waited for no ordaining council and imposition of hands, but may be said
to have begun with the preaching of Anne Hutchinson. Arriving in Boston
in 1634, and being admitted to membership in the church, she forthwith
began the advocacy of her peculiar doctrines, which carried with them
her commission to preach. Believing that “the power of the Holy Spirit
dwells in every believer, and that the inward revelations of the spirit,
the conscious judgment of the mind, are of paramount authority,” what
need could she feel of other sanction? Large numbers of women gathered
to the meetings in which she boldly discussed the sermons of the
preceding Sabbath, as was the custom of the men of the congregation, and
set forth her own belief. The dispute among her followers and their
opposers, according to Bancroft, “impressed its spirit into everything.
It interfered with the levy of troops for the Pequot war; it influenced
the respect shown to the magistrates, the distribution of town lots, the
assessment rates, and, at last, the continued existence of the two
opposing parties was considered inconsistent with the public peace.”
In 1637 a synod of the church was called at Newtown and, although
Cotton, Vane, and Wheelwright, together with all but five members of the
Boston church, had become warm partisans of Mrs. Hutchinson, her tenets
were among the eighty-two opinions condemned as erroneous. A few months
later, she was summoned before the General Court and, after a trial of
two days, sentenced to banishment from the territory of Massachusetts.
That her loss was felt by the church which had excommunicated her may be
inferred from the effort made to reclaim her by a deputation sent for
that purpose to the Island of Aquidneck, afterward called Rhode Island,
where she had found a refuge. After the death of her husband in 1642,
she removed to the Dutch settlement, then at war with the Indians, by
whose hand she, with all her family, save one child (carried captive),
cruelly perished.
This experience of the church was not calculated to encourage the public
preaching of women, nor incline it, a score of years later, to receive
with open-armed hospitality the two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann
Austin, whose books and trunks were burned on shipboard, and who, upon
landing, were haled to prison, in the same spirit of persecution which
had driven them from England to the West Indies, and thence to this
so-called “land of liberty.” Vainly searched for signs of witchcraft,
they were then banished for heresy.
Yet the mild doctrines of the Quakers were destined to take root upon
American soil, and do their full share in the liberalizing of thought
and especially in securing to woman that freedom to preach which has
made itself felt in other Christian denominations. The name of no
preacher among the Quakers, or “Friends,” as they prefer to be called,
stands above the name of Lucretia Mott, whose history is too well known
to demand more than a word concerning her call to such public service,
as given by herself:
“At twenty-five years of age, surrounded by a little family and many
cares, I felt called to a more public life and devotion to duty, and
engaged in the ministry in our Society, receiving every encouragement
from those in authority, until a separation from us, in 1827, when my
convictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the light within us,
resting on truth as authority, rather than taking authority for truth.”
This step into the larger freedom of the Hicksites, or Unitarian branch
of Quakers, proved no mistake for one whose heart and life could not
measure themselves by theological creeds. To use her own words, “I have
felt a far greater interest in the moral movements of our age, than in
any theological discussion.” And her eloquent pleadings and practical
charities for three-quarters of a century are ample witness of her
sincerity. The domestic life of Mrs. Mott was in itself a noble
refutation of the assertion that eminent public service by women is
incompatible with home making, since few homes could show such perfect
conjugal union and such thrifty household management. There are about
three hundred and fifty women preachers in this branch of the Christian
church at present.
The sect of Shakers, or “United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second
Appearing,” originating near Manchester, England, about 1770, as an
offshoot of the Society of Friends, and following the same spiritual
authority, gave to its women an equal share with men in its service and
government.
In 1770, Ann Lee, one of the members of this sect, professed to have
received a special illumination, in the name of which she was accepted
as the “Christ of the female order.” Her followers believing that “God
was revealed as a dual being, male and female, to the Jews, that Jesus
revealed to the world God, as a Father,” received “Mother Ann” as “God
revealed in the character of Mother, the bearing spirit of all the
creation of God.” In 1774, obedient to another revelation of the spirit,
Mother Ann, with nine of the more prominent members of her society,
emigrated to America and began her work in the State of New York, from
which center ardent missionaries propagated the new faith.
When we consider the essential doctrines of this sect,—human
brotherhood, exemplified in a community of goods, non-resistance,
non-participation in government, strict celibacy, and perfect
chastity,—we must confess that Ann Lee, possessing not even a
rudimentary education, must nevertheless have been gifted with
extraordinary powers of persuasion thus to have secured the founding of
the various communities of Shakers in the United States, among which her
name is still reverenced in its deific relations.
If allowed to follow what might be called natural lines, for the highest
ecclesiastical freedom for women, the Roman Catholic Church would seem a
proper starting point. Its exaltation of “Mary, Mother of God,” the
canonization of devout women, its many sisterhoods, its deep indebtness
to women in every age and every land, seem a fitting foundation upon
which to build an ecclesiasticism which should at least consider woman
to be as well endowed by her Creator for a celibate priesthood as the
sex ignored in providing the world’s Redeemer. Yet no church more
rigidly excludes women from the priestly office or gives less indication
of change in this regard; nor can it be expected in a non-progressive
system, crystallized around the dogma of infallibility.
Nor shall we, though continuing along the lines of natural expectation
into the largest Protestant church of America, the Methodist Episcopal
Church, find a radical change, although Susanna Wesley was called the
“real foundress of Methodism” in England, and Barbara Heck is given
equal credit for the first impulse given the church in America. Landing
in New York in 1760, in company with the first local preacher and class
leader, Philip Embury, Mrs. Heck seems to have “kept the faith” more
loyally, in the midst of the distractions and downward tendencies of the
new life, than did the preacher. Five years passed and, so far as known,
he did nothing to keep together the few Wesleyans, or add to their
number. There was much moral degeneration, which no doubt greatly
troubled the soul of Mrs. Heck. On a certain occasion, while visiting at
a house where were gathered a number of friends and acquaintances,
finding them engaged in card playing, “her spirit was roused, and,
doubtless emboldened by her long and intimate acquaintance with them in
Ireland, she seized the cards, threw them into the fire, and then most
solemnly warned them of their danger and duty. Leaving them she went
immediately to the dwelling of Embury, who was her cousin. After
narrating what she had seen and done, under the influence of the Divine
Spirit and with power, she appealed to him to be no longer silent, but
to preach the Word forthwith. She parried his excuses and urged him to
begin at once in his own house and to his own people. He consented, and
she went out and collected four persons who, with herself, constituted
his audience. After singing and prayer, he preached to them and enrolled
them in a class. He continued thereafter to meet them weekly,”[151] and
thus began the work of Methodism in America. When the rigging loft,
which had succeeded the house for preaching purposes, had also been
outgrown, it was “Barbara Heck, the real founder of American Methodism,”
who was ready with plans for a chapel, which still stands, a sacred
memorial of her zeal and that of the man recalled to his duty by her
burning words.
Nor can the work of the Countess of Huntingdon be overlooked in this
connection, although the scene of her labors was in another land, since
its fruits were here so largely shared through the work of Whitefield.
Not merely as the builder of sixty-four chapels, the founder and
supporter of a college for the education of ministers, many of whom were
maintained by her, is she to be remembered. In the volume just quoted
from, we read that, “Under the influence of Whitefield and the Countess
of Huntingdon, the Calvinistic non-conformity rose, as from the dead, to
new life, which has continued ever since with increasing energy. By the
same means, with the co-operation of Wesley, a powerful evangelical
party was raised up in the establishment, and most of the measures of
evangelical propagandism which have since kept British Christianity
alive with energy, and extended its activity to the foreign world, are
distinctly traceable to this great revival.... About the end of its
first decade, a scarcely parallel interest had been spread and sustained
throughout the United Kingdom and along the Atlantic coast of
America.... It had presented before the world the greatest pulpit orator
of the age (if not of any age), Whitefield; also one of the greatest
religious legislators of history, Wesley, a hymnist, whose supremacy has
been but doubtfully disputed by a single rival—Charles Wesley; and the
most signal example of female agency in religious affairs which
Christian history records, the Countess of Huntingdon.”[152]
Remembering that the churches established by this gifted woman were not
known by the names of the men associated with her, but as “Lady
Huntingdon’s Connexion,” some evidence of the leadership of women will
be apparent in the American Methodist Church. Strange to say, this is
far from being the case. Although Wesley had encouraged the preaching of
women, and although few men could equal the successful labors of many of
them, the Methodist Episcopal Church of America is singularly backward
in recognition of its women. According to its “Discipline,” “the
pronouns he, his, and him, when used with reference to stewards,
class-leaders, and Sunday-school superintendents, shall not be construed
so as to exclude women from these offices.” Notwithstanding this, “in
many American churches to-day, a woman class-leader would be almost as
great a curiosity as John the Baptist, with his raiment of camel’s hair,
and a leathern girdle around his loins.”[153]
Women of unquestioned ability, liberal education, and purity of
character have in vain applied for ordination, though supported by the
record of much successful pulpit and pastoral work as licensed lay
preachers, and by many influential friends of the laity and clergy. One
of these, of national reputation,[154] to whom this sanction of
ordination was refused, has since been ordained by the Protestant
Methodist Church, which, having done so, however, steadfastly declines
to add to the number, having apparently exhausted its liberality by this
extreme application of the spirit of Wesley.
The small sect of primitive Methodists which adheres most strictly to
the methods of Wesley have always employed women preachers as a means of
reaching the depraved classes; this being one of the points of
difference upon which it separated from the main body.
The United Brethren in Christ, or German Methodists, as formerly called,
when their membership was more largely of that element, are to be
distinguished as appointing the first woman as “circuit rider,” which
was recently done by Bishop Kephart of the Wabash Annual Conference,
held at Clay City, Ind. The appointee is a young woman eminently adapted
to the work and is one of several ordained women elders in this church.
So far as known, the Baptist Church has taken no steps leading to the
admission of women to its ministry, save in that division known as Free
Will Baptists, which has ordained a small number of women in various
parts of the country under its democratic system of government. The Free
Baptist General Conference of 1886 adopted the following resolution:
“That intelligent, godly women who are so situated as to devote their
time to the ministry, and desire to be ordained, should receive such
indorsement and authority as ordination involves, provided there are no
objections to such indorsement other than the matter of sex. Many of the
Baptist clergymen, however, as those of all leading denominations, save
the Episcopal and Roman Catholic, freely admit women to their pulpits to
speak upon great moral questions, and would welcome them to the ranks of
the ministry. Women are also prominent in its conference and prayer
meetings.”
The Presbyterian Church has been a strongly conservative body, slow to
sanction radical change in its polity, but if the Pan-Presbyterian
Council, held not long since in London, voices the general sentiment of
this large and important denomination, women are to enjoy a more equal
power in its administration. For a long period they were carefully
excluded; but for a number of years past a more liberal policy has
welcomed them to a free utterance in the conference and prayer meetings,
which they sometimes conduct, and at synods they often speak upon
missionary and other topics. At a Synod of the Reformed Presbyterians
held in 1889, it was decided by a vote of 93 to 24 that the ordination
of a woman as deacon is in harmony with the New Testament and the
constitution of the Apostolic Church.
There are also indications that the long-frozen ground of orthodox
Congregationalism is thawing toward a springtime of more generous
recognition of its women. The recent opening of the Hartford Theological
Seminary, and the almost immediate presentation to it of a prize
scholarship to be competed for by women alone, are notable signs. The
general recognition of the fitness of women preachers in missionary
fields, the significant fact that Oberlin College, which graduated its
first woman theological student[155] nearly forty years ago and has
added but one other since, prints this year, for the first time, the
names of these two women upon the Triennial Catalogue, are other straws
upon the rising tide of favor toward the woman ministry. Under the
Congregational system, any individual church may ordain for itself a
woman whom it may choose for its pastor, and this has been done in
several instances past, either by the deacons of the church or by a
council called for the purpose, the present year recording more such
ordinations than any preceding year.[156]
The German Lutheran Church, as represented in a recent session of the
Missouri Synod at Baltimore, feeling compelled to recognize the trend of
evangelical Christianity toward a woman ministry, presented for
discussion the question, “How far and under what conditions do we allow
women to teach?” The decision reached was that they must not teach at
all in the pulpit nor in the congregation. As there is absolute parity
of the clergy of this church, and the congregation is its ultimate of
authority, it is by no means certain that this position can be uniformly
maintained.
To this church is due the credit of introducing into the country as
early as 1849 the order of Deaconesses as maintained in Europe during
the last fifty years. By the persistent efforts of Mr. John D. Lankenau
of Philadelphia, an enthusiastic supporter of this institution, America
is now provided with the finest “Mother-house” in the world, the
immediate result of which has been a rapid increase of the order in
various denominations, in all parts of the country. This magnificent
edifice, built by Mr. Lankenau as a memorial of his wife, at a cost of
half a million of dollars, has been presented as a free gift to the
German Hospital Corporation of Philadelphia. “The western wing of the
building is used as a home for aged men and women, the eastern wing as a
residence and training school for the deaconesses, the chapel uniting
the two, and the whole being known as the Mary J. Drexel Home and
Mother-house of Deaconesses.”[157][158]
The Protestant Episcopal Church has for many years recognized the value
of “sisterhoods” of consecrated women, more or less closely affiliated,
for carrying on its various branches of philanthropic service, from
which the growth and efficiency of the church has received no small
degree of impetus and importance. Among these sisterhoods are numbered
two orders of deaconesses, one of which has been changed into the
“Sisterhood of St. John the Evangelist”; which, in view of the growing
hospitality of thought toward preaching by women, carries in its title a
certain suggestiveness. Fourteen sisterhoods, a religious order of
widows, and two orders of deaconesses are reported in 1888 for this
church.
The church polity of the “Christian Connection,” better known as the
Christian Church, as its name implies, is placed upon a broad
foundation, by which each church is an independent republic, and women
are thus eligible to its pulpits; one woman, ordained to its ministry in
the State of Illinois, having at the present time charge of three
prosperous churches.
The Universalist Church has been the first to open the doors of its
theological schools for the training of women for the ministry, and by
its established forms ordain them to its full fellowship. This was not,
however, considered a part of its ecclesiastical system until made
practically such by the admission of the first woman candidate,[159]
who, denied entrance to the Meadville Theological School (Unitarian),
applied in 1860 to the President of St. Lawrence University to be
admitted to its theological department. In his reply, the fair-minded
president candidly wrote: “No woman has ever been admitted to this
college, and, personally, I do not think women are called to the
ministry, but that I shall leave with the great head of the church.... I
shall render you every aid in my power.” A graduate of Mt. Holyoke
Seminary and of Antioch College, at which she received the degree of
A.B., this well-equipped pioneer for a larger place for women in the
Christian church soon verified her credentials, and the president,
always her steadfast friend, preached her ordination sermon. Since her
ordination, she has enjoyed a number of successful pastorates, with the
duties of which marriage and motherhood have not proved incompatible.
About fifty women have been ordained in this church, and all its schools
and colleges, save one, are now co-educational. There is also, with
scarcely an exception, among its clergymen a feeling of cordial
fellowship toward women preachers.
Would the limits of this article permit, sketches of the work
accomplished by its pioneer women preachers would furnish not
uninteresting reading, since their fields of labor have been some of the
most difficult in their respective churches. They have been called to
the building of new churches in unbroken fields, or to those so dead or
dormant as to be apparently beyond the reach of men workers, and yet we
hear of no failures among them to raise these churches to new life and
prosperity or to organize new material upon strong foundations. In one
notable instance, in a suburb of Chicago, a ten years’ pastorate has
resulted in the building of one church edifice which, speedily outgrown,
has made necessary a more spacious and elegant one; and there is no
disposition to exchange this successful woman minister for a masculine
successor.
The Universalist Register for 1889, contains, in its list of ministers,
the names of thirty-five women, being the largest number of ordained
women for any year, and the largest number in any denomination.
In just a decade after its refusal to admit a woman, the Meadville
Theological School (Unitarian) opened its doors to women students, since
which time it has received sixteen. About one third of these have
graduated, while others have taken but a partial course as wives or
prospective wives of ministers, in order to be more truly “help-meets”
in the pulpit work of their husbands. “Among these graduates,” writes a
member of the faculty, “every woman has been above the average. Our
experience indicates that for success in our ministry, care should be
taken to encourage only such women as, together with personal fitness
for the work, can easily maintain this high rank.”
An amusing incident in the domestic life of one of these women pastors
may indicate a possibility of growth in the woman ministry likely to
startle conservative minds. A little boy and girl, the children of a
mother whose work as a minister evidently contained no surprises for
them, were discussing plans for their own future. “I shall help mamma
preach,” said the little girl. “I shall preach, too,” stoutly said the
small brother. His sister, looking thoughtfully and doubtfully at him,
said slowly, “Yes, mens do preach sometimes.”
The woman ministry in America has had no warmer friend than Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe, herself a preacher of well-known ability, occasionally
preaching in the pulpits of this country, and having preached in Rome,
Jerusalem, and Santo Domingo while sojourning in those places. In 1873
Mrs. Howe succeeded in securing a convention of such ministers as were
within convenient distance of Boston during Anniversary week, at which
addresses were made and the communion observed, Rev. Lorenza Haynes and
Rev. Mary H. Graves officiating.
Since that time eight annual conventions have been held in Boston; and
in the Hollis Street Church, on June 2, 1882, the “Woman’s Ministerial
Conference” was formed, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, president. This is not a
working body, but a fellowship of women preachers, whether ordained or
not, representing all denominations. Its present officers are: Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe, president; Rev. Mary H. Graves, corresponding
secretary; Rev. Ada C. Bowles, recording secretary. These, with the
additional names of Rev. Louise S. Baker and Rev. Mary T. Whitney, form
its executive committee. The title of Rev. is never applied save to
those who have been regularly ordained in their respective
denominations.
That women bore an important part in the planting and early growth of
the Christian church needs no argument. That the plain teaching of Paul
should have been so perverted as to mean their exclusion from the office
of public teaching is to be explained only by the fact of a departure
from the methods of the primitive church, through a purely masculine
interpretation and application of regulations which, entirely adapted to
the age and country in which uttered, were never intended to be
prohibitive of women’s preaching in that, or at any later, period.
The establishment of the Diaconate, in which, as an order of the clergy,
women administered the sacraments, interpreted and promulgated
doctrines, in connection with the practical work of charity and
benevolence, are matters of history.