Women Ministers: A Quaker Contribution

A change in attitude regarding women's participation in the ministry has evolved slowly during the second half of the twentieth century. The ministry of women has been an ecumenical study of the World Council of Churches since its formation in 1948, at which time the only denominations ordaining women were the Congregational Church and the Disciples of Christ. The Presbyterians affirmed women's ordination in 1955, and the Methodists a year later, but not till 1976 did the Episcopalians approve ordination of women in the United States (having previously done so in Australia), and there has been continuing opposition to this decision. In 1978 the National Council of Churches released a statement showing that fewer than half of the churches in the United States ordain women, with only about four per cent of those ordained women. In other words, during the past thirty years relatively few women have come into the full role of ministry, and even when ordained they have met with varying degrees of acceptance.

Quakerism, on the other hand, has always encouraged women preachers. This must be considered in connection with another fact: for over two centuries of its history the Society of Friends depended entirely on a lay ministry, in which ordination had no place. Traditionally this ministry rose out of a response to the Inward Light believed to exist in all persons, regardless of sex, and its integrity was measurable only in terms of spiritual growth or sensitivity to the Divine Source. But within the past hundred years there has developed a large group of pastoral Friends with professional ministry. Of their pastors, only a minority have been women (the best known being Esther Frame).

The women chosen in this study by Robert Leach, though drawn from different periods of Quaker history, all belong to the unprogrammed tradition. Though they exhibited unusual aptitude in preaching, they were lay people without special training. In unique ways they accepted challenges of their time, pioneered new interpretations of women's roles, and were part of a society that was evolving to more equality for both sexes.