Mike Krasulski’s Facebook page, “History of the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia,” recently made me wince. That was a visceral response to posted materials on Philadelphia’s All Souls’ Church for the Deaf that was eventually sold; its congregants joined the hard of hearing for worship in several places, including St. Stephen’s. I winced at this familiar fate because of the early importance of the Deaf to this Diocese—and to St. Stephen’s.

For the Deaf, in turn, the Diocese and St. Stephen’s are heroes. Together with the Episcopal Church, they are long-acclaimed pioneers in the ministry to the Deaf, closely linked to the first institutional care and education for the Deaf in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Two of its leaders, now honored on the Episcopal Calendar (August 27), appear prominently and repeatedly at St. Stephen’s: Rev. Thomas Gallaudet, son of a co-founder of the first American school for the Deaf in Hartford, Conn., and one of its first teachers; and Rev. Henry Winter Syle, an outstanding early graduate (deafened in childhood) and ceaseless advocate literally to the death.

All were also the American vanguard in promoting sign language over oralism, the sounded alternative, intended to mainstream the Deaf, which dominated most of the twentieth century.

This surge, historians argue, formed part of two broader movements: the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, seeking social progress for all, and the second Great [religious] Awakening of the early nineteenth century, seeking salvation for all.

Episcopal advocacy of the Deaf began with Rev. Gallaudet’s founding of St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf in 1852. One of his first efforts to expand Deaf worship took place at Philadelphia’s St. Stephen’s, where he celebrated Pennsylvania’s first service in American Sign Language [ASL] in 1859, officially on March 4 but possibly on February 19. I hope someday to know why St. Stephen’s.

St. Stephen’s then hosted Henry Winter Syle’s ordination as deacon in October 1876: he thus became the first Deaf clergyman in the United States. This controversial event culminated in a compelling sermon by the Bishop of Pennsylvania, The Right Rev. William Bacon Stevens, on sign language as legitimate speech, officially affirming Syle’s credentials to celebrate the Word and sacraments, in rebuttal of objections to a disabled priest.

Rev. Syle’s ordination immediately opened the way for other American Deaf clergy. Reiterated in the Bishop’s address to that year’s Diocesan Conference, Bishop Stevens’ sermon for Rev. Syle’s ordination at St. Stephen’s remains a touchstone in Deaf history and sign language.

Why controversial? It’s hard to imagine the cultural consequences of deafness in Europe or America. What’s most familiar is the assumption that someone who is unable to hear or speak lacks intelligence (hence the corollary use of “dumb” as stupid). Over centuries, the Deaf born to privilege were painstakingly coached in speech and lip-reading in order to legally inherit family titles and property.

The implications of deafness and muteness for Christians were especially fraught. Many well into the nineteenth century doubted that the Deaf even had souls. If you couldn’t hear or speak (IF you were granted the possibility of a soul!), you were considered incapable of receiving or transmitting the Word of God, the Gospel. Many Anglo-American Protestant denominations and sects identified the ear as the sensory link between God and the soul, through the Gospel, readings, sermons, hymns, leading to the “auditory” sacred space to optimize hearing and speaking the Word.

Damned on several levels, the Deaf born in modest circumstances were often neglected or abandoned. The Abbé de l’Epée, the groundbreaking eighteenth-century French educator of the Deaf and codifier of French sign language, aimed, in part, to make salvation possible for them.

Protection of Philadelphia’s Deaf reportedly began by gathering precisely these neglected Deaf on the streets, leading to the foundation in 1820 of a nonsectarian private institution, with state funding for the poor (and modest tuition for the more fortunate), by a diverse group: a Jewish crockery merchant who first lodged deaf children (David Seixas); a Jewish woman intellectual, civic leader, and philanthropist (Rebecca Gratz); and the Episcopal Bishop William White, who recruited the venerable American Philosophical Society which had sponsored studies of the modern Deaf.

With Bishop White as its first president and unflagging advocate until he died (1834), the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb evolved into today’s Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD) on W. School House Lane in Philadelphia. Worth noting that the PSD celebrates its Bicentennial next year!

Alternatively, there are early accounts of American Deaf leading rich lives among the hearing. One of the most famous describes an old community on Martha’s Vineyard with so many residents with hereditary deafness that the hearing became “bilingual,” signing among themselves long after their deaf neighbors had died out.

This many-sided history made me wonder about the Deaf who responded to the early Episcopal advocates and services at St. Stephen’s. Who came to the first service in ASL in 1859 and why? Accounts regularly cite about fifty in attendance without naming any or any link to the church (or anywhere else). What happened at St. Stephen’s in the thirty years between the 1859 service and All Souls’ establishment as a congregation in the mid-1880s? That’s three decades, more than one generation. . . .

Stay tuned for some finds in the archives in Part II!

—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s parish historian and curator