Vida Scudder was involved in social change inside and outside of the Episcopal Church.

Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, known as Francis of Assisi, was an Italian mystic, poet, and Catholic friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. Inspired to lead a Christian life of poverty, he became a beggar and itinerant preacher.

Anna Ellison Butler Alexander (1865-1947) was born to recently emancipated slaves on Butler Plantation in MacIntosh County, Georgia. She was the first (and only) African-American set aside as a deaconess in the Episcopal Church in 1907. She founded Good Shepherd Church in a rural Georgia community where she taught children to read in a one-room schoolhouse. The school was later expanded to two rooms with a loft where Anna lived. She ministered in Georgia for 53 years, leaving a legacy of love and devotion still felt in Glynn County. Deaconess Alexander served in difficult times, however. The diocese segregated her congregations in 1907 and African-American congregations were not invited to another diocesan convention until 1947. Similarly, it was only in the 1950s that a woman set aside as a deaconess was recognized as being in deacon’s orders. However, her witness— wearing the distinctive dress of a deaconess, traveling by foot from Brunswick through Darien to Pennick, showing care and love for all whom she met—represents the best in Christian witness.

You can read more about Deaconess Alexander at the Diocese of Georgia’s website.

Hildegard of Bingen is a Doctor of the Church. She was also a writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, and German Benedictine abbess.

Hildegard quickly became recognized for her immense knowledge of all things faithful, music and natural science, with knowledge of herbs and medicinal arts, despite never having any formal education and not knowing how to write. Much of her insight is believed to have been communicated by God himself through her frequent visions. At first, Hildegard did not want to make her visions public, but she would confide in her spiritual director. He passed on the knowledge to his abbot, who decided to assign a monk to document everything Hildegard saw.

You can read a great article about Hildegard at the New Yorker.

Alexander Crummell settled in Washington, D.C. in 1873 and became “missionary at large to the colored people.” He focused on founding and strengthening urban black congregations that would provide worship, education, and social services for their communities. In 1883 when the Southern Bishops proposed that all black congregations become separate missionary districts, Crummell organized the Conference of Church Workers Among the Colored People (succeeded by the Union of Black Episcopalians) in protest.

You can read more about Father Crummell at the Archives of the Episcopal Church.