A Historical past of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity
Advancing the Anglo-Catholic Motion within the Episcopal Church
By Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook
Pickwick Publications, 279 pages, $35
The non secular orders of the Episcopal Church are few and much between, and therefore not well-known to Episcopalians. There have been solely three book-length research of a girls’s order: Sister Mary Hilary’s Ten A long time of Reward, in regards to the Neighborhood of St. Mary, and Valerie Bonham’s pair, Residing Stones and The Second Spring, in regards to the Neighborhood of St. John Baptist.
They now have a worthy companion on this well-researched historical past of one other essential order. The writer is professor of Anglican Research at Bloy Home within the Diocese of Los Angeles, historiographer of the Episcopal Church, and editor of Anglican & Episcopal Historical past.
The Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity was based in 1882 by Charles Chapman Grafton and Mom Ruth Margaret (Vose). The convent was in Boston, the place Grafton was rector of the Church of the Introduction. It moved to St. Stephen’s, Windfall, in 1888, the identical yr that Grafton grew to become Bishop of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The order quickly started work in that metropolis, transferring the motherhouse there in 1905, the place it remained till a small remnant withdrew to close by Inexperienced Lake in 2001 and to Ripon in 2014. I keep in mind visiting the previous convent within the late Fifties and noticing a eating set with the six wives of Henry VIII carved into the chairbacks.
Kujawa-Holbrook locations the order firmly throughout the custom of the Catholic motion within the Church of England and America, starting with the Oxford Motion of the early nineteenth century. The context of earlier orders, notably the Sisters of St. Margaret, is absolutely defined. The “Holy Nats,” as they have been typically referred to as, emphasised parish work, primarily academic and pastoral, but in addition with outreach to the neighborhood. Along with the successive places of their motherhouse, they labored in lots of different locations, from New York Metropolis to Los Angeles. Additionally they labored on school campuses and had a number of retreat facilities, notably one in Santa Barbara (now occupied by the Holy Cross brothers).
The richness of element can not obtain justice in a short overview. Of particular curiosity is the sisters’ work with the Oneida folks, instructed with historic background from colonial occasions. Additionally of curiosity was the sisters’ prayers for the Allies in each World Wars, even earlier than American participation.
Along with work exterior the convent, work inside included the making of vestments, communion wafers, and printed materials of a devotional and academic nature. There was additionally emphasis on the non secular lifetime of the sisters and their many associates. As soon as the biggest girls’s order within the Episcopal Church, it skilled the identical declining numbers as many different orders, particularly for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, and solely two members remained on the time of writing.
A beneficiant provision of pictures displays the order as a fellowship of girls and never simply an establishment. There is no such thing as a index, however copious footnotes, a number of appendices, and a bibliography segregated by kind of fabric make the work full. The e book units a excessive customary for later histories to stay as much as.
The Rev. Lawrence N. Crumb is vicar of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Cottage Grove, Oregon, and has written e book opinions for TLC since 1980.
