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]]