William Passavant

William Alfred Passavant ( born October 9, 1821 in Zelienople ( Butler County, Pennsylvania); † June 3, 1894 in Zelienople ) was a Lutheran clergyman who it was known that he brought the diaconal movement in the United States. The Sacred Calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America remembers on 24 November alongside Justus Falckner and Jehu Jones at him. The Episcopal Church of the United States of America has set up a feast for him on January 3.

Life

William Alfred Passavant was born in Zelienople (Pennsylvania), the youngest son of Philipp Ludwig and Fredericka Wilhelmina Basse Passavant. His mother, known under the name Zelie Passavant, was the daughter of the entrepreneur Detmar Basse. Basse, a former diplomat who traveled one in 1802 from Frankfurt and founded the town of Zelienople. The house where William Passavant was born being held today in the National Register of Historic Places as Passavant House. He married Eliza, born Walter. In 1856, he became the father of Charles Sidney Passavant. William Alfred Passavant was buried in the graveyard of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Zelienople.

Passavant attended Jefferson College and later the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, to prepare for a clerical career. Although he was initially attracted to the then recent practices of Lutheranism, he was returned later by the theologian Charles Porterfield Krauth to a more conservative model.

William Passavant began his ministry in Baltimore (Maryland) in 1842. He published the first Lutheran Almanac and The Missionary, who came up in 1845 in 1861 in The Lutheran of Philadelphia, for which he served as co-editor for many years. Dr. Passavant was pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Baden (Pennsylvania) from 1858 to 1879, so for 21 years.

William Passavant dedicated his life especially the establishment and administration of charities. His merit was to bring the first deaconess in the United States. During a trip to Germany he came into contact with Pastor Theodor Fliedner, who had founded as the founder of modern Diakonia, a hospital and a deaconess school in Kaiserwerth. On Passavants request, Fliedner brought in 1849 four German deaconesses to Pittsburgh, who would work at the local hospital ( the Passavant Hospital today).

The Thiel College, an independent institution, which is connected with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was founded following a meeting between Rev. Dr. William A. Passavant and A. Louis Thiel in 1866. At the meeting of the Pittsburgh Synod in Greensburg (Pennsylvania) in 1869, it was decided that the Thiel Hall should be converted into a college for the western Pennsylvania. Officially, the Thiel College was then established on 1 September 1870.

Passavant founded many more missions, hospitals, orphanages, colleges and seminars throughout the country. Many of the institutions founded by him were subsequently merged alongside others in the Lutheran Services in America, the largest Church's social program in the United States.

List of Passavant organized institutions (selection)

  • Orphanage and school of agriculture in Zelienople ( Pennsylvania) ( today Glade Run Lutheran Services)
  • Passavant Epilepsy Home in Rochester (Pennsylvania) (now Passavant Memorial Homes)
  • Passavant Hospital in Pittsburgh ( Pennsylvania) (now UPMC Passavant Hospital)
  • Passavant Hospital in Chicago ( Illinois) (now Passavant Memorial Hospital )
  • Passavant Hospital in Jacksonville ( Illinois) (now Passavant Area Hospital )
  • Passavant Hospital in Milwaukee (Wisconsin ) (now Aurora Sinai Medical Center, the former hospital building is now in the National Register of Historic Places ) *
  • Wartburg Orphans ' Farm School in Mount Vernon (New York) (now The Wartburg Adult Care Community )
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