UNITED METHODIST WOMEN

It is not only created beings that have life, but organizations have a life-span as well. Their time of birth can be determined, their development can be charted, and their periods of high and low productivity are in the records. And their demise?

This is the question facing UMW as we look toward the new millennium. The problem is not only a local one but is sweeping through the entire organization. "Times have changed" is accepted without argument. The November, 1996, Response magazine gives statistics from a U.S. News and World Report survey of 1,502 women and 460 men. Of those, 8% of the women were self-employed, 45% worked full time, and 15% worked part time and 18% were the sole source of income for their families. The conclusion: "Today's women are just plain busy." A second observation was that UMW has the image of being for the older ladies of the church.

Acknowledging the fact that attendance at meetings has decreased and leadership is hard to recruit, does the answer lie in disbanding the organization which contributes mightily to the ministry of the church, this body of Christ that is so needed in today’s world? It does not escape notice, when reading Paul's second letter to Timothy, that this period of time resembles the image Paul projected regarding the last days, "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God..." And he closes with what John Wesley quoted as his fear for the future of Methodism, "holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Tim. 3:1-5). Might this be the time when the UMW is more urgently needed than ever?

Women have provided a particular quality to Christianity from the time when women supported Jesus and the disciples “out of their resources.”1 What would have happen if when Jesus had been brought before him, Pilate had listened to his wife, "Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for...(I have had a dream about him)."2

On the night Jesus was arrested "all his disciples forsook him and fled"3 and it is uncertain how many of his followers were present at the crucifixion; but women were there and it was a woman to whom Jesus first appeared when he was resurrected4.

Men and women together formed the early church5. Women assisted Paul in his ministry6. A business woman, Lydia, was Paul's first convert on European soil and before there were church buildings, women provided their homes for church meetings8. History tells of the severe

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1 Luke 8:1-3

2 Matt. 27:19

3 Mark 14:50

4 John 20:1-18

5 Book of Acts

6 Rom. 16:3-4

7 Acts 16:14

8 Rom. 16:5-6, Col 4:15

persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire until the time of Constantine, who, surely influenced by his Christian mother, Helena, recognized and legalized Christianity.

Particularly regarding Methodism, Barbara Heck has been called its founder in the United States. She had been born in Ireland in 1734, accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior at age 18, and was strongly impressed by John Wesley when she heard him preach six years later. Barbara married Paul Heck in 1760 and left Ireland for America in the company of her cousin, Philip Embury, a local preacher and class leader. When once in America, Philip became interested in other pursuits. One day Barbara found him playing cards. She snatched them, threw them into the fire and cautioned him that he must preach or they would all go to hell. He gave the excuse that he had neither a church nor a congregation. This did not deter her. She challenged him to preach in his home and she would gather a congregation. He did and she did.

Barbara E. Campbell has written a book, In the Middle of Tomorrow, tracing the history of women's organizations within Methodism. In a section entitled "Beginnings" she has written that women organized for mission beginning in the mid-19th century. They saw people! The under­ lining is done by the •editor of this book; because there is, in the word "saw", a connotation of relating to the situation and attempting to do something about it. These women saw - especially women and children - hungry, poor, without education, needing doctors. These women were unaccustomed to public speaking and working outside the home, having husbands and fathers, as well as church leaders, who believed that was their role and place. The women, however, formed societies to address not only physical but spiritual needs of those around them.

Over time, as they gained experience, strength and confidence, they became involved in spreading the gospel as well as studying it themselves. They boldly led in a fight against slavery, war, child labor, illiteracy, achieved woman's suffrage and were involved in reforming prisons and working for the betterment of all persons.

It must be said almost tongue in cheek that women have been labeled "the weaker sex." An invalid in a wheelchair, Miss Mary Webb of the Baptist tradition, organized the Boston Female Society for Christian Purposes, which became the first Women's Missionary Society. It was an ecumenical body to which the annual dues were $2.

The ability to accomplish much by pooling meager resources was demonstrated by the Female Missionary Society of New York, organized in 1819 as an auxiliary to the Missionary and Bible Society. "Without resources, funds were secured by dint of much self-denial and many humiliations, sometimes begging missionary gifts from door to door, being vastly encouraged by a gift of 25-cents from a brother in the church, by spinning, sewing, and doing without."9

By 1820 it was generally conceded that women had the right to organize for fund raising, for prayer and for education of themselves and their children with respect to mission. It later was acknowledged that women had a superior knack for fund raising. Between 1886 and 1910, the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, raised $3,265,154.17, a penny or two at a time. In 1870 the dues to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society was $1 per year in order that every woman could belong. This was a pledge of 2-cents a week and a prayer. In 1986 the Women's Division of United Methodist Women gave from undesignated giving $4,800,000 to each the World Program Division and the National Program Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. In 1996 the Iowa UMW raised

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9 Some of the quotes in this paper are from notes kept over the years and the source was not recorded.

$1,065,976.41 of which $938,822.28 was sent to the Women's Division. Nationally, UMW income was $22,450,519.51.

But, apart from money that has been given, in the formation of the various societies there has been an underlying sensitivity, a desire to better conditions in which people are living. In the mid-1800's the Ladies' Aid was established; in 1869 the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society was organized with the almost immediate challenge to find support for Isabella Thoburn, who had offered her services to go to India, where her brother James was already serving. Isabella Thoburn had been educated in the Wheeling Female Seminary and Art School in Ohio, and she and Dr. Clara Swain sailed from New York six months after Isabella's original offer. She founded a girls' school in India which would become Isabella Thobum College, affiliated with Calcutta University.

It had been the opinion that missionary work was hard for men and therefore, the mission board stated, men should be married. "Wives endure 'hardness' quite as well as their husbands, and sometimes with more faith and patience." Their lives were extremely hard, carrying responsibility for homemaking in addition to working with other women and children in difficult situations. They bore children in large numbers and had to care for and teach them. It was their letters back home that made women aware of the plight of women and children in foreign lands.

In 1873 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was founded. The name of Carry Amelia Moore Nation immediately comes to mind in this association. The American Heritage Dictionary says of her, "American reformer; temperance leader. With hatchet she used to smash bottles and furnishings in saloons." (The weaker sex.)

In 1875 the Women’s Missionary Association was organized within the United Brethren Church. They combined home and foreign work. The Evangelical women organized a Woman's Missionary Association in 1875. In 1878 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South organized a Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and their Home Missionary Society in 1890.

Black women began a movement, operated mostly in secret, concerned with injustices inflicted on slave people. Within the book First, We Must Listen by Anne Leo Ellis, is writing by Katie Geneva Cannon, depicting the treatment of and attitude toward slaves. She wrote that white supremacists in the antebellum South believed that terrorism was the way to maintain their economic, social and political way of life. That gave them license to consider and treat slaves as animals, property to be owned and controlled with whatever means were necessary. She made the statement that black people were explicitly forbidden by law to become literate. It is an awesome, admirable discovery that out of that degradation rose a women's movement to correct injustices.

The heart of First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes, also, was touched by these conditions and, in 1880, she became the first president of the newly formed Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her main interest was helping black women in the South. The function of the organization was to build schools for blacks, later Native Americans and the mountain people of Kentucky. They concentrated on industrial schools and on deaconess' training schools.

In 1890 the Woman’s Department of the Board of Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, became a separate organization known as the Woman's Parsonage and Home Mission Society. That action was prompted by their interest in the salaries and living conditions of preachers and their families. They started building parsonages and then schools for the poor and/or immigrant children in city slums. The name was shortened to Woman's Home.

In 1893 the Woman's Home Missionary Society was organized, supporting both home and foreign missionary programs. They were interested in education for women but high in their priorities was to get women involved in the missionary program, to prepare children and young adults for missionary work, and getting women missionaries who could work with women and children.

The one preparing this material had personal experience with the early 1930's version of the WFMS (Women's Foreign Missionary Society). Within their umbrella of activities was sponsorship of a group of high school girls called "Standard Bearers." In addition to supervising monthly meetings, the ladies arranged retreats to which they invited missionaries and gave opportunities to the girls to talk with them one-on-one. One of the plans back-fired. I had become interested enough to give some thought to become a missionary and asked, "Do you feel that you are doing enough?" In maturity I realize the answer would have to be "No", which it was; but at that time I thought, "If giving your life to mission work still isn't enough, forget it." And I did.

However, a lesson that has affected my life ever since came from our counselor, who loved us, prayed for us, and taught us to tithe. I don't know how she conveyed the teaching, but somehow she made it clear that, in her opinion, becoming a Christian and deciding to tithe were not two separate decisions. A Christian tithed. It was as simple as that. The teaching has influenced my giving ever since.

The reaction of men to the societies that have been formed and the causes to which women have been dedicated, has ranged from having no sympathy to being openly suspicious and opposed. From somewhere comes the quote, "There are things which women may not do...which are clearly improper for them to undertake...Females have a 'shrinking delicacy' which renders them unfit for command and which subjects them to the rougher sex." Another quote from a now unknown source was that "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good."

These same attitudes have prevailed as women have sought to become more directly involved in ministry in the church. In 1880 Miss Anna Howard Shaw was ordained, but this was later ruled out of order. In that same year the Methodist Protestant Church permitted the ordination of women. The Order of Deaconesses came into being in 1888. From 1889 the United Brethren Church had a small but vital segment of women ministers. The Evangelical Church did not ordain women and thus, when the two merged in 1946, the United Brethren Church acceded to the custom of the Evangelicals. The 1924 General Conference authorized ordination of women but still did not allow them to be Annual Conference members. It was not until 1956 that full Conference privileges were extended to ordained women in the Methodist Church.

In 1980 Marjorie Matthews became the first woman bishop; in 1984 Judith Craig and Leontine T.C. Kelly, the first African American, were elected. However, women were tenacious and at the General Conference gathering in 1988 almost one third of the 996 members attending were women, which represented more than half the U.S. lay delegates and 14% of the clergy delegates. Currently seminary students in the 13 United Methodist seminaries are almost 50% women. However, there still remains reluctance on the part of some congregations to accept a woman pastor.

In 1921 employed women began to organize. There were the Wesleyan Service Guild of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Harford Circles of the United Brethren, the Christian Service Guild of the Evangelical Church, and the Professional Women's Circles of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. In Edith Brown's life story (the first Recipes for Living book) she mentioned as one of her most memorable experiences a Wesleyan Service Guild tour for all southern Iowa organizations. They visited Methodist projects particularly in Louisiana where there were programs of caring for children with special needs, one similar to day-care of the present time, and one in which there was care for adults.

In the history of the Osceola United Methodist Church is a notation from 1893, that the Ladies' Aid Society was organized to "assist the pastor in visiting the sick, non-churchgoers, newcomers, and to raise money in whatever way and for whatever purpose the society may deem proper." In the early 1900's the ladies worked 13 years to raise $1,000 for the needs of the church building, and a 1916 report included the statement that the pipe organ was paid for. It might be inferred that they were instrumental in that accomplishment.

The 1940 Methodist Discipline stated, "In every local church there shall be an organized unit of United Methodist Women." It referred to the Woman's Society of Christian Service, which was a predecessor of the present United Methodist Women. It led to the structure of district, conference and jurisdiction bodies. There developed a Million Member Movement and by 1943 the membership had reached 1,200,000 in 26,600 local societies.

In 1968 the United Methodist Church was formed by the union of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren, which had come about from the former union of the Church of United Brethren in Christ and the Evangelical Church. Four years later, in 1972, the women's organization became United Methodist Women. Response magazine of March, 1997, quoted a member who had been instrumental in the formation of the union of former organizations, "The paramount issue was to maintain it as a women's mission organization..." Another need was for it to be "inclusive of employed women, old and young, educated to understand the worldview as well as those who were interested in the kitchen."

The purpose is stated, currently, "The organized unit of United Methodist Women shall be a community of women whose purpose is to know God and to experience freedom as whole persons through Jesus Christ; to develop a creative, supportive fellowship; and to expand concepts of mission through participation in the global ministries of the church."

Through various emphases, the goal is still the betterment of women and their role in society. In addition to usual officers, UMW units include women designated as Mission Coordinators to lift up spiritual growth, education and interpretation, social action, membership, nurture and outreach. The year's schedule offers retreats, workshops, a reading program, and schools of Christian Mission with selected study materials, worship resources, magazines, and a prayer calendar. Although "mission" is still a primary purpose, Barbara Campbell points up that the word, along with "missions" and "missionary" are not used as comfortably as in the past. She says that we are caught in an age of transition where old landmarks have lost their meaning and new ones have yet to be discovered.10 Perhaps, she suggests, a better word is "ministry," which is people working with people instead of just helping them or doing things for them.

Be that as it may, it is obvious that women have played a substantial and vital role in the life and ministry of the church. The challenge is clear: how do we adapt to the changes in our culture, be attractive to women of all ages and remain true to our history and our calling? Presently, the question is unanswered but the present situation demands that it be confronted.

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10 Barbara E. Campbell In the Middle of Tomorrow, 1975, Women's Division, General
Board of Global Ministries, the United Methodist Church.

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