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.”