The Role of Training Schools for American Methodist Deaconesses in Overseas Mission
In her novel, A Little Leaven: A Missionary Story, Elizabeth Holding, a Methodist deaconess educator, traces the idyllic story of three young, carefree, well-to-do American women, Helen, Delle, and Kate who, by the end of the story, take up Christian work; two even become missionaries. This transformation occurs through their becoming acquainted with the Methodist deaconess movement, particularly Lucy Rider Meyer and the training school she founded in Chicago. Despite the highly stylized novel complete with a happy-ever-after ending, it nonetheless underscores this paper’s central argument that the deaconess training school became the pivotal place of preparation for American Methodist women heading to the foreign mission field in the late nineteenth century.
This paper will focus on the three historical figures introduced in Holding’s novel – Lucy Rider Meyer, Isabella Thoburn, and James Thoburn. Lucy Rider Meyer founded the Chicago Training School, the flagship institution for women pursuing theological and practical education in the US in the late nineteenth century. Bishop Thoburn, along with his sister, Isabella, herself a deaconess missionary, were Methodist missionary royalty. They were champions for the Methodist deaconess movement and for single women receiving an education for the mission field at a deaconess training school.
Priscilla Pope-Levison is Research Professor of Practical Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas.
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This page was last updated on 14 March 2025
