Why did a small Mennonite body suddenly start licensing female preachers in 1884, the first Mennonite group in North America ever to do so? How did the percentage of women in the MBiC Ontario Conference, in particular, reach 29% in 1905 to 33.3% in 1933 of all credentialed workers? In Canada at the time, perhaps only the well-known Salvation Army (note 1), the Free Methodist Church in Ontario (note 2) and the Gospel Workers Churches in the Georgian Bay area had similar percentages (note 3).

The current Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada has a smaller proportion of female to male preachers, an increase, however, from a period (roughly 1951 to 1979) with practically none. In contrast, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada reported recently that 27% of their credential holders were women (note 4).

An early EMCC precursor denomination, the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church, just a year old in 1884 though its roots went back at least to the 1850s, noticed one member, a young woman named Janet Douglas, was leading testimony prayer meetings in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They saw people were converting to faith in Jesus Christ (note 5). Since evangelism was one of the main reasons for the formation of the MBiC, the male leaders faced a decision, whether to recognize her efforts as a work of God, with official status or not. This 21-year old woman from Ontario had earlier moved with her family to Michigan where she was converted under the MBiC evangelist, David U Lambert. It is amazing that the Indiana-Ohio Conference granted her an evangelist’s license in March 1884 (note 6) when opposition to female preachers was still quite general in the MBiC.

From 1885 to 1886, Janet served as an evangelist in the tabernacle (tent) ministry of the MBiC Canada Conference (Ontario), and then as a helper to Henry S Hallman at Elmwood, ON, near Hanover. In 1886-1888, she was put in charge of a “field,” the MBiC term for a circuit/congregation at the village of Dornoch, south of Owen Sound, ON, to which the appointment of Kilsyth was added. That is, she was a pastor in modern usage. Reappointed to evangelistic work, she returned to Michigan, and the year following married James Hall, who was a convert through her work in Ontario. He himself became a probationer in the Canada Conference in 1889. The Halls’ careers as a ministry couple in Michigan and later at Alsask at the Saskatchewan-Alberta border were traced by Samuel J Steiner in the GAMEO article about her.

Janet Hall’s experience encouraged other young MBiC women who were zealous to witness and preach for Christ: Mary Nunemaker of Indiana (1886), Mary Ann Hallman (of New Dundee, ON, 1887), Katie Hygema of Indiana, Euphemia Pool (of Markham, ON, 1888) and her sister Sarah (1894), Maria Block and “Sister Eby,” (active, probably not licensed, mentioned in the Gospel Banner in 1889), Maude Chatham (1892) and a Mrs Elizabeth Risdon are some of them. David Schwartz published an excellent analysis of the movement in the MBiC in the Wesleyan Theological Journal and another version in the Missionary Church Historical Society journal Reflections (note 7). The movement was unprecedented among Mennonites, but not among North American churches in the 19th century. Women were being admitted to public ministry in a number of denominations although not without difficulty, and often with minimal official status.

Theologically, what encouraged the MBiC apart from the pragmatic argument–the women were successful evangelists–or, which was very common, “there are not enough men in ministry, so women have to do it/ God allows it (note 8),” were biblical studies. We’ll look at their arguments in later blogs. Wesleyan holiness women such as Catherine Booth, wife of William, the General of the Salvation Army, New York Methodist Phoebe Palmer and closer to the MBiC, a Michigan Free Will Baptist evangelist Lura (or Laura) Mains, who wrote for the Gospel Banner and offered the Church a Bible school she was leading (note 9). Free Methodists also licensed women workers as evangelists, preachers, mission and congregational leaders (pastors) (note 10). Free Methodist evangelist Hattie Bates of Michigan, who married MBiC member Allen Schlichter, son of New Mennonite preacher Samuel Schlichter (d 1873) from New Dundee, was also influential (note 11).

Something was going on. It’s curious to me that the Salvation Army organized numerous missions in North America in the 1880s, including Ontario, exactly when young women in the MBiC got the call as well. John Wesley in the 18th century had led the way by approving a set of women leaders for his Methodist bands, classes and societies. When male clerical privilege shut down women preachers in the main English Methodist Society/Church after his death, splinter groups such as the Primitive (meaning “original”) Methodists and Bible Christians took up the practice at least for a while, including in Ontario. Episcopal Methodists from the United States also accepted a few women preachers in Ontario in the first half of the 1800s (note 12). A new movement of female evangelist-preachers sprang up in the Canadian Methodists from 1884. Their numbers were small in proportion to Canadian Methodist membership: a few more than 30 individuals in the 25 years between 1885 and 1910, in a denomination of about 300,000 in 1899 (note 13).

In contrast, the MBiC had only 6351 (adult) members in all of North America in 1908, including 1680 in Ontario. The Church had 101 ordained elders that year, 26 being in Ontario (note 14), yet the Ontario Conference listed 25 women workers in 1908 alone.

In later blogs I will report on some of these women from Ontario who are relatively forgotten, though not with God.

Banner photo: Emma Hostetler in City Mission Worker uniform ca 1902-1907. Courtesy Missionary Church Historical Trust

note 1: My only statistic for the Salvation Army is that 77 out of 168 (45.1%) of corps started in Ontario 1882-1899 were started by or had a woman as their first officer. This number may be higher as the first name of pioneers in some cases was not given, and some locations have no historical data at all; compiled from R G Moyles, The Blood and Fire in Canada: A History of the Salvation Army in the Dominion 1882-1976 (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1977) p 270-281.

note 2: From 1876 to the time Sigsworth listed the credentialed ministers (about 1960), the Free Methodists in Ontario recorded 155 women who served as pastors and evangelists. Not being familiar with their history, I can only estimate that the women’s numbers are about 1:2 to the men; derived from John Wilkins Sigsworth, The Battle was the Lord’s: A History of the Free Methodist Church in Canada (Oshawa, ON: Sage Publishers, 1960) p 277-282.

note 3: One third of GWC workers were women in the period 1902-1908; Helen G Hobbs, “‘What She Could’: Women in the Gospel Workers Church 1902-1955,” in Changing Roles of Women within the Christian Church in Canada, ed Elizabeth Gillan Muir and Marilyn Fardig Whiteley (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1991) p 211.

note 4: https://www.andrewkgabriel.com/2018/05/14/pentecostal-women-ministry-paoc/. Interestingly, the International Foursquare Gospel Church reported about 2018 that 40% of their ministers were women, according to Gabriel.

note 5: Samuel J Steiner (June 2010), “Hall, Janet Douglas (1863-1946,)” https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Hall,_Janet_Douglas_(1863-1946)&oldid=165056.

note 6: Douglas’ license was granted by the Indiana-Ohio Conference in March 1884; Gospel Banner (April 1 1884) p 52, contrary to Everek R Storms, History of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: Bethel Publishing, 1958) p 251, and transferred to the Canada Conference in 1885.

note 7: David R Schwartz, “Woman, Thou Art Almost Loosed: The Rise of Women Ministers in the 19th-Century Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church,” Reflections (Spring and Fall 2007) p 19-40.

note 8: I have heard this often. It appears in, for example, Naomi Brudi, “Letter,” Emphasis (June 1 1975) p 11, and in Stanley Kistler, “God’s Word above Human Opinion,” Emphasis (August 15 1976) p 20, in which he calls women in public pastoral leadership an “emergency exception.”

note 9: Jasper Abraham Huffman, History of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church (New Carlisle, OH: Bethel Publishing, 1920) p 153.

note 10: Sigsworth, p 42-44.

note 11: Huffman, p 152.

note 12: Elizabeth Gillan Muir, Petticoats in the Pulpit: The Story of Early Nineteenth-Century Methodist Women Preachers in Upper Canada (Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1991) p 10-48.

note 13: Marilyn Fardig Whiteley, “Modest, Unaffected and Thoroughly Consecrated: Lady Evangelists in Canadian Methodism,” in Muir and Whiteley, p 185-200.

note 14: Storms, p 92.