Evangelical, Wesleyan, Egalitarian
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher (1739-1815)
Some time back I posted this list compiled by Kevin Jackson of the Wesleyan-Arminian blog: Women Leaders in the Wesleyan Movements. I did it to make a point: support for Women in Ministry in the Wesleyan movements goes back to the days of Wesley himself — back to the very beginning of the movement. And, in this regard to holiness denominations were (generally speaking) more radical and far ahead of the Methodist Episcopal —> Methodist —> (+ EUB) —> United Methodist Church. Though, of course, the Methodists got on board too.
The revivalists were there first.
That is a paradigm shift for a lot of people. The acceptance of women in ministry in the Wesley-related movements was well ahead of the modern, secular feminist movement — and is, in that sense, unrelated to it! The more radical, Bible-thumping, revivalistic branches of the Wesleyan movement accepted the idea of women in ministry long before the official acceptance of this by the United Methodist Church. (more…)