Historic Adventist women

An informative and inspiring review of women as ministers in the Adventist Church.

Ardis Stenbakken is the director of women's ministry at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

What on earth would they do with Ellen White?" The listener asked in amazement. She had just been told that a certain Adventist church was not allowing women to stand in the pulpit or to preach.

Prophet, spiritual advisor, preacher, writer, church leader the list is impressive. But when you add woman, wife, mother, it is amazing. Ellen G. White was all this and more. But somehow we think of her as an anomaly and we forget that she was in fact one among many women who helped build our church. She was the only one with the gift of prophecy, but other women played important roles in almost all aspects of our early church life, including pastoral ministry and administration and, yes, preaching and evangelism.

Sarepta Henry

One of them, Sarepta Myrenda Irish Henry, combined powerful preaching and administration. A temperance activist and national evangelist for the Women's Christian Temperance Union before becoming a Seventh-day Adventist, she spoke to crowds across the United States. Once she was invited to speak in Shabbona, Illinois, for three lectures. "Instead she stayed for three weeks. "The community was stirred to its depths. At the close of the meetings Mrs. Henry conducted a special service for the 200 converts, most of whom had never before held church membership, 73 of whom were . . . avowed infidels."1

Sarepta's travel and heavy work load affected her health. By 1895 she was almost an invalid. She went to the Battle Creek Sanitarium for treatment. While there in 1896 she became a Seventh-day Adventist.2 Sarepta sought Ellen White's counsel as to what she should do after her baptism and Mrs. White encouraged her to continue her work in temperance and to address the crowds.3 Shortly after her baptism, Henry did in fact speak in the Battle Creek Tabernacle to an audience of 2,500. Oliver Willard, editor of the Chicago Post, wrote after she spoke at Northwestern University that her speech was "one of the most beautiful pieces of word painting" to which he had ever listened.4

Sarepta became concerned about the state of Adventist women. Compared to the women with whom she had been working, Adventist women were apathetic, untrained, and uninvolved. Encouraged by letters from Ellen White, she began a "Woman's Ministry" for the General Conference, which granted her a ministerial license in 1898.5

Henry carried on this ministry6 until her unexpected and sudden death while attending a General Conference committee in Greysville, Tennessee, in January 1900.

Other women in ministry

With an increased interest in understanding the place of women in the church, especially in ministry, some "forgotten" women of the past are today becoming better known. In the one-volume Adventist encyclopedia, Ellen Lane warrants one significant sentence in an article about her husband, Elbert B. Lane: "During his illness, his wife, Ellen, took his place in the pulpit and in visiting, and from then on preached independently with marked success."7 In the revised two-volume edition she has an entry of her own, stating that she was the first Seventh-day Adventist woman to receive a ministerial license (1868). This was granted by the Michigan Conference and renewed in 1878.8 She worked with her husband in Pennsylvania and Virginia. One Sabbath morning in Virginia, Elbert spoke to 35 listeners and the next day 650 people gathered to hear Ellen speak.9

A ministerial license, or "preacher's license" was significant for these women because it meant that they had been "examined by a competent commit tee in regard to their doctrinal and educational qualifications."10 In 1878- 1879, the Kansas, Minnesota, and Kentucky-Tennessee Conferences also licensed women preachers. At the time of the 1881 General Conference Session, at least seven women held ministerial licenses.

Hattie Enoch held a preaching license, first granted to her in Kansas in 1879. Ellen White was present at the Conference proceedings and even spoke "at some length on the subject of licenses."11 G. I. Butler wrote to Ellen White in 1881 that the Kansas Conference president, Smith Sharp, made full use of licentiates. He wrote, "Among these are Marshall Enoch and his wife who is a public speaker who labors with her husband. Elder Cook [Kansas minister, soon to become president of the conference] thinks she is a better laborer in such things than any minister in the state."12

Perhaps even more remarkable was the story of LuLu Wightman. She was licensed in 1898 and between 1896 and 1905 she raised up 12 churches in New York state. Her husband, licensed in 1904, and she established another five churches. S. M. Cobb, a minister and contemporary of Mrs. Wightman, wrote in 1897 that Sister Lulu "has accomplished more in the last two years than any minister in this state." The General Conference statistical report for 1903 reported that New York had 11 ministers and two Bible workers, but 60 percent of the new converts were won by the Wightmans and one Bible worker, a Mrs. D.D. Smith.13 Unfortunately, the Wightmans became disgruntled and discouraged and later left the Adventist Church.

Another outstanding preacher was Jessie Weiss Curtis in Pennsylvania. Dr. J. M. Hoffman, who was evangelist and director of the Times Square Center in New York City for 20 years working for the Jewish people, tells how he was brought into the Church through her ministry. "She was quite a preacher, and the first time I went into church someone told her that a Jewish man was in the church with his wife. She changed her subject and preached on the 70 weeks. Jessie Weiss Curtis was a terrific preacher and she raised up the church in Drums, Pennsylvania, where I first became a member. My wife, Trudie, and I were both baptized at the same time."14

The fame of Mrs. Curtis as a preacher was such that in 1927, a newspaper reporter went to investigate what was happening in her tent. He reported, "Coming from a radius of twenty miles, there have been as many as 110 automobile loads at a single service."15 The Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia says that she began her work as a Bible worker with some important early pioneers such as H.M.J. Richards of the Voice of Prophecy; Ned Ashton, later a pastor of Sligo church; and F. H. Robbins, later president of the Columbia Union Conference.16 She also had many important men work under her as interns, including N. R. Dower, who later became Secretary of the Ministerial Association of the General Conference.17

Stories of courage

No story of women in ministry and administration would be complete without recounting the life of Anna Knight. Her accomplishments them selves are extremely impressive, but when you add the times in which she lived, and the challenges of belonging to two minority groups women and Blacks she was amazing.

Anna Knight essentially taught herself to read, and she read herself into the Adventist Church. After graduating from Battle Creek College with a degree in nursing, she returned to her native Mississippi to build a self-supporting school for Black children.18 Once while home on vacation she was ridiculed because on Sabbaths she took reading material, a dog, and a revolver out into the woods. "The dog" she said, "was to fend off wild hogs. The revolver was to fend off people!"19

When she attended the General Conference Session as a delegate in 1901,20 she became excited about mis sions and was soon on her way to India. After several years, she received word that there was trouble at home with her school. When the General Conference was unable to send some one to care for the problem, she asked for furlough. Eventually she was asked to start a sanitarium for Black people in Atlanta. Thus the first "colored" YWCA came into being there. At one point, Anna Knight served as Home Missionary, Missionary Volunteer, Education and Sabbath School secretaries all at once for two unions.21,22 Another woman of distinguished service was Minerva Jane Loughborough Chapman, a sister of J. N. Loughborough. She served for 26 years at the Review and Herald Publishing Association, nine as editor of the Youth's Instructor. She refused a salary during this time.23

From 1875 to 1877 Minerva Chapman served as the Corresponding Secretary of the General Conference. In 1877 she was asked to serve simultaneously as treasurer of the General Conference, editor of the Youth's Instructor, secretary of the Publishing Association and secretary and treasurer of the Tract and Missionary Society, the predecessor of both the Publishing and Personal Ministries Departments.

Although well-known in her day, Chapman has almost been forgotten by the Church she served so well. In his four-volume history of Seventh-day Adventists, Arthur W. Spalding does not mention her, although he does mention 24 other women. LeRoy Froom does not mention her in The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, nor does M. E. Olsen's A History of the Origin and Progress of Seventh-day Adventists.24

There are many more women: Maud Sisley Boyd, the first single woman missionary and assistant to both J. N. Loughborough and J. N. Andrews; Maria Huntley, the only woman other than Ellen White to be invited to address the 1888 General Conference Session in Minneapolis;25 Anna Georgia Burgess, one of the first Seventh-day Adventist missionaries to India; Grace Agnes Clark, outstanding missionary and linguist in East Africa; Betty Haskell, missionary and teacher of Bible instructors; and Minnie Sype, evangelist, pastor, administrator, and missionary. The list goes on and on. Today, many more women are being rediscovered in the annals of Adventist history.

The history of our church would certainly have been very different without the ministry of these women. What a mistake we make when we ignore this history and when we stifle the ministry of women who even now offer their service of love, dedication, and distinction.

1 Margaret White-Thiele, Whirlwind of the Lord (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1998), 179.

2 "Henry, Sarepta Myrenda (Irish)/' Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, Second Revised Edition (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1996).

3 Ellen G. White, Daughters of God (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1998) 130.

4 John G. Beach, Notable Women of Spirit (Nashville: Southern Pub. Assn., 1976), 91.

5 Josephine Benton, Called by God (Smithsburg, Md.: Blackberry Hill Pub., 1990), 230.

6 In late 1899 Mrs. Henry reported, "1 was absent from home five months; traveled over nine thousand miles; have spoken two hundred and fourteen times; was subject to nearly all conditions of living and climate which would test the strength of the most robust, and yet have returned in good working order. . . . After one day of rest I have taken up the work which is waiting for me in my office." White-Thiele, 285.

7 "Lane, Elbert B." Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 1976.

8 "Lane, Ellen S." Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 2nd revised ed., 1996.

9 Rosa Taylor Banks, ed., A Woman's Place (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn, 1992), 66.

10 Bert Haloviak, "The Adventist Heritage Calls for Ordination of Women," Spectrum, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1985, 52.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 53.

13 Banks, 67, 68.

14 Benton, 226.

15 Ibid., 223.

16 "Curtis, Jessie Weiss," Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 1976.

17 Benton, 118.

18 Banks, 61, 62.

19 Mervyn C. Maxwell, Tell it to the World (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1976), 190. Maxwell further states: "As a child she had made her own bows and arrows and was reputedlyable to hit a knothole at 100 yards."

20 Benton, 89, 90. Benton reports that Knight was asked to give a report of her work at the General Conference Session. She reported that in two years she had established a school of 24 pupils for Black children and built a comfortable school building free of debt. She conducted two Sunday Schools, and had given scores of lectures on health and temperance and treated the sick.

21 Maxwell, 190, 191.

22 Benton, 223. In her autobiography, Mississippi Girl, Anna Knight relates that "Since 1911 I have kept an itemized record of the work that I have done. I had to make monthly reports to the conference; therefore, I formed the habit of keeping a daily record. Thinking it might add interest in reporting, I am giving summary of four items herewith: I have held 9,388 meetings and have made 11,744 missionary visits. My work required the writing of 48,918 letters, and in getting to my appointments I have traveled 554,439 miles. This
report does not include mileage to or from my mission field, India, nor does it include any miles covered in my travel there."

23 Maxwell, 185.

24 Beach, 23, 24.

25 Banks, 47.


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Ardis Stenbakken is the director of women's ministry at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

August 2001

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