The Christian Woman's Board of Missions was organized Oct. 22, 1874, to maintain preachers and teachers for religious instruction; to encourage and cultivate a missionary spirit and effort in the churches; to disseminate missionary intelligence and secure systematic contributions for such purposes; to establish and maintain schools for the education of both sexes.
Fields: The United States, Jamaica, India, Mexico and Porto Rico. Work: University Bible lectureships, Michigan, Virginia, Kansas, Calcutta, India; eighteen schools, four orphanage schools, two kindergartens, four orphanages with 500 children, one Chinese mission, one hospital, three dispensaries, one leper mission, thirty mission stations outside the United States; 135 missionaries, besides native teachers, evangelists, Bible women and other helpers; $900,000 raised during twenty-six years; income last year, $106,728. Its publications are Missionary Tidings, circulation 13,500; Junior Builders, same circulation; leaflets, calendars, manuals, song books, etc. Property values: United States, $120,000; India, $60,300; Jamaica, $38,550; Porto Rico, $10,000; total, $229,650; amount of endowment funds, $85,000.
This is purely a woman's organization; funds are raised and disbursed, fields entered and work outlined and managed without connection with any "parent board," although relations with other organizations of the church are most cordial. There are thirty-six State organizations, 1,750 auxiliaries, forty-five young ladies' circles, 374 mission bands, 1,711 junior societies of Christian Endeavor, 177 intermediate societies and 40,000 members of auxiliaries.
The Woman's State Home Missionary Organization of the Congregational Church represents a slow but steady growth during the past thirty years. Branches exist now in forty-two States and Territories. The last report available, that of 1897, showed $100,768 collected that year and disbursed for the usual home missionary purposes.
The Woman's Centenary Association of the Universalist Church was organized in 1869 to assist weak parishes, foster Sunday-schools, help educate women students for the ministry, endow professorships in schools and colleges, relieve the wants of sick or disabled preachers, ministers' widows and orphans, distribute denominational literature, and do both home and foreign missionary work. Since its organization it has raised and disbursed over $300,000 and has a permanent fund of $20,500, the interest of which is annually expended for the purposes for which the association was organized. Millions of pages of denominational literature have been distributed. The association has ten State societies and 100 mission (local) circles.
The National Alliance of Unitarian and other Liberal Christian Women was organized in 1890. Its objects are primarily to quicken the religious life of Unitarian churches and to bring the women into closer acquaintance, co-operation and fellowship; to promote local organizations of women for missionary and denominational work and to bring the same into association; to collect and disseminate information regarding all matters of interest to the church, viz.: needs of local societies, facilities for meeting them, work to be done, collection and distribution of money, etc.
The Alliance takes part in the missionary work of the denomination, assisting small churches and starting new ones; supports one or more students each year at the Meadville Theological School and maintains several circuit ministers. It has lending and traveling libraries and libraries for ministers, and has established and maintained three permanent ones in places where there was no free library. Through its well-known Post Office Mission it distributes annually about 300,000 sermons and tracts, and through its Cheerful Letter Exchange an untold amount of miscellaneous literature. Money is not disbursed from a central treasury, but is given by the branches which are independent in such matters, an Executive Board making recommendations. The expenditures of the past ten years have been $419,757. The Alliance has 255 branches and nearly 11,000 members.
The Woman's Missionary Association of the United Brethren in Christ was organized Oct. 21, 1875, to engage and unite the efforts of women in sending missionaries into all the world; to support these and other laborers in mission fields, and to secure by gift, bequest and otherwise the funds necessary for these purposes. Valuable missionary work is being done in West Africa, China and the Philippines. The association in the last twenty-five years has raised $311,920. It has forty branches and 13,232 members.
The Woman's Foreign Union of Friends was organized May, 1890, to increase the efficiency for spreading the Gospel of Christ among the heathen, and to create an additional bond between the women of the American Yearly Meetings. It has been the instrumentality of greatly quickening the missionary zeal and activity in the denomination. It established missions in Japan, China, India and in unoccupied parts of Mexico, and rendered valuable assistance in planting missions in Alaska, Jamaica and Palestine. It founded and has successfully managed the Friends' Missionary Advocate. During the past ten years $300,000 have been raised and expended. It has ten branches and 4,000 members.
The Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the U. S. A. was organized in 1879. Its object is to cultivate a missionary spirit, to create a deeper interest in the spread of the Gospel, to disseminate missionary intelligence, and to engage and unite the efforts of Christian women in the Lutheran church in supporting missions and missionaries on home and foreign fields, in co-operation with the Boards of Home and Foreign Missions and Church Extension. In the Foreign field it is now supporting eight women missionaries in India, two of whom are physicians and one a trained nurse. The principal station is Guntur, Madras Presidency. In Africa it is supporting two women missionaries at Muhlenberg, Liberia. In the Home field it has helped support eighteen missions and build churches for twelve of them. The amount contributed by the societies for the year ending March 31, 1902, was $27,286.