Biography
Basilea Schlink was born Klara Schlink on October 21, 1904, in Darmstadt, Germany. She grew up in a comfortable home as the daughter of a university professor, and she was raised in the Lutheran church. She was a bright young woman, and she studied at the universities of Marburg and Berlin. She came to a living faith in her late teens and began to give herself to the service of God.
In the early 1930s, she joined the Bible circle movement and worked with young women in Darmstadt, teaching them the Scriptures. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, she became part of the Confessing Church, which stood against the attempts of the regime to bring the church under its control. She and her friends spoke out for the truth, and some of them paid a price. During the war years, she gathered a small group of women who prayed and worked together. In September 1944, Darmstadt was devastated by an Allied bombing raid, and most of the city was destroyed. Thousands died. Her own home was ruined.
The disaster turned her heart. She and her friends came to see the ruin of their city as a call to repent. They began to pray, not only for themselves, but for the whole German people, for the sins that had been committed in the name of the nation. They felt a heavy burden for the horrors of the Nazi years and particularly for the suffering of the Jewish people. In 1947 they formed the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a community of women who lived together in prayer and in service. They took the name from Mary of Bethany, who sat at the feet of Jesus.
The sisters built a house of prayer in Darmstadt, which they called Canaan. It was built partly by the labor of the women themselves, from the rubble of the bombed city. There they lived a life of daily worship and repentance. They also set up ministries to help the poor and refugees. The sisterhood has grown, and it has established houses in many countries, including in Israel, where it has worked to build bridges between Christians and Jews. They have also been active in caring for those who suffer.
She wrote over a hundred books, and many have been translated into many languages. Her works include Repentance: The Joy-Filled Life, My All for Him and Realities. They call the believer to a life of surrender, of honest repentance and of love for Jesus. She wrote that repentance is not a gloomy thing, but a door to joy. She also wrote about the final days and the return of Christ, and her writings are marked by a deep concern for the lost.
Some of her views were controversial, and her teaching on the end times and on spiritual warfare was questioned by some. She was also known for the high standard of discipline she asked of the sisters, a standard that some found hard to bear. She was open about her own weakness and failures and often spoke of her need for forgiveness.
She died on March 21, 2001, at the age of ninety-six. Her work continues in the sisterhood and in the lives of those she touched. Her life shows how a time of terrible loss can lead a believer to seek God with a whole heart, and how repentance may become the beginning of a new life of service.