In 2021, I published an Instagram post and this is an excerpt from the caption.
In 1666, Margaret Fell wrote a tract titled "Women's Speaking: Justified, Proved, and Allowed of by the Scriptures..."
In 1710, Susanna Wesley held evening prayer services that swelled to over 200 people. Her husband, who was away, asked her to stop because his assistant was complaining. She said she wouldn't stop without a positive command so that she would be absolved "from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good."
In the early 1800s, Jarena Lee composed a biography that included her call to preach. She wrote, "If a man may preach, because the Savior died for him, why not the woman? seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Savior, instead of a half one?"
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) gave public defense of her right as believer and a woman to proclaim the gospel.
Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946) defended a Scriptural position for women's full participation in the church that remarkably resembles the same conviction many people hold today.
This isn't to speak of the women in the desert movement or monasticism, the modern missionary movement composed largely of women (so many women were going to difficult and dangerous places that schools were begging men to go with them), or the women who helped start colleges to educate pastors/preachers and then weren't awarded their own earned degrees. This is only a tiny outline over a few hundred years.
Since then many others (women and men) have repeated these same arguments. From the looks of it, we'll have to continue doing this same work, every generation after the other. It is not that the scholarly work is not available but that we are not engaging with it. But imagine if we were able to put that time and energy into proclaiming the gospel and participating in the kingdom. What might happen then?
The history of the church reveals that, yes, there was a set attitude about women. But also that many women (and men) objected to this story about women and continued doing the work they called to do, carefully articulating theological arguments in their defense. Jarena Lee was one of them.
Jarena Lee was born in 1783 and was the first woman authorized to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, though she was never ordained or given a preaching license. She heard “Preach the Gospel; I will put words in your mouth, and you will turn your enemies to become your friends.” She told a bishop in 1811 about her call to preach and he responded that God would not accept that. Eight years later, she received the blessing of the bishop after a new minister found himself unable to finish his sermon and Lee got up and finished it for him with such power that no one could deny her calling.
It was more acceptable for a woman to travel and preach than for a woman to stay and pastor a church. They were also often called “evangelists” or “exhorters” instead of “preachers.” Jarena Lee became one of those traveling evangelists. She calculated that in one year she traveled 3,325 miles and preached 178 sermons. Lee faced opposition both because she was a female and because she was black, but the calling and power of God sustained her in her trials.
Lee wrote a book about her experiences, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a Coloured Lady, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel, which was published in 1836. It is the second known publication by an African American woman. Her book chronicles her call to preach in a way that mirrors the calling of the prophets of the Old Testament.
Lee’s opening line of her autobiography is the passage from Joel that states, “And it shall come to pass, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” When she was told, “But as to women preaching, he said our Discipline knew nothing at all about it—that it did not call for women preachers,” she was relieved. She wrote, “This I was glad to hear, because it removed the fear of the cross—but no sooner did this feeling cross my mind, than I found that a love of souls had in a measure departed from me; that holy energy which burned within me, as a fire, began to be smothered.”
She continued, “O how careful we ought to be, lest through our by-laws of church government and discipline, we bring into disrepute even the word of life…If a man may preach, because the Savior died for him, why not the woman? Seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Savior, instead of a half one?”
Sources
Women in the Mission of the Church, 132
A Women’s History of the Christian Church, 227
Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters, 324-326
In Her Words, 276-281
There was a two-step awareness in my own theological understanding of women and women in ministry. The first was that there were plenty of scholars who were expounding on the things that I was reading and noticing in the Bible. The second was that people, especially women, had been saying these same things for generations. It seems that each generation of Christian women have been forced to wander their way to these findings on their own.1 The lives of these women could have been punctuated with less pain and more stories and theology that made sense of their own calling.
Women have always been adept at working within the constraints of society and culture and being subversive at the same time. You don’t want a woman preacher? Fine, call her an exhorter while she goes to preach. We might sit and quibble over titles to try and make women’s service more acceptable, but I don’t believe that is the record God is keeping.2
Lee’s story reminds us that even in a culture that refuses to make space for women and their callings, God makes space for them. Your obedience may not lead to where you expect, but God will still honor your obedience.
For church leaders, there are questions we can be asking.3 Whose stories are we telling? Have we evaluated our own theology or just adopted what we’ve heard our whole lives? Are we paying attention to the work of the Spirit?
Where does Lee’s story speak to you?
Can you imagine what might be done if this time and energy could be turned to other things?
Women have been squeezed out of leadership even in movements started by women because it was disreputable to broader society to have women in leadership. See Women in the Mission of the Church for more.
It seems that more and more I see different ways for the people in church leadership to participate in these conversations. I want to steward the power that comes with leadership well. This is simply one way.