As is clear from Dr. Miranda Cruz’s video introduction, women have always preached, taught, and led in the Wesleyan tradition. This full embrace of the age of the Spirit continues to this day in The Wesleyan Church, where women can follow God’s call into any role of the church, including General Superintendent.
From time to time, debates break out in the broader American church over the question of women in ministry and leadership. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention recently considered whether to exclude from their fellowship any SBC church that had women on staff. Thankfully, the proposal failed. On social media, we regularly see voices wanting to return to the practices of the Roman Catholic Middle Ages when the church relegated the prophetic voices of women to the corners of the church.
Yet the movement of the Spirit is clear. One thread supporting women in ministry on X (formerly Twitter) received over 150,000 views in the first 48 hours, with the vast majority of the comments positive. The Spirit has created a thirst in the church, and The Wesleyan Church is one of many denominations that stands ready to welcome those women called to ministry who are excluded elsewhere.
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It makes sense that Dr. Cruz begins with John Wesley himself. Although his mother, Susanna Wesley, could not be ordained in the Anglican Church, she showed all the signs of a woman who would have become a minister in a different day and time. Indeed, she is a type of many women even today who show all the signs of being called but who either are not allowed or don’t think they can become ministers.
How many women in the church have had powerful ministries that they have undertaken from a limited seat either because of their own church context or the faulty way they have been taught? Perhaps their husbands were the officially ordained individuals. Perhaps they were known as the “pastor’s wife.” But their impact turned out to be so much larger than that of their husbands. God used them despite the artificial boundaries placed on them!
Susanna Wesley was one such person. She showed all the gifts and graces of a minister. She had all the wisdom. She had all the authority of a minister even though the constraints of the day would have kept her from thinking about such a thing. She is a type of the woman who is called today but doesn’t think she can or should. If you are such a person, may this microcourse free you to answer the call that, somewhere deep down, you have always known you had from God!
Wesley himself – as with so many of the great things God did through him – did not start his ministry with a thought that women might be ministers. Yet by the end of his ministry he had informally ordained two women. Sarah Mallet was one of the early Methodist preachers. She began preaching around 1762 and was known for her powerful oratory skills and deep spirituality. Wesley gave her a license to preach and provided her with written instructions on how to carry out her ministry.
Another women Wesley supported in this way was Mary Bosanquet Fletcher. She was a prominent Methodist lay preacher and philanthropist. She married John Fletcher, a leading theologian in the Methodist movement. Wesley recognized and encouraged her preaching ministry. Her work included extensive preaching, writing, and social outreach, particularly after her marriage to John Fletcher, with whom she collaborated in ministry.
Wesley’s openness to women preachers would blossom into the full blown ordination of women in Wesleyan contexts in the 1800s. We might start with Phoebe Palmer, who was a pivotal figure in the Wesleyan Holiness movement and a staunch advocate for women preachers. Although most churches in the Wesleyan holiness movement have never heard of her, the way that entire sanctification was preached throughout the late 1800s and 1900s – the “shorter way” – was almost entirely a result of her theology and ministry.
Born in New York City, Palmer began her ministry alongside her husband, Walter Palmer, in the early 1800s. She is best known for her “Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness,” which she began in her home in 1835. These meetings grew rapidly in popularity, attracting both men and women, and became a hub for the Holiness movement.
Palmer’s theology centered on the idea that you did not have to wait until near death to experience Christian perfection. She believed that sanctification was an immediate and attainable experience for all believers. Her book, The Way of Holiness, published in 1843, became a significant text within the holiness movement.
Palmer’s influence extended beyond her writing and meetings. She traveled extensively, preaching in churches and camp meetings across the United States and Europe. Her preaching and ministry was notable for the way it drew crowds of both men and women. Palmer’s work laid a foundation for greater acceptance of women in ministry within the Wesleyan tradition and beyond.
Back in England, Catherine Booth, the “Mother of The Salvation Army,” was another key figure who championed the cause of women in ministry. Born in Derbyshire, England, she married William Booth in 1855, and together they founded The Salvation Army in 1865. Catherine Booth was a powerful preacher and a prolific writer, advocating for the active involvement of women in ministry.
Her seminal work was, Female Ministry: Or, A Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel, published in 1859, argued biblically and theologically for the inclusion of women in preaching and leadership roles. She asserted that the Holy Spirit’s gifts were not specific to men and that women, like men, were called to share the gospel.
Under Catherine Booth’s influence, The Salvation Army became one of the most influential voices promoting women’s roles in ministry. Women were appointed as officers and preachers, and they played crucial roles in the organization’s evangelical and social work. The ministry of women in the church is part of Catherine Booth’s legacy, continuing the path started by Wesley.
Luther Lee was one of the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, one of the parent bodies of The Wesleyan Church. He was one of the two key individuals who withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1843 in disagreement with the way it was tacitly (and sometimes not so tacitly) supporting slavery. And, he was a strong advocate for women in ministry.
The sermon at the first ordination of a woman in America was preached by one of the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1853. The women’s rights movement in America was launched in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 in a Wesleyan Methodist Church.
Lee’s advocacy for women in ministry was grounded in his interpretation of Scripture and his belief in the equality of all believers. He famously preached the ordination sermon for Antoinette Brown when she couldn’t find anyone in her own denomination – the Congregational Church – who would do it. , In 1853, she was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in a recognized denomination in the United States. This act was controversial but highlighted Lee’s commitment to God’s call on women to be ministers.
We have already encountered his sermon “A Women’s Right to Preach the Gospel.” In it, Lee provided a robust theological and biblical defense for the ordination of women. He argued that the New Testament did not prohibit women from preaching and that many women in the early church, such as Phoebe and Junia, held significant ministerial roles. Lee’s work was instrumental in advancing the cause of women’s ordination within the Wesleyan tradition.
In the later 1800s, B. T. Roberts would do the same. He was the founder of the Free Methodist Church and a key advocate for social justice and women in ministry. Born in Gowanda, New York, Roberts was initially a Methodist Episcopal minister. However he was expelled from the denomination due to his opposition to slavery and his support for egalitarian principles.
In 1860, Roberts and like-minded individuals founded the Free Methodist Church, emphasizing holiness, abolitionism, and the equality of men and women. Roberts believed that the early Methodist movement, under John Wesley, had supported women preachers, and he sought to revive this practice within the Free Methodist Church.
Roberts’s book, Ordaining Women, published in 1891, provided a comprehensive biblical and historical argument for the ordination of women. He emphasized that women had played significant roles in the early church and that their exclusion from ministry was a departure from biblical principles. Roberts’ advocacy led to the Free Methodist Church officially ordaining women, making it one of the first denominations to do so in the United States.
1891 was also the year when the Wesleyan Methodist Church removed a brief ban on ordaining women that resulted from caving into the culture around them. For a brief window of time from 1879-91, Wesleyan Methodists backed up on light and prohibited women from ministry. However, it has not waivered in its support since, keeping faith with the spiritual wisdom of its founder, Luther Lee.
This was the church regaining its heart. After all, the woman’s rights movement – the movement for women to be able to vote and participate fully in civic life – started in a Wesleyan church building in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. A Wesleyan church that does not support women in ministry is a church that has lost part of its core identity.
Just as the Wesleyan Methodists began with an affirmation of women in ministry, the other primary parent body of The Wesleyan Church always endorsed women as preachers, namely, The Pilgrim Holiness Church. As a denomination born of Pentecostal revival, it is no suprise that the Pilgrim Church never gave a second thought to the possibility of female ministers.
In the early 1900s as many as 30 to 40% of the ministers in the Pilgrim Holiness Church were women.
In the 1930s, as many as 30% of the ministers in the Pilgrim Church were women. That number may have reached up into the 40% range during World War II in the 1940s. The Wesleyans didn’t start ordaining women because they went liberal. We ordained women when mainstream Methodism didn’t allow it. We did it because our same belief in the power of the Holy Spirit over Sin could empower anyone – man, woman, former slave, privileged European, Jew, or Irish – to proclaim the word of God as the Spirit led.
The denomination didn’t bat an eye with JoAnne Lyon was elected to be one of the General Superintendents of the Wesleyan Church in 2008. And there was no surprise when she became the sole General Superintendent in 2012. It only seemed fitting.
We end with an apt word from Dr. Miranda Cruz:
“Wesleyans have always affirmed that women are called and equipped for ministry. We affirm it on the basis of the work of the Holy Spirit, born witness to throughout the the Scriptures, and in continuity with the early church and with those courageous women who responded to the call of God even when the church was telling them no.”
