Women and Early Mission Work

 Many early missionary societies were led by Methodist women, partly due to the MEC's policy of an exclusively male clergy. These societies were precursors to today's United Women in Faith and the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. Discuss these themes, and how women have embodied the Wesleyan emphasis on ministry to the poor, sick, and incarcerated. 

https://www.umc.org/en/content/timeline-of-women-in-methodism

 

The prohibition against women as preaches goes back to the early Methodist movement. Wesley himself would not permit (most) women to preach, although he did authorize Sarah Mallet to preach. In 1957, the United Brethren General Conference passed a resolution that no woman should be allowed to preach.  In 1866, Helenor Davisson was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Protestant Church, making her the first ordained woman in the tradition.  Even though Anna Howard Shaw earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Boston University School of Theology, she is refused ordinated by the Methodist Episcopal General Conference in 1880.  She joined the Methodist Protestant Church and is ordained.  In 1984, the church rules her ordination out of order.  In 1888, five women were elected as lay delegates to the Methodist Episcopal General Conference; later, male reserves replaced them.  In the same year, the position of deaconess is established for women – women can serve in any capacity that does not require clergy rites – in ministries of love, justice, and service. 

 

Even though women could often not pursue a call to preaching, they were still experiencing the transformed life that Methodism offered.  They heard their calls, and social justice ministry was an outlet opened to them.  Women served as missionaries – sometimes as a spouse, and sometimes as a single person.

 

https://uwfaith.org/who-we-are/our-history/

 

The United Women in Faith is a social justice organization that was founded out of the need to be in service to the world.

 

The United Women in faith website states “In 1869, Clementina Butler and Lois Parker, wives of missionaries to India, made a plea to a group of eight women in Boston about the spiritual and physical needs of poor women in India. They could not be treated by male doctors. Schooling for girls was almost non-existent. Help was desperately needed.”  This was the beginning of what has become the United Women in Faith.  They say they have a legacy of “showing up and getting things done.” This has been my experience with United Women of Faith as well.

 

Other timeline events include that Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave, co-founded Kingston Methodist Church in New York State. She became involved in the abolitionist movement.  Sophronia Farrington, the first single missionary, arrived in Liberia in 1834.  In 1869, Isabella Thoburn and Clara Sawn leave for India.  Thorburn started a college, and Swain began medical work.