âSeventy Years, More or Lessâ First UMC Schenectady Celebration of 70 Years of Womenâs Full Clergy Rights
On Monday we celebrated 70 years of full ordination rights and clergy membership for Women in the United Methodist Church â which is as weâve already mentioned in worship a little more complicated that it initially sounds. What history isnât? Really that happened in the Methodist Episcopate Church (of which this church was part at the time) and there had been clergy women for the prior 36 years but they were âlocally ordainedâ which means two things: they had no guaranteed appointments and they had no to access to retirement funds.
Women preachers existed in the Methodist movement from the time of John Wesley whose own mother was a FABULOUS preacher through 1880 when rights were taken away and then in 1920 women regained local ordination and in 1956 full ordination rights. For all those years women preached, led, taught, and organized.The first woman who was given full clergy rights and membership in the Annual Conference was Maud Keister Jensen who got those rights TWO WEEKS after they became available in the Central Pennsylvania Annual Conference which merged into the Susquehanna Annual Conference â our sibling conference in our current episcopal structure. She gained her rights in abstensia cause she was a missionary serving in Korea. When she eventually heard it had happened she responded by wire, âI am deeply grateful for the privilege, but the honor was completely unexpected and due entirely to the early meeting of my Annual Conference. I feel that Georgia Harkness and other active women ministers deserve first recognition after their long struggle and able contributions to the church.â 1 2
In case you didnât know, Georgia Harkness was the first woman to teach in a US seminary, and sheâs from upstate NY and even lived and taught Sunday School here in the Albany District. Which is to say that this history is our history. And Rev. Jensenâs words emphasized how much she was part of a movement of women working together for each other.
The framing of this celebration of Ordination has been that it was a movement of the Holy Spirit, and thatâs clearly true. It even sounds like our gospel passage where the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit and truth and remains with us to remind us of our call to love God and each other! Because, loving people involves letting them do the work God calls them to. (SNAP.) It seems worth mentioning though that even at that historical General Conference in 1956 where full ordination rights and conference membership for women were accepted, it wasnât the plan! 2000 petitions came in about the topic, and the committee that was responsible for them came to the floor of the plenary with a majority report that meant to allow SOME women rights but only if they were single or widowed AND a minority report that hoped to prevent ALL women from full rights. A whole lot of people were in the Spiritâs way.
And since then it is has been good and bad and in-between. And to share some of that, I invite my sisters to speak. (Remarks by Rev. Eileen Deming, Rev. Dana Carroll, Rev. Jane Baker, Rev. Pat Loughlin, and Rev. Sara Baron followed.)
1Many of these details came from the podcast/video found here: https://www.youtube.com/live/JJTpqiUF8uU?si=WXUiGyLC4_oT3NQy
2Words from: https://www.resourceumc.org/en/partners/gcsrw/home/content/maud-keister-jensen
