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VOW
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Church Female Leadership,
Today it is customary for mainline churches to ordain women to all aspects of Christian ministry while the opposite is mostly true of our brothers and sisters in evangelical denominations. This, however, has not always been the case. Many of the evangelical churches at the end of the 19th century that emerged from revivals supported women in ministry. These included the Church of God, Church of the Nazarene, Pilgrim Holiness Church, Evangelical Free Church, and The Salvation Army. According to Kari Torjesen Malcolm, “With a charismatic concept of ministry instead of a hierarchical one, the cultural differences between men and women were more easily set aside. The gifts were given to men and women alike, and all were leveled at the cross.” (1) Seth Rees, first president of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, whose wife became a preacher in her teens, said: Nothing but jealously, bigotry, and a stingy love for bossing in men have prevented woman's public recognition by the church. No church that is acquainted with the Holy Ghost will object to the public ministry of women. We know scores of women who can preach the Gospel with a clearness, a power, and an efficiency seldom equaled by men. Sister, let the Holy Ghost fill, call and anoint you to preach the glorious Gospel of our Lord. (2)Fredrik Franson, who established The Evangelical Free Church, said this in support of his position: Acts 21:9 states that the evangelist Philip had four daughters who prophesied and it even says they were unmarried. The word "prophesy" is from Greek and "preach" from Latin but they mean the same. In order to prophesy or preach one must be before an assembly not just with one person; otherwise it would be conversing. If it was acceptable for a woman to preach in those days it should also be so in our time. (3)Pentecost provided a critical component of their reasoning. Jennie Fowler Willing, a licensed Methodist preacher, said she regarded it as "Woman's Emancipation Day." (4) Other evangelical leaders regarded it as the "beginning of a new age, which offered a widened ministry for women as the sign of the outpouring of God's Spirit before Christ's Second Coming." (5) As those evangelical Protestant groups moved toward a more professional church leadership and the organization of church hierarchies, however, women found it increasingly difficult to assume leadership roles. (This was similar to what happened in the early church as it became Rome's official state religion in the fourth century.) At Bible schools where women had served as faculty, those institutions that became full-fledged colleges now required appropriate academic degrees. Often women were found lacking, and they either were let go, or not replaced by other females with similar qualifications. Likewise, as churches became more established, they began demanding seminary-trained pastors, and many women were unqualified by that standard. In the mainline Protestant churches, large numbers of women belonged to missionary societies in the 19th century or served as missionaries themselves. (Those who went to obscure fields where men did not, often found themselves teaching and preaching in spite of their denomination's bans.) These were considered acceptable outlets, while speaking publicly was spurned, deemed in poor taste as well as scripturally antithetical. By the 20th century, men within mainline churches voted to absorb female missionary societies into oversight by their seminaries. This both limited women's leadership as well as helped them move into less traditional roles. Now deprived of their independent organizations, women were granted a more enhanced status within those organizations and they began to share leadership with men. Another factor that led to change was the influence of higher criticism. As liberal scholars reinterpreted key scriptural passages, those pertaining to women often came to be understood solely within a cultural context, apart from an authoritative rendering of the Word of God. By the turn of the century, a breathless optimism pervaded American society as many anticipated a "Christian century" of unprecedented peace and the triumph of God's kingdom on earth. From 1914-1945, the period encompassing the two World Wars, that confidence was gone. World War I has introduced horrifying new weapons of mass destruction, and a "lost generation" sought to steady itself on shaky ground. Instead of a Christian century, T.S. Eliot expressed the new view of intellectuals in his poem, "The Hollow Men." This loss of idealism about a reformed society depressed many evangelicals who had labored hard to rectify communal evils. Many began withdrawing publicly from the moral and philosophical challenges that lay before America, becoming more socially isolated and entrenched as they started their own institutions, such as schools and publishing houses. For many, an emphasis on Christ's Second Coming replaced an earlier passion to transform the social order. Kari Torjeson Malcolm says this impacted the view of women as well: Shortly before World War 2 . . . the evangelical church began to conform to the thinking of the secular world with regard to women. The virile evangelicalism that fought injustices in the name of the Lord was replaced by a preoccupation with correct doctrine and rules about do's and don'ts. The age of revival was gone, and with a return to "business as usual," the old prejudices against women began to surface. (6)During that era, mainline churches took up the banner for reform from their evangelical counterparts proclaiming a “social gospel” while downplaying biblical authority and salvation. Women benefited from this in terms of their ability to serve in more capacities, but at a high cost to orthodoxy. Why keep them "down," it was argued, when the scriptures that many believed were against female leadership were not to be taken in any authoritative way but should be more culturally understood? Ironically, accurate interpretations of scripture would have supported their leadership. When America entered World War II in 1941, American women's lives shifted. With men at war, they took jobs in the defense and domestic industries, and "Rosie the Riveter" became a national icon. The war introduced them to the working world in ways that would shatter old stereotypes and eventually help to usher in the modern feminist movement. When the troops started returning after 1945, jobs became harder to find, and women in large numbers returned to the domestic sphere. In the post-war 1950s, the legendary growth of suburbia occurred, bringing with it a baby boom. Popular images of American life came through the rapidly growing influence of television on shows like "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" in which the father worked at a white collar job while the mother stayed managed her and volunteer efforts. In one telling episode of "Father Knows Best," a successful, former college roommate visits the wife, who feels decidedly inferior. At the end of their visit, the single friend says how lucky the mother is to have a family instead of an empty career. This was typical of popular culture. Both evangelical and mainline Protestant churches reinforced an image of the home as a bastion and safe haven in a scary world of death camps, atomic threats, and the Cold War. (7) Malcolm comments, "The feminine mystique was the philosophy of womanhood that developed out of society's longing to go back to the ‘good ol' days.’" (8) Indeed, the 1950s were a time of general confusion for women who had proved themselves capable workers in the crucible of war. Many of them wanted to stay at home, but others desired to use their additional talents. Parents of college women tended to admonish their daughters to get good grades, but act dumb on dates. After all, the major reason for higher education was to get one's "M.R.S." At this time, not many daughters were following in the footsteps of pioneering professor or minister-mothers. That example was lost to this generation. (9) In mainline denominations, though, there was movement towards increased female leadership, which grew in connection with a burgeoning feminism in the secular culture. In the meantime, many evangelicals were teaching traditions about women based on popular Victorian images and current trends. They regarded women as "the weaker sex" who needed to remain at home and away from destructive secular influences promoting abortion, fornication, and lesbianism. They often leaned strongly upon a predetermined understanding of Pauline texts apart from their biblical and cultural contexts to support their positions. In reality, both mainline and evangelical Protestants had come to identify more closely with culture and society than scripture. The former were slowly broadening their outlook based on a secular women's movement, while the latter were reacting to fears of societal collapse. For large numbers of evangelicals, "the message was to cleave to traditional values lest the world at home become as frightening as the world outside." (10) This has continued, with some modifications, to the present. Although it does exist in American Christianity, it is still uncommon when a church or denomination maintain both an adherence to biblical authority and a commitment to uphold the giftedness of women for all aspects of Christian ministry. _____________
1.) Kari Torjesen Malcolm, Women at the Crossroads (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 128. 2.) Nancy Hardesty, Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Revivalism and Feminism in the Age of Finney (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1991), 76. 3.) Ibid., 129-130. 4.) Malcolm, 127. 5.) Ibid. 6.) Ibid., 131. 7.) William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 188. 8.) Malcolm, 131. 9.) Ibid., 128. 10.) Chafe, 188.
*Dr. Rebecca Price Janney is a theologically trained historian and the author of 15 published books, including Great Women in American History and Harriet Tubman. A graduate of Princeton Seminary, she received her doctorate from Biblical Seminary in 2000. For information on this topic, visit her website at http://www.geocities.com/rebeccapricejanney
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and click on her dissertation link.
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