A BRIEF
HISTORY OF SOME WOMEN IN CHURCH MINISTRY
- Richard M. Riss
During the first century,
many women were active in Christian ministry. Acts
21:9 mentions the four virgin daughters of Philip the
evangelist as prophetesses who lived in his home at
Caesarea, where Paul and his associates visited during
his third missionary journey. Priscilla, or Prisca, and
her husband Aquilla, were known as fellow-laborers in
Christ with the apostle Paul. Their expertise as
teachers enabled them to explain the way of God more
accurately to Apollos of Alexandria, another important
leader of the early church (Acts 18:25-26).
Another associate of
Paul's, Lydia, a seller of purple dye, opened her home
for ministry (Acts 16:40), as did many other Christian
women in the Roman empire, including the "elect
lady" to whom John addressed his second
epistle. Close examination of II John would suggest
that she was functioning in a pastoral capacity, as would
also have been the case for Lydia (Acts 16:40), Nympha
(Col. 4:15), and Chloe (I Cor. 1:11). Phoebe was a
leader of the Church at Cenchrea. In Romans 16:
1,2, Paul commanded the members of the church at Rome to
receive her as such, and to help her in whatever
manner she requested. Paul also mentions that Andronicus
and Junia were outstanding among the apostles (Romans
16:7), and there is little doubt that Junia was a
feminine name. Both John Chrysostom and Jerome made
reference to her as a woman apostle, and no commentator
referred to her as a man until the late thirteenth
century.
In the early fourth
century, Catherine of Alexandria defended the faith at
Alexandria before philosophers and courtiers, before she
was tortured to death by Maxentius, the son of the Roman
Emperor Maximian. At about the same time, Dorothy
of Caesarea in Cappadocia was martyred (A.D. 313).
As she was being led to her execution, Theophilus, a
lawyer, taunted her, asking her for a basket of flowers
and fruit. Soon afterward, a child came to her with
a basket laden with roses and apples. She sent this to Theophilus, who as a result of this incident became a
Christian and later gave his own life as a Martyr.
Macrina the Younger
(328-380) was founder of a religious community for women
in the eastern church. With her brothers, Basil the
Great and Gregory of Nyssa, she was a pioneer in the
monastic life. She healed, prophesied, and actively
spread the faith. John Chrysostom wrote of her that
"she was a great organizer, and independent thinker,
and as well educated as Basil himself." After
the death of her mother, she reared and educated her
younger brother Peter, who became Bishop of Sebaste.
Marcella (325-410) was an
important teacher in the early church who was highly
esteemed by Jerome. She was in the front lines in
interacting with heretics and bringing them to a better
understanding of Christian truth. Her palace on the
Aventine Hill became a center of Christian
influence. At one point, when a dispute arose in
Rome concerning the meaning of the Scriptures, Jerome
asked Marcella to settle it. Her Church of the
Household was not only a house of study and prayer, but a
center for deeds of Christian charity and
sacrifice. It was here that another woman, Fabiola,
received inspiration to establish the first hospitals in
Rome.
Marcella later established
on the outskirts of Rome the first religious retreat for
women. It was also at Marcella's Church of the Household
that Paula (347-404) and her daughter Eustochium first
made their decision to assist Jerome in his Latin
translation of the Bible. They went to Bethlehem in
order to aid him in this work, revising and correcting
his translations and making new Latin translations from
the Hebrew and Greek texts. In turn, Jerome
dedicated some of his books to them. Paula founded
three convents and a monastery in Bethlehem, where
Biblical manuscripts were copied. This became a
model for what soon became the universal practice at
monasteries for many centuries.
Genevieve (422-500) lived
in Paris when Attila and his Huns invaded France in
451. She assured the inhabitants of Paris that God
would protect them if they would pray. While the
men prepared for battle, she persuaded the women to pray
for hours in the church. Then, after Attila
destroyed Orleans, he decided not to touch Paris.
At a later time, she was said to have averted a famine in
Paris and the surrounding cities by distributing
miraculous gifts of bread.
Bridget, also known as
Bride (455-523), inspired the convent system that made an
indelible impact upon life in Ireland. After
settling in Kildare, she built for herself and her female
friends a house for refuge and devotion. As other
houses were founded through her missionary efforts, she
became known as the "mother abess" of all of
Ireland.
Theodora I (500-548), wife
of the emperor Justinian, was an important and
influential Christian. A woman of outstanding
intellect and learning, she was a moral reformer. Justinian, as Christian Emperor, was, for all practical
purposes, head of the Church of his generation, and his
wife, as Empress, shared his power to select church
leaders. The inscription "Theodora
Episcopa" or "Theodora, Bishop (fem.)" in
a mosaic at the Basilica of Sts. Prudentia and
Praexedis in Rome, may have been a reference to the
Empress.
Hilda (614-680) was
appointed by Aidan as abess of the convent at Hartlepool
in County Durham in 649. Ten years later, she
founded a double monastery for men and women at Whitby in
Yorkshire, which became world famous as a school of
theology and literature. Five of her disciples
became bishops and a sixth, Caedmon, became the earliest
known English poet.
Hildegard of Bingen
(1098-1179) was a German abbess, mystic, and writer known
throughout all of Europe. Skilled in subjects as
diverse as theology, medicine and politics, she did not
hesitate to rebuke the sins of the greatest men of her
time in both Church and state. She exerted a wide
influence among many people, including the Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa and various kings, prelates, and
saints. Many miracles were attributed to her during
her lifetime.
Clare (1193-1253) was
co-founder, with Francis of Assisi, of the Poor Clares, a
mendicant order which spread rapidly through Italy and
into France, Germany, and Spain. In 1249, when she
was lame, her convent was attacked by a group of
Saracens. She told the sisters to carry her to the
door of the monastery, then addressed the Saracens and
prayed aloud that God would "deliver the defenseless
children whom I have nourished with Thy love."
She heard a voice answer "I will always have them in
my keeping," and turning to the sisters, she said,
"Fear not." At this moment, the Saracens
scrambled down the walls of the cloister, recoiling from
her valiant words. Clare's care for the poor was a
tremendous inspiration to Elizabeth of Hungary
(1207-1231), a princess who, in the last years of her
short life, led a life of rigorous self-sacrifice and
service to the poor and sick.
Some other significant
women of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries
included Hechthild of Magdeburg, Gertrude the Great,
Angela of Foligno, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of
Sienna, Catherine of Sweden, Margery Kempe, Julian of
Norwich, Joan of Arc, Catherine of Genoa, Isabella of
Castile, and Maragaret Beaufort.
During the Reformation, a
member of the Bavarian nobility, Argula von Grumback
(1492-1563), challenged the Rector and all of the faculty
of the University of Ingolstadt to a debate in which she
would defend the principles of the Protestant
Reformation. She offered to base this debate upon a
translation of the Bible published prior to the outbreak
of the Reformation. She was permitted to present
her position in 1523 in Nuremberg before the diet of the
Empire. Martin Luther wrote of her, "that most
noble woman, Argula von Stauffer, is there making a
valiant fight with great spirit, boldness of speech and
knowledge of Christ." Her extensive education
and fine critical abilities enabled her to become a force
to be reckoned with. She conducted church meetings
in her home and officiated at funerals.
Two other important
leaders of the Protestant Reformation were Margaret of
Navarre (1492-1549) and her daughter, Jeanne d'Albret
(1528-1572), the grandmother and mother of King Henry IV
of France, who issued the Edict of Nantes, granting
religious toleration to the French Protestants for almost
a century. Jeanne d'Albret held services of the new
Reformed faith in her palace apartment. A friend of
John Calvin, she also used her palace as an institute for
Reformation study.
During the Puritan era,
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), became influential in
Boston, and opened her home to large classes of
women. It is estimated that as many as eighty
overflowed to the doorsteps of her house, at a time when
Boston had a population of roughly 1,000 people.
These meetings grew rapidly, and soon men, also, began to
attend. Among her loyal followers was Henry Vane,
who served for a short time as governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. Within two years of her
arrival from England, she had the strongest consistency
of any leader in the entire colony. Her large
following, coupled with her strong exegetical and
homiletical skills, deep Christian commitment and
insightful understanding of spiritual truths, may have
incurred the jealousy of several New England ministers,
who became uncomfortable enough with her successes that
she was accused of heresy and banished from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638.
Margaret Fell (1614-1702),
the mother of Quakerism, was an English peeress and wife
of Judge Thomas Fell, member of the Long Parliament and
Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster. Her home became a
place of refuge and renewal for the persecuted Quakers
for almost fifty years. She was arrested for
holding Quaker meetings in her home, Swarthmoor Hall, and
imprisoned for four years. After her release from
prison, she visited Quakers in jails and travelled on
horseback with her daughters and servants to remote farms
and villages as an itinerant preacher. Many people
sought wisdom and advice from her, including Thomas Salthouse, and, of course, George Fox, who married her a
number of years after the death of her husband.
Because she had his blessing in her preaching ministry,
she wrote many tracts and letters on the subject of women
in ministry.
Madame Guyon (1648-1717)
was a French mystic who was imprisoned on several
occasions for long periods of time because of her
beliefs, but she was never known to complain about this.
An author of forty books, including a twenty-volume
commentary of the Bible, she had a wide following,
particularly in France and Switzerland. Among those
profoundly influenced by her ministry was Archbishop
Francois Fenelon. The founder of the first
Methodist congregation in America was Barbara Heck
(1734-1804).
In England, Lady Selina
Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-1791), founder of
the Calivnistic Methodist denomination during the
Evangelical Awakening, functioned as a bishop by virtue
of her right as a peeress to appoint Anglican clergymen
as household chaplains and assign their duties, and to
purchase presentation rights to chapels, enabling her to
decide who would conduct services and preach. Among the
many chaplains whom she appointed and continued to
finance for many decades was George Whitefield. In
1779, after sixty chapels were already functioning under
her auspices, this practice was disallowed by a
consistory court of London. Therefore, in order to
continue to function, she was able, under the Toleration
Act, to register her chapels as dissenting places of
worship, known as "The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion." Lady Selina frequently invited members
of the aristocracy to her home to hear the preaching of
the Wesleys, Whitefield, Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge,
Benjamin Ingham, John Fletcher, John Berridge, William
Romaine, Henry Venn, and others. She founded Trevecca
House on property adjoining the home of Howel
Harris. A seminary for the training of ministers
for all denominations, its first president was John
Fletcher. Joseph Benson eventually became
headmaster on John Wesley's recommendation. George
Whitefield preached the inaugural sermon when it opened
in 1768.
In America, two important
preachers during the first years of the Second Awakening
(1800-1808) were Deborah Peirce of Paris, N.Y. and Martha
Howell of Utica. Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874), "The
Mother of the Holiness Movement," began her ministry
in 1835 with her Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of
Holiness, which continued for 39 years in New York City,
where she lived with her husband, who was a
physician. Hundreds of Methodist preachers,
including at least five bishops, were profoundly affected
by her ministry. The success of Phoebe Palmer's
informal meetings encouraged other women to conduct the
same type of ministry, and dozens of them sprang up
throughout North America. These meetings brought
together Christians of many denominations under the
leadership of women, particularly among Methodists,
Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Quakers.
In 1858, Walter Palmer,
Phoebe's husband, purchased the periodical GUIDE TO
HOLINESS, which under her able editorship, grew in
circulation from 13,000 to 30,000 subscribers. She
travelled widely with her husband, conducting
evangelistic meetings during the summer months. In the
fall of 1857, she and her husband travelled to Hamilton,
Ontario, where they attracted crowds of several thousand
people when an afternoon prayer meeting became a ten-day
revival meeting during which four hundred people were
converted to Christ. They experienced similar
successes in New York City and in England, where they
preached for four years to packed houses at Leeds,
Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, and dozens of other
places. It is estimated that within her lifetime,
Phoebe Palmer brought over 25,000 people to faith in
Christ.
Catherine Booth
(1829-1890), with her husband, William Booth, founded the
Christian Revival Association in 1865 and the Salvation
Army in 1878. The Booths regarded the active
participation of women to be vital to Christianity.
Before 1865, when they were still Methodists, Catherine
began preaching. Soon after her pulpit debut, her
husband became ill, and his slow recovery paved the way
for her own preaching ministry. For a time, he was
so ill that she had to take over his entire preaching
circuit. She eventually became one of the most
famous female preachers of England, and her last sermon
was delivered to an audience of 50,000 people.
Hannah Whitall Smith,
author of THE CHRISTIAN'S SECRET OF A HAPPY LIFE (1875)
catalyzed the development of the Holiness movement in
Britain and throughout Europe. Her activities in
England led to the Keswick Convention in 1874.
Carrie Judd Montgomery was
a healing evangelist of considerable prominence beginning
in 1879, and became a founding member, along with A. B.
Simpson, of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in
1887. She later became a part of the Pentecostal
revival and was ordained a minister by the Assemblies of
God in 1917, continuing in ministry until 1946.
Maria B. Woodworth-Etter
was also involved in the Holiness movement before she
rose to prominence as an early Pentecostal leader.
In 1884, she was licensed to preach by the Churches of
God general conference, founded by John Winebrenner in
1825. Within a few months of this time her meetings were
already beginning to receive national press coverage, and
in the late 1880s she started twelve churches, added
1,000 members, erected six church buildings, and started
several Sunday Schools. Her work at this time
resulted in the licensing of twelve preachers. The
revivals that she held at this time were accompanied with
unusual manifestations of God's power, many healings, and
mass conversions. During the early Pentecostal
movement, Woodworth- Etter was in continual demand,
becoming a featured speaker at the Worldwide Pentecostal
Camp Meeting at Arroyo Seco, California, in April
1913. She founded the Woodworth-Etter Tabernacle in
western Indianapolis in 1918, which she pastored until
her death in 1924.
Beginning in 1906 and
1907, Florence L. Crawford, Mabel Smith, Ivey Campbell,
and Rachel A. Sizelove were some of the first women to
spread the blessings of the early Pentecostal revival
through their separate itinerant ministries.
Florence Crawford planted and pastored several churches
in the Pacific Northwest, founding and becoming general
overseer of the Apostolic Faith Church based in Portland,
Oregon, which later became part of the Open Bible
Standard Denomination.
Other pioneers of the
Pentecostal movement in the U.S. included Mrs. Scott
Ladd, who opened a Pentecostal mission in Des Moines in
1907, the Duncan sisters, who had opened the Rochester
Bible Training School at Elim Faith Home,
"Mother" Barnes of St. Louis, Missouri, who,
with her son-in-law, B. F. Lawrence, held tent meetings
in southern Illinois in the spring of 1908, and Marie
Burgess, who preached in Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, and
New York City, where she founded Glad Tidings Hall, which
soon became an important center for the spread of the
Pentecostal revival.
Another early Pentecostal
pioneer in New York was Miss Maud Williams (Haycroft).
In Canada, some early pioneers of the Pentecostal
movement included Ellen Hebden in Toronto, Ella M. Goff
in Winnipeg, Alice B. Garrigus in Newfoundland, the Davis
sisters in the Maritime provinces, Mrs. C. E. Baker in
Montreal, and Zelma Argue throughout all of the Canadian
provinces. Aimee Semple McPherson of Ingersoll,
Ontario, began a preaching ministry in 1915 which began
in Toronto and took her along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard,
and across the United States in 1918. She
eventually founded Angelus Temple in 1923, where she
continued as senior pastor until her death in 1944.
Kathryn Kuhlman's ministry
began in the summer of 1923. After her ordination by the
Evangelical Church Alliance in Joliet, Illinois, she
established the Denver Revival Tabernacle in 1935, which
she pastored for three years. In the mid-1940s, she
went to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where she began to thrive
as a preacher and radio evangelist. Many people
were healed at her meetings beginning in 1947, and she
gained a reputation as one of the world's outstanding
healing evangelists, carrying on as a leading figure
during the charismatic movement until her death in 1976.
A few of the women working
as Pentecostal pastors during the charismatic movement of
the 1960s and 1970s included Charlotte Baker, Myrtle D. Beall, Helen Beard, Aimee
Cortese, Sue Curran, B. Maureen Gaglardi, Anne Giminez, Ione Glaeser, Hattie Hammond,
Alpha A. Henson, Marilyn Hickey, Violet Kitely, Janet Kreis, Freda Lindsay, Fuchsia T. Pickett, Iverna
Tompkins, and Rachel Titus. A sampling of a few of
the other women who were vital during the time of the
charismatic movement as speakers, authors, or
evangelists, would include Eleanor and Roberta Armstrong,
Rita Bennett, Edith Blumhofer, Hazel Bonawitz, Roxanne
Brant, Mary Ann Brown, Shirley Carpenter, Jean Darnall,
Josephine Massynberde Ford, Katie Fortune, Shirlee Green,
Nina Harris, Sue Malachuk, Daisy Osborn, Dorothy Ranaghan, Agnes Sanford, Gwen Shaw, Bernice Smith, Ruth
Carter Stapleton, Jean Stone, Joni Eareckson Tada, and
Corrie Ten Boom.
Source: International
Revival Network: archive.openheaven.com.
Copyright Richard Riss, used with permission (1995)
May be freely copied provided source and/or copyrights are included with
the text.
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