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Hoosier United Methodist News Archives
| Hoosier United Methodists together |
January 2006 |
Church marks 50th anniversary of women's ordination
By Catherine Koziatek
This marks the beginning of a year-long series of articles to be written by clergy women of the North Indiana Conference in celebration of the 50th anniversary of full clergy rights for women. Articles will include information about the courageous women who cleared the path for us and the pioneering women who were ordained in our own conference. We also will include information about women currently in track one as Commissioned Elders. Stories will include: a few women missionaries, senior and associate pastors, local pastors, deacons, chaplains, evangelists, women district superintendents and bishops and will end with a focus of women students who feel called to full-time ministry in the UMC.
In the footsteps of …
Much has been written about Susanna Wesley and her influence. She became the major precursor of the early Methodist women preachers.
The small groups that formed the Methodist Society became the training ground for the first women preachers. Even though they were not allowed to preach, they became class leaders, lead prayer time and exhorted those in attendance to follow the ways of Christ. As time went on, the line between exhorting and preaching became increasingly fine.
Women, such as Alice Cross, who introduced Methodism to Booth-Bank, Cheshire, in 1744 and Sarah Crosby (b. 1729), honored as Methodism's first woman preacher authorized by John Wesley, built the foundation of their subsequent ministry upon these early class experiences. Crosby later met and formed a deep friendship with another tireless worker for God - Mary Bosanquet Fletcher (b. 1739.)
From the beginning, there were struggles and discrimination. Some, such as Mary Stokes, a trusted leader at Bristol - described as one of the greatest and most influential of the women preachers of the 18th century - chose to leave the movement in favor of the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Despite the hardships, the circle of women preachers continued to widen and receive support. Women like Ann Gilbert, Margaret Davidson (Ireland's first woman preacher), Elizabeth Hurrell and Elizabeth Tonkin, Sarah Mallet and Alice Cambridge served faithfully in various parts of the British Isles and received Wesley's support.
After Wesley's death
After Wesley's death, the bitter controversy over women preaching would erupt anew. Mary Barritt (b. 1772), by some account the most famous female evangelist of the early 19th century, became one of the targets of this controversy, starting at the 1803 Manchester conference.
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The small groups that formed the Methodist Society became the training ground for the first women preachers. |
Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians and Universalists, and Freewill Baptists had been among the earliest religious groups in the United States to grant women the right to preach. In 1853 Antoinette Brown was ordained in a small Congregational church at South Butler, N.Y. She probably was the first ordained woman minister in America.
The 1800s found other women called to preach in America within the Methodist family. Among these are Jarena Lee (1783-1850?) African Methodist Episcopal, Fanny Butterfield Newell (1793-1824) Methodist Episcopal Church and Hannah Pearce Reeves (1800-1868) Methodist Protestant Church.
Despite the 1845 United Brethren General Conference ruling that the Gospel did not authorize women to preach, women, such as Lydia Sexton (1799-1894) were recommended as preachers and licensed.
The Holiness movement raised some powerful preaching evangelists in the persons of Phoebe Worrall Palmer (1807-1874) and Amanda Berry Smith (1837-1915)
Post Civil War
In the post Civil War years, all branches of Methodism was confronted in new ways with the issue of women's ordination. By 1866, Helenor M. Davison had been ordained a deacon for the Northern Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, in all likelihood becoming the first women ordained in the Methodist tradition in Indiana.
During the 1870s, numerous women - perhaps 70 or more - had asked for and received local preacher's licenses in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1880, two women, Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919) and Anna Oliver (1840-1892) applied to the MEC New England Conference for ordination. Both were turned down. They appealed to the General Conference which met in Cincinnati in 1880, again to be turned down. The 1880 General Conference not only decided against the ordination of women but also declared that all local preacher's licenses issued to women from 1869 on were to be rescinded. The Methodist Episcopal Church would not grant women local preacher's licenses again until 1920.
After the 1880 MEC General Conference, Anna Howard Shaw sought ordination in the Methodist Protestant Church. She was approved and ordained Oct. 12, 1880. She later resigned as pastor to devote herself to the battles for temperance and woman suffrage (ratified by the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920.)
The United Brethren in Christ ordained their first woman minister, Ella Niswonger in 1889. She also became the first woman to serve as a ministerial delegate to the 1901 United Brethren General Conference.
When the Evangelical United Brethren Church was formed in 1946, the question of the ordination of women was a thorny one. The United Brethren had been ordaining women since Ella Niswonger's ordination in 1889, while the Evangelicals never ordained women. Once again women's ordination was sacrificed for unity.
In 1920 women in the Methodist Episcopal Church, finally regained the right to be licensed as local preachers. There were two claimants for the honor of the first Methodist Episcopal woman to become a licensed Local Preacher in 1920: Winifred Willard (Trinity Church of Denver) and Witlia D. Caffray (First MEC of Wenatchee, Wash).
The first highly limited form of ordination for women was approved by the MEC at its 1924 General Conference. It granted women the right to be Local Elders.
At the Uniting Conference in 1939, full conference membership for female clergy was defeated by a narrow margin (371-384).
1956
By the time The Methodist Church General Conference met in 1956 at Minneapolis, it had received more than 2,000 petitions asking for full clergy rights for women. Following numerous debates, the delegates approved the historic motion putting into the Methodist Discipline the following simple but momentous words: "Women are included in all the provisions of the Discipline referring to the ministry."
Maud Keister Jensen was admitted May 18, 1956 on trial in absentia to the Central Pennsylvania Conference becoming the first women to receive full clergy rights in The Methodist Church. Jensen and her husband were on missionary service in Korea. Other women admitted that year included: Grace E. Huck, Grace M. Weaver, Gertrude G. Harris, Alice T. Hart, Esther A. Haskard and Margaret K. Henrichsen.
Emma P. Hill was admitted on trial by the Washington Conference of the Central Jurisdiction on May 26, 1956, apparently making her the first African American woman to receive full clergy rights in The Methodist Church.
Catherine Koziatek serves as pastor of New Salem UMC in Granger, Ind.
Resources to review
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She Offered Them Christ: The Legacy of Women Preachers in Early Methodism. Paul W. Chilcote. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. 1993.
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Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American Methodism 1760-1939.
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Jean Miller Schmidt. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. 1999.
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The Leading Women: Stories of the First Women Bishops in the United Methodist Church. Compiled by Judith Craig. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. 2004.
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In Our Own Voices: Four Centuries of American Women's Religious Writing. Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Editors. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY. 1995.
Last updated on 25 Apr 2008