In fact, if one focuses on the more activistic sons and daughters of the 13th-century “Evangelical Awakenings” (rather than on the more doctrinally-oriented forerunners of American fundamentalism), one can make a case that these persons were often the social radicals of earlier generations. In the first essay in this series, we tried to show that this was true for the heart of American “establishment evangelicalism”--Wheaton College and its founder Jonathan Blanchard. In this essay we would like to unfold something of the history of “evangelical feminism.”
The Wesleyan revival occurred at a crucial time in England’s history and was a part of (perhaps to some extent the cause of) a certain breaking down of older aristocratic and hierarchical patterns of society. A case can be made, in fact, that Methodism helped mediate in a peaceful way some of the radical social ideas of the more violent French Revolution (cf. Bernard Semmel’s recent book The Methodist Revolution). Such currents helped pave the way for new roles for women. As a “religion of the heart” rather than tradition or training, Methodism was a natural “leveler” more open to involvement of lower classes, laymen, women, and others held in check by more “established” and “hierarchical” forms of religion.
From the very beginning women played a major role in the “evangelical revival.” Perhaps it was in part due to the influence of a very powerful mother (who stirred controversy, for example, by turning her Sunday family worship into a service that 200 attended) that Wesley allowed women a new role in the church. After some hesitation he even encouraged a Mrs. Sarah Crosby to preach. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Mary Fletcher kept up the parish work and preached to crowds of 2,000-3,000 people. Other important women in early Methodism included Hester Rogers, Hannah Ball, Francis Pawson, Mary Taft, Sarah Bentley, and the Countess of Huntingdon.
This was so much the case that one writer, Robert Wearmouth (in Methodism and the Common People of the 18th Century, p. 223) has claimed that “the emancipation of womanhood began with him (Wesley).” In the generation after Wesley these sentiments developed in a definitely feminist direction. Adam Clarke, whose famous multi-volume commentary (1810) was a most important influence in the 19th century, insisted that “under the blessed spirit of Christianity they (women) have equal rights, equal privileges, and equal blessings, and let me add, they are equally useful.”
Similar developments were taking place in America under the influence of the “Great Awakening.” Here again women began to play a new role, especially in religious life. But it was under the influence of evangelist Charles G. Finney that things came to a head. One of his controversial “new measures” was the place he gave to women in his revival meetings. One of the earliest expressions of this took place the night Theodore Weld was converted in 1825 under the preaching of Finney. That night “seven females ... confessed their sin in being restrained by their sex and “prayed publickly in succession at that very meeting.” Few but the Quakers had ever permitted anything like this before.
Weld was Finney’s assistant for a while before becoming perhaps the most influential abolitionist of his age. It was probably Weld that lay behind this particular “new measure.” In those days abolitionism and feminism were often conjoined. Weld later married Angelina Grimke. Angelina and her sister Sarah were the first women to speak publicly to mixed audiences in America--the issue was abolitionism--and the first to assert women’s rights. Among Sarah’s sentiments were: “I am persuaded that the rights of women, like the rights of slaves, need only to be examined to be understood and asserted” (1837); “The New Testament has been referred to, and I am willing to abide by its decision, and must enter my protest against the false translations of some passages by the MEN who did that work ... when we are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible, a little different from those we now have (1837); “Men and women were CREATED EQUAL; they are moral and accountable beings, and whatever is right for man to do, is right for woman to do” (1837); “The literal translation of the word 'Help- meet' is a helper like unto himself; and is so rendered in the Septuagint and manifestly signifies a companion.” (For these quotes and related material, cf. Aileen Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal).
In 1835 Oberlin College opened with students largely abolitionized by Theodore Weld and with evangelist Finney as first professor of theology. Oberlin College was radically reformist and committed to abolitionism, peace activism, and “female reform,” among other concerns. Oberlin was the first co-educational college, and this fact was the one item that its first president Asa Mahan wanted engraved on his tombstone. Among early graduates of Oberlin were a number of the most important feminists of the era. These women even carried feminism beyond the stance of Oberlin.
Lucy Stone Oberlin, class of 1847, refused to take her husband’s name and was known as “Mrs. Stone." When she married, she and her husband Henry Blackwell together signed a protest that declared that their marriage implied “no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no man should possess” (Up From the Pedestal). And later the same couple founded in 1870 The Woman’s Journal, the principal suffragist paper.
Another graduate of Oberlin was Congregationalist Antoinette Brown, the first woman to be ordained. Her ordination sermon was preached by Luther Lee, a Wesleyan Methodist minister. The Wesleyan Methodists, founded in 1842 over abolitionism, had also been particularly receptive to women’s rights. The “Seneca Falls” meeting of 1848 that first called for the right of women to vote had been held in a Wesleyan Church because only the abolitionists were open to such radical ideas. Lee defended in 1852 a number of women who attempted to speak at a temperance meeting, and it was natural that he be asked in 1853 to preach at Antoinnette Brown’s ordination. His sermon on “Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel” was based on Galatians 3:28. He argued that “in the church, of which Christ is the only head, males and females possess equal rights and privileges ... if the text means anything, it means that males and females are equal in rights, privileges, and responsibilities upon the Christian platform ... if males may preach the gospel so may females; and if males may receive ordination by the imposition of hands, or otherwise, so may females.”
Feminism after the Civil War was perhaps less permeated by an “evangelical” spirit but even then their influence was felt. A recent dissertation by Ralph Spencer studies “Dr. Anna Howard Shaw: The Evangelical Feminist’’ (Boston University, 1972). Dr. Shaw was the second woman to attend Boston University’s School of Theology. After graduation she pastored Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, and Methodist Protestant churches before returning to Boston to take a medical degree. After this study she threw herself into the struggle for women’s rights for the rest of her life. The high point of her career was as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association during the period in which she set up the machinery for the campaign that won women the right to vote.
Another important feminist of the era was Francis Willard, founder and long-term president of the World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and for a while a co-worker with D.L. Moody. She felt that she had a supernatural call from God to proclaim the “gospel of woman’s suffrage” and combined for many years this work with her temperance concerns. She was also the author of a book Women in the Pulpit. In this book one finds such language as:
“'Behold, I make all things new' was the joyful declaration of women’s great Deliverer. 'He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bound.’ Above all other beings these words must refer to woman, who, without Christ, lies prostate under society’s pitiless and crushing pyramid. Whether they perceive it or not, it is chiefly ecclesiasticism and not Christianity that Robert Ingersoll and Elizabeth Cady Stanton have been fighting.”
Another neglected figure has been Catherine Booth, who with her husband, William, founded the Salvation Army. Catherine had originally refused to marry William until he straightened out his ideas on women (he had suggested that “woman has a fibre more in the heart and a cell less in the brain"). Later she defended the right of women to preach in Female Ministry, her contribution to pamphlet warfare on the subject. Catherine was a better speaker than her husband, and on some occasions William took care of the children while she preached. She was very concerned with raising her children with this new understanding. “I have tried to grind it into my boys that their sisters were just as intelligent and capable as themselves. Jesus Christ’s principles were to put women on the same platform as men although I am sorry to say his apostles did not always act upon it.” As her son-in-law put it, “she was to the end of her days an unfailing, unflinching, uncompromising champion of woman’s rights."
And even though his denomination was unwilling to go along, B.T. Roberts, founder of the Free Methodist Church, was firmly committed to the right of women to preach. In an 1891 book, Ordaining Women, a sophisticated study that can be read with profit even today, Roberts advanced the usual arguments for the ordination of women. But in addition to this he went on to argue for a radical equality in the home: “The greatest domestic happiness always exists where husband and wife live together on terms of equality. Two men, having individual interests, united only by business ties, daily associate as partners for years, without either of them being in subjection to the other. They consider each other as equals. Then, cannot a man and woman, united in conjugal love, the strongest tie that can unite two human beings, having the same interests, live together in the same manner?”
But the movement toward women in the church was most intense in the “holiness movement” that emerged from Methodism in the late 19th century. Phoebe Palmer, a lay evangelist and the major force behind this movement, argued in The Promise of the Father (1859) on the basis of Acts 2 that, as prophesied in Joel 2:28, in the “latter days” the spirit was to be poured out on daughters as well as sons. (The argument was more sophisticated than the proof-text sounds and involved an understanding of the restoration of a pre-fallen state of equality as well as a pnematologically grounded doctrine of the right of women to preach).
This argument gained force throughout the rest of the century and became a central theme of such groups as the Church of the Nazarene, the Pilgrim Holiness Church, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), etc. Mrs. J. Willing Fowler argued in the Guide to Holiness just before the turn of the century that “Pentecost laid the axe at the root of the tree of social injustice .... When the Pentecostal light shines most brightly, women do the bulk of common school teaching. They are also principals, professors, college presidents, and are admitted to all learned professions.” The original constitution of the Church of the Nazarene specifically recognized the right of women to preach. One entire conference from West Tennessee consisted for awhile of only women ministers. And even the little denomination called the “Pillar of Fire" issued for a number of years a periodical entitled Women’s Chains. The spirit of these groups is well illustrated in a quotation from Seth Cook Rees, one of the founders of the Pilgrim Holiness Church:
“Nothing but jealousy, prejudice, 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 efficacy seldom equaled by men. Sisters, let the Holy Ghost fill, call and anoint you to preach the glorious Gospel of our Lord.” And his wife, Hulda, served with him as co-pastor and co-evangelist.
We could go on, but this is enough to indicate not only that there is widespread historical antecedent “evangelical feminism,” but that in the 19th century it was evangelicals of various sorts that often took to most radical stances on the questions. Not only were most of the issues discussed on a sophisticated level in such groups in the 19th century, but there was also experimentation with egalitarian marriage, affirmation of the right of women to a full role in the church, concern with the socialization of children to sexist attitudes and roles, “co-pastorate" ministries, etc. It is indeed ironic that many of the descendants of these same groups are the most resistant to such ideas today.
When this article appeared, Lucille and Donald Dayton were both contributing editors to the Post American. Lucille worked as assistant director of the Urban Life Center in Chicago and Don was director of Mellander Library at North Park Theological Seminary while pursuing graduate study in theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
For further reading:
Aileen S. Kraditor, Up From the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), also available in paperback.
Gerda Lerner, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman’s Rights and Abolition (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), also available in paperback.
For the rest of the series, see below:
Recovering a Heritage, Part I:
Recovering a Heritage, Part II: Evangelical Feminism, by Donald W. Dayton and Lucille Sider
Recovering a Heritage, Part III: The Lane Rebellion and the Founding of
Recovering a Heritage, Part IV: The "Christian Radicalism" of
Recovering a Heritage, Part V: The Rescue Case, by Donald W. Dayton. December 1974.
Recovering a Heritage, Part VI:
Recovering a Heritage, Part VII: The Sermons of Luther Lee, by Donald Dayton. February 1975.
Recovering a Heritage, Part VIII: Theodore Weld, evangelical reformer, by Donald W. Dayton. March 1975.
Recovering a Heritage, Part IX: The Tappan Brothers: businessmen and reform, by Donald Dayton. April 1975.
Recovering a Heritage, Part X, by Donald Dayton. May 1975.
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