Conrad Beissel (1691-1768) was the founding leader of a monastic group of dissident Christians in Ephrata. The cloister he set up in this remote location at one point held 80 celibate followers, both men and women. His final home, featured here, was a much larger space than many of Ephrata’s members, and yet it still embraced the sparseness valued by this group.
Beissel was born in German-speaking European lands, in an area that had been the epicenter of religious warfare, dispute, fanaticism, and breakaway sects of Christianity. Rejecting Catholicism and Lutheranism, Beissel took influences from a myriad of denominations, such as the Pietists, Anabaptists, and mystics. Beissel moved to Philadelphia on a religious quest, hoping to connect with a notorious hermit named Kelpius whose writings he followed. Sadly, the hermit was no longer there, but Beissel made his way to Ephrata to start his own group of holy people.
His take on Christianity was that God had a masculine side that was strong and vengeful (expressed in the Christian Old Testament), and a feminine side (he called this Sophia) of mercy. He believed humans could unite both in a holy spiritual union, but this would mean they would have to abandon this-worldly marriages. Beissel taught that the Second Coming of Jesus was at hand, and so the folks at Ephrata awaited the event eagerly — they actually awoke at midnight because they took literally the Biblical phrase “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (Thessalonians 5:2). They didn’t bother staining their wooden buildings because they didn’t expect to be in them for long, what with the Second Coming and all.
Like many of the celibate communities of the post-Protestant Reformation, Ephrata’s members dwindled and eventually died out.
