But
Gideon Refused: The Institutionalization of Methodist Mission
Then
the Israelites said to Gideon, “Rule over us, you and your son and your
grandson also; for
you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian.” Gideon said to them, “I
will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord
will rule over you.” –
Judges 8:22-24 (NRSV) |
American
Methodism has always struggled with the tension inherent in American desires
for both order and liberty, attempting to balance the organization and structure
necessary to manage a large, disparate membership with the free exercise of
Christian conscience. Although founded
and nurtured by Englishmen John Wesley and Francis Asbury who were uninterested
in democratic church polity, the Methodist movement could not avoid being
affected by American ideals of democratization and individual freedom.[1] Wesley, who intended to renew the Church of
England, not form a new denomination, stated Methodism’s mission: “To reform
the nation and, in particular, the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over
the land.”
[2] In other words, it began as an evangelistic
mission which also advocated societal and ecclesiastical reform.
The conjunction of Methodism’s
missional goals with this uniquely American tension between order and liberty
has provoked some of the denomination’s greatest challenges. From nearly the day that Francis Asbury set
foot in America, sent by Wesley to (among other things) enforce discipline among
the American converts, [3] the careful
balance between order and liberty has increasingly given way to an emphasis on
order at the expense of liberty. With the
evangelical mission’s success, as Methodist converts and societies spread like
wild broomsage across the American continent, the hit-and-run itinerancy that
left the day-to-day sustenance of the faithful in the hands of capable, dedicated
laity gave way to institutional structures such as episcopacy, stationed pastors,
a missionary society, and a publishing house.
Methodism proved unable to maintain the heady freedom of its exciting early
days. As Rosemary Reuther and Eleanor McLaughlin wrote,
“In the next generation, as renewal movements settle down and begin themselves
to institutionalize, there is a loss of this early freedom. . . .
Institutionalized leadership again reverts to the patriarchal pattern,” [4] eventually becoming
a soulless bureaucracy more concerned with its own privileges and prerogatives
than with the spiritual thirst, poverty, and suffering on its doorstep.
"Even formation o
f the African Methodist Episcopal and
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches can be attributed in part to dissatisfaction
with an increasingly bureaucratic church that was willing to compromise
its anti-slavery principles for the sake of membership growth."
The effects of creeping Methodist institutionalism and attendant centralization of power have fuelled numerous church conflicts, from Robert Strawbridge’s insistence on administering the sacraments absent ordination, to James O’Kelly’s determination that itinerant preachers be permitted to appeal their bishop-decided appointments, to the schismatic Methodist Protestant laity whose congregational leadership was curtailed by the settling in of stationed pastors, to recent church trials of clergy who conducted holy unions for homosexual couples. Even formation of the African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches can be attributed in part to dissatisfaction with an increasingly bureaucratic church that was willing to compromise its anti-slavery principles for the sake of membership growth. [5] Yet nowhere in American Methodist history is institutionalization of mission better illustrated than through the history of women’s involvement in the church’s missionary work.
Despite its origins as a missionary movement,
Methodism was hesitant to establish overseas missions. After his unhappy excursion to Georgia, Wesley
focused on reforming and spreading scriptural holiness in his own nation, Great
Britain, [6]
but Irish converts transplanted the movement to North America, and
it became necessary to send missionaries to tend the growing flock and extend
Methodism’s reach.
[7]
Parallel to the development of these groups was a growing interest in mission work by churchwomen. In 1800, Mary Webb organized the Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes, with the goal of promoting benevolence as well as evangelism. Shortly thereafter, John and Mehitabel Simpkins began the first “Cent Society,” also in Boston. Members paid one cent per week in dues gained by doing without some small extravagance. Both groups spread quickly and effectively raised funds which they disbursed to “official” missionary organizations directed by men. [11]
Francis Asbury himself encouraged the development of Mite Societies, the Methodist version of Cent Societies. [12] Mary W. Mason established the most influential of these (later known as the New York Female Missionary and Bible Society), three months after the Methodist Missionary Society was founded in 1819, but it folded in 1861 due to denominational insistence on controlling it. [13] Once the genie of women’s leadership and participation was out of its bottle, however, it could not be put back inside. During the second half of the nineteenth century, a “flourishing company of relatively autonomous women’s missionary societies” was established, including in the predecessor denominations of the United Methodist Church. The women claimed neither a call to preach nor a leadership grounded in particular spiritual gifts; rather, they wished to address the “combined evangelical, physical, and social needs” of the marginalized in American society and overseas, especially women and children. Their mission was accomplished mostly by volunteer lay women who raised and managed funds, recruited, commissioned, and deployed their own missionaries (most of whom were single women), [14] and arranged Bible study, prayer, and mission education programs in their local congregations to support their efforts. Their purposes were consistent with the historic Methodist mission. For example, the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church pledged in 1920 “To help win America for Christ [through] evangelistic, educational, and industrial” work. [15]
The women’s missionaries founded schools
and hospitals. Their societies published
their own study materials, periodicals, and mission literature. They undertook public policy advocacy on issues
such as child labor, illiteracy, prison reform, and, above all, temperance. [16]
At times, they overshadowed the denominational
societies. In 1892, Julius Soper, a leading
figure among the missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Japan, met
missionaries recruited, trained, and funded by the Women’s Foreign Missionary
Society, and ruefully noted that they were considerably better provided for
than he. [17]
Despite their accomplishmentsor perhaps because of thema strong segment of church's leadership regarded the women’s accomplishments as a threat to social and denominational order. The church’s power structure periodically attempted to gain control of their programs, repeatedly returning to the old argument of order versus liberty; that is, the order of denominational efficiency and control trumps the church women's free expression of faith and compassion. Frequently, the male-dominated leadership deemed women’s groups as competitors to the general mission boards refusing to embrace them as “real” church organizations. [18]
Whenever events provided an opening, the women’s programs came under assault. Between 1910 and 1964 virtually every quasi-autonomous Protestant women’s missionary organization was co-opted and absorbed by male-dominated general mission boards. [19] In the Methodist Church, the 1939 merger of the Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal South, and Methodist Protestant churches provided the opportunity for the Methodist Board of Missions to subsume six women’s organizations into the new Woman’s Division of Christian Service, ending the organizational arrangement that had existed from the founding of the Women’s Foreign Mission Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1869 – complete autonomy and a direct reporting relationship to General Conference. Despite the organizational change with its attendant adjustments, the Woman’s Division maintained its own fund-raising, financial control, program generation, children’s and youth programs, and its own independent mission institutions, including its own missionaries. The 1964 General Conference, however, imposed changes requested by the Board of Missions but not approved nor desired by the Women’s Division, eliminating the entire home and foreign mission departments of the Woman’s Division and leaving as its only responsibility a Department of Christian Social Relations created in 1940. All direct supervision of long-established home and overseas missions and personnel was transferred to the denominational Board. The Woman’s Division’s commissioned women workers were “given away” to other divisions without explanation, leaving them confused and demoralized. The agenda of the Board of Missions was imposed on the Women’s Division without its consent. All the women retained was control of their money and assets, although they were able to exercise some oversight of missions through their guaranteed participation on the Board and its staff. [20]
Even this dramatic evisceration of the women’s
programs did not satisfy certain elements in the church, but several further
attempts to restructure the Women’s Division were foiled. The women’s advocacy on their own behalf – which
they had learned from decades of advocacy on behalf of others – led to the establishment
of the United Methodist Women, an important political victory for the assertion
of women’s power and leadership in the denomination, and an acknowledgement
of the philosophical differences between the church’s men and women on the subject
of mission. Theressa Hoover characterized
the ecclesiological disagreement by positing that churchmen viewed mission activity
as something separate from Christian social concerns, lay life, and discipleship,
while the women’s mission societies took an integrated, interwoven approach.
[21] Beneath these philosophical differences, however,
lies the order versus freedom conflict with which Methodism has always wrestled.
In the end, the pro-order contingent mostly prevailed, and the women’s
freedom to respond their call to mission was curtailed.
The Women’s Division remains in business
as one of ten divisions of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries,
a participant in the Board’s mission “to introduce people to Jesus Christ, strengthen
churches and communities, alleviate human suffering, and seek justice, freedom,
and peace,” [22] which is certainly
consistent with the historic purposes of Methodism and of the women’s societies.
It still supplies Bible and mission study materials, leadership training,
and periodicals for one million lay members in more than 25,000 local chapters. It still collects modest sums from thousands
of individual women in support of home and foreign missionaries, and about twenty
percent of those funds support programs under the direct control of the Women’s
Division, including child care centers, residences for women, community centers,
hospitality facilities for church workers, and a lay women’s training center,
all in the United States, [23] as well as
various specific programs and projects administered by the General Board.
Specific relationship with individual missionaries is all but forgotten. [24] Although Women’s Division officers and staff
serve on the decision-making bodies of the General Board, their membership no
longer exercises complete authority over funds they raise. “Undesignated giving,” the other eighty percent
of UMW-raised funds, about $20 million per annum and more than twenty percent
of General Board of Global Ministries total budget, is allotted by the General
Board. [25]
Order has prevailed. The Women’s Division is neatly packaged into
the denominational structure. But what
of freedom? Some remains, but the scale
no longer balances.
Permitting either order or freedom to
have the final word, for one to dominate the other, is a recipe for disaster.
When freedom is ascendant, anarchy reigns; structure and boundaries
go unrespected. Ascendancy of order quashes creativity, and
can lead to corruption and tyranny. [26] American Methodism is still challenged to balance
the two, seeking to maintain denominational order while welcoming the free
work of the Holy Spirit who, they believe, can keep the church forever refreshed
and renewed.
Notes
[1] Douglas M. Strong, Course Lecture, “The Church in History
II,” Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C., 16 March 2001.
[2] As quoted in Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the
People Called Methodists (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1995), 214.
[3] Douglas M. Strong, Course Lecture, “History and Doctrine
in the Methodist Traditions,” Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.,
23 Oct 2001.
[4] As quoted in Theressa Hoover, With Unveiled Face: Centennial
Reflections on Women and Men in the Community of the Church (New York:
Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist
Church, 1983), 15.
[5] Strong, History and Doctrine lectures, 23 October 2001
and 6 November 2001; Jane Donovan, Many Witnesses: A History of Dumbarton
United Methodist Church, 1772-1990 (Interlaken, N.Y.: Heart of the Lakes
Publishing, 1998), 109-136.
[6] Wesley made twenty-one preaching tours of Ireland, but
as it was under British control throughout his lifetime, the case could be
made that he did not leave his homeland.
[7] Strong, History and Doctrine lecture, 23 Oct 2001.
[8] R. Pierce Beaver, American Protestant Women in World Mission: A History of the First Feminist Movement in North America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1980), 16-17.
[9] Donovan, 73.
[10] Frederick A. Norwood, The Story of American Methodism
(Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1974), 330-331.
[11] Beaver, 14-27.
[12] For example, the Methodists in Georgetown, D.C. established
such a group on 25 April 1817, a year after Asbury’s death, and named it “The
George Town Asbury Mite Society.” Although
it was explicitly a women’s fund-raising organization in support of missions, its founding officers
were men, charged with supervising the ladies’ activities and managing their
money. Montgomery Street Methodist Episcopal Church,
“Quarterly Conference Minutes,” 25 April 1817, Archives of Dumbarton United Methodist Church, Historical
Society of Washington, D.C.
[13] Beaver, 40.
[14] Hoover, 13, 29.
[15] As quoted in Campbell, 7.
[16] Campbell, 3, 5, 58.
[17] Julius Soper to A. B. Leonard, 14 October 1892, Julius
Soper Papers, Archives of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United
Methodist Church.
[18] Hoover, 16.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., 26-31.
[21] Ibid., 35-52.
[22] General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist
Church, “In Mission Together,” available on-line at http://gbgm-umc.org/home_page/index.cfm, 17 November 2001.
[23] Ruth A. Daugherty, “United Methodist Women in Mission,”
Pamphlet 2139 (Cincinnati, Ohio: United Methodist Women Service Center, n.d.),
3, 10, 15-16, distributed at the United Methodist Women’s Learning Resource
Center for Wesley Students, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.,
26 September 2001.
[24] Ellen Hoover, United Methodist missionary to the People’s Democratic Republic of Congo, to Jane Donovan 15 November 2001.
[25] General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist
Church, “Mission Money Means: The Women’s Division and Undesignated Giving,”
Pamphlet 5626 (Cincinnati, Ohio: Women’s Division Service Center, 2001), n.p.,
distributed at the United Methodist Women’s Learning Resource Center for Wesley
Students, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C., 26 September 2001.
[26] Strong lecture, “The Church in History II,” 16 March 2001.