Kappa Phi History
Kappa Phi began as a women’s Sunday School class in a Methodist Church in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1915. Mrs. Gordon B. (Harriet) Thompson, the wife of the Wesley Foundation pastor, was the teacher of this group of freshmen women who would become the core of a new organization. The following year, in 1916, the group grew, and welcomed any Methodist woman attending the University of Kansas, and The Kappa Phi Club was born.
Harriet Thompson, reminiscing about the founding of the new organization, once wrote that, after a year of “praises and prayers, laughs and disappointments, tears, thrills, depression, and sometimes just plain plodding without a glimmer of inspiration…came the Ritual, the Constitution, some established precedents, a Hymn, and an organization.” Her husband spread word of the group to other campus ministers, and in 1917, women at the University of Iowa petitioned to organize a chapter on their campus. Thus, the chapter in Lawrence became known as Alpha chapter, and Beta chapter was established at the University of Iowa.
In less than a year, Gamma Chapter at Iowa State University joined the first two, and the first national meeting, known as the Council of Chapters, was held. This meeting is now held every two years in locations across the country.
Since those humble beginnings, Kappa Phi has stretched from Pennsylvania to Washington state, and from Minnesota to south Texas. One of the goals of the group has always been to prepare women to be leaders in the church, and Kappa Phi women have served as missionaries in places like China, Japan, India, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Many other sisters have served and continue to serve as ministers, deaconesses, Christian educators, and in other forms of service at home and abroad.