring in particular had much more interest
in refocusing diaconal work on nursing and poor relief than in contin-
uing his predecessors dream of producing a new generation of teachers.
To the extent that functional differentiation contributed at all to the dia-
conates eventual termination of its educational work, it did so only indi-
rectly.
chapter three
A. Popular Education in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Most of the formal schooling available in medieval Europe was provided

by ecclesiastical institutions. Charlemagne took the initiative to improve
literacy among clerics and monks by establishing schools in connection
with monasteries and diocesan sees in the late eighth century. Monastic
and cathedral schools in the early medieval period were thus intended
for those pursuing a religious vocation. The latter continued to serve as
important educational centers in the high Middle Ages, and a growing
number of them focused on the study of the liberal arts and philosophy.
The thirteenth century witnessed not only the beginnings of universities,
where theology was the most prestigious discipline, but also an increasing
number of schools dedicated to teaching the laity reading and writing.
Nevertheless, formal schooling was not an option for the majority. The
education that most children received was occupational (learning a trade
or agricultural skills) and religious. The latter was conducted in the family
and by clergy, and it did not include instruction in reading and writing.1
Schools providing elementary education for children became more
widely available in early modern Europe, ranging from parish elementary
schools to charity schools to girls schools. There was no coordinated
educational system as such. Early modern schools might complement
or overlap with one another in terms of the content of the instruction
they offered. Most elementary schools concentrated on teaching literacy
and religious knowledge, and for the vast majority of children who did
attend school, formal schooling did not go beyond elementary school.2
Secondary schooling was largely the preserve of children from wealthier
families and those who had an interest in entering the clergy or civil
service.
Children at the elementary school level might be taught by people who
were formally connected to the church, such as those who had a theol-
ogy degree but who chose to work as teachers while waiting for a more
1 C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval
Europe, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), ,

; Helen M. Jewell, Education in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martins Press,
), ; James Thompson, The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages (New York: Burt
Franklin, ); Evelyn Birge Vitz, Liturgy as Education in the Middle Ages, in Medieval
Education, eds. Ronald B. Begley and Joseph W. Koterski (New York: Fordham University
Press, ), .
2 R.A. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education
(London: Longman, ), , .
education
promising position in a parish. But not all teachers were religious pro-
fessionals. In many cases, teachers worked in other professions or trades
and taught school on the side as a means of earning additional income.
The quality of these teachers could vary significantly, with some having
little formal education themselves. Even when teachers were not religious
professionals, they were still considered a type of junior partner to the
local clergyman, since their job was first and foremost to provide reli-
gious and moral education.3
The eighteenth century witnessed attempts by many Western Euro-
pean countries to expand the provision of schools for elementary
education. Even with a greater number of schools, the percentage of
school-age children who attended school varied considerably. The aver-
age attendance rates in the second half of the eighteenth century ranged
anywhere from one-fifth to one-third of school-age children, depend-
ing on the region. In some areas, this percentage could reach fifty per-
cent or more, such as in Brandenburg-Prussia, England, and northeast-
ern France. In other areas, this percentage could dip below ten percent,
as in many parts of eastern and southern Europe.4 For those who did not
attend school, whatever education they may have received would have
been acquired in the home and/or church.
Among the Nordic countries, the provision of popular education via
schools also varied considerably. Whereas Denmark and Norway in-
creasingly came to depend on schools for popular education in the early
modern period, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland relied much less on them.
All five of the Nordic countries witnessed high literacy rates in this
period, but schools were more important in achieving these rates in
Denmark and Norway than in the other Nordic countries.5
Schooling was not uncommon in certain regions of Sweden in the
early modern period, but the availability of schools was confined largely
to cities or to the more populated regions in the south. Both extensive
poverty and the sparse population in most of the country meant that
3 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, ; Mary Jo Maynes, Schooling in Western
Europe: A Social History (Albany: State University of New York Press, ), .

4 Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, , ; Maynes, Schooling in Western
Europe, ; Richard S. Tompson, English and English Education in the Eighteenth

Century, in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century: Facets of Education in the
Eighteenth Century, ed. James A. Leith (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor
Institution, ), , .
5 Loftur Guttormsson, The Development of Popular Religious Literacy in the Sev-
enteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Scandinavian Journal of History (), .

chapter three
the provision of schools for the vast majority of rural parishes was often
untenable before the nineteenth century. As a result, popular education
in Sweden relied much more on cooperation between the heads of house-
holds on the one hand and church functionaries, such as parish priests
or clerks, on the other.6
The Lutheran church served as a catalyst in the widespread provi-
sion of popular education through its attempts to create a literate pop-
ulation that could read basic religious texts, particularly Luthers Small
Catechism. Legislation in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-
turies stipulated that the religious instruction of children was to be con-
ducted primarily in the household but with the assistance of local church
authorities. Children were to be taught by their parents or guardians
how to read familiar religious texts, such as the catechism. Parish priests
would examine the reading and religious knowledge of children and par-
ents/adults alike at annual house examinations (husfrhr). The parish
priest would record the reading ability of each parishioner in a register,
and if this ability was shown to be inadequate, it was incumbent upon
the priest to arrange for auxiliary instruction for the person(s) in ques-
tion. He could arrange for this instruction to be carried out by the parish
clerk, if the latter was capable. Otherwise, arrangements could be made
with a schoolmaster or other literate person in the parish to provide this
instruction.7
These examination records indicate that despite the lack of availability
of schools for most Swedes in the early modern period, by the end of
the seventeenth century, Sweden was the most literate Nordic country,
and by the end of the eighteenth century, it was one of the most literate
countries in all of Europe. Of course, such a judgment depends on how
literacy is defined. If the ability to write or sign ones name is excluded in
measuring literacy, then Swedes were far more literate than most other
6In , approximately percent of all rural parishes had an elementary school

of some sort. H. Arnold Barton, Popular Education in Sweden: Theory and Practice,
in Facets of Education in the Eighteenth Century, ; Houston, Literacy in Early Modern
Europe, .
7 Barton, Popular Education in Sweden, ; Gsta W. Berglund, Hemmet
och skolan, in Ett folk brjar skolan. Folkskolan r, , ed. Gunnar Richard-
son (Stockholm: Allmnna Frlaget, ), ; Houston, Literacy in Early Modern
Europe, , ; ke Isling, Arbetsformer och arbetsstt, Folkskolan r, ; Gunnar
Richardson, Svensk utbildningshistoria. Skola och samhlle frr och nu (Lund: Studentlit-
teratur, ), , , ; Bengt Sandin, Hemmet, gatan, fabriken eller skolan.
Folkundervisning och barnuppfostran i svenska stder (Lund: Arkiv, ),
.
education
Europeans, at least in terms of their ability to read and pronounce words

from a written text.8 What is important for our purposes is that the
two institutions of the church and the household played a vital role in
providing basic education to the vast majority of Swedes in the early
modern period, and in comparison to the popular education that existed
in other parts of Europe, these institutions carried out this social function
quite proficiently.
B. Educational Reforms in Nineteenth-Century Sweden
Significant growth in the number of schools available in much of Swe-

den took place in the first half of the nineteenth century. In particular,
between and , many schools were established according to the
Lancastrian model that had been started in England. This model enabled
one teacher to instruct up to several hundred children at once through
the assistance of more advanced students working as monitors. The Lan-
castrian method was first introduced in Sweden in . In , there
were Lancastrian schools in Sweden, and by , the year of the Ele-
mentary School Law, there were .9 These Lancastrian schools, added
to the already existing elementary schools of various sorts throughout
Sweden, meant that Sweden was becoming a more schooled society even
before the elementary school statute. Even so, at the end of the
s, almost one-half of Swedens parishes still lacked an elementary
school, meaning that in many regions, popular education continued to
be primarily a matter of the home.10
Two explanations are generally put forth by historians as to why the
king and the parliamentary estates decided to pass legislation on compul-
sory elementary education in . Some historians maintain that politi-
cians were responding to the growing democratization of society and
changes in the agrarian economy. Liberal politicians in particular felt that
8 Harvey J. Graff, The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western

Culture and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ), ; Guttormsson,
The Development of Popular Religious Literacy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, Scandinavian Journal of History (), .
9 Klas Aquilonius, Svensk folkskolans historia. Det svenska folkundervisningsvsendet
, vol. (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers, ), ; K.G. Lindqvist, Pio-

njrtidens skolor, Folkskolan r, ; Sixten Marklund, Lraren i skolan. Utbildning
och yrkesambitioner, Folkskolan r, .
10 Egil Johansson, Folkundervisningen fre folkskolan, Folkskolan r, ; Petter-
son, Fyller verkligen folkskolan r?, .

chapter three
mass education was needed to provide people with the knowledge nec-
essary to adapt to these changes. Other historians insist that politicians
implemented mass education in response to the rapid population growth
and the proletarianization of the country. More conservative politicians
saw in a compulsory elementary school a means of social control through
which the existing social order would be reinforced and legitimized. Most
likely, both sets of concerns enabled various factions within parliament to
come to a general agreement on the need for universal elementary school
education.11
In the debates leading up to the passing of the Elementary
School Law, all four parliamentary estates expressed concern that the
state allow local municipalities to have a great deal of freedom in orga-
nizing and overseeing elementary schools. Other concerns raised in
parliamentary debates pertained to the long distances that children in
larger parishes would have to walk to reach the school and the desire
to value the continued role of home instruction in education. Despite
these concerns, all four estates agreed that the state needed to create a
means to provide elementary school education throughout the coun-
try.12
On June , , the Elementary School Law officially took effect.
Each parish in the country was to establish an elementary school and
to hire a certified teacher to teach in it. The state took on the responsi-
bility for educating teachers, although organizationally, teacher-training
colleges would fall under the immediate authority and supervision of
the cathedral chapters. In those cases in which a parish was too poor
to bear the full financial burden of establishing an elementary school,
the state would subsidize the costs. Otherwise, the parishes themselves
would be responsible for all of the costs of building a school and hir-
ing a teacher. Parishes had to hire a teacher and establish a permanent
elementary school within five years, although allowances were made for
the creation of ambulatory schools if difficult financial circumstances or
other local conditions made it unfeasible to set up a permanent school.
The statute also allowed for private schools to be set up under the super-
vision of the parish school board.
11 Tomas Englund, Tidsanda och skolkunskap, Folkskolan r, ; Christina
Florin, Kampen om katedern. Feminiserings- och professionaliseringsprocessen inom den

svenska folkskolans lrakr (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ), .
12 Gunnar Richardson, rs folkskolestadga, Folkskolan r, .
education
While the state bore some of the responsibility for implementing the
new elementary school statute, religious institutions and professionals
clearly had an important role in the organization and operation of the
schools. Cathedral chapters had oversight of teacher training colleges.
At the local level, parish priests served as ex-officio chairmen of the
parish school boards. The school boards in turn made many of the
decisions concerning the operation of the school, including teaching
methods, discipline, the age at which children should begin school,
and the length of the school year. Moreover, instruction in Christianity
was the foundation of the curriculum, though children would also be
instructed in basic subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic. The
clergy had particular oversight of the instruction of Christianity.13
The law marked a change in the manner of large-scale educa-
tional provision for children in Sweden, but it is important to note that
the church and the clergy continued to have a dominant role in oversee-
ing and organizing popular education. The statute shifted the primary
locus of popular education from the household to the school, but this
transition did not mark the end of significant religious influence in edu-
cation. Even given the fact that the statute signaled a move toward the
creation of a teaching profession separate from the body of religious pro-
fessionals traditionally associated with popular education, such as parish
priests and clerks, teachers were still under the authority and supervi-
sion of the local clergy via the school boards. All of this is to say that
while the law signaled increased functional differentiation in pop-
ular education in Sweden through its efforts to establish both an elemen-
tary school in every parish and a separate body of teaching professionals,
the law did not initially lead to any significant decline in the influence of
religious institutions and professionals. In fact, the same law that led to
increased functional differentiation also generated a demand for educa-
tion that could not be adequately met by the new teaching professionals,
and this opened the door for deaconesses to find a small but important
niche as teachers in the s and s.
It soon became clear that the law was far too optimistic with
its five-year timeline. By , only about half of all school-age chil-
dren attended elementary schools, and just over one-third continued
13 For an overview of the role that the Church of Sweden and its representatives played
in compulsory education in the late nineteenth century, see Todd Green, The Partnering
of Church and School in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Journal of Church and State
(), .
chapter three
to receive their education through household instruction.14 For several

decades following the passing of the statute, there were significant prob-
lems in carrying out its basic provisions. First, the statute created a huge
and immediate demand for certified, educated teachers throughout the
country, yet it took several decades for the teaching colleges to pro-
duce enough teachers to meet much of this demand.15 Second, economic
resources were lacking. Many poor parishes had difficulty, even with state
aid, in building a school and hiring a teacher, while many parents strug-
gled to provide their children with adequate clothing and shoes needed
for school.16 Third, in the more sparsely populated areas, the distances
between some homes and the parish school were often too long, and the
roads to these schools were typically in poor condition.17 Finally, in a
number of communities, parental interest in the elementary school was
low. The tradition of household instruction still held sway in many areas,
not to mention that parents often needed their children to help with work
at home for much of the year.18
One decade after the passing of the statute, the state began to deal
with some of the obstacles that prevented the realization of universal
elementary school education. It addressed the issue of the long distances
to schools in some areas by giving the local school boards in
the right to establish lower elementary schools (mindre folkskolor). Five
years later, the state extended its recognition of approved schools to
include grammar schools (smskolor).19 Lower elementary schools were
intended to provide schools for those who lived too far from elementary
schools, and as such, they functioned as provisional elementary schools.
Grammar schools were intended to help with large class sizes and the
wide spectrum of knowledge and ability found in the classrooms by
14 Gunnar Richardson, Folkskolan tar formde frsta decennierna, Folkskolan
r, .
15 Richardson, Folkskolan tar form, Folkskolan r, ; Johan Wallner, Folkskolans
organisation och frvaltning i Sverige under perioden (Lund: Hkan Ohlssons

Boktryckeri, ), .
16 Richardson, Folkskolan tar form, Folkskolan r, , .
17 Marklund, Lraren i skolan, Folkskolan r, ; Richardson, Folkskolan
tar form, Folkskolan r, , , .

18 Berglund, Hemmet och skolan, ; Richardson, Folkskolan tar form, Folkskolan
r, , , .
19 Richardson, Folkskolan tar form, Folkskolan r, ; Ingela Schnberg, De
dubbla budskapen. Kvinnors bildning och utbildning i Sverige under - och -talen
(Lund: Studentlitteratur, ), .
education
creating separate schools for the very young and/or for beginners.20 In
some instances, grammar schools functioned as substitute elementary
schools, while in other cases they served as a preparatory stage for
elementary schools.21 In any event, the lower elementary schools and
grammar schools not only addressed the need for more school locales
and smaller class sizes, they also helped with the teacher shortage as the
state gave school boards the right to hire uncertified teachers at these
schools.22
The state also alleviated the severe shortage in teachers by allowing
women to teach at lower elementary schools and grammar schools in
and , respectively. In , women were allowed to teach
in elementary schools, and in , women were permitted to attend
teaching colleges. Women became attractive candidates as teachers in
part because they were cheap labor in comparison to male teachers.
Their gender also qualified them, since historically women had played
a significant role in the education of children in the household.23 In
this way, women could enter a profession that literally took them out
of the household but that ideologically could be justified because the
instruction and nurturing of children was an extension of the traditional
duties of a woman in the household.24 For their part, many women found
the teaching profession attractive because of the difficulties unmarried
women faced in the mid-nineteenth century in terms of supporting
themselves.
The state continued to become more involved in elementary school
education at the local and regional levels in the second half of the century.
In , the office of school inspector was created. Inspectors were
assigned the task of visiting schools in their respective districts and
learning about the conditions and needs of these schools. They were
then to report their findings to higher governing bodies, including the
cathedral chapter.25 In this way, educational policies could be developed
at the regional and national levels that better reflected the local realities
described by the school inspectors. In , the state approved a standard
curriculum for use throughout the country, and in , the length of the
20 Marklund, Lraren i skolan, Folkskolan r, .

21 Richardson, Folkskolan tar form, Folkskolan r, .
22 Marklund, Lraren i skolan, Folkskolan r, .
23 Aquilonius, Det svenska folkundervisningsvsendet, ; Schnberg, De dubbla bud-
skapen, , .
24 Florin, Kampen om katedern, .
chapter three
school year was set for all schools, as was the organizational structure of
elementary school education that would characterize the system well into
the twentieth century.26
This increasing functional differentiation in the second half of the
century would ultimately come at the expense of the influence of the
church and the local clergy on the operation of the schools and even on
the curriculum, but the decline in religious influence did not become
marked until the twentieth century.27 In the initial phase of functional
differentiation, the local parishes and their clergy exerted considerable
influence in the local schools. The provision that all parishes employ a
qualified teacher ultimately generated such a huge demand for teachers
that the door was opened for non-certified teachers to help meet some
of this demand. This opening gave the deaconessate the opportunity to
make significant contributions as teachers during the s and s.
C. The Deaconess School for Poor Children
The statutes for the Society for the Preparation of a Deaconess Insti-
tution in Stockholm stated that the intention of the future institution
would be to educate nurses.28 The statutes reaffirmed this commit-
ment to caring primarily for the sick and others in need.29 Yet one year
after its opening, the institution had taken on a branch of diaconal work
not explicitly mentioned in the statutesteaching. The administrative
board had already discussed during the first year the possibility of open-
ing a school primarily for the sick children cared for at the deaconess hos-
pital, though healthy children would also be allowed to attend. No deci-
26 Englund, Tidsanda och skolkunskap, Folkskolan r, ; Richardson, Folk-

skolan tar form, Folkskolan r, .
27 For a brief discussion of the secularization of the religious curriculum in elementary
schools in the twentieth century, see Sven Enlund, Svenska kyrkan och folkskoleseminar-
ierna . Med srskild hnsyn till seminarierna i Uppsala, Hrnsand, och Gte-
borg (Uppsala: Freningen fr Svensk Undervisningshistoria, ), ; see also
Green, The Partnering of Church and School in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Journal
of Church and State (), . For a treatment of the dissolution of the admin-
istrative connection between the church/clergy and the local elementary schools at the
turn of the twentieth century, see Lennart Tegborg, Folkskolans sekularisering .
Upplsning av det administrativa sambandet mellan folkskolan och kyrka i Sverige (Stock-
holm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ).
28 SDSFU Minutes, April , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
29 Stadgar fr Svenska Diakoniss-Sllskapet, June , , AA (vol. ), EDA.
education
sion had been reached on the matter when Marie Cederschild opened
a school for poor children living in Katarina parish in Stockholm on
July .30 The school was organized on the basis of paragraph twelve in
the statute allowing individuals and organizations to establish pri-
vate schools. Just over a week after Cederschild opened the school, she
reported her decision to the institutional board, while Oscar Carlheim-
Gyllenskjld communicated Cederschilds actions to the administrative
board in September.31
Cederschilds decision created some controversy. While the min-
utes from both boards do not reflect it, Cederschilds diary does. She
noted that at a meeting of the institutional board in August, a little nag-
ging took place concerning the school.32 After an administrative board
meeting in October, she wrote how some board members described the
new school as an outgrowth, a parasite, an enterprise only by me, for
my recreation. When she offered to close down the school, the board
declined, insisting only that rules be established for its operation.33
One likely reason why some board members were upset was that
Cederschild had opened the school without authorization from the
governing boards. Since the statutes indicated that the administrative
board was the highest authority, Cederschilds actions may very well
have been interpreted as an attempt to circumvent the board. It is also
possible that a few board members were upset because the teaching of
children was not in accordance with the original intention of the Swedish
Deaconess Society to train deaconesses as nurses, even if the society was
aware that education was a branch of diaconal work at similar institutions
on the continent.34
After these initial reservations, there are no other recorded instances
of discontent with the school in Cederschilds diary or in the board
minutes. But Cederschild remained sensitive to the perception that the
school was not in accordance with the original intention of diaconal
work. For this reason, she wrote in the annual report that
30 Katarina parish was one of the poorest parishes in Stockholm in the mid-nineteenth
century. See Johan Sderberg, Ulf Jonsson, and Christer Persson, A Stagnating Metropolis:
The Economy and Demography of Stockholm, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, ), .
ing (Lund: CWK Gleerups, ), .

32 MCD, August , FX, EDA.
33 MCD, October , FX, EDA.
34 Anmlan, April , AA (vol. ), EDA.
chapter three
[t]hrough the opening of the school, the primary purpose of the insti-
tution is not being overlooked but rather comes closer to its realization.
She added that it was already becoming clear that not all probationary
sisters had the constitution or skills for nursing, but they were still called
to serve the Lord.35 The school thus was a good outlet for those women
who possessed the general calling to serve God and their fellow human
being but who were not cut out for nursing.
Seven children were initially registered at the school when it opened,
but within a year that number had jumped to twenty-seven, and the
school was moved into the deaconess house during the winter of
.36 By , approximately fifty-eight children were attending the
school, and four years later the number had increased to between seventy
and eighty.37 Over the course of the next decade, registration would
average between seventy and eighty. While it is unknown how many
private schools there were in Stockholm in the s and s, it is
estimated that attendance at such schools would have averaged twenty
to thirty students.38 The deaconess school was thus large compared to
other private schools in the city.
Probationary sisters who were preparing to specialize as teachers car-
ried out the teaching at the school. They did so under the supervision of
an experienced teacher. The first supervisor of the teacher-training pro-
gram at the school was not a deaconess but was a fervent supporter of
diaconal work. In the winter of , Betty Ehrenborg had trav-
eled to England, where she observed several kinds of educational insti-
tutions using different teaching methods. It is unclear which pedagogi-
cal approach Ehrenborg used when she began working at the deaconess
institution in the fall of , but we do know that her experience in Eng-
land led her to become quite critical of the Lancaster method.39 Ehren-
borg directed teacher training at the school until . In that year, the
institutions leadership had voiced its criticism of Ehrenborg for train-
ing women as teachers who had no intention of becoming deaconesses.
She was asked to cease taking on student teachers of this kind. Ehren-

37 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; SDSFU Berttelse och redo-
visning , .
38 Einar Ekman, Diakonien och folkskolan. En minnesvrd insats i svenskt folkbild-
ningsarbete under frra seklet (Stockholm: Freningen fr svensk undervisningshistoria,

), .
39 Ibid., .
education
borg resigned her post that year, and one year later she opened a sepa-
rate teaching college for women.40 She continued to be a supporter of the
Swedish Deaconess Society even after her departure, while in her place,
various experienced deaconesses oversaw the training of teachers.
In the first few years, the institution wanted to focus only on teaching
older children, those who had already learned some of the basics of
reading and spelling.41 But younger children were also accepted in these
early years, meaning that children of different abilities and levels of
preparation received instruction at the school.
The heart of the curriculum was instruction in Christianity. The
annual reported stated that we hope very much that . . . the Bible
knowledge that the children receive . . . will be sufficient for the awaken-
ing of the spiritual life.42 Children were regularly tested on their knowl-
edge of the principles of the Christian faith acquired through studying
the Bible and learning the catechism. In addition to religious knowledge,
the children were instructed in most of the subjects taught in the state-
mandated elementary schools: reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, his-
tory, and geography.
Besides these subjects, girls were given additional instruction in
household tasks, such as sewing and knitting. The institutions leadership
viewed the schools work with girls as primarily that of educating future
wives and mothers, even if the girls received instruction in many of the
same subjects as boys. When annual reports commended the progress of
the students, boys were praised for their achievements in subjects such as
arithmetic and writing, while girls were complimented on their perfor-
mance in household tasks, such as needlework.43 Moreover, the number
of girls accepted at the school consistently exceeded the number of boys,
suggesting a clear preference for teaching girls. Statistics concerning the
female-to-male ratio were not typically given in the annual reports, but
when they were, the imbalance was evident. In , the annual report
stated that of the eighty-eight children registered, fifty-four were girls,
and this ratio appeared much more balanced when compared to earlier
years.44 By focusing more on the education of girls, deaconesses were
40 Ibid., .
44 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , . By comparison, in there
were fifty-eight children registered. The annual report indicates that only a few were
boys. See SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , .
chapter three
better able to reinforce their own connection to the domestic sphere by

carrying out the responsibilities of mothers in teaching younger girls
household tasks, tasks at which deaconesses would have been deemed
naturally gifted due to their gender. Of course, even in the instruction
of boys, deaconesses extended the responsibilities of a woman in the
domestic sphere into a public setting, since basic education of children
of both genders had historically been a responsibility of mothers in the
household.
It is difficult to assess how individual deaconesses who trained or
taught in the school felt about their work, since, unlike diaconal teach-
ing in provincial schools, there are no surviving documents written by
deaconesses that reflect on this work. The annual reports contain assess-
ments about the successes and frustrations of this work, but how much
this reflects the sentiment of deaconesses as a whole is difficult to know.
Some reports note that children responded positively to the evangelis-
tic efforts of the sisters by demonstrating a desire to hear Gods Word.45
As noted above, the reports also contain some positive evaluations of the
progress the children were generally making in their schoolwork.
The challenges faced by the deaconesses at the school appear to have
been of two kinds. First, it was difficult to teach children who came from
impoverished conditions and who thus were exposed to what was per-
ceived as immorality outside the school. The annual report
states how amazed some of the deaconesses were that the children were
not more disobedient and immoral than they already were, given that
these small, poor children hear and see evil in all its hideous forms in
their homes.46 Several years later, another report indicates how much the
religious instruction of the children was undermined due to the immoral
conditions under which the children lived in their parents homes.47 Spe-
cific examples of immoral conditions are not given, but what is clear in
the annual reports is that poverty and immorality were closely linked in
the perspective of the institutions leadership.
The other challenge that deaconesses faced involved irregular school
attendance among their pupils. There were complaints that children did
not come to school as often as they should, in part because parents
needed them at home to help with work, and in part because poor
families had to move from one location in the city to another quite

education
frequently. It was therefore difficult for some children to make progress

because of sporadic attendance.48
Even with these challenges, annual reports consistently indicate that
their school was in demand among many parents in Katarina parish. As
early as , the school was turning down requests for a place at the
school due to cramped conditions.49 The lack of space still forced the
school to turn away children several years later, even though in doing
so, the school had to deny many mothers who insistently beg us to
accept their children.50 The rapid increase in enrollment in the course
of the s, and the fact that the average number of registered students
remained in the seventy to eighty range and at times came close to
one hundred also reflected a demand for the education provided by the
deaconess school.
Much of the demand certainly stemmed from the fact that for some
decades after the statute, there were too few schools and teachers
in proportion to the number of school-age children in the country. The
school at the deaconess institution therefore fulfilled a necessary function
by providing education to children who may have had difficulty getting
an adequate education elsewhere in the city. An article in Febe many years
later reinforces this view, noting that the institution made significant
contributions to the education of children in its first two decades because
of the paucity of schools at the time.51 The need for basic educational
provision was great in the s and into the s, and the institutions
school was in demand in large part because it helped to meet this need
in one of Stockholms poorest parishes.
D. Deaconesses as Teachers in Provincial Sweden
It was noted earlier that the Elementary School Law was particu-
larly difficult to implement in rural areas due to widespread poverty, the
long distances to schools, and a strong tradition of household instruc-
tion. The severe shortage of teachers also made it difficult for many
rural communities to meet the basic provisions of the new statute. The

51 Ngra drag ur Svenska Diakonissanstaltens historia, dess uppkomst och utvekling,
Febe (), .
chapter three
rise of the female diaconate in the s came at an opportune time

because it provided a potential pool of teachers for some of the com-
munities that had the greatest difficulty in fulfilling the provisions of the
statute.
Like the school for poor children in Stockholm, the provincial schools
at which deaconesses taught from the mid-s onward were mostly
organized according to paragraph twelve of the law, which enabled
individuals and organizations to establish private schools in a given dis-
trict under the authority of the school board. Teachers at private schools
did not have to be certified, though their competency and knowledge
were subject to examination by the parish school board. The overall per-
centage of children instructed in private schools in the years immedi-
ately following the law was not high. In , approximately four
percent of children received their primary elementary school education
in this way. Considering that in the same year just over fifty percent of
children received their education in elementary schools,52 it is clear that
many communities continued to lack access either to schools or to teach-
ers, though certainly there were families who did not send their children
to schools for reasons having little to do with accessibility issues. Under
these circumstances, private schools were the only schools in some rural
districts available to children in the decades following the statutes imple-
mentation.
Some of the private schools at which deaconesses taught were estate
schools, established by an individual on his or her estate. In most in-
stances, the individuals in question were members of the nobility who
had some sort of connection to the neo-evangelical revivals. Many other
schools at which deaconesses taught were established by missionary
societies, also connected to revivalism. This was particularly the case in
the province of Gotland, an island off the east coast of Sweden. Until the
late s, estate and mission schools made up at least fifty percent, and
often more, of the types of schools at which deaconesses taught. Other
kinds of private schools at which deaconesses were stationed included
orphanage schools, church schools, and mill/factory schools.53 Many
were located in the south, with four provinces hosting over half of these
schools: Gotland, Vstergtland, Uppland, and Smland.54 Altogether,
the deaconess institution stationed sisters at sixty-two provincial schools

53 Ekman, Diakonien och folkskolan, .
54 Ibid., .
education
between , when the first deaconess was assigned, and , the year
the last school station was discontinued.55
The number of children registered at these schools varied consider-
ably. For example, in , twenty-two provincial schools employed dea-
conesses. The number of students registered at these schools is estimated
to be between and children. The average number of students per
school therefore would have been between thirty-four and thirty-seven
students. The fewest number was at sterker School, with seventeen
students, while the highest number was sixty-five at Khlbck School in
stergtland.56 A survey of other annual reports indicates that the num-
ber of children at a given school could surpass one hundred. In , two
schools met or exceeded this mark, both in Vrmland and each staffed
by one probationary sister: Vse School, with registered students,
and Sjnnebol School, with .57 The deaconess institution did not keep
records on attendance rates, though it is clear from deaconess correspon-
dence that these rates could vary considerably.
As for the responsibilities that deaconesses were expected to carry out,
a survey of the few hiring contracts that have been preserved, combined
with some of the letters deaconesses wrote back to the institution, pro-
vide a general picture of a deaconesss job responsibilities. In addition
to leading Sunday School, sisters were expected to teach many of the
same subjects found in the state-mandated elementary schools, includ-
ing reading, writing, arithmetic, church music, biblical history, and the
catechism. They were also to teach household skills, such as sewing and
knitting, to girls.58 Instructing girls in household skills sometimes took
place while boys were getting additional practice in the basic elementary
school subjects.59 If it were a girls school, the elementary school subjects
might be taught in the morning and household skills in the afternoon.60
55 The annual report states that a probationary sister was actually sent to a
school station in Vstmanland, though it appears that this was a temporary assignment.
How much time the sister in question worked at this school is unclear. SDSFU Berttelse
och redovisning , .
57 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , . Beginning with the
annual report, the deaconess institution did not provide information concerning the
number of children registered at the different provincial schools.
58 Contract between SDAS and Eskelhem Parish School Board, June , Ia
(no. ), EDA.
59 H. berg to M. Cederschild, May , E Va (no. ), EDA.
60 C. Kindberg to M. Cederschild, June , E Va (no. ), EDA.
chapter three
Deaconesses would have been attractive candidates for some private

girls schools as well as for other private religious schools with girls
registered. The instruction of young girls in traditional domestic skills
was after all the responsibility of wives and mothers, and as women
who belonged to the domestic sphere, deaconesses would have been
viewed as perfectly qualified to carry out the duties assigned to wives
and mothers in a school setting. This would have been particularly true
among more traditional religious individuals or communities, such as
those that typically sought to hire deaconesses as teachers. Even in the
instruction of boys, deaconesses were carrying out their gender-specific
responsibilities of nurturing young children and providing them with a
basic education. Through their role as teachers, deaconesses reinforced
their connection to the household sphere by extending the traditional
educational duties of wives and mothers into a public setting.
Deaconesses assigned as teachers in provincial schools were often
expected to carry out duties not related to teaching. For example, the
school at Gksholm in the province of Nrke was joined to a small
orphanage, and the deaconess assigned to this school had responsibility
for the orphans as well.61 In the estate schools of Agnestad and Viken
in Vstergtland, Emma Salton had responsibility for instructing the
children in basic health and hygiene. Salton also visited the poor and the
sick in their homes.62 It was even possible for the school to be a secondary
assignment for some deaconesses. This was the case in mmeberg in
Nrke, where in two deaconesses were assigned primarily to work
as nurses in a hospital owned by a Belgian mining company. When the
company opened a school for the children of its workers in , the
deaconesses also worked as teachers there.63
Through a survey of the letters written by deaconesses that have been
preserved from the s and s, combined with other accounts
published in the annual reports, it is possible to get some sense of
how satisfied deaconesses were in their roles as teachers. Some of the
deaconesses reflected quite positively on their teaching experiences. An
excerpt from a letter written in by Johanna Svensson, stationed
61 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; Ekman, Diakonien och folkskolan,

.
ning , ; Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Ekman, Diakonien och

folkskolan, .
63 Ibid., .
education
at Gksholm School, illustrates how much some deaconesses enjoyed

their work:
The school children are attentive, and they animate me a lot. Their child-
like, funny answers often move me. It is such a gift of grace that I may
talk to them . . . about Gods Word. children are registered . . . Most are
boys, all are quite kind, and [they] often talk at home about what they have
learned in school. Some who were believed to be too small to begin school
have astonished their parents with how well they have learned the Bible
. . . The older kids learn biblical history and geography. The girls sew and
crotchet quite nicely. I have now begun to hold Sunday School . . . Many
of the parents go with the children.64
Positive accounts from other deaconesses noted how kind and obedient
the children were, how willing the children were to learn and attend
school, or even how some of the children were beginning to know the
Lord.
Not everyone experienced Johanna Svenssons joys and successes. Dea-
conesses also encountered various difficulties and obstacles in their work
as teachers, enough in some cases to discourage them from continuing as
teachers or even as deaconesses. One challenge involved resistance and at
times outright opposition from the local church authorities. Sofia Holm-
blad complained that the parish priest openly opposed her presence in
the school, entering the classroom several times as a roaring lion.65 She
also noted how on one occasion, representatives from the parish council
tried to remove her, but through the Lords intervention, nothing came of
it.66 Emma Hjerner arrived at her teaching station only to discover that
the parish priest would not officially acknowledge her right to teach until
she had formally submitted her credentials. The same priest later articu-
lated his anger both to Hjerner and Cederschild that Hjerners Sunday
Schools were adding to further divisions and tensions in the parish, prob-
ably because they at times took on the form of revival meetings.67 Both
Holmblad and Hjerner were stationed at mission schools in the province
of Gotland at the time of these encounters, and the resistance of local
church authorities was no doubt related to what they perceived to be the
separatist tendencies of the revival movements in the region. Most of

65 S. Holmblad to M. Cederschild, October , E Va (no. ), EDA.
66 S. Holmblad to M. Cederschild, January , E Va (no. ), EDA.
chapter three
the instances in which deaconesses encountered resistance from church

authorities occurred on Gotland.68
A second challenge concerned the difficulty of teaching large classes
with wide ranges of student ability. Charlotta Wallin noted how difficult
it was to teach a large number of children, with ages ranging from six to
fourteen and with vastly different levels of knowledge and competency.69
Johanna Magnusson expressed similar frustrations in terms of the large
class size, though in her case, the bishop intervened and had her class
divided into two, with the older and younger children alternating days
of the week in which they attended.70 Many elementary school teachers
faced these kinds of obstacles.
A third challenge pertained to the childrens behavior. Anna Lundgren
expressed sentiments found in letters by a few other deaconesses when
she wrote to Bring that [m]y children are not kind, but rather very dis-
obedient and difficult.71 Others were not so much disillusioned with mis-
behavior in class as they were with the spiritual condition of the children.
Karna Larsson articulated that while she was glad that so many children
were attending her school, she was disappointed that none of them have
yet begun to ask the way to heaven.72
A fourth challenge involved feelings of inadequacy and incompe-
tency when it came to the actual task of teaching. Mathilda Westerberg
expressed her frustration after an exam she had administered that [t]he
children knew more than I, I who am supposed to be their teacher.73
Sofia Holmblad similarly complained that she was too ill-equipped and
unknowledgeable for teaching, and for this reason she requested to
be relieved from her assignment.74 Maria Clarin asked to be reassigned,
noting that while she tried to be strict with her children, she could not
gain their respect since they see that they surpass me in almost every-
thing. In Clarins case, it got to the point that she was terrified that a
parent or school board official might visit the school and discover her
lack of knowledge and ability in teaching, though she suspected that
68 Ekman, Diakonien och folkskolan, .

69 C. Wallin to M. Cederschild, November , E Va (no. ), EDA.
70 J. Magnusson to J.C. Bring, October , E Va (no. ), EDA.
71 A. Lundgren to J.C. Bring, May , E Va (no. ), EDA.
72 K. Larsson to J.C. Bring, February , E Va (Nn. ), EDA.
73 M. Westerberg to M. Cederschild, May , E Va (no. ), EDA.
74 S. Holmblad to M. Cederschild, January , E Va (no. ), EDA; S. Holm-
blad to M. Cederschild, May , E Va (no. ), EDA.

education
the children were already telling their parents how poorly things were
going in school.75
It is possible to overestimate the number of deaconesses who were
dissatisfied with their work as teachers. After all, not every letter writ-
ten by deaconesses to the institution has been preserved from the s
and s, and even among those that have, there are many letters in
which deaconesses write little about their satisfaction (or lack thereof)
with their work as teachers. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the lead-
ership of the deaconess institution heard numerous complaints from dea-
conesses about the difficulties and challenges of their work.
Irrespective of how the deaconess themselves felt about their abil-
ities or job performance, most indications are that deaconesses were
very much in demand. The extant correspondence between provincial
school authorities and the deaconess institution, combined with state-
ments made in annual reports, demonstrate that into the late s, and
even a little beyond, demand for the services of deaconesses as teach-
ers consistently outweighed supply. Some schools had to make repeated
requests, perhaps over a period of years, before they finally received a
deaconess. In other cases, employers practically begged the institution
not to reassign the deaconess they already had to another school or work
station. In still other cases, schools received word that no deaconess could
be sent, causing them, often reluctantly, to make alternate arrangements
for hiring a teacher.
Several reasons can be offered for this demand for the teaching ser-
vices of deaconesses. First, as women connected to the household sphere,
deaconesses would have been perceived as obvious candidates to nur-
ture children and to instruct girls in such domestic skills as sewing and
knitting. Second, many of the employers were either individuals or orga-
nizations strongly influenced by the neo-evangelical revival. The main
qualification they sought in a teacher, according to the correspondence,
was a Christian-minded woman who would faithfully instruct the chil-
dren in the true religion and serve as a solid religious role model.76 As an
organization born out of the revival, the deaconessate was thus perceived
as a legitimate source for religiously qualified teachers.
75M. Clarin to J.C. Bring, October , E Va (no. ), EDA.

76See, for example, Rfvetofta School to J.C. Bring, undated, Ia (no. ), EDA;
Nahlavi School to J.C. Bring, undated, Ia (no. ), EDA.
chapter three
A third reason for the demand is that deaconesses were quite afford-
able in comparison with many teachers.77 If one calculates a deaconesss
salary both in terms of the annual cash stipend she received and the cost
of her lodging, a deaconess received approximately riksdaler per
year in the s and early s.78 By comparison, many rural elemen-
tary school teachers in the s received riksdaler per year,
though this figure does not take into account the lodging provided to
them by the parish. A deaconess received a salary roughly equivalent to
the lowest-paid elementary school teachers in rural Sweden.79 However,
because some of the districts in which these schools were located were so
impoverished, even the cost of employing a deaconess at times could be
too difficult to bear. This was the case, for example, at Torpelund School
in , when the school board noted its desire to renew the contract
with its deaconess for another year, but expressed concern that it would
not be able to pay the fee to the deaconess institution.80
A fourth explanation for deaconess demand is that there was over-
all satisfaction with their job performance. The institutions
annual report stated that:
[W]e have generally been spared any troublesome information concerning
so many sisters employed in the provinces . . . instead, on more than one
occasion, we have been encouraged by the testimonies concerning their
work.81
Much of the surviving correspondence from school authorities confirms
this view. A typical assessment is that of the parish school board oversee-
ing Khlbck School, which was fully pleased with the teacher Johanna
Magnusson, and added that as long as she finds herself satisfied with her
position, it hoped to be able to keep her.82 Many other letters note more
generally how satisfied school officials, parents, and even children were
with the work being carried out by deaconesses. The numerous requests
77 Christina Florin notes that the rapid feminization of the teaching profession in late
nineteenth-century Sweden was primarily due to the fact that women were cheaper to
employ than men, and thus they were attractive candidates in many local communities.
See Florin, Kampen om katedern, .
78 Riksdaler refers to the currency used in Sweden until , after which the country
began to use the crown.

80 Torpelund School to J.C. Bring, October , Ia (no. ), EDA.
82 Khlbck School to J.C. Bring, September , Ia (no. ), EDA. The
Khlbck School was also known as the Emmaus School (Emausskolan).

education
made by school officials for contract renewals also confirms the overall
satisfaction many schools had with their deaconesses.
Not all reports were glowing. Officials at Torpelund School once asked
that the deaconess who had previously been stationed at their school,
Edla Pettersson, be reassigned to them because the current deaconess,
Maria Andersson, seemed to lack the knowledge and ability needed for
teaching.83 Bring also noted in the Olivebladet in that the institution
had received some complaints, presumably from some provincial school
officials, that deaconesses serving as teachers had insufficient knowledge
to do the work.84 But these complains were infrequent.
Perhaps the most important reason why deaconesses were in demand
in these rural districts was that there was still a deficit of available teach-
ers two decades after the law. As mentioned previously, attempts
were made in the s to address the shortage of teachers by, among
other things, allowing more informal elementary or primary schools to
hire uncertified teachers, including female teachers. Nevertheless, some
areas continued to have difficulty in recruiting teachers. Letters from
provincial schools to the deaconess institution reflect this difficulty. In
the spring of , the school board overseeing Eskelhem School on Got-
land expressed frustration that the much longed-for Sister that they had
requested the previous fall had still not been sent. They were concerned
that the children had gone so long without any teacher in Christianity,
among other things.85 Apparently, the Eskelhem School did not have any
other prospects for teachers at the time. A parish priest in the province
of Nrke urged Bring not to remove Johanna Jonsson from her teaching
post at Nahlavi School, noting that the need for teaching assistance at the
School is . . . so great.86 rnskldsvik School in ngermanland had so
few prospects for teachers that when it received word that its deaconess,
Margaret Persson, was to be reassigned, it asked the deaconess institution
to help it find another teacher, even if the institution could not do this by
sending another deaconess in Perssons place.87
83 Torpelund School to J.C. Bring, December , Ia (no. ), EDA. Despite
the reservations of school officials about Andersson, she did not leave immediately.
According to the annual reports, she continued in the position until .
85 L. Walldarfve to M. Cederschild, March , Ia (no. ), EDA.
86 Westman to J.C. Bring, April , Ia (no. ), EDA.
87 rnskldsvik School to DAS, April , Ia (no. ), EDA.
chapter three
E. The Discontinuation of Teaching
Even though demand for the educational services of deaconesses was

consistently high in Katarina parish of Stockholm and in certain rural
districts, the institutions leadership chose in the late s to phase out
teaching. The leadership first announced its decision to pull back from
education in . In , the institution closed its school for poor
children in Stockholm, ending its training of deaconesses as teachers.
With the discontinuation of the Stockholm school and the reassignment
of sisters to areas such as health care and poor relief, the area of work
that once dominated the diaconates attention faded into the background.
In the year following the leaderships first announcement that it would
reduce the number of sisters assigned to schools, the number of school
stations had reached its peak at thirty-three. By , this number was
down to ten, and seven years later, only one school, the Torpelund School,
employed a deaconess. A deaconess would continue at this school until
.88
Why did the leadership discontinue the diaconates involvement in
education, particularly at a time when there was still demand? The rea-
son given by Bring and the leadership, at least publicly, was that state-
supported teaching seminaries were effectively meeting the general de-
mand in Sweden for teachers, and, more importantly, they were doing
so with better-trained teachers.89 An article in Febe written some twenty
years after the diaconate began its withdrawal from teaching described
the situation this way:
In the same degree that the public school system developed, the need for
deaconesses serving as teachers diminished gradually. Thus it happened
that one school after another was given over to teachers who had been
trained at one of the training colleges. Competition with these [teaching
colleges] could no longer occur unless we established our own teaching
college, as is the case at some deaconess institutions abroad.90
The leadership clearly was reacting to what sociologists today call func-
tional differentiation. The process by which college-trained teachers were
88 Hwad r diakonissanstalten?, Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse
, ; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), . The Torpelund station

is last listed in the annual report. SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (),
. See also Table .
90 Ngra drag ur Svenska Diakonissanstaltens historia, dess uppkomst och utveck-
ling, Febe (), .

education
assuming more and more teaching positions had progressed to the point
that the institutions leadership no longer felt deaconesses could compete
with these specialized professionals.
The leaderships conviction that it could not compete in the field of
education was reinforced by occasional complaints both from employers
and from deaconesses themselves concerning the latters lack of qualifi-
cations. The leaderships response to these complaints, particularly when
they came from an employer, is worth noting. Bring wrote in an
edition of the Olivebladet that the institution has from various places
heard criticisms . . . that our school teachers have too little knowledge.
He reminded these critics that the institution has never tried to por-
tray its deaconesses as being on a par with elementary school teach-
ers. He insisted that deaconesses were best suited for teaching smaller
children, particularly girls, for deaconesses were very much qualified to
instruct the latter in household tasks. Criticisms about the knowledge
and ability of deaconesses as teachers, he argued, stemmed from unre-
alistic demands placed upon them in those schools in which they were
expected to teach elementary school subjects and older children.91 While
he felt that these criticisms were unfair, these occasional complaints,
combined with the fact that some deaconesses also expressed frustra-
tion at their lack of knowledge and preparation, helped to convince him
and the leadership that the diaconate was not well positioned to compete
with the increasing supply of certified teachers coming out of teaching
colleges.
Functional differentiation therefore contributed to the leaderships
decision to withdraw deaconesses from teaching, but caution is in order
when determining whether functional differentiation inevitably forced
deaconesses out of education. The discontinuation of teaching was a
conscious, strategic choice. Functional differentiation may have raised
the stakes in terms of competition, but the leadership could have chosen
to improve the educational program of the institution so that deaconesses
would have possessed similar qualifications and training as those coming
out of teaching colleges. This decision was not made. Moreover, given the
fact that there was still demand for deaconesses as teachers in the late
s, and even beyond, it would have been possible for the institution
to expand its teaching work stations beyond the thirty-three it possessed
in . Instead, the leadership chose to do the opposite by turning down

chapter three
requests from additional schools and reassigning existing teachers to

other types of stations.
As for why the leadership chose not to compete with teaching colleges,
or why it did not take advantage of the continuing demand in the late
s by expanding its work in schools, the best explanation is that the
commitment to education under Brings leadership was never strong.
Bring noted that in withdrawing from teaching, the institution would be
able to devote itself to other areas that are closer to what we want to
be doing as an Institution, namely poor relief and health care.92 Brings
other writings and public addresses reveal his conviction that a focus on
health care and poor relief was more in line with Christs own earthly
ministry among those in need as well as the work carried out by deacons
and deaconesses in the early church.93 It must also be remembered that
the Swedish Deaconess Society did not initially intend to enter into
education when it opened the institution. Cederschild had opened the
school for poor children on her own initiative, and it is understandable
why her successor may not have been as committed to this branch of
work as she was.
The discontinuation of teaching resulted primarily from the lack of
commitment on Brings part and only indirectly from functional differ-
entiation. By the late s, functional differentiation had progressed to
the point that it had created more competitive conditions and higher
expectations in schools concerning teacher qualifications. Under these
circumstances, the institutions leadership, already convinced that health
care and poor relief were more appropriate tasks for deaconesses, decided
that the time was right to give up teaching altogether.
F. Conclusion
The diaconates participation in education reveals how functional dif-

ferentiation could be a two-edged sword. After the Elementary
School Law shifted the primary responsibility for teaching children from
the clergy and parents to a separate body of teaching professionals, a
huge demand for teachers arose almost immediately, and there were not

93 Om Diakoniss-verksamheten, Olivebladet (), ; I Jesu namn, Olive-
bladet (), ; Ngot som, enligt skriften, kan anbefalla diakonissverksamhe-
ten, Olivebladet (), .
education
enough teachers to meet this demand. In this way, functional differen-

tiation initially opened the door for deaconesses to work as teachers.
As functional differentiation progressed, the supply of certified teachers
educated at teaching colleges increased, and this increased supply con-
tributed to the decision to discontinue the deaconessates work in schools.
What functional differentiation did not do was force deaconesses out
of teaching by eliminating or even reducing demand for their teaching
services. Demand for deaconesses as teachers was consistently strong in
the s and s. However much functional differentiation had pro-
gressed in education by the late s, the fact that external school sta-
tions were at their peak in , combined with the fact that requests
continued to be made for contract renewals or new deaconesses, indi-
cates that deaconesses were as attractive as ever as teachers. The increase
in college-trained teachers may have influenced the leaderships decision
to abandon teaching, but it is also clear that the diaconate left the field of
education largely because its leaders felt that the diaconates mission was
more suited to nursing and poor relief and that it could be more com-
petitive in these spheres. On this latter point, the leaderships confidence
was not misplaced, as the next two chapters will demonstrate.
chapter four
HEALTH CARE
By the late s, the female diaconate shifted its attention from educa-
tion to health care. This shift represented the leaderships desire to return
to the original vision of the Swedish Deaconess Societythe training of
evangelical nurses to help the sick and the suffering. In this chapter, I will
examine the diaconates influence in nursing and health care provision in
late nineteenth-century Sweden. It is important to note that health care
and poor relief overlapped significantly in the diaconates work; a sharp
distinction between the two cannot be made. I will focus on the dia-
conates involvement in institutions whose central purpose was to pro-
vide health care to patients irrespective of financial status. In the next
chapter, I will discuss the diaconates work in poor relief institutions and
parishes where the focus was on helping the poor, even though this work
often included providing health care to the poor sick.
The first section will survey the history of health care in early modern
Europe and Sweden, with particular attention given to the role played by
religious institutions and personnel. The second section will address the
impact of female religious organizations and personnel on the develop-
ment of the modern nursing profession in Sweden. The remaining sec-
tions will examine in greater detail the diaconates work in nursing and
health care provision both at the institution and outside of it.
I will argue that the professionalization of nursing in modern Swedish
history began through the pioneering work of deaconesses. Nurses ex-
isted in Sweden before the nineteenth century, but deaconesses were
the first women with higher education to work as specialized health
care professionals. I will also demonstrate that the health care services of
deaconesses were in fairly high demand among patients and employers,
particularly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This demand
was fueled by advances in medical knowledge, the rapid expansion of
institutional health care, the opportunities for free health care that the
institution gave to the poor, and overall satisfaction with deaconess job
performance among employing institutions.
The implications of these arguments are twofold. First, the role dea-
conesses played in the professionalization of nursing means that func-
health care
tional differentiation cannot be understood simply as a separation of the

religious from the secular in the provision of essential social functions in
modern history. Religious organizations and professionals were some-
times crucial agents in the creation of specialized professions, a reality
that many theories of functional differentiation overlook. Second, we
encounter yet another instance in which functional differentiation cre-
ated opportunities for religious professionals to exercise social signifi-
cance in the public sphere.
A. Health Care in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Hospitals in the West can be found already in the Frankish period,

though numerous establishments of hospitals first occurred in the twelfth
century. Lords, princes, and bishops took the initiative for these founda-
tions. Because hospitals were considered religious institutions, they typi-
cally fell under the jurisdiction of bishops, though by the fourteenth cen-
tury municipal governments in regions such as Germany and Italy began
to assume responsibility. The architectural design of many medieval hos-
pitals reflected their ecclesiastical connections in that they resembled
churches. Hospitals were typically managed by monastic communities
and occasionally staffed by nursing orders. Nurses performed duties
ranging from housekeeping (emptying chamber pots, preparing food,
etc.) to administering medications.1
Hospitals in the Middle Ages performed three principal functions:
caring for the sick, serving as hospices for travelers and pilgrims, and
sheltering the poor.2 Only one of these three corresponds to what modern
people think of as a hospitals appropriate task, but even in caring for the
sick, it must be remembered that the purpose of hospitals was custodial
rather than curative. Efforts to cure inmates did take place, but this was
not a hospitals primary function.
1 Darrel W. Amundsen, Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval
Worlds (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, ), ; Daniel Le Blvec,

Hospital, Hospice, in Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages I, eds. Andre Vauchez, Barrie
Dobson, and Michael Lapidge, trans. Adrian Walford (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub-
lishers, ), ; Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, ), .
2 Robert Jtte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ), .
chapter four
By the end of the Middle Ages, there were more than , hospitals
in Europe, many of them in urban areas or in the vicinity of towns.3
In Sweden, it is estimated that there were some forty hospitals just
prior to the Reformation.4 Even so, most people in need of healing or
medical attention never set foot in one. Childbirth, illness, and death
typically took place in the home, and if someone outside the family
was called upon for medical assistance, this practitioner usually treated
the patient at home. Patients, perhaps more accurately conceived of as
patrons, had a wide range of healers to choose from, including religious
personnel, such as monks, nuns, and parish priests, but also surgeons,
midwives, cunning-men and cunning-women, and, most importantly,
wives and mothers. While the number of university-educated physicians
grew significantly from the twelfth century onward, most people never
consulted one.5
The Reformation in some Protestant lands led to a severe disruption
of services to the poor and sick as a result of the confiscation of ecclesi-
astical property and the closing of many monasteries. The most notable
example of this was in England, but even there, the disruption affected
institutional health care provision in some regions more than others. In
London, English monarchs had already reestablished the so-called Five
Royal Hospitals by the s and s, with each hospital receiving
a staff of physicians and surgeons. In the provinces, the restoration of
hospitals went much more slowly, with little improvement until the vol-
untary hospital movement of the eighteenth century.6
The case of England should not be universalized. Many Protestant
reformers went to great lengths to provide for those in need, even with
the dissolution of monasteries and religious orders. They were motivated
by the desire to create a Christian commonwealth in which the poor and
sick were cared for by the Christian community to express neighborly
love and not to gain merit in the quest for eternal life. Johannes Bugen-
hagen is perhaps the most prominent reformer in this regard. The church
orders he helped to implement in Denmark and northern Germany con-
tributed to the foundation of new hospitals, particularly plague hospitals.
3 Ibid., .
4 This figure excludes monasteries that may have practically functioned as hospitals.
See Barbro Holmdahl, Sjukskterskans historia. Frn siukwakterska till omvrdnadsdoktor
(Stockholm: Liber, ), .
5 Lindemann, Medicine and Society, , .
6 Ibid., .
health care
Bugenhagen also worked to create a form of nursing service in some town

hospitals. In the Braunschweig and Hamburg church orders, he inserted a
paragraph requiring all women who were maintained in a hospital and/or
who received support from the parish common chest to care for the sick.7
Sweden did not experience the same degree of disruption in health
care provision as had taken place in England. Despite his confiscation of
ecclesiastical properties, Gustav Vasa preserved many of the kingdoms
hospitals for the care of the poor and sick. He also worked to transform
some existing monasteries and convents in the cities into hospitals. In
Stockholm, he was helped in these efforts by Olaus Petri, Swedens leading
Protestant reformer.
Outside of Stockholm, the local parish assumed primary responsibil-
ity for caring for the sick and poor who had no family to aid them. The
Church Law recommended that each parish establish an infirmary
capable of housing four to six patients. Many parishes followed suit by
setting up infirmaries in buildings adjacent to the local churches. The
churches were expected to fund these infirmaries through collections.
Legislation in the following century continued to emphasize the obliga-
tion of local parishes to provide health care to those residents who could
not be cared for at home. Preventing relief institutions and hospitals in
more populated towns from being overburdened by the poor and the sick
from other parishes provided much of the impetus for this legislation.8
In Catholic lands, the post-Tridentine religious revival led to a re-
newed charitable impulse that inspired many prelates and princes to
establish numerous hospitals. The spirit of creating new hospitals in
Catholic Europe was most evident in seventeenth-century France, par-
ticularly after Louis XIVs decree that all towns and cities were
required to establish a hpital gnral.9 Seventeenth-century France also
experienced the revival of hospital nursing orders through the establish-
ment of communities such as the Daughters of Charity.10
7 Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, The Reformation and Changes in
Welfare Provision in Early Modern Northern Europe, in Health Care and Poor Relief
in Protestant Europe, , eds. Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (New
York: Routledge, ), ; Ole Peter Grell, The Protestant Imperative of Christian Care
and Neighbourly Love, Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, .
8 ke Andrn, Sveriges kyrkohistoria . Reformationstid (Stockholm: Verbum, ),
; E.I. Kouri, Health Care and Poor Relief in Sweden and Finland, c., in
Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, , .
9 Jtte, Poverty and Deviance, ; Lindemann, Medicine and Society, .
10 For an overview of the Daughters of Charity and other nursing communities in
chapter four
In the eighteenth century, Enlightenment-inspired reformers made

efforts to found new hospitals and to transform existing ones into insti-
tutions that focused more particularly on treating curable illnesses. The
establishment of hospitals arose from both public and private initia-
tives, and in some cases prominent ecclesiastical institutions and clergy
played an instrumental role. Historians have traditionally argued that this
reform movement bore fruit at the end of the century as clinical medicine
began to be practiced in many hospitals through a combination of clinical
observation, statistical assessments, and bedside teaching.11
Enlightenment-inspired reform initiatives also reached Sweden in the
eighteenth century as several larger hospitals were established to serve
the sick and the poor beyond the confines of the local parish. The most
significant one was the Seraphim Hospital in Stockholm, established in
, with similar hospitals in other urban areas arising throughout the
late eighteenth century. These efforts were endorsed by the king and
parliament and signaled the beginnings of a shift away from institutional
health care provision as a matter primarily of the local parish, though the
clergy were called upon to collect the money to fund these new hospitals
and to implement state-initiated health care policies at the local level.12
Many of these eighteenth-century hospitals still lacked the kind of
professionalized staff that would begin to characterize hospitals later in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, see Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative:
Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France (London: Routledge,
).
11 Mary Lindemann nuances this interpretation, arguing that the practice of clinical
medicine gradually emerged throughout the eighteenth century and did not erupt onto
the scene all of the sudden at the end of the century. See Lindemann, Medicine and Society,
. For an example of the view that clinical medicine largely did not exist prior to
the end of the eighteenth century, see John Frangos, From Housing the Poor to Healing
the Sick: The Changing Institution of Paris Hospitals under the Old Regime and Revolution
(Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, ). Frangos insists that in France, it was
the Revolution that led to the medicalization of hospitals.
12 Wolfran Kock, Sjukhusvsendets utveckling i Sverige, in Svenska Sjukhus. En
versikt av det svenska sjukhusvsendets utveckling till -talets mitt. Frsta delen, ed.
Einar Edn (Stockholm: hln & kerlunds Boktryckeri, ), , . Dorothy
Porter argues that an important impetus behind the states growing involvement in health
care reform in the eighteenth century was the national census. The census revealed
just how low population levels in the country were, and the state responded by improving
health care in order to stimulate population growth. Dorothy Porter, Health Care and
the Construction of Citizenship in Civil Societies in the Era of the Enlightenment and
Industrialisation, in Health Care and Poor Relief in th and th Century Northern
Europe, eds. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jtte (Burlington, Vt.:
Ashgate, ), .
health care
the nineteenth century. For example, some eighteenth-century Swedish

hospitals employed nurses, but their duties were not much different from
those of the medieval nursing orders. Even into the early nineteenth
century, patients with minor illnesses were expected to help care for
patients suffering from more serious illnesses. As Barbara Holmdahl
notes, the boundary between patients and care personnel such as nurses
was blurry in Swedish hospitals before the late nineteenth century.13
The growing number of hospitals in eighteenth-century Europe did
not significantly shift the locus of health care from the home to the hospi-
tal. Women of the household continued to provide primary care in times
of illness or childbirth. Beyond the household, the range of potential
providers was as extensive as in the Middle Ages and continued to include
religious personnel such as clergy (and in Protestant regions, clergy
spouses). Apothecaries, midwives, surgeons, and physicians also com-
peted for the opportunity to treat prospective patients. Midwives were
the health care providers who most commonly entered homes. While
the number of physicians had grown significantly by the mid-eighteenth
century, most people still did not hire one because they were either too
expensive or too few of them existed in a given region. Throughout the
early modern period, physicians typically were not deemed more qual-
ified to treat illnesses than other practitioners. Physicians were viewed
in the popular mind as particularly, if not uniquely, qualified to provide
health care only from the mid-nineteenth century onward.14 The growth
of a different kind of nursing corps, one trained especially to help physi-
cians in treating illnesses, accompanied this change in the perception of
physicians. It is to these developments that we now turn.
B. Origins of the Modern Nursing

Profession in Nineteenth-Century Sweden
Most historians agree that the large-scale transformation of institutional

health care from caring primarily for the sick poor to a medicalized sys-
tem focused on curing illnesses occurred during the nineteenth century.
By the end of the century, physicians had become many peoples first
choice of health care providers, clinical teaching and bedside instruction
had become integral to the education of physicians, and a specialized
13 Holmdahl, Sjukskterskans historia, .

14 Lindemann, Medicine and Society, , .
chapter four
nursing profession had arisen to work closely with physicians in treat-

ing patients. Hospitals cared not only for the very poor but people of all
classes, even if the tradition of home care for the wealthy persisted. Sig-
nificant advances were made in understanding how diseases were caused
and spread, while the use of anesthetics and antiseptics by the end of the
century led to successes in treating patients that were unimaginable a
century before.15
Health care provision became more centralized in nineteenth-century
Sweden. Public health commissions already existed in the eighteenth
century, but with the cholera epidemics of the early nineteenth century,
these commissions assumed greater authority. In , a public health
board was created for Stockholm that differed from its immediate pre-
decessors in that its concerns for public health went beyond the fight
against cholera.16 Throughout the late nineteenth century, the Swedish
state expanded its role in the establishment of public hospitals and in the
creation of public health officers for the entire nation.17 The provision of
institutional health care, in conjunction with poor relief, had largely been
a matter for the local parish for much of the early modern period. From
the mid-nineteenth century, it became primarily a state affair.
But functional differentiation in the sphere of health care is not sim-
ply the story of the separation of the religious from the secular. The
development of the modern nursing profession in Sweden is a story that
cannot be told apart from the role played by a new group of religious
organizations and professionals. In the late nineteenth century, the three
most prominent training colleges for nurses were all institutions with
religious orientations: the Swedish Deaconess Institution, the Red Cross
School of Nursing, and the Sophia Home. They arose in response to the
growing demand for educated nurses, a demand fed by two important
developments. First, new advancements in medical knowledge created
a greater need for qualified personnel to assist physicians, particularly
in the area of hygienic work.18 Second, a rapid expansion in health care
15 Bengt Pernow, Sophiahemmet i sin tid. Utbildning och sjukvrd under elva decennier
(Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, ), .

16 Torgny Hjer, Sockenstmmor i Stockholm fram till (Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell, ), .
17 Porter, Health Care in the Era of the Enlightenment and Industrialisation, Health
Care and Poor Relief in th and th Century Northern Europe, .

18 Agneta Emanuelsson, Pionjrer i vitt. Professionella och fackliga strategier bland
svenska sjukskterskor och sjukvrdsbitrden, (Stockholm: Svenska hlso- och

sjukvrdens tjnstemannafrbund, ), .
health care
institutions accompanied the tremendous advances in medical treat-

ment. This is reflected in the increase in the number of hospital beds in
the country from , in to , by .19 The demand for health
care professionals from private residences accompanied this institutional
growth.
The Swedish Deaconess Institution was the first to provide specialized
training for nurses. The original vision of the Swedish Deaconess Society
in was to create on pure Christian grounds a deaconess institution
whose first and actual purpose will be to train Christian-minded women
as nurses who have the predisposition and will to devote themselves to
this calling in such a way that, not only the health of the body but also
that of the soul can be aided with Gods blessings.20 Influenced by the
neo-evangelical revivals and the German program of Inner Mission, the
society felt that existing health care lacked compassion for and neglected
the spiritual needs of the sick and suffering. The society aimed to educate
nurses to treat the physical needs of the sick more humanely and to tend
to their spiritual needs through evangelization.21
Throughout the late nineteenth century, the leadership of the Swedish
Deaconess Institution consistently maintained that deaconesses were
particularly qualified for addressing the physical and spiritual needs of
the sick because of their gender and faith. Caring for the sick and suffer-
ing, the leadership argued, was a task particularly suited for a womans
temperament, for she possessed a natural disposition toward demon-
strating compassion and tenderness.22 In her capacity as a nurse, a dea-
coness was doing nothing more than extending the caretaking responsi-
bilities traditionally associated with women in the domestic sphere into
a setting beyond the household. The leadership also maintained that in
helping to alleviate physical suffering, a deaconess was in a position to
bring Gods Word closer to patients, since those who suffer are more open
to receiving the Gospel than might otherwise be the case.23 As women of
19 Holmdahl, Sjukskterskans historia, .

ing (Lund: CWK Gleerups, ), .

22 Diakoniss-saken ssom en Christi-frsamlings sak, Olivebladet (), ; Hu-
ru skall kyrkan bst tillgodose de andliga behofwen hos de lekamliga ndstlda?, Olive-
bladet (), .
23 Diakoniss-saken ssom en Christi-frsamlings sak, Olivebladet (), ; Dia-
konisswerksamhetens stora uppgift att lta lefwande watten flytta ut i knen, Olibebladet
(), .
chapter four
faith, deaconesses were thus ideal candidates for realizing the societys
initial vision of bringing health to the bodies and souls of the sick and
suffering.
To prepare for this mission, all students at the institution took courses
in basic elementary school subjects, received theoretical and practical
instruction in health care, and attended weekly Bible studies and cate-
chetical lessons. Once they completed their education and became full
deaconesses, the leadership assigned the sisters to work stations in accor-
dance with their gifts and in light of the requests received from prospec-
tive employers. A sister might never be assigned to a health care station
even though she had the training of a nurse. This is because the institu-
tion was in the business of educating women for the deaconess vocation,
a vocation that could be carried out in various capacities (nursing, teach-
ing, childcare, etc). Since a sister could receive different occupational
assignments throughout her career, the institution needed to prepare her
to be adaptable so that she could be placed where the need was greatest.
In this way, the deaconess institution differed from the Red Cross School
of Nursing and the Sophia Home in that these two schools focused only
on training nurses.
While a basic overview of deaconess education was provided in chap-
ter two, a closer look at the institutions nursing education illuminates its
importance in the overall training program. A deaconesss education in
health care took place during her time as a probationary sister. The pro-
bationary stage lasted anywhere from one to three years and was divided
into two phases. The first phase entailed both theoretical and practi-
cal education. The theoretical component consisted of general education
courses, such as Swedish, arithmetic, and geography, with only a little
attention given to coursework in health care.
Most of the nursing education came through the practical component.
The institution employed a doctor to oversee this training. Probationary
sisters accompanied the doctor on his rounds at the institutions hospital
and took notes as he instructed them on how to treat patients with
various illnesses. Once per week, the doctor lectured the sisters on a
specific health care topic. Probationary sisters participated in the daily
nursing work of the hospital, and they learned how to compound some
of the medicines that the doctor prescribed to patients. By the end of the
century, the practical training alone usually lasted ten to eleven months.24
24 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; Yngve Iverson, Tro verksam
i krlek. En bok om Ersta (Stockholm: Verbum, ), .

health care
Upon completing the theoretical and practical education, a sister en-

tered the second phase of the probationary stage. During this period, she
was assigned to a work station at or outside of the institution. If this were a
health care station, she had the opportunity to deepen her knowledge and
experience of nursing. After satisfactorily completing this second phase,
she was eligible to become a full deaconess.25
Nursing education was clearly integral to the overall training program.
The practical component of the first phase of the probationary stage
consisted solely of nursing education. Theoretical instruction was less
important, though deaconesses received more in this area than was the
case with many hospital-based nursing programs that arose at the end
of the century. Because of the central place of nursing education at the
institution, Yngve Iverson rightly notes that for the first hundred years of
its existence, all deaconesses were trained nurses, even if they did not
always practice nursing as a full-time occupation in their respective
work stations.26 Even when deaconesses were not assigned to hospitals,
they still might be called upon to practice nursing in their work. As we
will see in the next chapter, many of the sisters assigned to poorhouses
or as parish deaconesses put their nursing skills to use on a regular basis.
The first institution to focus solely on the training of nurses was
the Red Cross School of Nursing, established in . It received its
inspiration from the model of nursing education developed by Florence
Nightingale in England. The schools first director, Emmy Rappe, had
traveled to St. Thomas Hospital in London one year earlier to receive
her basic nursing education. Upon returning to Sweden, she opened
the Red Cross School at the Uppsala Akademiska Hospital. The school
moved to the Sahlgrensk Hospital in Gothenburg in and then to
the Sabbatsberg Hospital in Stockholm in . One decade later, an
institutional home for Red Cross nurses opened and adopted some of
the motherhouse characteristics found at the deaconess institution.
During its first years, the Red Cross nursing program lasted six months
and contained no theoretical instruction. The emphasis was on surgical
care. After the move to Stockholm, the program included theoretical
instruction in order to keep up with the rapid expansion in medical
knowledge. During the s, the length of the program expanded to
one year, growing to eighteen months by the turn of the century.27

26 Ibid., .
27 sa Andersson, Ett hgt och delt kall. Kalltankens betydelse fr sjukskterskeyr-
chapter four
sa Andersson describes the Red Cross institution as Swedens first

secular nursing school, since its purpose was not to carry out a Christian
mission to the sick and suffering but to build up a well-functioning sys-
tem of nursing care detached from a particular confessional structure.28
While this is true, the importance of religious motivations for establish-
ing the school and inspiring women to attend must not be overlooked. As
Andersson herself notes, Rappe was a person of deep religious faith who
saw God as the source of strength in her work and who also admired the
Christian motivation behind the female diaconates work. The women
who entered the school also possessed a strong sense of Christian call-
ing.29 For this reason, the term secular can be misleading. It is more
accurate to describe the school as Swedens first non-sectarian nursing
institution.
Queen Sophia was the instrumental force behind the establishment
of the Sophia Home in Stockholm in . This nursing school, like
the deaconess institution, utilized the motherhouse system. Sisters in
its service remained celibate, received their salary from the home, and
wore a common uniform. The leadership also assigned the sisters to work
stations. This system remained in effect until .30
In the beginning, Sophia nursing students received their theoretical
and practical training at the Sabbatsberg Hospital in Stockholm. The
home established a hospital of its own in Stockholm in so that its
students could receive training there. The length of education at first was
ten months, but by , it had been extended to eighteen months. At the
turn of the century, the program was expanded to three years, making it
the longest in the country.31
In accordance with the queens wishes, the school was to be guided by
the motto Everything for Gods Honor.32 The admission requirements
reflected this sense of Christian mission in the training of nurses. Appli-
cants were required to adhere to a Protestant confession and to possess a
kets formering (Ume: Ume institution fr historiska studier, ), ;

Emanuelsson, Pionjrer i vitt, ; Holmdahl, Sjukskterskans historia, .
28 Andersson, Ett hgt och delt kall, .
29 Ibid., .
30 Andersson, Ett hgt och delt kall, ; Holmdahl, Sjukskterskans historia, ;
Pernow, Sophiahemmet i sin tid, .

31 Emanuelsson, Pionjrer i vitt, . This statement must be qualified since it took
students at least the same amount of time to become full deaconesses. The difference
is that deaconesses received other types of instruction and practical training besides
nursing.
32 Ibid., .
health care
strong sense of calling based on a true fear of God.33 Similar to the dea-
coness institution, the leadership of the Sophia Home emphasized that
personal faith in Christ was essential in fulfilling ones calling as a nurse.
Even though the Sophia Home shared the religious motivations of
the other two schools, it differed from them in two important ways.
First, most of its nurses were recruited from higher social classes, and
this undoubtedly paved the way for making the nursing profession a
more respectable career choice for unmarried women by the turn of the
century. Second, it placed far more emphasis on theoretical education
than either of the other two institutions, and this, along with the length
of the program by , made it the most rigorous nursing school in the
country.
Nursing education expanded rapidly at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and by , there were twenty schools that trained nurses. Two-
thirds of these were located at provincial hospitals. Hospital physicians
often created these programs for the purpose of educating nurses for
the needs of that particular hospital. These programs had much lower
admission standards and far less theoretical instruction than the three
schools discussed above. Hospital training programs were also signifi-
cantly shorter, with most lasting six months to one year.34
Because these provincial programs were less rigorous and were of sig-
nificantly shorter duration, they attracted more students. By the early
twentieth century, the vast majority of nurses were products of these pro-
grams. Even so, the influence of the Swedish Deaconess Institution, the
Red Cross School of Nursing, and the Sophia Home on the development
of the modern nursing profession far exceeded the number of nurses they
were producing. Graduates from these three schools frequently occupied
positions of leadership in hospitals, supervising other nurses and nurses
aides and overseeing the hygienic routines.35 In a few of the larger hospi-
tals with training programs, they even led some of the theoretical training
that nursing students received.36 These institutions also set the standards
for nursing education in the first quarter of the twentieth century, par-
ticularly in terms of the more rigorous education they promoted and the
necessity of theoretical instruction as part of this education. Finally, the
understanding that nursing was a divine calling, central to the ethos of
33 Ibid., .
34 Andersson, Ett hgt och delt kall, ; Emanuelsson, Pionjrer i vitt, , .
35 Andersson, Ett hgt och delt kall, ; Emanuelsson, Pionjrer i vitt, .
36 Emanuelsson, Pionjrer i vitt, .
chapter four
the Swedish Deaconess Institution and the Sophia Home but also present
at the Red Cross School, permeated the nursing corps as a whole as it
developed at the end of the nineteenth century. As sa Andersson points
out, this element of calling was not seriously questioned until the s.37
C. The Deaconess Hospital
While the deaconess institution housed several divisions ranging from a

household school to an elderly home, its primary division was the hos-
pital. When the institution first opened in July , it rented a two-
story house that served as both the deaconess house and the hospi-
tal. The facility contained beds for twelve patients.38 The hospital staff
consisted of the sisters in training and one doctor. The doctor per-
formed daily rounds and gave practical instruction in how to care for
the patients.39
In the first several years, only women and children were admitted.40
The annual reports do not give reasons for this, though one possible
explanation is that the leadership was concerned about the sisters coming
into intimate contact with men who were not members of their own
family. Such interaction was deemed highly inappropriate for women
in the mid-nineteenth century, and the leadership may have wanted
deaconesses to avoid any sort of behavior that might taint them as
public women who were not connected to a respectable household.
The lack of space at the first hospital also would have made it impossible
to create a separate section for the care of male patients even had the
leadership wanted to do so.
When the hospital changed locations in the mid-s, it had space
for thirty patients and began to admit men. In , the hospital moved
to the Ersta location in the Sdermalm region. The Ersta Hospital could
accommodate approximately forty patients, and this capacity remained
the same until after the turn of the century. By the end of the century,
the hospital had one larger and three smaller wards for women and one
ward for men. Children were accommodated as much as possible in these

ning , .
health care
existing wards. There were also five private rooms for patients along with
a separate private room for deaconesses requiring hospitalization.41 The
hospital was staffed by deaconesses and deaconesses in training. They
carried out the nursing duties and basic cleaning tasks for the hospital.42
There were also two doctorsa head physician and an assistant. The
latter was added to the staff in .43
What appeared to be an adequate-sized hospital in proved too
small by the end of the century. This lack of space caused many prob-
lems for the functioning of the hospital. The hospital did not have suf-
ficient space for carrying out operations. In fact, the hospital did not
receive its first operating room until ; until then, operations were
performed in the bedrooms of the deaconesses.44 The hospital also was
not large enough to allow for adequate nursing training for all of the pro-
bationary sisters who needed it. Arrangements were made in for
some probationary sisters to do part of their training at the Maria Hos-
pital in order to address this problem, though this solution proved to
be temporary.45 Furthermore, the hospital did not have a separate ward
for children. Only one or two children at a time could be cared for in
the existing wards for women and men. Finally, the hospital could not
accommodate all of the people who sought admission. Additional beds
were sometimes set up in an attempt to meet this demand, but the num-
ber of people needing care was so great that many still had to be turned
away.46
On its fiftieth anniversary celebration, the institution received a gift
from the royal couple, Oscar II and Sophia, of , crowns.47 The
41 Vrt sjukhus, Olivebladet (), .

42 It is difficult to determine the exact number of sisters who carried out nursing duties
at the hospital at any one time. In , the Olivebladet stated that there were seventy-
nine sisters (deaconesses, probationary sisters, and inquirers) who lived and worked at
the deaconess institution. Of these, twenty-one deaconesses and probationary sisters were
assigned to work in the hospital, nursing home, orphanage, household school, or rescue
shelter. A more detailed breakdown is not provided. Moreover, this number does not
include inquirers, nor does it include deaconesses and probationary sisters who were
assigned to household tasks at the hospital. See Det nya diakonisshusets inwigning,
Olivebladet (), .
43 Meddelanden frn Diakonissanstalten, Olivebladet (), .
44 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), .
45 The partnership with Maria Hospital was discontinued in October due to
problems with living accommodations for sisters and with reduced instruction time at
the Ersta Hospital. SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), .
46 Vrt sjukshus, Olivebladet (), .
47 Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjubileum, Olivebladet (), .
chapter four
money was to be used to improve the hospital facilities, but the leadership
decided to build a larger, more modern hospital. Fundraising continued
for the next few years, and in , the new Ersta Hospital opened with
room for ninety patients. The municipal government of Stockholm gave
the institution , crowns toward construction costs in exchange for
having forty-five beds at the hospital set aside for the citys use. These beds
were to be reserved for poor patients referred to the hospital by municipal
poor relief authorities.48 Even with this gift, the hospital continued to be
run as a private health care facility, but this arrangement did signal the
beginning of a partnership with the municipal government that would
last throughout the twentieth century.
Reserving beds for the poor after the turn of the century did not
signal a new direction for the hospital in terms of its clientele. Hospitals
were gaining prestige in the late nineteenth century, but wealthier people
still preferred to be treated at home. Most of the deaconess hospitals
patients in this period were people of little means. For example, of the
people treated in , the four largest groups of patients, excluding
the institutions personnel, were servants (), wives and children from
the working class (), unmarried women (), and artisan journeymen
and industrial workers ().49 These statistics also reflect the fact that far
more women than men were treated. It was common for two-thirds to
three-fourths of patients in a given year to be women.50
The hospital was funded through private donations and the nomi-
nal fees paid by patients rather than government subsidies, so the cost
of treating so many of the poor was a perennial problem. The insti-
tution implemented two partial solutions to address this issue. First, it
established free beds (frisngar) beginning in . These were funded
by private donors to provide free care for those who otherwise could
not afford treatment. Some of the beds were open to anyone without
the means to pay, while others were established to provide free care for
certain categories of people, such as children or people hailing from a

50 Most of the patients also hailed from Stockholm, but there was a contingency from
the provinces. Statistics on the city, province, or country of origin were not published in
the annual reports beyond the first two decades, but from the annual report
we get a sense of the geographical background of the patients. Of the patients treated
in that year, came from the provinces. SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning ,
.
health care
particular parish. By , there were fourteen free beds.51 Second, in

, the institution established so-called free funds (frikassa) through
private donations. These covered the expenses of the poor who could
not be cared for in one of the free beds either because they did not
qualify or because the beds were already occupied. The free beds and free
funds enabled approximately one-third of all patients throughout the late
nineteenth century to receive treatment without paying.52
The hospital treated patients with a wide variety of ailments. Among
the patients admitted from May to April , the most com-
mon afflictions were typhoid fever, consumption, anemia, pneumonia,
rheumatism, gastritis, and typhus. Seventeen operations, mostly eye
surgeries, were also performed.53 By , the range of diseases treated
at the hospital increased significantly, though some of the most common
afflictions had not changed drastically. Of the patients cared for that
year, the most numerous illnesses treated included anemia, pneumonia,
gastritis, tuberculosis, bronchitis, cataracts, and neurasthenia. The num-
ber of operations also increased considerably by , due largely to the
creation of a separate operating room in . A total of patients
received operations that year, with the most common operations includ-
ing cataract surgery, strabismus surgery, amputations, and the removal
of various tumors.54
Treating physical illnesses and carrying out operations were only part
of the hospitals mission. The annual reports repeatedly emphasized the
importance of caring for the body and the soul. In the first decade,
annual reports even included accounts of patient conversions such as the
following from the mid-s:
A man, suffering from lung disease, stayed a few weeks in our hospital.
In the beginning, he was deaf to Gods Word; pleased with what reason
taught him concerning God, he did not want to know more. He appeared
to shelter himself from everything that he heard during moments of prayer,
and [he] gave the visiting chaplain monosyllabic and unfriendly answers
to questions. Toward the end of his stay in our hospital, he became milder
and more communicative, [he] began to read Gods Word, and when he
came home to his wife, she found him much changed. He later became
51 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; Ernst Lnegren, Minneskrift till
Svenska Diakonissanstaltens femtiorsjublieum (Stockholm, ), .

54 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), . Just six years earlier,
only forty operations had been conducted. SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet

(), .
chapter four
seriously ill and wished to talk to a chaplain, for whom he gave a beautiful
confession in which he expressed regret for his sins and articulated his
faith in the forgiveness of sins through Jesus, soon thereafter dying in this
faith.55
The annual reports from J.C. Brings time as director typically did not
include such conversion narratives, yet he consistently stressed that the
sick and suffering were much more open to the Word of God, and he
lifted up the important role that deaconesses played in bringing them the
Word. The sort of conversion experienced by the individual in the above
narrative was thus sought after throughout Brings tenure as well.
The hospitals spiritual mission meant that deaconesses were not only
responsible for administering medications and assisting in operations but
also for providing spiritual counseling to patients. In the first decade,
deaconesses read passages from the Bible and other devotional books
to patients in the afternoons. This responsibility appears to have been
absorbed by Bring and the various assistant chaplains from the mid-
s onward, but throughout the remainder of the century, deaconesses
continued to evangelize and pray with patients.56
What most patients thought of this evangelization is largely unknown,
but it is clear that the hospitals health services were very much in de-
mand. Even though the forty-bed capacity of the hospital remained
unchanged from until the end of the century, a steady rise in the
number of patients treated annually did take place. From May to
April , patients were treated.57 This number increased to a
decade later, and by , it had risen to .58 The number of people
seeking treatment became so great that by the s and s, the
hospital was turning away patients almost daily. Refusing treatment was
clearly a last resort, and the hospital went to some extreme measures to
treat as many as possible, including setting up extra beds and discharging
patients before they were fully recovered.59
What accounts for this steady increase in the number of patients and
the growing demand for the services of the hospital? In the last quarter of

58 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse
, Olivebladet (), .
59 Concerning the hospitals struggle over whether to discharge patients before full
recovery, see SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), .

health care
the century, significant advances had been made in medical knowledge,

leading to more efficient and effective methods of treating common ill-
nesses. As a result, patients were treated and discharged more quickly,
leading to greater turnover in hospital beds. Medical advances also con-
tributed to an increase in the prestige of many health care institutions,
meaning that more people sought treatment at them.
Another explanation relates particularly to the deaconess hospital
and its mission to the poor. The diaconate focused on reaching out to
the poor through health care and poor relief in the last quarter of the
century. Through recourse to free beds and free funds, the deaconess
hospital found its niche in providing health care to a segment of the
population that had difficulty affording it. In the last two decades of the
century, between and patients on average were cared for annually
through free beds and free funds. The deaconess hospital was not the only
Stockholm hospital to provide free treatment for those with little means,
but it played a significant role in such health care provision in a time of
growing need and in an area of the city with a high percentage of poor
and working-class people.
D. The Nursing Home and the Polyclinic
The hospital was the focal point of nursing education and health care
provision at the institution, but in the course of the late nineteenth
century two other important divisions developed to meet the growing
demand for health care. One was a nursing home that provided long-
term medical care for the chronically ill. The other was a polyclinic, an
outpatient facility that performed minor and emergency operations and
treated less serious ailments.
Nineteenth-century hospitals were at a loss as to how to provide care
for chronically ill patients. As early as , the deaconess institution was
developing plans to devote a section of the hospital to care for patients
with incurable diseases. In , one of the hospital rooms was dedicated
to this purpose, and three patients were admitted. When these patients
died several years later, the hospital discontinued its efforts to treat the
chronically ill, at least for the time being.
The hospital had experienced enough of an increase in demand for
this sort of care by the early s that some of its supporters donated
money to establish a nursing home. The nursing home was dedicated
at the end of . It was connected to the hospital and had room for
chapter four
twenty patients. The home had one ward for six patients, four rooms for
two patients each, and six private rooms that held one patient each.60
Chronically ill adult patients from anywhere in Sweden, with or with-
out the means to pay, were eligible for admission.61 The number of
patients cared for in a given year typically ranged from twenty-five to
thirty-five, and most of them were women. Like the hospital, the nurs-
ing home had free beds and free funds to cover the expenses of those who
could not afford to pay for their care, and on average, anywhere from one-
fourth to one-half of all patients paid no fees. While the nursing home
filled an important social function by providing long-term health care,
its capacity was small, and the waiting list was so long that many seeking
admission had to wait several years.
A much larger operation was established in the polyclinic.
Its purpose was twofold: to give sisters additional practical training in
treating patients, usually under the supervision of the hospitals assistant
doctor; and to provide more accessible health care for the poor and
working class people in the city.62 The polyclinic was aimed particularly
at treating the poor, so the vast majority of its patients paid nothing.
Many of the polyclinics visitors were in need of immediate treatment,
oftentimes due to accidents, meaning that the clinic performed many
operations. Major operations included extracting foreign objects from
the cornea, amputating fingers, removing lymphatic glands, and treating
ingrown toenails. More minor operations treated abscesses, carbuncles,
and boils. In some cases, patients were referred directly to the hospital to
receive inpatient care.
Due to the large numbers of visitors, the polyclinic expanded its
facilities two years after opening. By , it had taken over the bottom
floor of the hospital and consisted of a waiting room, an operating room,
a small apothecary, and a private room for doctors.63 In , ,
patients were treated, with that number rising to , by .64 These
numbers demonstrate a significant demand, particularly among the poor
and working class in the citys Sdermalm region, for the outpatient and
emergency care provided by the polyclinic.
60 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; Inwigningen af Diakonis-
sanstaltens sjukhem, Olivebladet (), .

61 Regler fr sjukhemmet, Olivebladet (), .
64 SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse ,
Olivebladet (), .
health care
E. Private Home Care and Provincial Hospitals
The shift in focus from education to health care in the diaconates external
work stations took place in the late s. Even so, deaconesses made
important contributions to health care outside the institutions hospital
before this shift. This can be seen through their work during the cholera
epidemics of the s and the Danish-German War of , and in
private home care.
Several cholera epidemics broke out during the s in Stockholm. In
the first part of the decade, a few of the sisters went into the city to provide
care for victims of cholera, since the deaconess hospital at the time was
too small to admit cholera patients. Deaconesses provided health care
to victims of cholera and smallpox in , even though some of the
sisters became infected as a result. Some of the smallpox patients in this
outbreak were admitted to the hospital. During an outbreak of cholera in
, sixteen deaconesses provided nursing care for victims in the city.
The annual reports were quick to note that no deaconess died as a result
of their work among cholera and smallpox patients.65
Deaconesses also gained recognition as nurses during the Danish-
German War of . Denmark requested Swedish assistance in caring
for sick and injured prisoners during the war, and eight deaconesses
from Stockholm served at a field hospital on the Danish island of Als.
The king and queen of Denmark received some of these deaconesses on
their way to Als and expressed gratitude for their willingness to help. In
their service at Als, the deaconesses assisted with amputations and other
operations as well as the day-to-day care of patients in the hospital. Their
contributions gained the admiration of the Swedish Society of Medicine
(Svenska Lkaresllskapet). At its meeting in , it pointed to the work
of deaconesses during the war as evidence against the argument that field
health care was unsuitable for women.66
Most of the health care efforts outside the institution in the s and
s took place in private homes in the Stockholm area. The tradition
of health care in the home was still strong in the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, and even at the end of the century, this custom persevered among
65 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; SDSFU Berttelse och redo-
visning, , ; Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, ; Iverson, En bok om Ersta,

.
66 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; Anderson, Ett hgt och delt kall,
; Iverson, En bok om Ersta, .

chapter four
the well-to-do in Swedish society. In , deaconesses provided

private health care in thirty-two homes.67 By , this num-
ber reached seventy-two.68 As external health care stations grew from
the s onward, instances of private care decreased, rarely exceeding
twenty-five in a given year.69 In some years, the number was as low as nine
or ten. The leadership repeatedly lamented its inability to meet requests
for private home care due to the lack of available sisters and the grow-
ing demand for deaconesses from other institutions. By the s, the
leadership began to provide an additional justification for moving away
from private home care by arguing that its primary mission in health care
provision was to assist the poor. Even with the decline in private health
care provided by deaconesses in the last quarter of the century, demand
in this area remained high. This strong demand, in fact, is characteristic
of the entire period under investigation here.
The diaconates participation in health care both through its hospital
and outside of it indicates that the deaconess institution was not neglect-
ing health care in its formative period. And yet it took almost a decade
before the institution assigned its first deaconesses to a provincial hospi-
tal. One of the reasons for this is clear from the previous chapter. Marie
Cederschilds strong interests in education, combined with the huge
demand for teachers created by the elementary school statute, led
the diaconate to concentrate its efforts outside the institution on teach-
ing in the first decade and a half. But given its other efforts in health care
provision in this period, additional factors must be sought to explain the
institutions delay in establishing external health care stations.
One likely factor is that physicians were initially skeptical of the idea of
having educated nurses assist them. Doctors were certainly accustomed
to having women working in hospitals as servants, but they were not
used to working with other educated health care professionals who could

69 As the diaconates involvement in private home care decreased, that of the St Eliza-
beth Sisters increased. Bring saw Catholic female religious orders not only as competition
in private health care provision but also as a threat to the true Lutheran faith. Ironically,
Bring decried Catholic involvement in private home care even as he redeployed the insti-
tutions resources away from this area. Gunnel Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall.
Johan Christoffer Brings syn p diakonissverksamhetens uppgift och form (Skellefte: Artos
& Norma, ), . For a summary of the work carried out by the St Elizabeth Sis-
ters in the late nineteenth century and the Lutheran opposition to it, see Yvonne Maria
Werner, Vrldsvid men frmmande. Den katolska kyrkan i Sverige (Uppsala:
Katolska Bokfrlaget, ), .
health care
carry out some of the tasks they were accustomed to performing, such as
administering medications to patients.70 It took almost two decades after
the diaconate was established before this idea began to take root among
physicians.
Another factor is that hospitals in the s were still considered
inappropriate places for women from the middle and upper classes. sa
Andersson points out that Swedish society had yet to become accus-
tomed to respectable women working as nurses and coming into close
physical contact with men who were not family members. For this reason,
hospital work could potentially be branded as risky or even immoral
behavior, and as such, the institution was initially hesitant to send dea-
conesses to hospitals. When these assignments were finally made begin-
ning in the late s, sisters were sent in pairs. Schools and orphanages,
on the other hand, were considered safe, meaning that sisters could be
sent to them individually.71 Assigning two or more deaconesses to hospi-
tals remained the norm throughout the nineteenth century, even if there
were exceptions already in the s, particularly at smaller hospitals.
Anderssons observations on why sisters were sent out in pairs are help-
ful, but I would add that this practice was also meant to protect dea-
conesses from unwanted sexual advances by reinforcing their connection
to a spiritual household. This household became actualized in hospitals
as deaconesses lived out their sisterly relationship through their daily
interactions with one another. Patients and personnel would therefore be
less likely to view them as having no household ties and would treat them
with the deference afforded to any woman coming from a respectable
family.
All of these factors may have impeded the diaconates adoption of
external health care stations in the beginning, but by the mid-s,
the leadership focused more of its efforts on placing sisters in provin-
cial hospitals. The institution adopted its first external health care sta-
tion, mmeberg Hospital, in . The hospital, owned by La Vielle
Montagne, a Belgian mining company, was to provide medical care for
the companys workers and their families. According to the contract, the
two sisters assigned to this hospital were to care for the sick in accor-
dance with the doctors instructions. They were also expected to prepare

71 Ibid., . Gunnel Elmund notes that when the institution accepted the mme-
berg Hospital as its first external health care station in , it sent two deaconesses, even
though the hospital requested only one. Elmund, Den kvinnliga diakonin, .
chapter four
food and do laundry for the patients.72 By the late s, a second hos-
pital opened in the vicinity of this one, and a total of four sisters were
assigned to the two hospitals. The responsibilities of the sisters expanded
to include providing health care in the homes of workers.73
The number of health care stations adopted by the institution steadily
increased from the mid-s onward. Ten sisters worked at six health
care stations in , increasing a decade later to twenty-one and four-
teen, respectively. Health care was the dominant work outside the insti-
tution for much of the s and into the early s. By , fifty-one
sisters were assigned to twenty-two hospitals.74
The sizes and types of hospitals varied. In , six deaconesses were
assigned to the Stockholm Public Care Institution (Stockholms Stads
Allmnna Frsrjningsinrttning), an institution focused on providing
health care and indoor relief for the poor. Its sick ward held patients,
to which four of the deaconesses were assigned. The other two served
in the convalescent ward. In fact, deaconesses served as nurses in many
of the countrys largest hospitals at this time, including the Sabbatsberg
Hospital in Stockholm (with nine deaconesses), the rebro Hospital
(with six), and the Norrkping Hospital (with five). Deaconesses were
also assigned to smaller, more specialized hospitals. The Malm Chil-
drens Hospital, with room for twenty-five patients, was directed by a dea-
coness. The Gvle Nursing Home, with space for twenty female patients,
had one deaconess serving as its housemother.
Not much is known about how the deaconesses serving at these hospi-
tals felt about their work, since letters by them to the institution have not
been preserved. From the institutions periodicals and from letters writ-
ten by provincial hospital administrators, it appears that deaconesses at
times felt overwhelmed by their nursing duties. For example, in ,
a doctor at Jnkping Hospital expressed his concern to the hospital
board that the number of patients being treated was becoming so large
that the two sisters were struggling with the workload.75 In the same
year, Bring noted that the deaconess assigned to the Falkping Hospital,
Karna Larsson, was responsible for the care of sixty to seventy patients
per day, and that with the hospitals recent expansion, she was feeling too
72 Contract between mmeberg Hospital and DAS, June , Ib (no. ), EDA.

73 Ngra minnen frn en resan, Olivebladet (), .
74 See Table , p. .
75 Jnkping Hospital to J.C. Bring, October , Ib (no. ), EDA.
health care
overwhelmed to continue her work without at least some temporary

help.76 A decade earlier, Bring observed that the perception of nursing
as strenuous and demanding work inhibited deaconess recruitment. He
sought to reassure potential recruits that deaconesses working as nurses
were never assigned more patients than they could reasonably handle.77
Even with the heavy workloads and accompanying stress, the corre-
spondence between provincial hospitals and the institution indicates a
continuing demand for the nursing services of deaconesses among hos-
pitals already under contract. When deaconesses had to be reassigned or
were unable to carry out their duties due to illness, hospitals were quick to
request an immediate replacement. In many cases, hospitals pleaded with
the institution not to reassign a deaconess already in its service. There
were also occasions when hospitals undergoing expansion were eager to
add more deaconesses to their staffs.
The deaconess publications reflect this high demand from potential
employers. While annual reports typically did not publish statistics on
the exact number of requests made for the services of deaconesses, an
exception was made in the report. Twelve requests from hos-
pitals were received that year, though most of these could not be met
due to a lack of sisters.78 Several years later, Bring noted that the insti-
tution received a request to take over a -bed hospital. It was esti-
mated that fourteen deaconesses would be needed to staff this hospital,
but since fourteen sisters were not available, it turned down the request.79
Beyond the occasional specifics, the annual reports frequently lamented
that despite numerous requests for deaconesses from hospitals, it was
forced to respond with the common refrain: We have no one to send.
Two of the reasons for this demand have already been addressed
in other sections of this chapter: advances in medical knowledge and
treatment, and the rapid expansion of institutional health care. These
factors contributed to a general increase in the demand for educated
nurses, which in turn led to high demand for deaconesses at a time
in which few institutions provided nursing education. A third reason
is that doctors and hospital administrators were mostly pleased with
how well deaconesses carried out their duties. For example, Falkping
Hospital requested that the contract for Maria Clarin be renewed since
76 Ngra minnen frn en resan, Olivebladet (), .

77 Beriktigande, Olivebladet (), .
chapter four
there was overall satisfaction with how the sister has carried out her
duties.80 Upon receiving news of an increase in the fees for employing
deaconesses, Jnkping Hospital responded that it was more than willing
to pay the higher fees since it had been very pleased with the job perfor-
mances of its sisters.81 The deaconesses reputation for competent nursing
also spread to hospitals that employed no deaconesses but were eager to
do so after hearing about them. When Sderkping Hospital learned that
hospitals in Norrkping, Linkping, and Vadstena were pleased with the
deaconesses in their employment, it requested that two sisters be sent
(one for the position of head nurse) in order to assist in operations and
provide care for about forty patients.82
The correspondence does reflect occasional displeasure with job per-
formance. The most notable case involved Sophie Sjgren at mmeberg
Hospital. The district doctor wrote to Bring in requesting that Sj-
gren be dismissed, adding that the doctors and other personnel had been
longing for her removal for some time. The district doctor described the
problem as primarily a personality conflict between Sjgren and the staff.
He described Sjgren as follows:
S. is of a despotic, high-handed, and intolerant disposition . . . equipped
with the most colossal insolence I have ever encountered in a woman
not to mention a deaconess. Politeness and common courtesy, and above
all a mild disposition, are qualities that I demand and value more than
anything in such a person, but with S., one finds just the opposite. Modesty
is a feeling that probably has never been found in her . . ..
The doctor went on to add that she failed to show doctors due reverence
and even took it upon herself at times to change a doctors prescriptions
and instructions for patient treatment.83
In the Sjgren case, much of the problem appears to be discomfort over
having a woman asserting authority and even independence in a public
context. The doctors in question clearly would have been more comfort-
able with a nurse who conformed to the feminine ideal of modesty and
submissiveness. Sjgrens behavior was interpreted as an infringement
upon male terrain and a threat to male authority. Even so, it appears that
at least some if not much of the staff was also displeased with her job
performance and was all too ready to be rid of her.
80 Falkping Hospital to J.C. Bring, June , Ib (no. ), EDA.

81 Jnkping Hospital to J.C. Bring, March , Ib (no. ), EDA.
82 Nystrm (Sderkping Hospital) to J.C. Bring, October , Ib , EDA.
83 Schrder (mmeberg Hospital) to J.C. Bring, July , Ib (no. ), EDA.
health care
There is also evidence that doctors occasionally were not comfortable

with the evangelization carried out by deaconesses. In , a doctor at
the Norrkping Hospital wanted to prohibit a deaconess, Johanna Lund-
gren, from evangelizing to patients due to the angst one patient expe-
rienced concerning salvation after a conversation with her. Lundgren
felt that she could not in good conscience follow the doctors prohibi-
tion since she perceived evangelization as fundamental to her calling.
It is unclear how this matter was resolved.84 The extant correspondence
between hospitals and the institution does not contain many such com-
plaints. Most of the records indicate that hospitals were very appreciative
of the contributions made by deaconesses in their service.
F. Conclusion
The contributions made by deaconesses to health care and nursing in

the late nineteenth century pose two significant challenges to the the-
ory of functional differentiation. First, we encounter an example of a
religious organization playing an integral role in the development of a
modern secular profession. Deaconesses were the first nurses in mod-
ern Swedish history to receive both theoretical and practical training for
their occupation. This model of education would inspire similar training
programs in the late nineteenth century. In their roles as head nurses at
many hospitals, deaconesses shaped future generations of nurses. Dea-
conesses were also largely responsible for injecting the notion of divine
calling into the nursing profession, and this element would remain well
into the twentieth century. The evolution of the modern nursing profes-
sion is a story that cannot be told apart from the important contributions
made by the diaconate, and for this reason, theories of functional differ-
entiation that uniformly portray the birth of modern specialized profes-
sions as a separation of the religious from the secular must be reconsid-
ered.
Second, the diaconates involvement in health care is another example
of how functional differentiation created opportunities for deaconesses
to wield influence in the public sphere. Two significant developments
in the late nineteenth centurythe advances in medical knowledge and
the accompanying expansion of institutional health caregenerated a
84 SDSFU minutes, April , , AA (vol. ), EDA; Elmund, Det kvinnliga
diakonatet som kall, .

chapter four
greater demand for educated, specialized nursing professionals, partic-

ularly in the last quarter of the century. Since few institutions trained
nurses for much of the period, deaconesses were obvious candidates to
serve as nurses, even if there were not enough of them to meet this grow-
ing demand. The diaconate contributed to the demand for its services
because of the special attention it gave to health care for the poor and the
proficiency with which the sisters carried out their nursing duties, a pro-
ficiency noted by many of their employers. This demand reinforces the
argument that functional differentiation did not always have a seculariz-
ing effect in the nineteenth century.
chapter five
POOR RELIEF
The female diaconates growing involvement in health care in the s

was accompanied by increasing interest in poor relief. By the late s,
poor relief assignments outside the institution exceeded all others, al-
though, as it was demonstrated in the previous chapter, the boundary
between poor relief and health care was fluid. This is understandable
given the history of these social functions. In medieval and early mod-
ern Europe, health care and poor relief were two sides of the same coin.
Hospitals cared predominantly for the poor, while the sick were the most
likely candidates for poor relief, as they were more prone to falling into
destitution in an era before welfare states and health insurance. Health
care and poor relief continued to go hand-in-hand in the nineteenth
century. Discussing the two separately in the context of the diaconates
work is nevertheless possible because the deaconess institutions leader-
ship categorized these assignments under separate headings, and because
the common denominator in all poor relief work was the intended recip-
ients, the poor themselves.
The first two sections will survey the history of poor relief in early
modern and nineteenth-century Europe and Sweden, with particular
attention given to the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular wel-
fare. The remaining sections will analyze the diaconates contributions to
and participation in poor relief in the last quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury. I will argue that demand for the diaconates poor relief services was
not adversely affected by functional differentiation. Specialized munic-
ipal welfare boards assumed greater responsibility for poor relief in the
mid-nineteenth century, but these institutions were unable and at times
unwilling to meet the growing needs of those seeking assistance. The
increasing demands placed on poor relief boards due to famines, com-
bined with legislation that significantly limited the number of people
qualifying for government relief, opened the door for many charitable
and philanthropic organizations to partner with poor relief boards.
The diaconates increasing involvement in poor relief paralleled these
developments, and its services were very much in demand in the last
quarter of the century. Municipal poor relief boards, philanthropies, and
chapter five
parish councils all recruited deaconesses to serve as nurses and relief

workers in parishes. Municipal poor relief boards also employed dea-
conesses as nurses and relief workers in poorhouses and workhouses.
The poor themselves sought out parish deaconesses in order to obtain
nursing help for family members, to acquire household goods at dis-
counted prices, and to make a case for receiving cash or in-kind relief.
This demand demonstrates that deaconesses were beneficiaries and not
victims of functional differentiation.
A. Poor Relief in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Ecclesiastical institutions were the primary providers of poor relief in

medieval Europe. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the belief that
giving alms to the poor conferred sanctity and salvation to the giver had
taken root, and this contributed to the proliferation of charitable insti-
tutions and initiatives. Churches allocated anywhere from one-quarter
to one-third of their revenues to poor relief. Monasteries were impor-
tant providers of poor relief, collecting and distributing vast amounts of
alms on behalf of donors.1 Guilds and confraternities, functioning as reli-
gious and charitable associations, provided for disabled, sick, or destitute
members. Hospitals, under the management of monastic orders, func-
tioned as the main indoor relief institutions by housing the poor and the
sick.2
Increasing pauperism and the greater migration of beggars in the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries contributed to what some historians have
called the secularization of charity. But Carter Lindberg warns against
thinking of this process as the abandonment of the religious motives for
poor relief. Civil authorities certainly assumed greater responsibility for
the administration of charitable institutions and ecclesiastical resources
for the poor, but this was not a reflection of rivalry between church and
1 In the history of welfare provision, a distinction is made between outdoor and
indoor poor relief. The former involves providing money or in-kind assistance to the
poor outside of an institution, whereas the latter pertains to assistance given within an
institutional setting, such as a poorhouse or hospital.
2 Bronislaw Geremek, Poverty: A History, trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska (Oxford:
Blackwell, ), , , ; Carter Lindberg, Beyond Charity: Reformation Initiatives

for the Poor (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, ), , , ; Catharina Lis and
Hugo Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Sussex: The Harvester Press,
), .
poor relief
state but rather a sign of the latters growing awareness of the immense
social and economic problems created by the increase in begging.3 Reli-
gious institutions and professionals continued to participate in poor relief
in cooperation with government authorities.
Growing numbers of beggars and itinerant poor led local governments
to implement ordinances restricting begging. Greater efforts were made
to discriminate between those who truly needed charity and those who
had the capacity to earn a living by working. The idea that poverty could
have spiritual value, represented in the monastic life, persisted even in
the late Middle Ages, as did the giving of alms for salvific benefits, but
the restrictive legislation on begging in urban areas reflected the growing
belief that many beggars were lazy and disingenuous.4
A lively debate in recent decades has focused on the Reformations
role in sixteenth-century poor relief reforms. The traditional view dat-
ing from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries held that the
Reformation instigated many of the welfare reforms because of Protes-
tant challenges to the belief that salvation could be achieved through
good works, such as almsgiving. In Protestant regions, the rejection of
the salvific benefits of helping the poor led to the laicization and secu-
larization of poor relief, whereas Catholic regions continued to embrace
the medieval view of almsgiving and thus did not secularize poor relief
to the same degree.
Since the s, scholars have increasingly challenged this interpreta-
tion. Robert Jtte, a leading opponent, argues that Catholic and Protes-
tant communities shared much in common in poor relief reform, includ-
ing efforts to discriminate between those truly in need and those capable
of supporting themselves, attempts by theologians to encourage greater
government intervention, and the centralization of charitable funds into
a common box. These reforms, he adds, were inspired less by the Ref-
ormation and more by the social, demographic, and economic changes
of the late medieval and early modern periods.5
3 Lindberg, Beyond Charity, .

4 Geremek, Poverty, ; Lindberg, Beyond Charity, , , .
5 Robert Jtte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Eng.:
Cambridge University Press, ). See also Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance
Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State to (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell,
); and Natalie Z. Davis, Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy, in Society and Culture
in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ), .
chapter five
Some historians, led by Ole Peter Grell, continue to champion the tra-
ditional view that without the Reformation, the centralization and sec-
ularization of poor relief would not have taken place. Grell insists that
in Catholic regions, the emphasis on the salvific benefits of almsgiving
persisted much more than was the case in Protestant lands. In northern
Europe, on the other hand, the efforts of Protestant Reformers to under-
mine the medieval understanding of almsgiving contributed significantly
to more extensive poor relief reforms and the greater involvement of sec-
ular authorities in welfare.6
Despite differences in these two positions, most historians agree on
the following points. First, with a few exceptions, Catholic and Protestant
lands witnessed a marked increase in state participation and intervention
in both indoor and outdoor poor relief, and this trend antedates the reli-
gious upheavals of the early sixteenth century. This rise in state involve-
ment coincided with greater efforts to distinguish between the deserv-
ing poorthose who could not support themselves apart from assis-
tance (widows, orphans, the infirm, etc.)and the undeserving poor
those who had the capacity to work and yet still sought relief. Second,
poor relief was subject to greater bureaucratization and professionaliza-
tion in much of Europe as larger towns were divided into relief districts,
welfare officers were appointed, and the residents of charitable institu-
tions were more meticulously documented. Third, the centralization of
poor relief was much stronger in Protestant than in Catholic lands. Par-
ticularly in Spain and Italy, the state was much more reluctant to central-
ize poor relief, meaning that religious organizations such as confraterni-
ties continued to play a pivotal role. Finally, religious ideology influenced
poor relief provision. Welfare throughout Europe continued to be viewed
primarily as an act of Christian compassion, irrespective of which insti-
tutions were responsible for it.
Poor relief reform in early modern Sweden reflected many of the
patterns found elsewhere. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wit-
nessed increased efforts by the national government to centralize welfare.
Legislation was passed curtailing vagrancy and prohibiting the unde-
serving poor from receiving relief. Local parishes were admonished to
6 See Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Health Care and Poor Relief in
Protestant Europe, (New York: Routledge, ). Many of the contributors to

this volume share Grells views. For an overview of Grells position, see his essay The
Protestant Imperative of Christian Care and Neighbourly Love, .
poor relief
establish infirmaries and almshouses adjacent to parish churches for the

care of the sick and poor. The common box, a feature in Protestant
regions, was to be placed in every church porch to collect funds for poor
relief, and these funds were to be administered separately from other
church finances.7
Increasing state involvement and the bureaucratization and centraliza-
tion of poor relief in medieval and early modern Europe reveal that func-
tional differentiation in welfare was not new to the nineteenth century.
Care must be taken not to view this process as a separation of the reli-
gious from the secular. The secularization of poor relief in pre-modern
Europe reflected the efforts of both civil and ecclesiastical leaders to cre-
ate a Christian commonwealth. In overseeing poor relief, magistrates
were carrying out their Christian duty on behalf of society, and the clergy
actively encouraged this role for civil authorities.
It must also be emphasized that religious institutions and representa-
tives remained involved in the poor relief systems of Protestant regions.
The clergy held administrative positions in some charitable institutions
and participated in the election of lay administrators in many others. At
the parish level, the clergys personal knowledge of parishioners played
a role in who was deemed qualified to receive relief. Parish clergy also
exhorted the faithful to donate money to support indoor and outdoor
poor relief. In many Reformed regions, such as Holland, deacons had a
central role in poor relief provision, and in rural England, churchwar-
dens strongly influenced decisions concerning poor relief. In Sweden,
bishops and rural deans gave the deserving poor special passes that
enabled them to beg legally. Finally, common chests, typically located
in parish churches, meant that churches effectively functioned as welfare
offices.8
7 E.I. Kouri, Health Care and Poor Relief in Sweden and Finland, in Health Care
and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, .

8 L.A. Botelho, Old Age and the English Poor Law, (Rochester, NY: The
Boydell Press, ); Thomas Safley, Introduction, in The Reformation of Charity:

The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief, ed. Thomas Safley (Boston:
Brill Academic Publishers, ), ; Charles H. Parker, Calvinism and Poor Relief in
Reformation Holland, The Reformation of Charity, ; and Kouri, Health Care
and Poor Relief in Sweden and Finland, .
chapter five
B. Poor Relief Reform in Nineteenth-Century Sweden
Criticism of poor relief systems grew significantly toward the end of

the Enlightenment. Critics insisted that poor relief was contributing to
poverty because it encouraged the able-bodied poor toward idleness,
itself a precondition for moral decadence. The remedy for poverty was
putting the able-bodied poor to work. Enlightenment thinkers argued
that to the extent that welfare was provided, the state must do it more
efficiently and discriminatorily.9
Enlightenment criticisms of poor relief systems paved the way for
harsher attitudes and policies toward welfare in nineteenth-century Eur-
ope. Legislation such as the Poor Law in England reduced the states
burden in outdoor relief. The able-bodied poor were especially targeted,
making welfare assistance dependent upon their willingness to enter a
workhouse to earn relief. Indoor relief became a more preferable form of
assistance among government officials in many regions. In London, for
example, the percentage of paupers residing in workhouses, hospitals,
asylums, etc., increased from percent in to percent by the
s.10
Greater responsibility for outdoor relief fell to the growing number of
religious and secular philanthropies, though many of these organizations
worked in cooperation with government welfare. They adopted the view
that relief was best administered in a system that fostered more intimate
knowledge of potential welfare recipients in order to better discriminate
between the deserving and the undeserving. To accomplish this, vol-
unteers visited the poor in their homes, investigated their needs, pro-
vided them with moral instruction and support, and distributed money
or goods to those deemed in genuine need.11 These volunteers included
many middle-class women whose charitable work in the public sphere
9 Marco H.D. Van Leeuwen, The Logic of Charity: Amsterdam, , trans.
Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: St. Martins Press, ), ; Stuart Woolf, The Poor in
Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Methuen, ), ;
Geremek, Poverty, .
10 Lynn Hollen Lees, The Survival of the Unfit: Welfare Policies and Family Mainte-
nance in Nineteenth-Century London, in The Uses of Charity: The Poor on Relief in the
Nineteenth-Century Metropolis, Peter Mandler, ed. (Philadelphia: University of Philadel-
phia Press, ), .
11 Bernard Harris, The Origins of the British Welfare State: Society, State and Social
Welfare in England and Wales, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ), ;

Alan Kidd, State, Society and the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England (New York: St.
poor relief
was deemed acceptable in spite of an ideology of domesticity that

sought to confine women to the household sphere. This was because these
women focused on work that was viewed as an extension of their domes-
tic responsibilities, such as helping women and children and teaching
religious morals.12
The rise in the importance of charities was not a reflection of a decline
in the states authority over poor relief. National and local governments
continued to legislate and/or oversee welfare, but they did not want to
bear so much of the burden of poor relief, in part because nineteenth-
century liberal political thought encouraged policies of limited and re-
strained government.13 But in the growing number of philanthropies and
charities, governments found partners willing to shoulder some of the
load.
Poor relief reform in nineteenth-century Sweden reflected many of the
trends in Western Europe, such as increased governmental restrictions
on outdoor relief and the greater involvement of philanthropies. Many
of these developments occurred much later in Sweden than in countries
such as England. In fact, Swedens first significant poor relief legislation
in actually increased access to outdoor relief and the local govern-
ments responsibilities in welfare provision, and it was only in the s
that parliament restricted outdoor relief at the local level and embraced
a policy that depended more heavily on voluntary organizations.14
It has already been noted that in early modern Sweden, local parishes
had the primary responsibility for poor relief. The local institutions and
authorities, including parish assemblies, parish clergy, and provincial
governors, were given considerable latitude in how welfare was carried
out. Welfare was funded predominantly through voluntary donations
and church collections, and because these funds often were insufficient,
Martins Press, ), ; Peter Mandler, Poverty and Charity in the Nineteenth-

Century Metropolis: An Introduction, The Poor on Relief, ; Van Leeuwen, The Logic
of Charity, ; Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe, .
12 Rachel G. Fuchs and Virginia E. Thompson, Women in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ), .

13 Geremek notes that the difference between political liberalism in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries is that it encouraged limited government in the former and expanded
government in the latter. See Geremek, Poverty, .
14 Voluntary organizations were important partners in government poor relief before
the law. Ingrid berg notes that many womens associations worked closely with
municipal poor relief in the s and s. See Ingrid berg, Revivalism, Philan-
thropy and Emancipation. Womens Liberation and Organization in the Early Nineteenth
Century, Scandinavian Journal of History (): .
chapter five
begging was typically permitted. The Poor Law reflected parlia-

ments desire to create greater uniformity throughout the country in wel-
fare assistance in order better to meet the relief needs of growing seg-
ments of the population. The law spelled out the obligation of all parishes
and towns to provide relief for the poor. Begging was prohibited, the poor
could seek relief outside their home parish, and in locales where wel-
fare funds were insufficient to meet the need, a poor tax was instituted.
Reflecting ideas proposed a century earlier by Montesquieu, parliament
endorsed through this law the notion that the poor had a right to relief
and that the government had the duty to provide it.15
The law created a new set of specialized institutions, poor relief boards,
to bear the responsibility of welfare provision in towns and cities.16 In
addition to overseeing the affairs of local indoor relief institutions and
referring the able-bodied poor to them, these boards considered requests
for outdoor relief. If they denied relief to an applicant, the latter had the
right to appeal the decision to a county board. Some historians interpret
the creation of these boards as the end of church-based poor relief, but
as we have seen, the involvement of secular authorities in welfare had
characterized Sweden throughout the early modern period.17 The cre-
ation of these specialized institutions also did not preclude clergy from
taking part in them, and for some decades after the laws implementa-
tion, clergy were active participants in, and in some cases chairpersons
of, these boards. In many respects, the law reaffirmed the traditional reli-
gious justification for relief as an act of Christian compassion. Caution
is therefore in order when declaring that the Poor Law signaled the
beginnings of welfare as a purely secular/civil affair. Religious and secular
institutions and organizations continued to work together in poor relief
15 For discussions of the Poor Law, see Oloph Bexell, Sveriges kyrkohistoria .
Folkvckelsens och kyrkofrnyelsens tid (Stockholm: Verbum, ), ; Gunnel Elmund,
Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall. Johan Christoffer Brings syn p diakonissverksamhetens
uppgift och form (Skellefte: Artos & Norma bokfrlag, ), ; Gran Gellerstam,
Frn fattigvrd till frsamlingsvrd. Utvecklingslinjer inom fattigvrd och diakoni i Sverige
omkring (Lund, ), , ; Svante Jakobsson, Fattighushjonets vrld i
-talets Stockholm (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, ), ; Sverkar Oredsson,
Samhllelig eller enskild fattigvrd? En linje i debatten infr rs fattigvrdslagstift-
ning, Scandia (), .
16 In Stockholm, poor relief boards already were established in each territorial parish
in .
17 Gran Gellerstam notes that older church history literature in particular viewed the
Poor Law as the end of church-based poor relief. See Gellerstam, Frn fattigvrd till
frsamlingsvrd, .
poor relief
throughout the nineteenth century. But the Poor Law did represent
increasing functional differentiation in poor relief as specialized insti-
tutions assumed some of the responsibilities and authority that parish
assemblies and clergy had possessed in the early modern period.
The Poor Law generated little controversy after its implemen-
tation, but opposition to it increased significantly in the late s as
bad harvests and widespread famine generated huge demands on govern-
ment welfare. The number of welfare recipients peaked in , and the
tremendous strain on poor relief funds led to debates in parliament about
reforming the law. The result was the Poor Law. It restricted
obligatory relief to minors (under fifteen years of age), the aged, and
the infirm. Outdoor relief for the able-bodied unemployed was largely
abolished, and greater responsibility was placed on relatives to care for
their own. The right to appeal municipal poor relief decisions to a county
board was severely restricted.18
The Poor Law reflected the liberal belief in limited government.
Local municipalities were given considerable freedom to determine the
parameters of welfare provision. Poor relief reverted to more of a volun-
tary model with a greater reliance on private contributions and philan-
thropic organizations as a complement to government welfare. The coop-
eration between government authorities, religious organizations, and
secular philanthropies would strongly characterize poor relief in Sweden
until World War I.
Neither of the above-mentioned laws generated significant opposition
among the clergy. It was not until the early s that the issue of poor
relief received considerable attention in church circles. This interest was
generated by several developments in society, such as industrialization
and its effects on the poor, the growth of socialist movements and their
attempts to engage the social question, and the increase in free churches
and free church involvement in social issues.
The debates among prominent theologians and clergy centered on the
relationship between government and church-based poor relief. Some
clergy, such as Gottfrid Billing, were strongly critical of government poor
relief, insisting that it did not instill gratitude among welfare recipients.
18 Staffan Frhammar, Med knsla eller frnuft? Svensk debatt om filanropi
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ), ; Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet

som kall, ; Gellerstam, Frn fattigvrd till frsamlingsvrd, , ; Jakobsson, Fat-
tighushjonets vrld, , ; Oredsson, Samhllelig eller enskild fattigvrd? En linje i
debatten infr rs fattigvrdslagstiftning, Scandia (), .
chapter five
Billing argued that a church-based system, under the leadership of the

clergy and with the help of specially consecrated laypeople, was the only
real remedy to the deficiencies of government poor relief and the growing
threats posed by socialism. Other prominent clergy, such as S.L. Bring,
believed that government poor relief was a necessity, but in addition to
it, a church-based system should be implemented to address those needs
that municipal welfare was not obligated to meet.19 Bring shared with
Billing the belief that more formally organized church-based relief was
necessary because it alone could instill thankfulness among recipients
and remind them that welfare was an act of Christian compassion and
not a right. He differed from Billing in that he held a more positive view
of government relief and the ways it could complement a church-based
system.20
J.C. Bring was an active participant in these debates. He shared the
views of many other clergy that government poor relief could not address
the spiritual needs of the poor. Government relief was not firmly rooted
in an understanding of welfare as a voluntary act of Christian compas-
sion, one that was meant to invoke gratitude in the recipient. He did sup-
port the continued existence of government welfare since the needs of the
poor were so great, but more church involvement and Christian compas-
sion in poor relief were needed.
Understandably, Brings solution to the poor relief quandary was the
diaconate. He increased the deaconessates involvement in poor relief
considerably in the s and s, in part because he believed that the
female diaconate was in the best position to function as an intermediary
link (mellanlnk) between the rich and the poor. Deaconesses could
awaken Christian compassion among the rich so that they would be
more willing to share their possessions with the poor, and they could
distribute aid in a way that enabled the poor to experience gratitude for
what they were receiving. Bring believed this reconciliatory work was all
the more needed because misunderstandings and suspicions between the
19 Gottfrid Billing would eventually become a bishop, first in Vsters ()

and later in Lund (). Sven Libert Bring was a professor of practical theology at
Lund University in the late nineteenth century. He was also J.C. Brings brother.
20 Another important figure in this debate was Olof Holmstrm, professor of practical
theology at Lund University. He echoed many of S.L. Brings sentiments concerning

the need for a church-based poor relief to complement government welfare. See Olof
Holmstrm, Kyrklig fattigvrd. Ett praktiskt teologiskt inlgg i fattigvrdsfrgan (Lund,
). For a more in-depth discussion of the main positions and contributors in church
debates over poor relief at the end of the nineteenth century, see Elmund, Det kvinnliga
poor relief
rich and the poor had increased significantly, and the growing socialist
movements were aggravating instead of ameliorating these tensions.21
Debates in the Church of Sweden concerning the relationship between
church-based and government poor relief led to other attempts to in-
crease church involvement in welfare. One prominent effort was the
implementation of the Elberfeld system in some cities at the end of the
century. This was an amalgamation of municipal and church-based poor
relief inspired by a German program.22 Cities were divided into districts,
with overseers appointed to each district in order to visit poor families,
investigate their need for relief, and distribute aid to them if needed.
Church leaders actively endorsed and helped to implement this system
so that poor relief would be less bureaucratic and more personal. Church
donations also helped fund some of this relief. The system was utilized in
several prominent cities at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of
the twentieth centuries, including Malm, Lund, and Linkping. But the
difficulty of finding suitable overseers and the preexisting government
welfare infrastructure made this system untenable in the long run.23
A more lasting result of the debates was the creation of a male dia-
conate. Discussions concerning the establishment of a male diaconate
had already begun in the mid-nineteenth century, but the clergys grow-
ing concern over poor relief in the s made the issue more pressing.
In , Nils Lvgren, parish priest in Gvle and later bishop in Vsters,
established the Swedish Deacon Society (Svenska Diakonsllskapet). An
educational institution in Gvle was created that same year for the pur-
pose of educating deacons primarily for poor relief work.24
But for the period under consideration here, the clergys best hope
for the realization of church-based poor relief carried out in coopera-
tion with government welfare was the same as J.C. Bringsthe female
diaconate. A growing number of parish priests and councils sought to
employ parish deaconesses toward the end of the century, though they
were not the only interested employers. After the Poor Law, the
21 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; LHA , Diakonissans

kall, III b, EDA; Fredrag, Olivebladet (), . For an excellent discussion
of J.C. Brings views on poor relief and the social question as expressed in his articles,
sermons, and public addresses, see Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, .
22 The Elberfeld system originated in Elberfeld, present-day Wuppertal, in the s.
23 Thorsten Levenstam, Kyrklig diakoni och samhllets sociala omsorgsarbete, omkring
omkring (lvsj: Skeab Verbum, ), . For an overview of the Elber-

feld system in nineteenth-century Germany, see Young-Sun Hong, Welfare, Modernity,
and the Weimar State, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), .
24 Levenstam, Kyrklig diakoni, , .
chapter five
municipal poor relief boards were in greater need of help from chari-
table and voluntary organizations, and it became increasingly clear to
them that deaconesses were well qualified for work among the urban
poor and sick. The leadership of the deaconess institution took notice
of this demand from the civil and ecclesiastical spheres, and by the late
s, poor relief had become the primary focus of diaconal work out-
side the institution.
C. Indoor Relief
Unlike education and health care, poor relief was not, strictly speak-
ing, an internal division within the deaconess institution in Stockholm,
even though Stockholmers sometimes mistook the institution for a poor-
house.25 Probationary sisters could not train for poor relief work at the
institution in the same way as for teaching and nursing. Nevertheless,
the leadership maintained that probationary sisters got plenty of experi-
ence working with the poor through other internal divisions, such as the
school for poor children or the Magdalene Home.26
Poorhouses were the most common type of indoor relief stations
adopted by the diaconate, though sisters were also assigned to work-
houses and poor farms.27 Poorhouses provided shelter to many kinds
of paupers, including the mentally ill, the chronically ill, the elderly,
orphans, single women who had just given birth, etc. Some poorhouses
also housed those capable of work who had fallen on hard times, though
workhouses were also established for this purpose. Able-bodied pau-
pers might enter a poorhouse or workhouse voluntarily or as a punish-

26 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , . Those in need of outdoor relief
also visited the deaconess institution regularly. Their visits eventually became so common
that the leadership assigned a sister to work as a parish deaconess at the institution
beginning in . Meddelanden frn Diakonissanstalten, Olivebladet (), .
27 Categorizing indoor poor relief assignments is challenging because the annual
reports list deaconesses working in the hospital divisions of poor relief institutions under
the heading of health care. For example, in the annual report, seven sisters are
listed as assigned to poor relief institutions, but this number does not include the three
sisters working in the hospital divisions of indoor relief institutions. SDSFU rsberttelse
, Olivebladet (), , . I have chosen to follow the institutions catego-
rization largely because deaconesses assigned to hospital divisions worked almost exclu-
sively as nurses, whereas the other sisters carried out a variety of other duties in addition
to nursing.
poor relief
ment from the municipal authorities for not repaying outdoor relief. Poor
farms were indoor relief institutions in rural areas at which the poor were
given food and lodging in return for working on a farm or helping with
the household at the institution. Incidentally, all of these relief institu-
tions were under the supervision of the local poor relief boards in the
late nineteenth century.
The first indoor relief station was a poorhouse in Falkping adopted
in the early s.28 The number of deaconesses stationed at indoor
institutions gradually increased in the ensuing decades, but this sphere of
work was never particularly large when compared to outdoor relief work.
In , three deaconesses were assigned to indoor relief institutions.
This number doubled by , rising to eleven in .29 By comparison,
fifty-five sisters worked in outdoor relief as parish deaconesses in .30
A periodical article from described the instructions that the
administrators of one poorhouse gave to its deaconess. It noted that this
job description was typical of other poorhouse assignments. Many of
these instructions reflected prevailing gender norms and expectations
regarding the proper activities of a woman within the domestic sphere.
The deaconess was to serve as a model of morality among all of the pau-
pers, leading them in daily prayers and working to instill the fear of
God in them. She was to have particular oversight of the children and
female residents. If the children were unable to attend the parishs local
elementary school, she was to take charge of their education. She was
also to perform general household tasks for all of the residents, such as
mending clothes. Finally, she was to care for the sick, enlisting the help of
other female residents known for their morality in this task.31 Because
all of these duties would have been considered appropriate feminine
tasks, the deaconess protected herself from potential objections concern-
ing the public nature of her work, particularly at an institution that many
church leaders would have considered tainted with moral decay and
where interaction with men was unavoidable.32

29 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olive-
bladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (),.
31 Hwad gra diakonissorna?, Olivebladet (), .
32 J.C. Bring shared the views of many other church leaders that poorhouses were dark
points and prone to moral decay, though he hoped that deaconesses could brighten
them by tending to the spiritual needs of the residents. Huru skall kyrkan bst tillgodose
de andliga behofwen hos de lekamliga ndstlda?, Olivebladet (), .
chapter five
Few deaconess letters from the s onward have been preserved,

meaning that little is known about what the sisters thought about their
work at poorhouses. Some letters from the administrators of relief insti-
tutions show that deaconesses occasionally were overwhelmed by the
work and the number of paupers for whom they had charge. Otherwise,
these letters do not indicate whether the sisters found their work in poor
relief institutions rewarding or frustrating.
What the letters and deaconess publications do reveal is that there was
some demand for deaconesses among indoor relief institutions, even if
this demand was not as strong as in the areas of nursing or outdoor
poor relief. In the letters, one commonly encounters pleas by these
institutions not to reassign a deaconess or, if this cannot be avoided, to
send a replacement as soon as possible. The quarterly and annual reports
periodically note that requests from poor relief institutions cannot be
adequately met due to a lack of deaconesses.
Several reasons account for this demand. The first one has already
been mentionedgender. As women, deaconesses would have been con-
sidered by poor relief authorities as particularly qualified for caring for
women and children. Another reason pertains to the nursing skills of
deaconesses. Because most poor relief institutions contained residents
in need of medical care, prospective employers appreciated the fact that
deaconesses were trained nurses. In fact, many contracts with indoor
relief institutions stress the need for a deaconess capable of tending to
the poor sick, even though her duties were typically not limited to this.
Finally, administrators and municipal poor relief boards were very much
pleased with the job performance of deaconesses at indoor institutions.
The letters preserved from these authorities on the whole attest to how
successful deaconesses were in gaining the trust and confidence of the
poor relief boards as well as the administrators, doctors, staff, and resi-
dents of these institutions.33
D. Outdoor Relief
The deaconess institutions leadership directed much more energy and

effort to placing sisters in outdoor relief stations. One likely reason is
that the Poor Law opened up a greater need among municipal
33 See, for example, rebro Workhouse Board to DAS, April , Ic , EDA;
Lund Poor Relief Board to J.C. Bring, September , Ic , EDA.

poor relief
poor relief boards for voluntary assistance in outdoor relief than was
the case for indoor relief. This is understandable, since one of the main
purposes of the law was to limit the responsibility of these government
boards in outdoor relief. A second reason is Brings conviction that the
most appropriate form of female diaconal work was that of outdoor
poor relief carried out on behalf of the local congregation. He noted
that the early church instituted the office of deaconess in order to serve
the local congregation through helping the poor. It was unfortunate, he
maintained, that the contemporary deaconessate was not connected to
the local congregation as it had been in the early church. For this reason,
he devoted much of his energy to re-creating this early church model
by forging closer ties with urban churches, coordinating with them in
instituting parish deaconess positions.34 Brings hope was that parish
deaconesses would be hired on the initiative of parish clergy and councils,
though ultimately many of the employers would be municipal poor relief
boards. Even so, Bring insisted that all parish deaconesses were servants
of the local congregation and were to think of themselves as assistants to
the parish priest in their work.35
The diaconates growing interest in parish deaconess work in the s
is understandable given the greater demand in society for poor relief
due to the famines of the late s and the increased opportunities
for voluntary assistance to government relief boards after the Poor
Law. Even before these developments, Bring had proposed the idea of
assigning sisters as parish deaconesses. He first publicized this plan
in an article in which he argued that deaconesses could be of
tremendous help at the parish level in visiting the sick. He noted that
many clergy had difficulty visiting the sick due to their other duties.
Deaconesses could help the clergy with their pastoral care responsi-
bilities among the sick while also putting their nursing skills to use.
In cases where there were not enough sick to visit, deaconesses could
help local poor relief boards by visiting the poor, gathering information
about their needs, and administering government relief to them when
needed.36
That same year, the deaconess institution adopted its first parish dea-
coness station in Stockholms Adolf Fredrik parish. The contract was
34 Ngot som, enligt skriften, kan anbefalla diakonissverksamheten, Olivebladet
(), ; Diakonissans kall, Olivebladet (), .

35 Elmund, Det kvinnliga diakonatet som kall, .
36 Jag var sjuk och I skten mig, Olivebladet (), .
chapter five
established with a womens philanthropic society that had already em-

ployed a deaconess for several years as the director of its nursery. The
society requested that this same deaconess be hired to visit the poor in
their homes, provide basic health care to the sick, and find alternative
living arrangements for neglected children.37 It is noteworthy that it was
a private philanthropic organization that first hired a parish deaconess.
At the time, parish councils were legally prohibited from contracting the
services of a deaconess directly, and for this reason any parish wanting
to hire one had to work through an independent organization.38 This
organization would also be responsible for funding the position and pro-
viding for the deaconesss immediate needs, such as food and lodging.
Private organizations continued to hire deaconesses based on the prece-
dent established in the Adolf Fredrik parish. Municipal poor relief boards
joined private organizations as the most common employers of parish
deaconesses by the s, while a change in the law by this time also
opened the way for parish councils to contract directly with the institu-
tion for the services of deaconesses.
The famines of the late s and the corresponding need for outdoor
poor relief in society did stimulate greater interest among the institutions
leadership for expanding its work in this area, but the growth in parish
deaconess stations was still modest in the s. From assigning five
sisters to parish deaconess stations at the beginning of the decade, the
institution had only nine sisters serving in this capacity in . But
after , this number would increase dramatically. In , there were
twenty-one parish deaconesses. This number rose to forty-two a decade
later and was at fifty-five by .39 By the end of the century, parish poor
relief was the largest area of work outside the institution.40 Every parish
in Stockholm employed at least one parish deaconess, as did most other
urban parishes.

38 Yngve Iverson, Tro verksam i krlek. En bok om Ersta (Stockholm: Verbum, ),
.
39 SDSFU Berttelse och redovisning , ; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olive-
bladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU

rsberttelse , Olivebladet (), ; SDSFU rsberttelse , Olive-
bladet (), .
40 Parish deaconess work was the fastest-growing area outside the institution for most
of the last two decades, but it was only in that the number of assignments in this area
exceeded the number assigned to external health care stations. See SDSFU rsberttelse
, Olivebladet (), .
poor relief
A wealth of information concerning the duties of parish deaconesses

exists, even though few letters from them have been preserved. Bring
published several lengthy articles detailing the range of work and respon-
sibilities of these sisters. On occasion, he solicited first-hand accounts
from parish deaconesses for publication. As a result, we probably know
more about the life and work of parish deaconesses than sisters assigned
to any other station, internal or external.
One of the most significant responsibilities of parish deaconesses was
providing outdoor poor relief. Because municipal poor relief boards,
philanthropies, the clergy, and the institutions leadership agreed that
relief should be given in a discriminatory fashion and to those truly in
need (i.e., the deserving poor), a parish deaconess distributed nothing
without first determining the real needs of the poor. She devoted much
time to visiting the poor in their domiciles and holding daily office
hours in her living quarters so that the poor could visit her and tell her
their needs. It was not uncommon for so many potential relief recipients
to visit a parish deaconess that she did not have time to meet with all of
them.41
Much of the relief distributed by a parish deaconess was in-kind. She
received money from the parish councils, municipal poor relief boards,
or private philanthropies, and she had considerable freedom concerning
how this money was spent. She frequently bought and distributed basic
provisions to poor families, such as bread, milk, potatoes, and wood. On
occasion, she gave money directly to poor families on behalf of poor relief
boards or private charities, though Bring discouraged relief in this form
unless it was deemed absolutely necessary.42
Brings suspicion of distributing money directly to the poor reflected
a principle held by many poor relief organizations, public or private, in
the nineteenth centuryhelp to self-help. If the poor were to rise above
their destitution, they must acquire and utilize knowledge and skills that
enabled them to support themselves. On the other hand, providing them
with no-strings-attached money or excessive amounts of in-kind relief
or charity encouraged them to rely too much on others and thus inspired
41 En frsamlingsdiakonissas werksamhet i en af hufwudstadens frsamlingar, Olive-
bladet (), ; Hwad gra diakonissorna?, Olivebladet (), .

bladet (), ; Ur ett julbref, Olivebladet (), . Some parish dea-

conesses in Stockholm directed mission houses (missionshyddor) in which meals were
provided to hundreds of poor visitors on a weekly basis. Ett drag ur arbetet fr Stock-
holms fattiga, Olivebladet (), .
chapter five
them to idleness and laziness.43 Not surprisingly, some of the outdoor

relief that parish deaconesses gave to the poor was a reflection of this
principle. In particular, parish deaconesses often sponsored weekly or
semimonthly sewing circles for poor and working-class mothers and
housewives. The deaconesses helped these women by enabling them
to buy materials at a very low price, while the women engaged in self-
help by doing the actual sewing. The finished garments were sometimes
intended for the families of these women, while at other times they
were given to poor children in the community displaced from their
homes. In some cases, the women sold these garments to supplement
the family income.44 These sewing circles provided poor women with the
opportunity to receive in-kind relief or money, but from the diaconates
perspective, what was important was that these women were earning
this assistance by relying on their own skills and industriousness.
A second responsibility of most parish deaconesses was providing
nursing care and health care consultations for the poor. Much of this
work centered on visiting the poor sick in their homes and evaluating
their health care needs. She determined whether they could be cared for
in their homes by a local doctor, or whether their condition warranted
admission to a local hospital. In the latter case, she would work with
the district doctor and hospital to arrange for treatment. In addition
to making referrals, a parish deaconess functioned as a social worker.
For example, if the patient in question was a mother with children, it
fell to the deaconess to make childcare arrangements while the mother
underwent medical treatment.45
A third responsibility was evangelization. This duty was not one im-
posed by municipal poor relief boards but rather was embraced by the
diaconate as an integral part of its calling. Bring maintained that this
task was made possible by the first two responsibilities, for if you have
won the trust of the poor . . . so that they understand that you wish them
well, then you can attempt to awaken in them the hunger for the bread of
43 Till frsamlingsdiakonissorna!, Olivebladet (), ; Elmund, Det kvinnliga

bladet (), ; Hwad en frsamlingsdiakonissa utrttar, Olivebladet (),

.
bladet (), ; Hwad gra diakonissorna?, Olivebladet (), ; Hwad en

frsamlingsdiakonissa utrttar, Olivebladet (), , .
poor relief
life and show them the way to Him who says: I am the Bread of Life .46
The parish deaconess was to encourage the poor to read the Bible and
to attend church. If the family in question did not have a Bible or other
devotional book, she was to arrange for this literature to be placed in
the home. Beyond such encouragement, the deaconess was to serve as
a spiritual leader to the poor, teaching Sunday School, reading from the
Bible or other spiritual work at sewing circles, personally testifying to
Christs salvific work, and arranging for clergy to give Bible lessons and
sermons at gatherings for the poor.47
This emphasis on evangelization undoubtedly gave a parish deacon-
esss work a religious quality that was either much less prominent or alto-
gether lacking in the outdoor relief work conducted by poor relief board
officials and secular philanthropies. What is less clear is what the poor
thought of these evangelization efforts. Periodical articles and autobio-
graphical accounts say little about whether relief recipients embraced or
rejected this proselytizing.
These duties were accompanied by a host of other responsibilities,
including providing moral support and at times alternative living ar-
rangements for girls whose homes were plagued with drunkenness or
sexual immorality, teaching young girls to sew, and making sure that
children attended school regularly. What connected many of these tasks
was their domestic nature. Parish deaconesses functioned as stand-in
mothers for children whose mothers were too sick to care for them. They
served as female role models for young girls at risk of becoming fallen
women. They helped poor housewives to better provide for their families
by encouraging them to make use of their domestic skills. By focusing
on these and other feminine tasks, parish deaconesses reinforced their
connection to the domestic sphere and their fidelity to the Lutheran
construction of gender, thereby circumventing potential objections to
their public work. In fact, their gender came to be viewed by some
prominent clergy as a tremendous asset in church-based poor relief,
since doors were opened for them, particularly among poor women and
children, that were largely closed to men.48
46 Till frsamlingsdiakonissorna!, Olivebladet (), .

bladet (), ; Till frsamlingsdiakonissorna!, Olivebladet (), ; Hwad
en frsamlingsdiakonissa utrttar, Olivebladet (), .
48 For advocates of a male diaconate, this principle could be inverted in that dea-
conesses were unable to intervene with lost or strayed young men in the same way as
chapter five
The periodical articles provide us with considerable information con-

cerning the typical duties of parish deaconesses, but they shed only a little
light on how the sisters experienced their work and whether they found
it fulfilling. It is clear that the work could be overwhelming, as sisters
often were so occupied with visits to and from the poor that they had lit-
tle time for anything else. Certain times of year were more stressful than
others. Deaconesses stationed at mission houses in Stockholm witnessed
a significant increase during the winter in the number of people visiting
them to receive meals.49 The weeks leading up to Christmas could be par-
ticularly taxing. One parish deaconess in Stockholm wrote how busy she
became during this time due to the increasing number of people applying
for municipal poor relief, the amount of money and in-kind relief to be
distributed, and the amount of sewing she had to do for poor children.
She noted that distributing relief to poor families was itself a monumental
task, as she often visited fifty to sixty families per day.50
The overwhelming nature of the work reflected the considerable de-
mand among the poor for the assistance of parish deaconesses, and this
demand was shared by employers. The annual reports repeatedly noted
by the mid-s that requests for deaconesses to work among the urban
sick and poor outnumbered all others.51 While the leadership devoted
more energy to fulfilling these requests than any others, it still could
not keep up with demand. The fact that [t]he demand far exceeds the
supply, as the parish priest in Gvle, Nils Lvgren, noted, meant that
some prospective employers had to make repeated requests before a
parish deaconess was assigned.52 Others pleaded with the institution not
to reassign their parish deaconess, noting how difficult it was to replace
a sister who had become so familiar with the families and conditions in
their particular locale. Still others found that one parish deaconess did
not suffice, and they requested that additional sisters be assigned, even
though they were aware of the supply limitations.
Explanations for this demand vary depending on which group was
seeking the assistance of deaconesses. Poor relief applicants sought out
deaconesses and conveyed their needs to them because the sisters were
deacons. See David Granqwist, Om behofwet af diakoner i wra store stadsfrsamlingar

och drmed sammanhngande frgor, Olivebladet (), .
49 Ett drag ur arbetet fr Stockholms fattiga, Olivebladet (), .
50 Ur ett julbref, Olivebladet (), .
52 Nils Lvgren, Diakonissors anstllande fr kyrklig krlekswerksamhet, Olive-
bladet (), .
poor relief
in some cases their primary link to the municipal poor relief boards. In
other words, many applicants viewed deaconesses as their spokespersons
before government welfare organizations, and they wanted to influence
the sisters to advocate on their behalf. Deaconesses were also granted
funds by poor relief boards and private charities to use as they best saw
fit, and for this reason, the poor visited parish deaconesses, at times in
overwhelming numbers, in order to convince them to use these resources
on their behalf. Finally, attending a gathering hosted by a deaconess, such
as a sewing circle, gave poor mothers and housewives access to clothing
and materials at a discounted price, and these women took advantage
of this opportunity to help provide for their families. Parish deaconesses
were clearly important resources to many poor families in their struggles
to make ends meet.
The famines of the late s and the Poor Law created demand
among many municipal poor relief boards for assistance in outdoor relief,
and the diaconate eventually became an important resource for them.
The drive to conduct outdoor relief more efficiently in light of greater
demand for relief and limited government resources meant that these
boards needed individuals to provide them with information concerning
the real needs of the poor. The boards valued the time and energy
deaconesses devoted to visiting with the poor for this purpose. Given
the growing concerns of many municipalities with public health and the
connection between disease and poverty in the late nineteenth century,
poor relief boards also appreciated the nursing skills of deaconesses and
often asked specifically that the sisters provide care for the poor and the
sick. With deaconesses, poor relief boards got two services for the price
of one.
Debates over the social question from the s onward and the rise
of socialist movements generated significant interest in church circles
regarding a church-based poor relief to complement government welfare.
For most of the last two decades, the best option for organized Christian
(i.e., Lutheran) involvement in poor relief was the female diaconate, and
growing numbers of parish clergy, particularly in urban areas, requested
the services of parish deaconesses. Church officials viewed the religious
characteristics and convictions of deaconesses as particularly attractive
features, though gender was also considered a significant asset, as the
sisters could focus their work particularly on poor women and children.
A reason for high demand that holds true for all employers was sat-
isfaction with deaconess job performance. Some employers repeatedly
articulated their appreciation for how well deaconesses related to the
chapter five
poor and familiarized themselves with the conditions and needs of the
parish. Vxj parish expressed disappointment that Sister Natalie Fern-
strm was to be reassigned, noting that she has a good way with the
poor and sick and that her knowledge of the people and the housing
situation would be difficult to replace.53 Others were appreciative of the
energy and zeal demonstrated by the sisters. The Hedvig Elenora poor
relief board in Stockholm wrote to Albertina Claesson that [y]ou have
with unreserved energy and zeal devoted your energies to serving society
and . . . to easing the burdens of those in need.54 Most of the preserved
letters reflect sentiments similar to these. The few complaints made in the
correspondence were typically mild and focused mostly on the inability
of a deaconess to carry out her duties due either to poor health or to the
overwhelming amount of responsibilities in her work. But even in some
of these cases, her efforts were praised.
E. Conclusion
Functional differentiation in welfare did not first arise in the nineteenth

century, but this process did increase as a result of poor relief legisla-
tion in . Specialized poor relief boards were created in municipal-
ities to carry out welfare functions that had been overseen in part by
parish clergy and councils for much of the early modern period. When
the Poor Law limited the obligations of these boards to provide out-
door relief, a growing number of voluntary philanthropies and charities
partnered with government welfare to focus on helping the poor.
The female diaconates participation in poor relief came at a time
of increasing functional differentiation, but deaconesses were far from
marginal in welfare provision. This was particularly true of outdoor relief,
and by the end of the century, the demand for deaconesses outside the
institution in this area was higher than in any other. Parish deaconesses
served as links between poor families and municipal welfare authorities.
Welfare applicants depended on the sisters to advocate on their behalf
before poor relief boards, while municipal poor relief boards relied on
them for information concerning the needs and conditions of the poor
53 Vxj Parish to J.C. Bring, September , II , EDA; Vxj Parish to
J.C. Bring, October , II , EDA.

54 Hedvig Elenora Poor Relief Board to Albertina Claesson, September , II
, EDA.
poor relief
and for distributing money and in-kind relief. Parish deaconesses also
referred the poor sick to hospitals and arranged for childcare in homes
when the mother was unable to look after the children. The sisters car-
ried out these and many other duties as religious professionals, evange-
lizing to the poor and partnering with parish clergy in pastoral care. The
diaconates contributions in poor relief offer clear evidence of how some
religious organizations not only survived but flourished as providers of
essential social functions in a context of increased functional differenti-
ation.
chapter six
THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SWEDISH DEACONESSES
Secularization theories often presuppose that religion is the victim of

inevitable modernizing forces. Science, technology, industrialization, ur-
banization, and functional differentiation constitute a teleological pro-
cess whose end result is the marginalization of religion in the modern
world. Growing numbers of historians and sociologists are countering
these theories, insisting that religion has been and continues to be a
resilient force in the face of modernity. These critics point to high lev-
els of church participation and religious beliefs in the United States or
the Global South as proof of this resilience. Some even argue that while
religious participation in Western Europe does not match trends in the
rest of the world, religious beliefs still persist, even if they no longer fit
neatly in traditional orthodox categories.
The problem with these critiques is that they are largely limited to
beliefs and practices and fail to address adequately the public role of reli-
gion. Religious historians of modern Europe generally take it for granted
that the growing number of specialized, secular institutions in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries stripped religious institutions of most of
their societal functions and relegated their influence to a more private
realm. What I am arguing is that even this aspect of the secularization
thesis needs serious qualification. One outcome of functional differen-
tiation in modern European history was secularization, but this was not
the only outcome. The nineteenth century was the age of associations and
philanthropies, and some of these organizations took advantage of the
opportunities generated by functional differentiation and became them-
selves specialized providers of essential social services. In the case of reli-
gious organizations and associations, some were more successful than
others, but the larger point is that it was functional differentiation that
gave these organizations their raison dtre.
The female diaconate in Sweden is an excellent example of a nine-
teenth-century religious organization that was largely successful in its
efforts to specialize in three significant social functions: education, health
care, and poor relief. This does not mean that the deaconess movement
was an unequivocal success story. The diaconate did struggle to keep up
the social significance of swedish deaconesses
with demand through recruitment. Its work in education was also short-
lived, and deaconesses had less of an impact on teaching than on the fields
of health care and poor relief. But the diaconate was a religious organiza-
tion whose services were in high demand throughout the late nineteenth
century. Since the secularization thesis claims that modernity and mod-
ernization inevitably lead to a decline in the demand for religion, the fact
that deaconesses were in such demand at the very least raises questions
about whether the thesis is too narrow in its understanding of the effects
of modernity on religion.
What accounted for this demand for deaconesses? One important fac-
tor is the very government reform efforts that led to increased functional
differentiation. While nineteenth-century legislation created more spe-
cialized institutions and professionals to carry out government-spon-
sored education and welfare, it also generated much greater demand for
these services in society. The new specialized institutions and profession-
als either could not or would not meet this demand on their own, and this
opened the door for religious organizations such as the female diaconate
to find a niche in providing these services.
In education, the Elementary School Law marked the first at-
tempt at compulsory public schooling. This legislation stipulated that
all parishes had to establish a school and hire a certified teacher. The
law stimulated increased functional differentiation, but it also created
a huge demand for teachers and schools that the teaching colleges and
parishes could not meet for several decades. This led provincial schools
to hire teachers who had not been educated at teaching colleges, and dea-
conesses were among those who worked in this capacity. The deaconess
institutions school for poor children in Stockholm also served a need
for many poor families in the Katrina parish who had difficulty finding
schooling for their children, and the schools enrollment was consistently
so high that children had to be turned away.
Even though J.C. Bring began withdrawing the diaconate from ele-
mentary education in the s, his decision was not due to a lack of
demand for deaconesses as teachers. The main reason he gave for the
decision was the growing number of certified teachers and the inability of
deaconesses in the long run to compete with these specialized profession-
als educated. Functional differentiation did influence Brings decision to
abandon teaching, but it must be stressed that he made this decision while
demand appeared to be at its highest. A far more important factor driving
his decision was his desire to pattern the diaconate on the early church
model of diaconal work through a focus on health care and poor relief.
chapter six
In the area of poor relief, the Poor Law created specialized insti-
tutions at the local level known as poor relief boards to oversee and carry
out welfare. With this legislation, towns and parishes were now obligated
to provide outdoor relief under specified conditions, and the demand for
government welfare increased as a result. This demand grew even more
in the late s due to famines that swept the country. But poor relief
boards were unable and increasingly unwilling to meet the growing need
for welfare. The strain on government resources led to the Poor Law.
This law curtailed the obligations of poor relief boards to provide outdoor
relief in an effort to relieve the strain on government resources. Welfare
reverted to more of a voluntary model in which government agencies
cooperated with private philanthropies and religious organizations in
poor relief provision. Poor relief boards were in need of greater assistance
in the closing decades of the century, and they looked to deaconesses to
help them carry out poor relief more efficiently and to improve public
health by evaluating the needs of the poor sick. The nineteenth-century
poor laws represent another example of legislation leading to increased
functional differentiation and opportunities for religious professionals
such as deaconesses to wield influence in the public sphere.
A second factor explaining deaconess demand pertains to the pro-
fessionalization and medicalization of health care. The nineteenth cen-
tury witnessed new advances in medical knowledge and a rapid expan-
sion in health care institutions in which the focus was on curing the sick
instead of caring for the sick poor. These developments created greater
demand for specialized health care professionals. Physicians became the
focal point of the emerging health care system, but the need for educated
nurses to assist them grew considerably. The Swedish Deaconess Institu-
tion was the first to provide specialized nursing education to meet this
need for professional health care assistants. The institution served as one
of the most important nursing schools in this period, and deaconesses
were particularly sought after by health care officials to oversee nursing
staffs, nursing education, and hygiene in the growing number of hospi-
tals.
A third factor is the overall employer satisfaction with job perfor-
mance. The surviving correspondence between employers and the dea-
coness institution reveals high levels of appreciation and admiration for
the ways that deaconesses conducted their work. The fact that so many
of these letters included requests for contract renewals and pleas for the
institution not to reassign sisters indicates how much employers valued
deaconesses.
A fourth reason is the diaconates focus on serving the poor, a group

whose education, health care, and/or welfare needs were not always ade-
quately met or addressed by other institutions. The deaconess school for
poor children in Stockholm provided children from poor and working-
class backgrounds with an education at a time in which there was still a
limited number of schools. The deaconess hospital instituted free beds
and raised money for free funds in order to cover the expenses of those
unable to afford medical treatment. The institutions polyclinic also pro-
vided free outpatient health care to large numbers of poor and working-
class individuals. Parish deaconesses served as important links between
welfare applicants and government welfare boards. Deaconesses were
clearly providers of essential social functions to many poor people who
were struggling to survive and to find a place in a rapidly changing soci-
ety.
Another basis for deaconess demand involves the diaconates religious
profile. The vocation of a deaconess was first and foremost a religious one.
Conversion experiences were prerequisites for admission to the institu-
tion, and the concept of a calling was integral to the identity of a dea-
coness. In all three areas I have considered, deaconesses conducted their
work in an overt religious manner. They proselytized and prayed with
students, patients, and the poor. They led Sunday School in parishes and
taught the Bible and the Lutheran confessions to children. Some employ-
ers hired deaconesses because the sisters incorporated these religious
tasks into their teaching, nursing, or poor relief work. This was partic-
ularly true of religious organizations that ran provincial schools or char-
itable relief work, though there is evidence that even secular institutions,
such as some municipal poor relief boards, valued this aspect of the dia-
conates work.
A final important element explaining demand pertains to gender. I
have devoted significant attention to how the diaconate sought to address
and overcome gender-based objections to its activities in the public
sphere by interpreting, organizing, and conducting its work so as to
reconcile it with the Lutheran construction of gender. Their success at
doing this was in many ways the necessary precondition for gaining
access to the public sphere and for being in a position to be in demand
by employers. The diaconate organized itself in accordance with the
motherhouse system in order to reinforce the sisters connection to a
respectable household. Deaconesses also carried out feminine tasks,
including arranging childcare for children of sick parents and teaching
sewing skills to girls, in order to present their work as domestic work. On
chapter six
the whole, the diaconate succeeded in reconciling its public work with the
understanding of a womans calling to the household sphere. Particularly
in church circles, potential objections to the diaconates work were largely
alleviated, and the door was open for deaconesses to compete with other
specialized institutions and professionals.
I have argued that gender was not only an obstacle to be overcome;
some employers considered it a valuable asset. Leading sewing circles
for poor housewives and mothers, serving as role models for girls in
danger of becoming fallen women, teaching household skills to girls in
elementary schoolsemployers hired deaconesses to carry out these and
similar tasks because this was understood as womens work. Men would
not have been considered qualified to perform these responsibilities, nor
would they have been able to work in close proximity with women and
young girls in the same way as deaconesses.
This overall demand for deaconesses clearly demonstrates that they
were not at the mercy of impersonal, secularizing forces. The female
diaconate took charge of its own destiny and found ways to become and
remain competitive in a context of increasing functional differentiation.
It utilized its strengths in appealing to prospective employers, it took
advantage of opportunities created by political or social developments,
and it found niches in the public sphere not adequately covered by other
institutions.
The story of the nineteenth-century deaconess movement was there-
fore largely a success story. But did this success last? Was the twentieth-
century diaconate as adept in adapting to functional differentiation? Or
did functional differentiation take its toll on the diaconate in the long run
through the rise of the modern welfare state and the states wide security
net that sought to cover the social needs of all citizens?
Functional differentiation did cause more significant problems for the
diaconate in the twentieth century than was the case in the nineteenth,
but these problems arose primarily in the postwar era. In the first three
decades of the century, the diaconate continued to expand its sphere of
work and influence. A larger deaconess hospital was built in Stockholm,
an affiliate deaconess institution was opened in the Norrland province,
and pioneering work among the blind and epileptics was inaugurated.
The diaconate increased its involvement in health care and poor relief,
and it expanded its social work among prostitutes and troubled youth.
Significant challenges to diaconal work, female and male, began with
the rise of the Social Democrats and the development of the modern
Swedish welfare state in the decades following World War II. For many
leaders in the Social Democratic Party, the diaconate represented the old
class society that they believed to be a thing of the past. The party increas-
ingly criticized the participation of religious organizations in nursing
and social work and argued that such work was best carried out under
government auspices. Some government officials came to the defense
of diaconal participation in areas such as welfare, but gone was the
much broader support that deaconesses had received from government
institutions in the nineteenth century. Functional differentiation at last
appeared to be taking its toll as deaconesses found their work in social
services, poor relief, and health care increasingly regulated and in some
cases taken over by the welfare state.
Social Democratic attempts to push religious organizations out of
these areas created uncertainty within the diaconate concerning its role
in a welfare society, but it managed nonetheless to maintain its involve-
ment in health care and social work. It also modernized its structure and
operations to make deaconesses more competitive in the professional
marketplace. In the s, the deaconess institution ended its practices of
assigning deaconesses to work stations. The sisters were allowed to enter
into employment on their own initiative and on terms agreed upon with
employers. The institution also abolished the motherhouse system and
lifted its restrictions on marriage. These and other measures made dia-
conal work more attractive, and by the s, applications for admission
rose and even exceeded available slots.
Today, the Ersta Diaconate Society, the successor of the Swedish Dea-
coness Society, continues the work of its nineteenth-century predeces-
sors. Ersta Skndal University College, comprising approximately ,
students, provides education in the areas of nursing and health care,
social work, and church-related disciplines such as theology and church
music. Ersta Hospital continues to work in cooperation with the Stock-
holm municipal government as a major health care provider. The dia-
conate also operates shelters for abused women and girls, a treatment
facility for homeless persons with somatic and psychological illnesses, a
nursing home, and a home for persons suffering from dementia.
Even in a country with one of the worlds most extensive welfare
systems, religious organizations such as the diaconate continue to find
ways to perform essential social functions. This is not to minimize the
impact of the welfare state on the diaconate in the last fifty years. The
diaconates involvement in some areas, most prominently in welfare, has
largely disappeared. But the diaconate still provides important services
in the fields of health care and social work, and it does so in cooperation
chapter six
with a variety of civil and ecclesiastical organizations. The welfare state

has not eliminated religions public role altogether, even if some Social
Democrats in the mid-twentieth century hoped this would happen. In
the face of the supposedly inevitable, secularizing forces of modernity,
the diaconates story has been and continues to be one of adaptation,
resilience, and survival.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary SourcesUnpublished
Ersta Diaconate Societys Archives

Minutes (A)
Administrative Board Minutes (AA)
Outgoing Correspondence (B)
J.C. Brings Circular Letters (B )
Application Documents for Deaconess Education (E Va)
Documents Arranged by Subject (F)
Documents Concerning Erstas History (FX)
Marie Cedershilds Diary (FX)
Miscellaneous Documents ()
Preserved Deaconess Documents ( III b)
Louise Heimbrgers Notes ( III b)
Hiring Contracts ()
Institutions ( I)
Childcare ( Ia)
Health Care ( Ib)
Social Care ( Ic)
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INDEX
Agnestad School, and the Deaconess School for

mmeberg Hospital, , , Poor Children, controversy
concerning, , ,
Andersson, sa, , , , Kaiserswerths deaconess
Andersson, Maria, institution, work at,
strm, Anna, celibacy, ,
Chalmers, Thomas,
baptism, , Charlemagne,
Baptists, , churching,
Berger, Peter, , Claesson, Albertina,
Billing, Gottfrid, Clarin, Maria, ,
Bring, Johan Christoffer (J.C.), , Cox, Jeffrey, , , ,
, , , , , ,
, , , , , , , Danish-German War of ,
Daughters of Charity,
views concerning Davie, Grace,
calling of a deaconess, , deacon. See Swedish Deacon Society
, , Deaconess School for Poor
Catholic female religious Children (Stockholm), ,
orders, , , , , , , ,
church-based poor relief, , , , ,
, Durkheim, milie,
deaconess participation in
non-Lutheran communities, Eckerstrm, Clara, , ,
Ehrenborg, Betty,
marriage, elderly home,
teaching, diaconal involvement Elberfeld system. See poor relief,
in, , , , Elberfeld system
Bring, Sven Libert (S.L.), , Elementary School Law of , ,
Brown, Callum, , , , , ,
Bruce, Steve, , , ,
Bugenhagen, Johannes, Elmblad, Emilia, , ,
Elmblad, Per Magnus, ,
Carlheim-Gyllenskjld, Oscar, , Elmund, Gunnel, , ,
, , Ersta Diaconate Society. See Swedish
Casanova, Jos, , , Deaconess Society
Castelli, Alma, Ersta Hospital, , ,
Catholicism, , , , , , Ersta Skndal University College,
n.
See also Saint Elizabeth Sisters Eskelhem School,
Cederschild, Marie, , , , Eucharist,
, , ,
index
Falkping Hospital, , Ketscher, Augusta,

Febe (Phoebe), , , Khlbck School, ,
Fehr, Fredrik, Kselman, Thomas, , ,
Finke, Roger,
Fjellstedt, Peter, ,
Fliedner, Friederike, Lambert, Yves,
Fliedner, Karoline, , Lancastrian schools, ,
Fliedner, Theodor, , , , Larsson, Karna, ,
free beds (frisnger), , , Larsson, Olle,
French Revolution, Lind, Jenny,
Fry, Elizabeth, Lindberg, Carter,
functional differentiation literacy,
definition of, Ljungberg, Charlotte,
funeral, Lnegren, Ernst, ,
Lvgren, Nils, ,
Gvle Nursing Home, Louis XIV,
Gelfgren, Stefan, Lundgren, Anna,
General Conference (of deaconess Lundgren, Johanna,
motherhouses), Luther, Martin, , ,
Gksholm School, ,
Grell, Ole Peter, Magnusson, Johanna, ,
Gustafsson, Emma, Malm Childrens Hospital,
Gustav Vasa, King of Sweden,
Gustavsson, Anders, Maria Hospital,
marriage,
Hammar, Inger, Markkola, Pirjo, , ,
Heimbrger, Louise, , Martling, Carl Henrik, ,
Hjerner, Emma,
Holmblad, Sofia, , McLeod, Hugh, , , , ,
Holmdahl, Barbara, ,
house examinations (husfrhr), Methodists,
household school, , , motherhouse system
overview of,
inquirer stage,
Iannaccone, Laurence R., Nahlavi School,
Inner Mission, , , , , Napoleonic wars, ,
Iverson, Yngve, neo-evangelical revivalism, ,
, , ,
Jansdotter, Anna, , Nightingale, Florence,
Jnkping Hospital, , Nobel family,
Jnsdotter, Carin, Norrkping Hospital, , ,
Jonsson, Johanna,
Jtte, Robert, nursing
and health care in early modern
Kaiserswerth Europe,
deaconess institution, , , and health care in early modern
, , , Sweden,
index
deaconess assignments poorhouses. See poor relief,

Danish-German War of , deaconess assignments, indoor
relief.
Ersta Hospital, , , poor farms. See poor relief, dea-
coness assignments, indoor relief.
hospitals outside the institu- poor relief
tion, deaconess assignments
number of external work indoor relief stations, ,
stations, (Table )
nursing home, number of external work
polyclinic, , stations, (Table )
private homes, outdoor relief stations, ,
education in nineteenth-century
Sweden, , Elberfeld system,
at the Swedish Deaconess in medieval and early modern
Institution, , , Europe,
, , , in medieval and early modern
See also Red Cross School of Sweden,
Nursing, The; Sophia Home, law of , , , ,
The.
nursing home, , , law of , , , ,
, , ,
berg, Hilda, , reform in nineteenth-century
Olivebladet (The Olive Leaf), , , Sweden,
, , , , probationary stage,
rebro Hospital,
rnskldsvik School, Rappe, Emmy,
orphanages, , , , , rational choice theory,
Oscar II, King of Sweden, Roman Catholicism. See Catholi-
sterker School, cism; Saint Elizabeth Sisters
stling, Johanna, recruitment of deaconesses, ,
outpatient clinic. See polyclinic
Owen, Robert, Red Cross School of Nursing, The,
, ,
parish deaconesses. See also poor Reformation, The, , , , ,
relief, deaconess assignments,
outdoor relief. retention of deaconesses, ,
responsibilities of, , ,
Roper, Lyndal,
Paulsson, Olivia, Rosenius, C.O., ,
Persson, Margaret, Ruether, Rosemary Radford,
Petersen, Emilie,
Petersen, Johan, Sabbatsberg Hospital, , ,
Petersson, Kjell,
Petri, Olaus, Sahlgrensk Hospital,
Pettersson, Edla, Saint Elizabeth Sisters, , n.
polyclinic, , , , ,
index
Sanders, Hanne, , Swedish Deaconess Society, ,

Salton, Emma, , , , , , ,
Salvation Army, ,
secularization Swedish Mission Covenanters,
definition of, Svensson, Maria,
theory or thesis (overview),
Seraphim Hospital, Toll, Emelie,
Sethlin, Mimmi, Torpelund School, ,
Sieveking, Amalie,
Sisters of Charity, uniforms,
Sjgren, Sophie, Uppsala Akademiska Hospital,
Sjnnebol School,
Social Democrats, , Vse School,
Society for the Preparation vicarious religion,
of a Deaconess Institution Viken School,
in Stockholm. See Swedish
Deaconess Society Wallin, Charlotta,
Sderkping Hospital, Weber, Max,
Sommerville, C.J., , Westerberg, Mathilda, ,
Sophia Home, The, , , , Wichern, Johannes, , ,
Wiman, Carin,
Sophia, Queen of Sweden, , Wilson, Bryan, , ,
Stark, Rodney, Woodhead, Linda,
Stockholm Public Care Institution, workhouses. See poor relief,
deaconess assignments, indoor
supply-side theory, see rational relief.
choice theory World War II,
Svensson, Johanna,
Swedish Deacon Society, Zetterstrm, Ebba,

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Responding to Secularization

Studies in the History of

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Chapter One. The Secularization Debate: An Introduction to the

Chapter Two. The Female Diaconate in Nineteenth-Century

Chapter Three. Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Chapter Four. Health Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Chapter Five. Poor Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Chapter Six. The Social Significance Of Swedish Deaconesses .. . . . . 166

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who

to life than research. My wife, Tabita, gave me so much support while I

THE SECULARIZATION DEBATE:

Religious historians and sociologists of religion have participated in a

will subsequently address the relationship between gender and religion

1 In certain regions of Europe, historians who study secularization do not emphasize

logical claim that functional differentiation necessarily leads to secular-

Because the concept of secularization has multiple dimensions, and be-

4 Yves Lambert, New Christianity, Indifference and Diffused Spirituality, in The

found in Hugh McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, (New York: St.

In recent decades, scholars have attempted to delineate more clearly

7 Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, ; Rethinking Secularization: A

Global Comparative Perspective, The Hedgehog Review (), .

B. The Secularization Debate in Sociology

Decline or Religious Change? Making Sense of Secularization in Europe, Religion Com-

Tracy B. Strong (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company), .

would continue to be pushed to the margins of the social order as more

religion to a more private realm. To the extent that religion survives, it

Western Europe in general, as unchurched as opposed to secular; that

19 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since : Believing Without Belonging (Oxford:

home and/or low-paid domestic labour and piecework, resulting in the

C. The Secularization Debate in

Historians of religion in modern Europe have followed these sociological

23 Linda Woodhead, Gendering Secularization Theory, Social Compass (),

Chapel and Social Change, (London: Longman, ); Stephen Yeo, Religion

modern Europe have become as skeptical of the thesis as many of their

26 Thomas Kselman, The Varieties of Religious Experience in Urban France, in

28 McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, .

Callum Brown does not stress the importance of pluralism as do Ksel-

accept the reality of secularization in modern European history, though

D. The Secularization Debate in Swedish Religious History

Few Swedish historians have been deeply influenced by the revisionist

32 Brown, The secularisation decade, Decline of Christendom, .

The pioneer of modern historical studies of secularization in Sweden,

hlft (Lund: Gleerups, ); Kyrkosed och sekularisering (Stockholm: Sveriges Kristliga

Martlings work inspired similar studies in the ensuing decades.

(Lund: CWK Gleerup, ).

approach to religion is thus a necessary precondition for a secularized

40 Hanne Sanders, Bondevkkelse og sekularisering. En protestantisk folkelig kultur i

Danmark og Sverige (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, ). For earlier

talets Stockholm (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ).

Ironically, the Church of Sweden encouraged this development and

42 Larsson, Biskopen visiterar. Den kyrkliga verhetens mte med lokalsamhllet

(Vxj: Vxj Stiftshistoria Sllskap, ).

lands-Stiftelsen (Skellefte: Artos & Norma, ).

process, which is why many of them view the secularization process as

E. The Place of the Present Work in Secularization Scholarship

This work falls into the category of Anglo-American scholarship that is

pluralism/competition and secularization on the societal and institu-

shortage of potential providers in a given location, or because some of

45 For example, see Bruce, God is Dead, .

I do not deny that a connection exists between lower supplies of reli-