ONLY GOD KNOWS THE OPPOSITION WE FACE: THE RHETORIC OF NINETEENTH CENTURY FREE METHODIST WOMEN’S QUEST FOR ORDINATION

Christy E. Mesaros-Winckles

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2012

Committee:

Ellen Gorsevski, Adviser

Ellen E. Berry Graduate Faculty Representative

Alberto Gonzalez

Catherine Cassara

© 2012

Christy Mesaros-Winckles

All Rights Reserved

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ABSTRACT

Ellen Gorsevski, Advisor

This study focuses on two prominent evangelists, Ida Gage and Clara Wetherald, who served as two of the earliest women delegates to the Free Methodist General Conference and argued in defense of their ministries. Rhetorical artifacts include historical writings from both

Gage and Wetherald. To illustrate the tension these women faced in gaining acceptance for their ministry, the 1890 and 1894 General Conference debates on ordaining women are analyzed to provide a broader religious and cultural understanding. Using archival research methods, the dissertation emphasizes constructing a rhetorical history narrative about the debates in the Free

Methodist Church on women’s place in ministry and in the home.

The rhetorical concept of “passing” is used to illustrate how both Wetherald and Gage had to construct their narratives in a way that would allow them to be accepted in the male dominated profession of ministry. Additionally, the concept of silence as a rhetorical device is also used to demonstrate how both Wetherald’s and Gage’s ministries and impact in the denomination quickly vanished after the issue of women’s ordination was defeated and both became divorcees. However, while their ministry gains suffered setbacks within the Free

Methodist Church, the fact that Wetherald went on to have a thriving preaching career and Gage inspired both her children and grandchildren to start successful ministries outside of the denomination illustrates their long-lasting impact on nineteenth century ministerial culture.

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This dissertation is dedicated to the lives of all Free Methodist women who have faithfully pursued their passion to spread their faith despite opposition. In particular, I dedicate this to the

nineteenth century Free Methodist women trailblazers who experienced numerous physical,

financial and personal hardships to break pathways for women to become ministers. v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without the help of numerous individuals, this dissertation would never have been possible. First, I wish to thank Dr. Ellen Gorsevski, who has been my adviser and dissertation

committee chair. Thank you for pushing me to explore new theoretical ideas and helping me to

believe in my academic abilities when I sometimes did not believe in them myself. Additionally,

I want to thank my wonderful dissertation committee – Dr. Ellen Berry, Dr. Alberto Gonzalez

and Dr. Catherine Cassara – who have allowed me to research the topics I am passionate about

and have seen value in my scholarship. The gentle guidance my committee has provided is

invaluable.

When I began working on this dissertation a year and a half ago, Clara Wetherald and Ida

Gage were no more than names on the page of a denominational history book. At times I

seriously questioned whether I would ever find enough information to understand the lives and

rhetoric of these two amazing trailblazers in women’s ministry. Without question, I would not

have succeeded without the help of Wetherald’s and Gage’s descendants. Special thanks must go

to Florene Turner who faithfully preserved her grandmother Edith Gage Tingley’s memoirs and

provided me with a copy of this amazing book. So much of what I know about Ida is a result of

the Tingely family’s thorough genealogical research. Additionally, I have to thank Norm

Luppino, a descendant of Clara Wetherald’s brother, Perry Miller. Thank you for working as my

tireless, unpaid, research assistant and sending me newspaper articles, family letters and other

valuable information about Clara Wetherald and her family. Furthermore, I need to thank Betty

Arford for her help transcribing the Miller and Wetherald family letters, and Dr. Rev. Doug

Showater who shared his research on Clara Wetherald’s Congregationalist connections and was

incredibly helpful in explaining the history of ordination in the Congregationalist Church. vi

Finally, special thanks goes to Dorothy Spring who has served as my sounding board, research assistant, and friend throughout this process. Dorothy’s passion to uncover Clara’s story helped motivate me to beat her in uncovering information.

Furthermore, because at the heart and soul of this dissertation are the primary sources collected for this project, I wish to thank several archivists for their time and access to the amazing collection of treasures they oversee. Thank you to Cathy Fortner and Kate McGinn at the Marston Memorial Historical Center for opening up the Free Methodist archives and hunting down sources and material for me. Thank you to Susan Panak of Spring Arbor University whose probing questions as the Spring Arbor archivist made me think about the missing pieces in Clara and Ida’s stories in new ways. I’m indebted to all of you.

The list of people who helped me with this project is extensive, but I wish to especially remember two amazing Free Methodist scholars who have helped me throughout this process.

First, Dr. Howard Snyder’s groundbreaking history, Populist Saints, about Free Methodist founders B.T. and Ellen Roberts, helped me see that Free Methodism’s impact extends beyond religious history to the history of social movements in nineteenth century American culture.

Thank you, Dr. Snyder, for your support throughout this project and for your belief that my research had merit and is valuable to the denomination. You have become a wonderful mentor to me.

Thank you to Beth Armstrong whose current survey research on barriers to women’s ordination in the twenty-first century Free Methodist Church has helped me draw correlations between the past and present. I greatly appreciate you sharing your ongoing research findings with me. I have enjoyed finding a colleague who shares my passion to break down the “stained glass ceiling” for women pursing full-time ministry. vii

Finally, thanks to my husband, Andrew Winckles, who acted as my editor and provided valuable, honest critiques of each dissertation chapter before I sent it off to the committee for review. Andrew has listened to me worry for almost two years about not finding needed sources and wondering at times if this topic was even possible to pursue. Without his support I doubt I would have been sane enough to finish this dissertation. I also need to thank my cat Paisley who telepathically communicated to me some of the most complex theoretical ideas I used in this dissertation. I have one smart cat who spent hours sitting on my lap as I wrote, a wonderful comfort and stress reliever. I think he is probably one of the first cats to complete a dissertation.

Thus, he rightfully deserves to be credited in my acknowledgements section.

In conclusion, I want to extend thanks to the Bowling Green State University Alumni

Association for giving me the Katzner Award to fund part of this research. The financial assistance was greatly appreciated, as archival research is not an inexpensive research method. I have been humbled, encouraged and challenged by the faculty I have worked with in the School of Media and Communication, the Women’s Studies Department, and the American Culture

Studies Department who have exposed me to new topics and new research methods. I am a more well-rounded scholar because of the diverse, interdisciplinary research I have been taught.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER I. EXCAVATING THE PAST: THE LITERATURE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

WOMEN’S RHETORIC ...... 1

Retrieving Nineteenth Century Women’s Contributions ...... 4

Wesleyan History and Women’s Rhetoric ...... 7

Free Methodist Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century ...... 11

First-wave Feminism and Religion ...... 18

CHAPTER II. WEAVING TOGETHER FEMINIST THEORY, RHETORICAL HISTORY

AND ARCHIVAL RESEARCH ...... 26

Overview of Rhetorical Criticism from a Narrative Perspective ...... 26

Conversion Narratives/Christian Perfection as Embodied Experience ...... 31

Overview of the Rhetorical Concepts of the Fourth Persona ...... 35

Rhetorical Silencing of Women in Their Faith Communities ...... 37

Overview of Feminist Archival Research Methods ...... 39

CHAPTER III. THE LEGACY OF CLARA WETHERALD AND IDA GAGE ...... 44

Clara Wetherald’s Ministry and Rhetorical Identity ...... 46

Ida Gage’s Ministry and Rhetorical Identity ...... 61

CHAPTER IV. THE ORDAINING DEBATE WOMEN IN THE FREE METHODIST

CHURCH ...... 74

The Free Methodist Magazine Debates Prior to 1890 ...... 78

The 1890 General Conference Debates on Ordaining Women ...... 81

Ordaining Women and the Debates between Conferences ...... 94 ix

The 1894 General Conference Debates on Ordaining Women ...... 97

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS ...... 106

Feminist Social Movements and Women’s Ordination ...... 108

Religious Fundamentalism and Women’s Ordination ...... 111

Directions for Feminist/Religious/Communication Research ...... 115

ENDNOTES ...... 120

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 144

APPENDIX A. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE HOLINESS MOVEMENT ...... 154

APPENDIX B. BIOGRRAPHICAL OUTLINE OF CLARA WETHERALD’S AND IDA

GAGE’S MINISTRY ...... 156

APPENDIX C. PHOTOS OF CLARA WETHERALD AND IDA GAGE ...... 162

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CHAPTER I: EXCAVATING THE PAST: THE LITERATURE OF NINETEENTH

CENTURY WOMEN’S RHETORIC

In 1891 Benjamin Titus Roberts, founder of the Free Methodist Church, published a

book, Ordaining Women. It is a book that evangelical historian Donald Dayton calls “the most

radical of Evangelical defenses of feminism” in the nineteenth century.1 Even at the time of its

publication in 1891, Ordaining Women was heralded by various religious publications as an

important and necessary book to clarify theological debate on gender equality and women’s

ordination. The Pentecost, for example, noted that “The book is greatly needed to disabuse the people of errors regarding the qualification of women in the work of God.”2

Within the Free Methodist Church, women embraced the book as a way to liberate

themselves from religious oppression and to free themselves to fulfill more senior leadership

roles within the denomination. As Mariet Hardy Freeland, a regular female writer to the

denominational magazine, The Free Methodist, said, “May this book, under God, accomplish as

great a work for the deliverance for women, especially in the Free Methodist Church, as ‘Uncle

Tom’s Cabin’ did for the colored race.”3 Ordaining Women did not have the desired effect of

granting Free Methodist women ordination. Following its publication, delegates at the 1894

General Conference still voted against ordaining women. However, the support of Roberts and other early Free Methodist leaders for women evangelists allowed several prominent women preachers to emerge from the denomination. Women such as Clara Wetherald of the East

Michigan Free Methodist Conference, and Ida Gage of the Ohio Conference, preached to thousands of people, holding revivals for weeks at a time. Wetherald traveled from coast-to- coast, holding revivals from New York to California,4 and Gage traveled to Colorado to hold a

series of revival services there.5 While these women were restricted to the title of evangelist, 2

which meant they could not baptize, marry or serve communion, they found ways to work through a restrictive religious system and make an important spiritual impact throughout the country. (For more information on the founding of the Free Methodist Church see Appendix A)

Both Wetherald and Gage were among the first women delegates appointed to the quadrennial Free Methodist General Conference. Wetherald served in 1890 and Gage in 1894.

Yet, after the death of Roberts in 1893, the denomination became more resistant to granting women ordination and the ministries of Gage and Wetherald slowly faded. Gage left the denomination and devoted the rest of her life to nursing in California. Wetherald left the Free

Methodist Church and became one of the first women ordained by a regional Congregationalist council as a minister.6 By the beginning of the twentieth century, the denomination decisively voted against allowing women to be ordained as elders. Thus, a denomination that began by opening ministry to women, focusing on helping the poor and social reform lost its focus.

However, for the first thirty years, Free Methodism was very much a women’s movement that helped pave the way for women to emerge from the domestic sphere and find professional and spiritual fulfillment through ministry.

Consequently, because the denominational leadership after Roberts’ death chose to relegate women’s roles in the church to the mission field or other leadership positions, the contributions of early Free Methodist women evangelists were greatly overlooked. Women evangelists during this time period are only beginning to gain attention from current scholars across numerous disciplines as the influence of women preachers, such as Gage and Wetherald, becomes more well-known. Additionally, the rhetorical debates (the 1890 and 1894 General

Conference debates on women’s ordination) in late nineteenth century Free Methodist culture regarding Biblical gender roles and women’s preaching are almost identical to the continuing 3

gender debates in twenty-first century evangelical culture. To understand how deeply entrenched these rhetorical constructs of gender have become, scholars must return to the rhetorics of the past. Only through this study will rhetorical strategies be devised to combat the present theology of male-headship.

However, the impact of Wetherald’s and Gage’s ministries, along with the Free

Methodist debates on women’s ordination cannot be easily explained through a single theoretical lens. The text and rhetorical situation must be allowed to influence theory and method, not vice versa. For example, in nineteenth century America many women, especially those in upper classes, were hindered by social constraints that greatly limited or effectively prevented them from working outside the home. Gage and Wetherald were able break through those barriers and rhetorically navigate social and denominational norms by downplaying their domestic identities in their writings and sermons. Contributions by women such as Gage and Wetherald extend beyond Free Methodist culture. Both women ministered during a time in American history when women were beginning to gain access to other public arenas such as law and medicine.

Therefore the issues this dissertation addresses include, but are not limited to, questions such as:

• Question 1: How did these women use rhetoric to advance their denominational,

theological, social, cultural, and personal missions?

• Question 2: What rhetorical constraints and social and organizational forces did these

women face in their careers as Free Methodist women preachers?

• Question 3: What does the study of their lives and rhetorical artifacts illuminate about

spirituality and vocation in nineteenth century America? 4

• Question 4: Furthermore, how might a better understanding of early feminist activism

and the rhetoric of ministry create the potential to productively alter or influence

contemporary theological rhetoric, praxis, and how scholars do feminist rhetorical

history?

Hence, the intricate and far-reaching questions addressed in this dissertation have the potential to provide a new methodological and theoretical framework for nineteenth century women’s rhetoric and to provide historical context to the current debates in Christian culture regarding male and female roles in domestic and public spheres.

Retrieving Nineteenth Century Women’s Contributions

Over the past twenty years feminist rhetorical scholars have begun to retrieve forgotten speeches and narratives of nineteenth century American women. Essentially, the purpose of writing a feminist rhetorical history is to write women back into the history of rhetoric. The foundational work of Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and her two-volume collection Man Cannot Speak for Her illustrates this essential tenet of feminist rhetorical history. As her work points out, nineteenth century women were active in the abolitionist cause and then later in the temperance and suffragist movements; yet, until Kohrs Campbell’s work was published, rhetorical historians often overlooked the importance of women’s participation in the public sphere. One of the most exciting elements of exploring women’s rhetorical history has been discovering how faith motivated many of these women’s social activities. Research on Quaker women, such as the

Grimke sisters, Lucretia Mott, and early twentieth century suffragist Alice Paul,7 demonstrates that religious faith does not have to restrict women’s role in society, but can serve as a form of empowerment. 5

Since the 1990s, the rhetorical tradition in Communication has largely overlooked the study of feminist rhetorical history, instead, allowing English rhetoricians, feminist historians, and literary and cultural critics to explore women’s religious history. The amount of archival material yet to be retrieved on nineteenth century women’s rhetoric is extensive and continues to illustrate that this is a massive and promising area of scholarship, but one that is still largely untapped by scholars across disciplines. As Kathryn Kish Skylar notes, women’s involvement in organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union needs to be further explored.8

Viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective, the relationship between religion and women’s activism is changing. As historians Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries explain,

Early assessments of Christianity as responsible for a deceptively flattering, patriarchal

construction of femininity that combined ‘spiritual power with social impotence;’ have

given way to something of a ‘religious turn’ in gender history. Through denominational

and institutional histories, biographical studies and literary representation, historians have

begun to think in more nuanced and judicious ways about the influence of religion in the

formation of women’s private selves and public roles.9

While Morgan and deVries write as historians, the basis of any solid rhetorical scholarship should be interdisciplinary. A rhetorician must work to understand, not only the discourse, but the history, theology and cultural factors that influence the formation of a movement’s rhetoric, or the language and discourse used by a social group to define their mission and motivate followers. It is only by working to understand rhetoric in all of its contexts that rhetoricians can begin to excavate the meanings and motivations behind discourse structures. Thus, Chapter I of this dissertation will begin by outlining a rationale for feminist rhetorical history and how women in the Methodist/Wesleyan10 tradition have been studied from interdisciplinary and 6

rhetorical perspectives, ending with Methodist connections to first-wave feminism and how feminist rhetorical history can be used to construct a deeper understanding of religious egalitarian rhetoric from the Progressive Era in American history.11

A Rationale for Conducting Feminist Rhetorical History

Researching historical rhetoric12 from a feminist perspective allows the scholar to not only to focus on the important written works and speeches from the past but also to work for a more just future.13 Feminist rhetorical history looks beyond the study of speeches and public discourse to examine how embodied experiences are also rhetorical texts. Thus, when studying nineteenth century Free Methodist women and conceptualizing their rhetoric, by necessity the focus of study extends beyond their sermons and writings to account for the emotional and spiritual elements that fueled their ministry. Feminist rhetorical history consciously pushes scholars to move beyond traditional rhetorical theory and explore new ways to define what is rhetorical. As Lisa Ede, Cheryl Glenn and Andrea Lunsford note in “Border Crossings”:

Until recently the figure of the rhetor has been assumed to be masculine, unified, stable,

autonomous, and capable of acting rationally on the world through language. Those who

did not fit this pattern – women, people of color, poorly educated workers, those who

judged to be overly emotional or unstable – those who stood outside of the rhetorical

situation, […] were considered neither capable of nor in need of remembering and

inventing arguments…. [F]eminist theory has consistently challenged any public/private

distinction, arguing that knowledge based in the personal, in lived experience, be valued

and accepted as important and significant.14

Feminist historical rhetoric continues to challenge traditional rhetorical definitions. It takes into account the cultural experiences of the rhetor and does not attempt to fit history or rhetoric to a 7

Westernized, male-dominated, rhetorical canon. It allows the narrative to illustrate the rhetorical

elements the rhetor is sharing. Instead of telling the audience what is rhetorical about the event,

person or text, the scholar shares the narrative in a way that does not eliminate the context and

culture but enhances it. Thus, feminist theory allows room for religious experience to be seen as

rhetoric. Specifically in the Wesleyan tradition, where lived experience is central to religious

rhetoric, feminist analysis provides a way of drawing attention to overlooked rhetors who did not

fit within the traditional cultural contexts of power.

Wesleyan History and Women’s Rhetoric

The earliest examples of Methodist women’s rhetoric appear in the late eighteenth century when itinerant women preachers helped John Wesley spread Methodism throughout

England. In his early ministry, John Wesley was hesitant to allow women to preach. However, as he witnessed their extraordinary power to draw hundreds of people to attend their services, he revised his stance and came to allow anyone with an “extraordinary call” to be able to minister.15

Early Methodism had many powerful women orators, a fact which opened the way for women’s

discursive empowerment. Instead of feeling they had to fight against a patriarchal system, these

women found freedom in Methodism to stay in an established religious tradition and push for

change from within.

Powerful early Methodist female figures included Hester Ann Rogers, who very rarely

spoke in public, but through her prophetic writings, illustrated her passion and ability to draw

people towards repentance. Mary Bosanquet, whose wealthy family opposed her to desire to join

the Methodists, was another early Methodist leader and preacher who used her independent

means to establish a female run orphanage first in London and later in Yorkshire. Many British

women attended Methodist meetings secretly, without their families’ permission, as Bosanquet 8

did. While Bosanquet’s father never approved of her affiliation with the Methodists, an independent inheritance allowed her the freedom to pursue preaching in a way that other women

– restricted by family obligations and children – could not.16

These early Methodist preachers relied heavily on John Wesley’s call to speak simply and from the heart and to use their gifts of spiritual prophecy to provide authority to their message. As Krueger puts it, Methodist women preachers relied on “the ethos of prophecy and the ethos of simplicity” to reach their audiences.17 While Methodist women preachers thrived during Wesley’s lifetime, drawing large audiences and converts to the Methodist movement, their preaching was greatly restricted at the 1803 Conference. From then on women were only permitted to preach to other women, and even then, only if they had the permission of the area superintendent. However, this decision did not stop Methodist women from continuing to act as itinerant preachers. Prominent Methodist men also fought in favor of allowing women to continue preaching. In 1841, Methodist minister Zachariah Taft published a pamphlet, The

Female Advocate, reminding the Methodists that during Wesley’s lifetime as many as 2,000 women were actively preaching.18 Thus despite opposition, the importance and power of women’s preaching was not lost by Methodist leaders as the denomination moved from a social movement to a social institution laden with bureaucratic rules.

As Methodism moved to America and gained followers in the late eighteenth century, the importance of women’s involvement continued to be a central issue. By the time of the Civil

War various Wesleyan sects were breaking off from the central Methodist Episcopal Church.

These fledgling movements depended on the help of everyone – both men and women – to build new denominations. In addition to allowing women a place of leadership within the church, the civic activism of these Wesleyan offshoots, including Free Methodism, began to develop social 9

and political consciousness in their members. In this environment, Methodist women took on various forms of social activism as extensions of their religious convictions.

One of the earliest Methodist American women preachers – and one of the most studied

Methodist women – was Phoebe Palmer. Carrying on the legacy of eighteenth century English

Methodist women, Palmer held regular “Tuesday Night Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness”

for more than sixty years, while her periodical, The Guide to Holiness, became a worldwide

model of the holiness tradition. Influential to generations of Methodists,19 Palmer’s ministry

illustrates the safe space the denomination provided for women to become empowered through

their faith. Early in her career (1839) Palmer actively travelled and spoke at revival meetings, but

by the time that Benjamin Titus Roberts, the founder of the Free Methodist Church, came into

contact with her through his future wife, Ellen Stowe, she was primarily serving as a discussion

leader and publishing her widely read religious periodical. Palmer’s writings and speeches

blazed the way for other Methodist women to pursue preaching, and her beliefs in Biblical

equality are very evident in the theology of Free Methodism. Palmer’s sermons about women’s

role in ministry’s public sphere serve as a foundation from which many other Methodist women

and men in the late nineteenth century launched ministries of equality. Palmer notes in her

address, “Tongues of Fire on the Daughters of the Lord”:

God has given the word; and in this wonderful season of the outpouring of the Spirit,

great might be the company who would publish it. This, in a most emphatic sense, is the

day of which the prophet spake – when God would pour out his Spirit on his sons and

daughters. Though many men have in these last days received the baptism of fire, still

greater, as in all revivals, has been the number of females. These constitute a great 10

company, who would fain, as witness for Christ, publish the glad tidings of their own

heart-experiences of his saving power, at least in the social assembly.20

Palmer’s fiery message recognized the gifts and calling of both men and women and inspired some of the century’s greatest social organizations. As noted in her address above, by using phrases such as “their own heart-experiences,” Palmer was intentionally demonstrating that faith and roles within faith communities are not gender specific. Her belief in Biblical equality for men and women inspired other Methodist women to follow her example.

One woman Palmer inspired was Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army, who heard Palmer speak in England. A preacher herself, Booth split preaching duties with her husband William so they could cover more territory to promote their ministry. Additionally, following the Methodist tradition of gender equality, Booth tried to teach enlightened views of women to her children.21 Another Methodist inspired by Palmer was Frances Willard, the long serving president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).22 Along with Palmer,

Willard is one of the most researched Methodist woman of nineteenth century America. Yet her ministry was so prolific (she often spoke several times a day) that there is still a great deal of rhetorical material to uncover about her life and work. Willard was greatly attracted to Palmer’s holiness ideals,23 and while she would never define herself as a member of the holiness tradition, she did respect the passionate, spirit-filled nature of the Methodist movement and often used holiness themes in her work with the WCTU.

Willard was a brilliant rhetor who knew how to frame her political and social petitions in a manner that appealed to religious women and gained ardent support for the WCTU from denominations such as the Free Methodist Church. One example of her ability to tie together 11

both the issue of women’s preaching and the issue of temperance is her address, “Women in the

Pulpit”:

The masses of people have forsaken God’s house, and solace themselves in the saloons or

with the Sunday newspaper. But the masses will go to hear women when they speak, and

every woman who leads a life of week-day holiness, and has the Gospel in her looks,

however plain her face and dress may be, has round her head the sweet Madonna’s halo,

in the eyes of every man who sees her, and she speaks to him with the sacred cadence of

his own mother’s voice. The devil knew what he was doing when he exhausted sophistry

to keep women down and silent. He knew that ‘the only consecrated place on earth is

where God’s Spirit is,’ and that a Christian woman’s heart enshrines that holy Guest

more surely than many ‘consecrated’ pulpit.24

Willard’s speech shows a continual trend in nineteenth century women’s public addresses and

writings – the elevated stature of woman. However, unlike earlier in the century where the cult of

domesticity attempted to confine women’s sphere to the home, Willard was using the very

rhetoric used to suppress women as a way to free them. If women are shown to be morally

superior to most men, then they should have an active role in ministry, society and politics to

better create a culture that protects their children and establishes a moral order. The idea of

women’s sermons serving a unique role in the church goes back as far as Wesley and continues in the Free Methodist Church as women preached and argued for their ordination as church elders.

Free Methodist Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century

In a period of American history where women had little political or social power, the Free

Methodist Church rejected traditional cultural boundaries and encouraged both men and women 12

to view gender roles in a fundamentally different way. Free Methodism’s radical birth began in

1858 when Roberts was expelled from the Methodist Episcopal Church, in part for his series of

controversial articles published in the Northern Independent, a newspaper published by noted

abolitionist William Hosmer. In these articles Roberts denounced the dominant leadership in the

Methodist Episcopal Church for their worldliness and doctrinal laxity. He urged a return to what

he called “Old School Methodism,” which relied heavily on the beliefs of Methodism’s founder

John Wesley and an emphasis on social reform.25

After his expulsion from the Methodist Episcopal Church, Roberts, together with other

disillusioned Methodist ministers and lay leaders, formed the Free Methodist Church in 1860.

The denomination was founded on four key principles of freedom: 1. free pews; 2. freedom of the slaves; 3. freedom of the Spirit; and 4. freedom from secret societies. Each of these principles embodied the ideals of equality and the value of every person to God. Early Free Methodism’s connection to the holiness movement and principles of social and religious equality led to exponential growth in the denomination’s first few decades.

The principle of free pews originated as a response to the system of pew subscriptions through which wealthy Methodist churches raised money by renting out the best pews.

According to Roberts, this system was not only un-Biblical, it also created a divide between the rich and poor. Thus the idea of free pews was more than just a rebuttal to church policy; it was a strong statement designed to emphasize that religion should be open to anyone who sought it.

Likewise the abolitionist stance upon which Free Methodism was founded demonstrates Roberts’ passion for equality. Like the Wesleyan Methodists who had split from the Methodist Episcopal

Church in 1841, the Free Methodists felt that prior to the Civil War the Methodist Episcopal

Church was not condemning slavery as harshly as it should or helping the African-Americans 13

improve their economic and social status. As Leslie Marston emphasizes in From Age to Age: A

Living Witness, “The Christian principle of freedom for rich and poor, alike to gospel privileges, and as well as the slave’s claim to civil and political freedom, were soon to play an important part in the formation of the Free Methodist Church and would principally determine its name.”26

In addition to the social justice platform of the early Free Methodist Church, “freedom of the spirit” or the belief in Christian perfection was central to the denomination’s theology.

Christian perfection was a theological belief dating back to eighteenth century Methodism and the preaching of John Wesley. Wesley thought of Christian perfection “[a]s the elimination of all intentional sin,” which he believed to be attainable in this life. However, by sin Wesley did not mean unintentional wrongdoing but a “voluntary transgression of a known law’ of God.”27

Additionally, Christian perfection emphasized loving your neighbor and God with all your strength as Christ loved us.28 Thus, Christian perfectionism tied directly to the social justice focus of early Free Methodism, for if Christians truly desired to follow God’s will, they would seek social and religious reform and devote much of their time to service.

The final component of early Free Methodism was opposition to secret societies. Many of the Methodist Episcopal leaders who expelled Roberts for his radical teachings were members of secret clubs and groups. Belonging to such societies required wealth and social status, and was another way to draw a line between the poor and rich in church congregations. With the emphasis on equal access to the gospel, the Free Methodists could not endorse such organizations.29

Christian Perfection in Nineteenth Century American Culture

Underlying all of these radical social positions was an emphasis among early Free

Methodists on holiness, for it was in the experience of Christian perfection that the individual’s 14

heart was transformed with love for God and neighbor. The popularity of Christian perfection extended beyond the Methodist traditions and into nineteenth century culture at large. Much of its popularity can be attributed to Phoebe Palmer. As historian Timothy Smith explains,

“Enthusiasm for Christian perfection was evangelical Protestantism’s answer to the moral strivings of the age.”30 Rhetoric scholar Stephen Browne expresses a similar view about Quaker

Angeline Grimke’s social reform measures. Protestants were interested in establishing a new moral order through their writings and speeches.31 Radical social change was at the heart of an individual’s quest for Christian perfection.

Various groups throughout the nineteenth century also embraced the quest for holiness.

The Transcendental Movement referred to it as a quest for “perfect love,” and religious mystics of the time period also sought new ways to connect on deeper levels with spirituality. Even social reformers of the time, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, were attracted the notion of

Christian perfection preached by Methodists and revivalist Charles Finney, who emerged from the Calvinist tradition. The belief that Christians could essentially become capable of living without sin through Christ was one of the greatest motivators for social reform in the nineteenth century.32 The belief in Christian perfection and the rise of the holiness movement, as historian

Donald Dayton notes, contributed to the rise of Enlightenment ideals. The holiness movement with its “egalitarian gospel” brought together the intellectual ideas of the century and put them into a populist framework that the average American could understand.33

Free Methodism’s emphasis on social and racial equality and Christian perfection caused the young denomination to experience brisk growth in its first few decades. By the first General

Conference in 1862, there were 2,533 members; by 1866 there were 4,974. By the 1886 General

Conference when the debate about women’s roles was beginning to stir, there were 17,677 and 15

by 1890, 21,161. The most rapid growth occurred between 1874 and 1890 – about a 178 percent growth rate over 16 years.34 Contributing to the rapid growth was the mass distribution of

Roberts’ independent magazine, The Earnest Christian, which reached people from various denominational backgrounds and encouraged the outcropping of revivals across the country.35

Both ventures quickly spread the denomination’s rhetoric of equality and Christian perfection.

Methodism’s Connections to Women’s Empowerment

The deep connections between religion and social reform are one reason that

Methodism has always been a woman’s movement. From the eighteenth century when it began under John Wesley through the nineteenth century and the founding of the Wesleyan and Free

Methodist denominations, women were heavily involved in ministry and social reform movements associated with these churches.36 Free Methodism, in particular, produced some of the earliest theological writings on Biblical gender equality. Roberts strongly supported women’s involvement in all forms of ministry. From early on, women were allowed to be licensed evangelists who spent weeks on the road traveling and preaching in small towns and developing new fields of ministry for the denomination. By 1886 women could be elected as delegates to their local annual conference and to the Free Methodist General Conference, held once every four years, where denominational issues were voted and debated on by the delegates. By 1911 women were allowed to be appointed deacons in the denomination, and the only area of ministry that remained closed to them was ordination as church elders, which was not granted until 1974.

The delay in ordaining women was largely due to the strong, socially conservative sect growing within the denomination that favored God-ordained gender roles, restricting women’s role in the public sphere. While Roberts was progressive in his views on race and gender, other leaders of the denomination were not. The rhetoric and history of early Free Methodism 16

illustrates the cultural tensions between the first-wave suffrage movement and the cult of domesticity. While some Free Methodist men and many of the women evangelists fought for equality in senior leadership positions, their opponents would always refer to specific gender roles that kept women in the home. As Michael Kimmel notes in his study “Men’s Reponses to

Feminism at the Turn of the Century,” there was a decidedly masculine backlash against women’s public roles out of fear that men would be displaced and lose their position of power in social institutions.37 Biblical interpretation disputes also fueled the Free Methodist debates on women’s roles and an undeniable fear of change is present in the rhetoric of some Free

Methodist men.

This anti-feminist rhetoric of the nineteenth century is one area that has not been explored in-depth by rhetorical scholars, and the combination of both feminist and anti-feminist discourse within Free Methodism makes the denomination’s history and rhetoric a prime example of the sweeping social changes and climate of nineteenth century America. In terms of feminist rhetoric within the denomination, there were several powerful women writers, speakers and teachers who were influential in the denomination’s early years.

In the August 7, 1889 issue of The Free Methodist, Roberts published the graduation oration from Chili Seminary, a Free Methodist school Roberts had founded. The speech was given by Harriet D.W. and focused on the role of women in the church and society. As D.W. illustrated in her graduation address, Christianity allowed women to gain more and more rights in both the church and society at large. Towards the end of the speech, she noted that women had already been given the right to vote in England, but not in the United States nor in the church:

All that is due woman has not yet been awarded her; but the tide of progress is still rising,

and friends of the cause believe that as Christ’s teachings are being better understood, the 17

day, not far distant, approaches when the avenues of learning will be thronged by women

of great intellect, every employment and position of usefulness open to her and her

rightful position granted without controversy. Her indispensible help in moral reforms is

acknowledged and the Christian sentiment of giving honor to whom honor is due is

prevailing.38

D.W.’s address embraces the heart of the issue. Nineteenth century culture was changing and

Christian society could embrace or denounce the changing social norms. Yet D.W.’s address

gives hope that there was a way to balance the changes in society and still stay true to Biblical norms that were held dear by all Free Methodists at this time.

Other women, including Mariet Hardy Freeland, who was one of the first women in the

denomination to be granted an evangelist license, also argued passionately for gender equality in

the denomination. As Freeland points in her Free Methodist editorial “Why?,”

In the various departments of science, literature and the arts she is vying with her brother

man, oft outstripping him in the race. Since she has proved herself capable of

accomplishing everything she has been permitted to attempt in the civil, social or

religious world even to self-governed in the legal use of the elective franchise, and the

position of ordained pastor over churches; and still onward is her watchword. Can any

say God has had no hand in this?39

Freeland was active in numerous Free Methodist enterprises, including regularly contribution to

The Free Methodist and The Earnest Christian magazines. Her point-by-point defense in

“Why?” is logically structured in a manner that would appeal to male readers of The Free

Methodist. Free Methodist women writers were not afraid to rhetorically argue in the same

manner as men, giving accurate and logical reasons why female ordination made sense from the 18

standpoint of church growth, theology, and recognizing the gifts of talented women ministers.

Yet, as the reprinted speech by D.W. also points out, the issue of ordination was tied to the larger social issue of gender equality.

D.W. and Freeland were not the only women to speak out. Other women, such as Gage, spoke passionately about women’s ability to preach. Gage was responsible for founding churches across Ohio and actively served as president of Sunday school societies and preached at revivals in the state.40 She was also an early female delegate to the Free Methodist General Conference, representing the Ohio annual conference in 1894 and participating in the second round of debates on women’s ordination.41

Yet the rhetorical contributions of these women and women from various offshoots of the Methodist Episcopal Church have been largely forgotten. Their history, speeches and writings have not been preserved in any coherent manner and must be pieced together carefully through various denominational publications of the time period. However, while gaps do exist and more research must be done, of all the churches that ordained women in the nineteenth century, the two most researched are the Congregationalists and the Quakers. Their contributions have been viewed not only from a religious perspective, but also from a feminist perspective, focusing on their contributions to the early suffrage movement.

First-Wave Feminism and Religion

Congregationalist Women Ministers

Quaker connections to first-wave feminism have received much attention by rhetorical scholars and historians. Additionally, the history of nineteenth century Congregationalist churches has also been studied because in 1853, Antoinette Brown-Blackwell became the first woman ordained in a Protestant denomination in the United States. Congregationalist churches 19

have a loose organizational structure that grants autonomy to local congregations and allows

them to choose their own ministers. Brown-Blackwell’s ordination applied only to her local

Congregationalist church in Wayne County, New York.

On a conference level, Congregationalists did not approve the ordination of women until

1889. Among the early ordained Congregationalist women was Clara (Wetherald-Buell)

Harbridge, who was the sixth woman to be ordained in the denomination.42 Lisa Gring-Pemble

explains the Congregationalist acceptance of women ministers through a rhetorical study of the

letters between Brown-Blackwell and the noted suffragist Lucy Stone. Both women attended

Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the earliest universities to admit women. As Gring-Pemble illustrates through the Brown-Blackwell and Stone connection, the work of early feminists included fighting for both political and religious rights.43

Stone herself notes in an address to the Congress of Women at the 1893 World’s Fair that Brown-Blackwell’s ordination “met opposition and ridicule that can hardly be conceived of to-day. Now there are women ministers, east and west, all over the country.”44 The

Congregationalists’ openness to ordaining women contrasted with the dogmatic fundamentalist

creeds that restricted women’s ministry at the turn of the twentieth century. However, even with

the contributions of Quakers and early Congregationalist women ministers, the history of first- wave feminism often too heavily focuses on the secular aspects of the movement, excluding the role religion played in many early suffragists’ lives.

Religion Fueling Social Reform

First-wave feminism, which refers to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

when women sought the vote and basic civil rights, might not have succeeded without the

contributions of many women from various ethnic and religious backgrounds.45 While feminist 20

rhetorical historians have drawn attention to the work of the most well-known first-wave feminists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, less well-known women have

been ignored. As Carol Mattingly notes in her essay, “Telling Evidence: Rethinking What

Counts in Rhetoric,” the rhetorical historian has to be careful not to rewrite or emphasize certain

historical moments in a manner that reflects the views of the present or values one person’s

contributions to history over another’s. Mattingly urges scholars to consider new people and new

perspectives when researching women’s rhetorical history:

As I examined many and various nineteenth-century primary texts, I, too, became

concerned about the canonical status academic feminists had given to a few women early

in our recovery efforts. In our initial efforts, we have, not surprisingly, appreciated those

historical figures who most resemble academic feminists – those who seemed to share

our investment in confrontational and assertive approaches – at the expense of others

worthy of our attention. This problem was complicated… because historians also felt the

need to prove the credibility of the women they promoted. To that end, they put much

emphasis on the same characteristics that had been value in the traditional canon – an

agnostic, logical approach that, by its nature, carried prejudices and exclusions.46

Mattingly’s concern with emphasizing a certain “type” of nineteenth century suffragist is

certainly warranted.

While the suffragist movement would not have been successful without the help of

women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Stanton does not fit within the same rhetorical or even

feminist category as Methodist women. Stanton, like feminist theologians after her such as Mary

Daly in the twentieth century, rejected organized Christianity and embarked on creating the

Women’s Bible, which took out patriarchal passages, creating a more “rational religion.”47 While 21

Stanton still believed in a divine creator, her rejection of organized Christianity has led to women’s history being largely written from a secular perspective or a viewpoint that has diminished the impact of organized faith traditions.

Although that trend is changing and scholars are revisiting early speeches, writings, and historical moments to draw out the religious faith of early feminists and the political impact of their faith on issues such as Prohibition, there is plenty of room for new scholarship. For example, historical theologians such as Priscilla Pope Levinson have begun to study nineteenth century Methodist and non-denominational women who were travelling revivalists.48 Feminist literary critics, such as Elizabeth Grammer, have also begun examining the lives of nineteenth century women preachers and their role in changing American society by helping women gain greater freedom and expand their roles outside the home.49 Stephen Browne has examined

Angelina Grimke’s diaries, letters and speeches to draw attention to how her Quaker faith influenced her abolitionist and suffragist work,50 and Katherine Adams and Michael Keene have examined the visual rhetoric of the early twentieth century Quaker suffragist Alice Paul.51 As

Adams, Keene, and Browne’s works show, religion motivated some of the most well-known leaders of first-wave feminism to be concerned about the rights of women and other social justice issues. In particular, Alice Paul’s Quaker heritage, as Adams and Keene explain, influenced her nonviolent resistance to Woodrow Wilson’s administration and helped push through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, granting American women the right to vote.

Adding Evangelical/Wesleyan History to Women’s History

As the preceding examples reveal, there is a void in communication scholarship that needs to be filled. As other disciplines begin examining how faith impacts social action, communication scholars, particularly rhetorical historians, need also to be examining and 22

broadening the field of rhetorical scholarship. Wesleyan historical rhetoric is an area that has numerous topics for exploration. While British Methodist women of John Wesley’s lifetime and members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in nineteenth century America are being researched, the contributions of women in the various Wesleyan offshoots of Methodism have remained relatively untouched; the evangelical history of gender equality has been forgotten. As

Dayton explains, this in part due to evangelical culture’s current focus on male-headship:

The same twists of history that have obscured the Evangelical sources of abolitionism

have also hidden the early Evangelical commitment to feminist principles. By and large,

today’s Evangelicals have been dead set against the recent movement of women’s

liberation. The ordination of women has been opposed by dominant leaders of

contemporary Evangelicalism. The Christian bookstores today are filled with

innumerable books affirming traditional roles for women, emphasizing the subordination

of women to men, and calling Evangelical women to a ‘total’ and ‘fascinating’

womanhood that completely submerges their own personalities and aspirations.52

As Dayton notes, if evangelicals have forgotten their own history, then what interest will outside scholars have in finding a history that wants to be forgotten?

Thus, as a cultural insider, I have both a scholarly and personal investment in recovering the rhetoric of Free Methodist women. I will elaborate more on this point in the methodology chapter under the “narrative analysis” section. However, I will discuss here the meaning of a

“cultural insider” as defined for the purpose of this dissertation. I am a life-long member of the

Free Methodist Church. Yet while I have been actively involved in this religious community my entire life, I was never taught about the history of women’s contributions to the denomination and Roberts’ belief in gender equality. It was not until I began researching alternative Christian 23

rhetoric that would combat the concepts of the Christian patriarchy movement that I discovered

the strong egalitarian tradition of my own denomination. I slowly came to realize that the impact

of early Free Methodism extended beyond its importance to members of the denomination to

understanding the impact of religion on first-wave feminism and on the continuing debate about

Biblical gender roles. Approaching rhetoric as a cultural insider is not a new idea in scholarship.

Chas Barefoot, in his study of the impact of Four Square founder, Aimee Semple McPherson,53

situates his study in his personal background with the Pentecostal movement. Additionally,

Jacqueline Royster54 and Patricia Hill Collins situate their work on African-American women’s

rhetoric from their own personal experience and cultural connections to the African-American

tradition.

While I am choosing to use the term “cultural insider” to describe my positionality, by

definition, taking an insider approach is in line with standpoint theory. Collins notes in her own

work and work of other Black feminist that writing from her own cultural perspective

acknowledges the unique standpoint of an intellectual researching his or her own cultural

heritage. As Collins points out, “The one role of Black feminist intellectuals is to produce facts

and theories about the Black female experience that will clarify a Black woman’s standpoint.”55

As a member of the Free Methodist Church and a woman, one of the primary objectives of my

intellectual work and of this dissertation is to provide women within my own faith tradition the

knowledge to become empowered through their own rhetorical history. For too long the

rhetorical history and impact of nineteenth century Free Methodist women has not been studied –

thus silencing their narrative and contributions.

Therefore, perhaps the most important element of nineteenth century women’s rhetoric is

the concept of rhetorical silence. In her article, “Reigning in the Court of Silence,” 24

rhetorical scholar Nan Johnson explains that after the Civil War, the pressure on women

to conform to the idea of rhetorical silence and shy away from public speaking became

even stronger. This was due to the increasing number of opportunities available to

women in the public sphere and resulted in the publication of numerous etiquette and

social commentary books about the “naturally” rhetorical force behind being only a wife

and mother.56 This push towards trying to maintain a social order that was becoming

extinct added to the tension of women pursuing professional occupations, such as

ministry. Thus, evangelical history silenced the voices of their female founders as the role

of women was seen to be largely in the home, while these women’s contributions to the

founding of numerous religious movements and denominations were downplayed or

excluded completely. It is time to write a new evangelical history that recognizes the

contributions of all its early leaders, regardless of gender.

By examining the history and also the rhetoric (writings, speeches, letters) of Free

Methodist women, a new denominational history is being created. It is an inclusive history that emphasizes women’s contributions to both the denomination and to larger social movements of the time period, such as the temperance and suffrage movement. Feminist rhetorical history does not limit the exploration of religious rhetoric, but instead helps provide space for the acceptance of it. The proceeding chapters will further address ties between religion and women’s empowerment. Chapter Two will provide a theoretical and methodological overview, exploring the complex matrix of religious experience and persuasion from a historical perspective. In

Chapter Three, the biographical narratives of Wetherald and Gage will be laid out, along with how both women constructed their rhetorical identity, successfully passing as ministers in a male-dominated profession. Chapter Four will draw Gage and Wetherald into the larger 25

denominational debates on women’s roles and ordination, and illustrate the effects of organizational silencing as both women attempt to challenge accepted social norms. Finally, the concluding chapter will connect historic nineteenth century Free Methodist rhetoric with current gender debates in Christian culture and provide suggestions for future research. 26

CHAPTER II: WEAVING TOGETHER FEMINIST THEORY, RHEOTRICAL HISTORY AND ARCHIVAL RESEARCH

Culture and rhetoric are inseparable.1 Thus, productive rhetorical study requires that one

account for the multiple dimensions that create a rhetorical situation. In my own scholarship on

Free Methodist historical rhetoric, the cultural values and theology are at the heart of what makes

a certain text or event rhetorical. It would be easy to diminish theology’s influence on discourse

or eliminate oppressive ideological elements of a text because they are irrational. However, for a

rhetorician to focus only on the logical aspects, the easily definable aspects of a discourse, is to

overlook other important rhetorical elements such as ethos, pathos and mythos (the mythic

elements). There must be an increased emphasis on how rhetoric expands examination beyond

the speaker, the speaker’s text, and the speaker’s performance to also include the mythos that

inspired the rhetoric. In religious rhetoric, the audience plays a much larger role as the cultural

constraints and deeply rooted theological interpretations (mythos) greatly influence how the text

is received. Therefore, when exploring the rhetorical debates on ordaining women in the Free

Methodist Church and the contributions of Gage and Wetherald in connection with those

debates, it is important to look at the rhetorical situation from a culturally sensitive perspective.

Using a combination of archival techniques, narrative analysis and rhetorical constructs, the

theological, social and personal motivations that fueled the nineteenth century Free Methodist

debates on women’s roles can be best interrogated and understood.

Overview of Rhetorical Criticism from a Narrative Perspective

History always has been a narrative of human interaction. At the heart of this research project is the belief that explaining the historic rhetoric of Gage and Wetherald through a narrative framework is essential. Rhetorical scholar Walter Fisher knew this when he emphasized that all human beings are storytellers.2 I see this dissertation as a layered rhetorical 27

history. The overarching rhetorical philosophy is Fisher’s narrative framework. Fisher believed

that human communication should be viewed as both historical and situational, as stories or

accounts competing with other stories or accounts. The story is believable when it satisfies the

demands of the audience to create a coherent narrative (narrative probability) and the audience believes the account (narrative fidelity).3

The narrative paradigm’s reliance on narrative probability and narrative fidelity is not

without critics. Feminist scholars, such as Barbara Warnick, are particularly concerned with how

Fisher attempts to apply a set method of analysis to narrative, a positioning that tends to apply a

masculine view to narrative analysis. As Warnick explains,

Who or what determines the context for making a judgment? Fisher distrusts the rational

standard because it can be used to close off the public from decision-making, and he

rejects universal or ideal standards because decision-making is situational. By examining

Fisher’s own work as a critic, we can discover the one remaining locus of assessment –

the critic? 4

Warnick’s critique brings up a valid point. The narrative paradigm should not be viewed as a set

method to follow. Even Fisher notes what the narrative paradigm attempts to do “[c]omes closer

to capturing the experiences of the world, simultaneously appealing to various senses, to reason

and emotions, to intellect and imagination, to fact and value.”5 Fisher’s narrative philosophy

allows room for moral reasoning and spiritual practices to be considered valid forms of rhetorical

argument and social belief.

Furthermore, Warnick is correct to point out that narrative can often operate as a

restricting form of masculine and patriarchal rhetoric. Even in the case of the Methodist

conversion narrative, the form itself was in large part constructed by men like John Wesley and 28

George Whitefield who, in their published conversion accounts, laid out the terrain that needed

to be crossed in conversion. These narrative conventions are especially apparent in the women’s

conversion narratives that were published in John Wesley’s Arminian Magazine. As Jones has

pointed out, John Wesley’s editorial hand is evident in the way that women’s narratives are

presented for public consumption. Collected over a lifetime of correspondence Wesley selected

and edited the women’s conversion narratives that were published in the Arminian Magazine,

highlighting the particular points he wanted emphasized. In mediating women’s accounts in this

way he provided a space for women’s expression that was not available before, but it was

certainly a highly mediated space. 6

While true that narrative can operate as a restrictive and masculine rhetoric, careful

attention to the conditions and contexts of narrative production allows for a nuanced view of how

Free Methodist women preachers used narrative – even in masculine contexts – to express their own identity and establish their own legitimacy in a male dominated profession. In the case of early Methodist (and Free Methodist) women this means, as Phyllis Mack has pointed out, re- conceptualizing the meaning and role of feminine agency through narrative:

Methodists and others defined agency not as the freedom to do what one wants but as the

freedom to want and to do what is right…. since doing what is right inevitably means

subduing at least some of one’s own habits, desires, and impulses, agency implied self-

negation as well as self-expression…. The sanctified Christian wants what God wants;

she is God’s agent in the world. 7

Thus, narrative not only allows women to express their new identity in Christ, it also provides a

means through which they can act in the world. Though in some ways based on a masculine

rhetoric and, in many cases mediated by men, women are nevertheless able to use narrative to 29

express individual identity and validate ministry. At its very core Methodist narrative patterns allow individuals to express free will, a willing turning towards God. Within the Wesleyan tradition God does not destine people to specific roles or create a group of “elect” who are the only ones who will get into heaven. There is choice and individual agency in Methodist theology, even if it is constructed as a willingness to be God’s agent, just as there is choice and variety in rhetorical experience. Since this dissertation is not relying on a single theory or method, Fisher’s philosophy of narrative is what guides this research.

Thus Fisher’s narrative paradigm in many ways reflects the type of narrative structures that were favored by early Methodists and Free Methodist in that it allows room for experience and faith to be considered rhetorical, social factors that help determine the narrative. As Fisher explains, existing institutions, such as church denominations, provide the “plots” that help tell the stories, but the people are full participants in making and sharing the messages they create.

Their embodied experience is front and center in the rhetoric. It is not a secondary aspect.8 The

Methodist emphasis on embodied experience ties directly to the Christian perfectionism found in the nineteenth century holiness movement and the belief that God communicates directly to the believer. It is this type of embodied, experiential narrative culture that has been largely lost to us in the twenty-first century– it is messy, noisy, complicated, even other-worldly. It also means that, as Leigh Eric Schmidt points out, historians of religion must become ventriloquists in seeking to resurrect the voices of the past in all their otherness and complexity. He or she must follow, “the devout to those bodily thresholds where the senses themselves seem to lose their very sensuousness, where the dangers and limitations of the sensual are transfigured.”9 In tracing the voices of early Free Methodist women preachers, in following their rhetoric to the threshold of the sensual, in channeling their emotion, their tears, their stories the feminist rhetorical 30

historian is able to retrace and reconstruct a narrative identity that truly defies any attempt to label it as “masculine” or “feminine.”

Finally, as a life-long member of the Free Methodist Church, I approach this research from the perspective of a cultural insider – I have lived and experienced many of the same religious encounters as the individuals I am studying. I understand the theology behind the rhetoric because it is the theology with which I personally identify. I am culturally sensitive to the sincerity behind the rhetoric of people who are both for and against women in ministry. Yet this cultural sensitivity and connectedness does not hamper my critique of oppressive practices that existed in the denomination. In many ways, I believe it helps craft a better rhetorical narrative that can find the fine line between a culturally sensitive critique and one that dismisses all religious experience as repressive.

Central to this nuanced approach is an understanding of how two Free Methodist evangelists, Clara Wetherald and Ida Gage, viewed their call to ministry and how they framed their ministry to fit within the dominant Methodist narrative. Their spiritual encounters are important in order to understand how these women developed their voice within Free

Methodism. The following chapter will use the writings of Wetherald and Gage in the denominational magazine, The Free Methodist, along with family records, to illustrate how both women’s ministries during their time as Free Methodists fit the Wesleyan conversion narrative model, and how both women were able to create a public persona where they were accepted as preachers. Both women eventually went “rogue” and left the Free Methodist Church, but the foundation of both their ministries was based on Methodist theology, and even after leaving Free

Methodism, elements of that theology appear in the framework of their later ministries.

31

Conversion Narratives/Christian Perfection as Embodied Experience

The Methodist conversion narratives changed little from the time of Wesley in the

eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century when the Free Methodist Church was formed.

The Wesleyan conversion narrative originated in the eighteenth century when Methodist preachers would receive letters from individuals they had converted. These letters were often published to encourage conversion and to reassure the faithful.10 The narrative patterns

represented in these accounts were further re-enforced by the examples of conversion narrative set by notable men and women like John Wesley and George Whitefield, in their published

Journals. Indeed it was through publishing his narrative that Wesley hoped to map the terrain

that led to conversion. As Hindmarsh has pointed out:

Through these communal practices they learned what was commonly expected in

religious experience, and what was common became, in literary terms,

conventional…. In expectation of conversion, evangelical discourse acted like a

map, identifying the sort of terrain one might cross and the sort of destination one

might arrive at if one chose to venture out. 11

Thus the conversion narrative genre became the means through which Methodist, and later Free

Methodist, women came to relate their personal religious experience to a wider audience. It was

by using the conventions of conversion narrative – like sensibility to sin, justification to God,

and sanctification by his Spirit – that Methodist women were able to connect to an ever

expanding reading audience. In the eighteenth century this served as a means through which the individual believer could represent experience to a developing public sphere. By the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of denominational publishing houses, such as the Free Methodist 32

publishing house, allowed for denominational tracts and books that permitted the conversion

narrative framework to be even more widely distributed in promotion of the church’s mission.

Yet while the conversion narrative was used by denominations as an outreach tool, it also serves to illustrate a dialectical tension that still exists in the Methodist tradition – a strain between a populist movement that appeals to the average citizen and a desire to remain apart from the world. As Hempton notes:

The relationship of Methodism and popular culture is two-sided. On the one hand

Methodism did chime in with popular culture in its conversionist theology (the age-old

desire to make a fresh start), providential interventions, religious entertainment on a

cosmic scale, underlying anti-Catholicism, and in its function as a religious association in

the age of associations. On the other hand Methodism confronted popular culture in its

opposition to drunkenness, bawdiness, rough music, wife sales, popular sports and race-

meetings.12

This rhetorical tension of being ‘in the world, but not of the world’ focuses on the individual

nature of conversion, the knowledge that one’s sins were forgiven, and a need to share one’s faith with the world.13 Charismatic joy and a desire for Christian perfection are also prevalent

themes in these narratives. In particular Christian perfection was an important tenet of early Free

Methodist conversion narratives.

Christian Perfection as Rhetorical Experience

In Wesley’s day there was apprehension within the Methodist tradition about the extreme

emotionalism that sometimes accompanied a conversion experience. The reactions to Wesley’s

doctrine of Christian perfection are a case in point. According to Wesley, Christian perfection

represented a “second work of grace” whereby all intentional sin was destroyed and the 33

individual believer only desired to love “God with all the heart, so that every evil temper is destroyed, and every thought and word and work springs from and is conducted to that end by the pure love of God and our neighbor.” 14 This experience could happen either instantaneously or over gradually over the course of a lifetime – nevertheless Wesley believed that it was ultimately possible to be holy in this life and not just in some future state. By the nineteenth century, Christian perfection had fallen out of favor in the United States Methodist Episcopal

Church. Methodist offshoots, such as the Free Methodist Church, which had a stronger emphasis on personal conversion experience and a connection to the revivalist movement of the Second

Great Awakening,15 supported the belief that spiritual perfection, often instantaneously granted in a moment of spiritual revelation, was possible.

Those who believed in spiritual perfection felt that God revealed his will directly to individuals. Methodists, such as Gage and Wetherald, would argue that God placed them in certain locations and gave them specific roles to help share the gospel. Besides the work of Vicki

Tolar Collins, who has studied the rhetoric of eighteenth century Methodist women, very little rhetorical scholarship has been conducted on the Wesleyan tradition. Perhaps this is due in part to the emotional nature of the movement, which defies traditional definitions of persuasion and its emphasis on logos (logical argument) over pathos (emotional/passionate argument). Emotion is sometimes seen as a feminine trait, but during the height of Methodist revivals, emotionalism was central to both the male and female religious experience. Hence, the rhetoric of the

Methodist movements must focus on the mystical, emotional elements that drew so many women and men into its fold.

One element of the conversion narrative that strongly appealed to women was its ability to bridge the divide between dependence and freedom. In a period of American history when the 34

cult of domesticity was prevalent, the concept of personal liberty in the form of religion was captivating to women. As feminist historian Phyllis Mack explains, it would be easy to view the conversion narrative as relating to the stereotypical concepts of romantic love or infantile attachment to a divine being. However, to reduce the spiritual experience of Methodist women to a framework that only puts it into the context of the domestic sphere would be to greatly diminish the sense of agency that religion offered women.16

For women such as Gage and Wetherald, Methodist conversion narratives were the beginning of a life-long devotion to faith and ministry that superseded any denominational ties.

Their conversions provided a sense of freedom and both spiritual and vocational agency that their domestic roles did not provide. As Gage explains in her testimony at the 1894 Free

Methodist General Conference:

Some years ago when bound by infidelity and atheism, God send some blessed salvation

planks floating down my way…. My relatives all opposed me, I waded through my

mother’s opposition. I reached the placed where it was this way or Kalamazoo. I was

living in Michigan at this time. You take this privilege from me and you make me an

infidel. I find those in the work who say it is simply an impression. I believe this

impression is a call of God.17

Wetherald expresses a similar sentiment in her final sermon at the 1890 Free Methodist General

Conference:

God only knows how much opposition is met by a woman in her work of souls. Only

those do know who have passed through it. It required consecration for me to answer to

the call God gave me in this direction. I had never heard of a woman who preached, and

supposed the only way to work for God was as a preacher’s wife. I therefore gave up 35

marrying a farmer to whom I was engaged and married a minister of the gospel that I

might give my life to the work of God. God has showed his approval of my course by

giving me hundreds of souls as seals of my ministry.18

Wetherald’s conversion experience was so confirming that it even determined the type of man

she chose for her first husband – a fellow preacher. The Methodist conversion narrative not only

illustrates how women were able to express a sense of agency apart from their traditional

domestic roles, but it also illustrates why their ministries were often more successful than those

of their male counterparts.

As Mack notes in her book Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment, eighteenth

century Methodist women used personal narratives and testimony in their sermons more than

their male counterparts. This appealed to the masses who could see their own flaws and

similarities through the narratives of women evangelists.19 Free Methodist women continued this

form of preaching into the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Both their ministry reports and

fragments of sermons that still exist illustrate a strong emphasis on personal testimony and

narrative as rhetorical techniques.

Overview of the Rhetorical Concepts of the Fourth Persona

When Wetherald and Gage divorced their respective spouses, their narratives and any other contributions they made were silenced. There was no record of their leaving the denomination and no comments on their lives until their deaths, when an obituary would remind

Free Methodists about the women’s service to the denomination. It is odd as a researcher to observe and wonder how two powerful evangelists who were so influential in spreading Free

Methodism could be overlooked in the denomination’s history. Later, after researching both 36

women, it became clear that this happened because they chose paths that were considered controversial and scandalous in the Free Methodist Church and society during that time period.

They chose divorce. They chose to believe they could be ministers in their own right; as a result their stories are only briefly noted. To the credit of current denominational historians, both

Wetherald and Gage have been included in new denominational histories, despite their divorces.

Present researchers do not silence them. It was their contemporaries who silenced these women and their contributions. They were accepted for a time in the male-dominated field of preaching because they were willing to play by the rules, but as they became empowered and confident in their call, they chose a path that did not allow them to fit within accepted social behavior for late nineteenth/early twentieth century women. As the narratives of Wetherald and Gage are studied, it is important to consider the significance of both silence and passing in their rhetoric.

Rhetorically Passing

Scholars of queer rhetoric most often use the concept of passing as a rhetorical construct.

Charles Morris III in his foundational study on J. Edger Hoover creates what is commonly called the “fourth persona” of rhetoric. Morris’ research on passing focuses on the ability of the speaker to maintain a double-consciousness in order to survive and resist oppressive cultural practices.

Oppressed speakers balance both secrecy and disclosure in their rhetoric.20 Early Free Methodist women, such as Gage and Wetherald, had two personas – they were wives/mothers and also pastors. In their public persona as ministers, they downplayed their domestic role and focused on their capacity as pastors. They had to illustrate to their male collogues that they, too, could travel long distances to preach and have successful ministries by starting churches. In a professional and symbolic sense, these women had to self-portray as men. 37

While Morris uses the concept of passing as a construct for queer rhetoric, rhetorician

Sarah Wells takes the concept of passing and applies it to nineteenth century women physicians.

Like nineteenth century preachers, women physicians during this time period were entering a

male dominated profession and had to prove they deserved the respect of their male counterparts.

As Wells notes, early women physicians, such as Putnam Jacobi, “urged her students [women] to

see themselves first as physicians and then as women.”21 Thus, both groups of professional

women had to maintain a double-consciousness, remaining silent about the aspects of their lives

that would limit their ability to stay in their chosen professions.

However, while Morris notes that in the act of passing, silence is constructive and used to

maintain an individual’s status in society,22 in regards to both Wetherald and Gage silence was

constructive only for a certain time period. Ultimately, their personal lives became public when

they both chose to divorce their husbands, breaking social and cultural norms of the time period.

Therefore, the silence that had helped them pass for so long and maintain a successful ministry

became the very device that would eventually constrain them.

Rhetorical Silencing of Women in Their Faith Communities

Silence communicates a message just as much as the spoken or written word. Robin

Patric Clair notes in Organizing Silence that “people are named into certain subject positions, but the notion that those positions carry with them privilege or disprivilege is silenced…. [T]o complicate matters, no individual carries a single subject position.”23 This is seen with both

Wetherald and Gage; their positions in society are complex, multifaceted and do not fit within one position. One moment they empowered, passing women; the next moment they are silenced.

Their lives rhetorically are a combination of both Morris’ fourth persona and Cloud’s construct of the null persona, or silenced persona. As Cloud explains, silence in vernacular discourse 38

draws attention to issues of race and gender-based oppression.24 However, while Cloud takes a materialist approach to this silence, the connections she draws between hierarchy and silence can extend beyond a materialist framework. Ideology and hierarchy can also play a crucial role in rhetorical silence. As Clair explains:

The power of narratives in the cultural and ideological development and reproduction of

organizations is well documented. In the past researchers frequently selected and

interpreted organizational stories that were easily obtainable due to their public status….

Now it is essential to investigate those stories that do not receive the same public

exposure, legitimation, or respect within the organization that more commonly reviewed

stories reach and receive, that is sequestered stories.25

By the term “sequestered,” Clair means stories set apart from the mainstream, such as narratives like Wetherald’s and Gage’s, which have been left out of the main denominational narrative/history up to this point. Both women’s narratives illustrate a constant tension between the constructive silence that preserved their ministries for several decades, and the destructive silence that ended their professional ties to the Free Methodist Church.

The silencing of Wetherald and Gage is complicated not only by the organizational silencing but also by the performative silencing of their ministries. Certainly their narratives and rhetoric are important to understand how two well-known regional evangelists have been largely forgotten, but when looking at Wetherald’s rhetoric at the 1890 General Conference and Gage’s rhetoric at the 1894 General Conference, there is a performative aspect that cannot be overlooked. As Judith Butler notes, gender roles are “sedimented over time” to produce a corporal gender style that, when diverged from, as Wetherald and Gage did at the General

Conferences, ultimately results in their silencing.26 39

Both women lived in what bell hooks calls the social margins. “Marginality is not a place of deprivation, it is a site of resistance against hegemonic culture. At the margins – we cling to it as it nourishes our power to resist.”27 The delicate balancing act of constructive and destructive silencing meant that Wetherald and Gage always lived at the edge of social acceptability, and this balancing act becomes incredibly evident as they participated in the General Conferences.

Thus as a rhetorical historian, a feminist archival approach is important to illustrate this rhetorical strain in the narratives. It also allows the study to interrogate who wrote Free

Methodist history and their perspectives about why these women’s stories have never before been told.

Both Wetherald and Gage’s ministries and personal narratives have not been preserved in any coherent form. Yet pieces of their narratives do exist. They have not been put together, nor have their contributions to early Free Methodism and evangelical culture been studied. Thus, drawing attention to the ministry of these two women requires intensive archival research and a focus on creating a rhetorical history that values their contributions as ministers, while at the same time requires the researcher to offer a critique about how and why these women’s contributions have been silenced for almost a century.

Overview of Feminist Archival Research Methods

The history of women’s involvement in a variety of American organizations, both religious and secular, is a vastly under-researched area of study. As Kathryn Kish Skylar notes in

“Organized Womanhood,” the Progressive Era in the United States (approximately 1890-1920) has scores of women whose stories have not been told.28 Historian Barbara Tuchman also emphasizes this point with her research – history can and should be studied as a record of human behavior. It does not always have to focus on famous individuals or groundbreaking historic 40

incidents. The purpose of history is much broader.29 Particularly in the case of women’s history,

when so many nineteenth century women’s contributions are still undiscovered and under-

researched, just understanding who these women were is important to appreciating women’s

broader contributions to nineteenth century society. Yet, uncovering even the simple life story of women such as Wetherald and Gage requires time intensive research. It requires archival researchers to acknowledge that understanding who these women were requires the scholar to live and breathe the research process, to immerse themselves in the time period and the persons they are studying.

Research as a Lived Process

Understanding that archival research is a lived process recognizes that the researcher

must understand the complexity of human communication. People are more than the now-

archived documents that they wrote. Neal Lerner notes in “Archival Research as a Social

Process”:

The histories that emerge from archival research are never simple, never complete. This

conclusion should not be surprising, for good historical narratives are about people and

programs and practices that they have shaped. It does not take an advanced degree in

psychology to know people are very complex, and the records to be found in archives

only hint at that complexity.30

Lerner goes on to note that archival research is very similar to ethnography in that the archival

scholar must suspend preconceived notions about a text, engage in the world being studied, and

commit to finding out the meaning and significance of the text as much as possible.

Often the length of time researchers spend with the historical individuals they study creates a sense of connection with these people who passed away years ago. Their story becomes 41

our story. The research becomes a personal quest for the scholar to find his/her own narrative in the study and to give an overlooked historic individual a chance to have his/her contributions told. As historical rhetorician Elizabeth Birmingham notes, the archivist develops a “sixth sense.” Dead people come alive through the archivist’s search to find out more about them. The mystery and research quest to find out more information spurs the scholar forward. As

Birmingham explains,

My argument for the researcher’s sixth sense is not that it will enable us to recover and

converse with the lost dead, but that they will help us recover ourselves, help us discover

that we did not know that we were dead, inhabiting the crypt, repeating dead histories in

dead languages.31

Having spent days reading news articles, sermons, and personal correspondence by and about these women, their lived experiences have become apparent to me. This research required days in the Free Methodist denominational archives at the Marston Historic Center. It took several additional weeks to look through Free Methodist material in the Spring Arbor University archives in Michigan. Through both denominational sources, I have collected original newspaper articles and speeches that Gage and Wetherald wrote in defense of their ministries.

While studying the denomination’s records has enabled me to construct a narrative of both women’s ministries, there were are pieces still missing. Gage divorced her first husband and moved to California where she married a Methodist minister.32 Wetherald divorced her first husband John, married a “drunkard” to reform him, was widowed and married a

Congregationalist minister.33 Facts about these portions of their lives were not to be found in the denominational records because they did not fit with what early Free Methodist authors wanted the denomination’s legacy to be. I had to expand my archival study and connect with 42

descendants of both women. The denominational archives included newspaper articles and

conference minutes that contain both Gage and Wetherald‘s original writings for the

denomination, but who these women were as people and their motivation for pursuing a career in

ministry was not clear from the information in the Free Methodist archives. Fortunately, both

women’s families have conducted extensive family genealogy studies and have been generous in

sharing their information with me, including photographs. The families have granted permission

to use family records and photos as part of this dissertation and future research on these two

evangelists.

The narratives and contributions of both Gage and Wetherald extend beyond their time in

the Free Methodist Church. However, as historian Barbara Tuchman points out, the key to good

scholarship is knowing when to stop, because the story is never really finished.34 After leaving

the Free Methodists, Wetherald went on to preach almost another thirty years as a minister in the

Congregationalist Church. In many ways, her time as a Congregationalist has garnered more

attention from scholars than her time in the Free Methodist Church. Evangelical feminist

historian Jenette Hassey recognized her as an early female Congregationalist minister in her

book No Time for Silence, and within the denominational history of the Congregationalist

Church, Wetherald’s narrative has received attention from historians.35 Still, even within the

Congregationalist Church, Wetherald also faced silencing as her second marriage and her

divorce from John Wetherald were not mentioned her Congregational obituary, nor in her

obituary for the Free Methodist Church, which her own brother wrote.36 To preserve her ministry

she returned to the rhetorical art of constructive silencing (given no voice in the public arena).

Although this is an important element of Wetherald’s narrative, this dissertation’s primary objective is to illustrate the rhetorical debates on women’s role in early Free Methodist culture 43

and women’s participation in those debates. The debates in Free Methodism were representative of the debates in numerous holiness denominations at the time period, including the

Congregationalists, who did not ordain women at a conference level until 1889.37

There is a need for more rhetorical history research on early evangelical culture. The debates of the nineteenth century Free Methodist Church are debates that still continue today within the denomination and in evangelical culture at large. The issue of organizational silencing is a rhetorical construct that has long been present in Christian culture and even in Methodist culture. While Wesley allowed women to preach, just twelve years after his death, the

Committee of One Hundred, which he had appointed to take over the denomination after his death, drastically limited women’s ability to preach in public. They were allowed only to preach if they had an extraordinary call (a gift to preach and draw large crowds) and even then, to preach only to their own sex.

This ruling was in 1803, and as late as the 1850s in the American Methodist movement,

Methodist historian George Coles had to apologize for including certain Methodist women in his book, Methodist Heroines.38 Only those women who modeled domestic piety or whose roles in the church were restricted to working with children, teaching Sunday school classes, or other roles that did not put them in central leadership positions were revered. The silencing of early

Methodist and early Free Methodist women always returns to the rhetorical debate regarding male-headship and male leadership in Christian culture. It is a cultural and theological struggle that has gone on for centuries. Thus, this dissertation’s intent is to provide the historical background to understand the current debates and positions on Biblically-informed gender roles within the Free Methodist Church. 44

CHAPTER III. THE LEGACY OF CLARA WETHERALD AND IDA GAGE

In the fall of 1892, Clara Buell (Wetherald)1 was heralded in the Women’s Column for

helping open ordination to women. The weekly publication was edited by the Women’s Suffrage

Association and used as a tool to draw attention to women’s advancements in numerous

professions.2 Buell (Wetherald), along with several other Congregationalist women ministers,

was praised for their “refinement and culture” and ability to instruct parishioners. As the

Congregationalists began to ordain more and more women, Buell (Wetherald) found acceptance for ministry as an ordained elder, which she had not found at that time in the Free Methodist

Church.

Wetherald had fought passionately at the 1890 Free Methodist General Conference for

ordination, but the decision was postponed until the 1894 General Conference. By that time,

Wetherald had left the Free Methodist Church due to personal and professional reasons and had

been ordained in the Congregationalist Church. As one of only two women delegates to be sent

to the 1890 Free Methodist General Conference, and the only woman to speak on the record at

the conference in defense of women’s ministry, her departure left a vacuum. However, as

Wetherald was leaving the denomination, another strong, woman minister was just beginning a

dynamic ministry in Ohio – Ida Gage. Gage would take up the debate where Wetherald had left

off, fighting for women’s right to preach at the 1894 General Conference. Both women were

forces to be reckoned with, and both women’s contributions to push open the doors for women’s

ordination has been forgotten.

Perhaps this is because both Wetherald and Gage straddled multiple worlds. They lived in

a period of American history that defined women’s primary space as the domestic sphere. They

were preachers in a time when ministers were mostly men, and they were also wives and 45

mothers. Their various identities led them to live a complex balancing act where certain aspects of their private personas were hidden or revised to fit the public perceptions of their ministries.

Until recently, they were just names written in the roles of the Free Methodist General

Conference Minutes.3 Yet both Wetherald and Gage are more than names on a page. They lived multifaceted personal lives, which greatly influenced how they constructed their public ethos.

They defied social, religious and gender conventions to fulfill their spiritual callings. Thus, to fully understand how both women came to be successful evangelists, drawing large crowds and leading revivals lasting weeks at a time, it is important to understand how their childhood, marriages, and family relationships helped construct their rhetorical identities (both as preachers and their domestic identity as mothers and wives).

They lived a life of double consciousness in order to survive and resist the dominant nineteenth century religious narrative, which more often than not viewed women’s God-ordained role as in the home and not in the pulpit. As oppressed speakers they had to balance both secrecy and disclosure in their rhetoric. Their double consciousness consisted of both a public and private persona. As preachers they downplayed their domestic roles and focused on their capability as ministers.4 Wetherald and Gage had to illustrate to their male colleagues that they too could travel long distances to preach and have successful ministries starting churches. In a professional and symbolic sense, these women had to self-portray as men.

While no diaries exist from either woman, they have left behind a rich history of personal letters, family stories, and professional correspondence with the Free Methodist Church through its denominational publications. These two women stand out for their very vocal support of women’s ministry. At the General Conferences where men vastly outnumbered the women 46

delegates, they boldly stood toe to toe with their male counterparts and demonstrated that they could debate just as well, if not better, than men could.

No other women, even though there were other women delegates at both conferences, chose to speak up and challenge their contemporaries about their prejudices. Therefore, it seems only right to examine the biographies of Wetherald and Gage chronologically, beginning with

Wetherald’s life and ministry, which preceded Gage’s work in the Free Methodist Church.

Emphasis will be placed on illustrating how both women balanced a double consciousness throughout their ministry. However, even while they attempted to control their narrative, parts of their personal stories were still controlled by family and the denominations they aligned with, as others chose to intentionally write out or emphasize certain parts of these women’s lives more than others.

Clara Wetherald’s Ministry and Rhetorical Identity

Clara Wetherald’s Early Life

Clara Wetherald was born Clarissa Miller on June 20, 1849, in Erie County,

Pennsylvania.5 Her parents, Esther and Harvey Miller, moved to Michigan when she was three and settled near Montrose, Michigan.6 Wetherald had three other siblings, an older brother, Perry

Miller, an older sister, Sarah Miller, and a younger brother, Frank Miller.7 Wetherald credits her mother, Esther Miller, with influencing all four of her children to go into ministry. Wetherald’s sister, Sarah (Miller) Smith, also served as a Free Methodist evangelist. Her older brother, Perry

Miller, served as a pastor in several different denominations, including the Free Methodist

Church. Perry Miller became an ordained Free Methodist elder in 18688 and most likely influenced Wetherald and her husband John to join the denomination in 1875. Wetherald’s close relationships with her siblings and her mother demonstrate how compelling and persuasive 47

family relationships were in forming her identity as a strong, independent woman and also as an

evangelist. Her family influenced the development of her rhetorical and spiritual conscience

more than anyone else throughout her life.

Despite her mother’s religious training and influence on her children, Wetherald’s parents’ marriage was difficult. Her father was a successful land speculator, buying and developing more than 100 acres in Michigan’s Genesee and Saginaw counties, and in 1858 served as constable and highway commissioner in Montrose, Michigan (located in Genesee

County). Yet, while he was a local leader and profitable businessman, his first marriage fell to shambles. He abandoned Esther Miller and his children and moved to Missouri in 1861 where he remarried.9 His infidelities led Esther Miller to file for divorce in 186210 when Wetherald was

thirteen. Wetherald’s parents’ marriage and her father’s mistakes had a profound effect on her.

Wetherald’s brother Frank notes that his sister felt a clear call to ministry by the age of sixteen.11

She pleaded with God to save her “wicked father” and if he did, she would devote her life to

God’s service. Additionally, her parent’s divorce left Wetherald alone to care for her mother.12

Her oldest sister married in 1861 prior to her parent’s divorce,13 and Wetherald’s older brother

enlisted as a drummer in a Michigan regiment during the Civil War.14 Frank was taken to

Missouri to live with their father.15

While her siblings dispersed to different parts of the country, Wetherald stayed at her

mother’s side and witnessed her marriage in 1862 to Wm. H. Smith.16 Esther Miller (Smith) was

not a woman to cross, and her strong example clearly influenced Wetherald to develop her own

self-sufficient personality. In her mother’s obituary Wetherald shares how her mother was

converted in Marbletown, New York, in the middle of winter when she was only eighteen and

her oldest child, Perry, was six months old. Esther insisted the ice be broken so she could have 48

her infant son immediately baptized, despite the protests of other members of the congregation

that it was too cold. Her religious zeal only increased in her second marriage. Wetherald

recounted that wherever the family lived, her mother would always convince ministers to come

out to their rural locations. Once, while living in Kansas, Esther and Wm. H. Smith traveled one

hundred and fifty miles to bring a minister to their area and supported him financially on their

own.17 Wetherald’s deep connection with her mother not only shows how influential her example

was on Wetherald’s own ministry, but Esther’s obituary, written by Wetherald, is another

indication of her dramatic, rhetorical style and ability to portray her mother’s life in a socially acceptable manner. Esther’s divorce is only briefly mentioned and the two-column obituary reads as a tribute to a spiritual woman whose life influenced scores of people. In describing her mother’s final moments Wetherald expounds:

Notwithstanding her many years of useful, faithful service, as her life drew towards its

close, she looked up and said, ‘Clara, my own righteousness appears to me as ‘filthy

rags’; nothing can save me but the precious blood of Jesus. When dying she called each

child present by name and said ‘Pray,’ which we did, and then sang ‘Jesus Paid it All,’

‘Happy Day,’ and finally ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus,’ and while we sang the spirit passed

away…. Her daughter Clara, by her mother’s request, preached from the words, ‘She

hath done what she could.’ Mark 14:8.’18

By the time of her mother’s death in 1903 Wetherald was an established preacher and an ordained Congregationalist minister. Yet the obituary Wetherald wrote about her mother’s life

has implications for understanding the early part of her own life. Esther Miller had instilled in

her as a child a spiritual sensitivity that made Wetherald willing to view faith as a form of social

action. While all of Wetherald’s siblings were in ministry, it is significant that Wetherald was 49

asked by her mother to preach her funeral sermon. Her mother’s request shows Miller’s respect for her daughter’s accomplishments.

In both Esther Miller’s marriages, at least from Wetherald’s recollections, her mother was a strong, influential leader in the marriage. She initiated her divorce from Harvey Miller, and she was the one who worked diligently to provide every community she lived in access to a preacher.

Therefore, both Wetherald and her sister were brought up in a unique home environment, where they were shown through their mother’s example that women could be called to a profession outside the domestic sphere.

Wetherald’s Ministry Begins

While the family had ties to several denominations, Wetherald was raised primarily in the

Methodist Episcopal Church, with her own mother and older sister remaining in the Free

Methodist Church even after Wetherald had left it. Thus, the Wesleyan emphasis on her conversion experience was central to Wetherald’s desire to be a pastor and was foundational to how she viewed her purpose as a minister. Unlike Gage’s narrative, which has been preserved and clearly illustrates her voice, Wetherald’s conversion account is pieced together from her speeches at the 1890 Free Methodist General Conference, her obituary written by her brother

Frank Miller, and the necrology report from the Michigan Congregationalist Conference in 1922 after Wetherald’s death. Additionally, in Wetherald’s narrative there is no clear date or turning point of conversion. Instead, her testimony begins with her call to ministry. The fragmented nature of her narrative is another illustration of the silencing of women’s contributions as ministers. Very little record of Wetherald’s conversion and call to ministry exists in her own

voice. Instead, we see her brother Frank and the Congregationalist Church reconstructing her life

and ministry and framing it from their own perspectives. The Congregationalist account of her 50

conversion clearly favors the Congregationalist Church’s organizational narrative and is included

in her necrology report, whereas Frank Miller’s account of Wetherald’s ministry focuses on her

impact as a national evangelist. He almost completely writes out her personal life, aside from her

impact on his own life and her concern for her father’s soul.

The Accounts of Clara’s Conversion

The necrology report for the Michigan Congregationalist Conference (a record of the

lives of all members who had died the previous year) credits the Congregationalists with

Wetherald’s conversion. According to this report, she

[w]as converted before she was sixteen in the meetings conducted by the father of Rev.

Chester C. Omans, one of the ministers of our conference. She preached her first sermon

in the pulpit of Mr. Oman’s father. At the age of sixteen she began the kind of ministry in

which she has been so signally successful, namely, preaching as an evangelist and

conducting revival meetings. In her first service three adults were converted.19

The report does not allude to the personal motives behind Wetherald’s call to ministry in 1865, and it also makes the claim that Wetherald began her ministry in the Congregationalist denomination, when in reality she was raised in the Methodist Episcopal Church, married a

Methodist minister, and officially began preaching as a licensed evangelist in the Methodist church.20 The Congregationalist narrative of her ministry is one of many reconstructions of

Wetherald’s contributions made to fit the organization’s main narrative. While the

Congregationalists do not discuss her motivation to pursue preaching, her brother Frank explains

it in Wetherald’s obituary in The Free Methodist. Her concern for her father’s salvation was one

of the biggest motivations in her pursuit of full-time ministry.21 51

By 1865 her father was living in Missouri and remarried, and Wetherald appears to have

little face-to-face contact with him after his move. The unfortunate death of Wetherald’s father is

tinged with a hint of sensation. According to numerous family accounts, in 1866 Harvey Miller

was shot in the head by the Jesse James gang and died three months later from his wounds.22 The

family stories vary about what happened. Wetherald said he was shot because the gang hated all

Yankees.23 Frank, who was with his father when he was shot, said he was shot over a

misunderstanding. Their father was attempting to sell part of his Missouri farm and had gone

about town, telling the local merchants about the land sell in hopes of stirring up interest. The

gang members, who were in town at the time, thought he was warning the community about

them. So they later rode out to the farm and shot Harvey Miller while he offered them a drink of

water. Miller lived another three months after being shot before finally dying from his wound.24

While the facts of the story are murky, there are too many independent family testimonials about

the incident to doubt it occurred, even if it was not the Jesse James gang that shot him but

another group of bandits.

Frank Miller writes that due to Wetherald’s efforts through prayer or letters, their father

was saved before he died. His death came soon after Clara’s call to ministry and is one of the

most intimate accounts of her motivations to preach that has survived. Wetherald’s father’s life

and tragic death come up continually in family lore, and Wetherald referred to it in 1903 when

she wrote her mother’s obituary. Between the tragic loss of her father and her passionate zeal to find a way into ministry, Wetherald decided the best route was to marry a minister. As she would note in a sermon at the 1890 General Conference, she did not know of any woman preachers and assumed that the only way she could preach was if she married a preacher. So at seventeen she married John Wetherald, a Methodist Episcopal minister.25 52

Even at a young age she was developing a rhetorical identity (a vocational/spirtual call to preaching) that was not typical of the time period. Wetherald resisted the accepted definition of nineteenth century womanhood and early in her marriage, chose to use language as a way to create her public identity. In the words of Fisher, Wetherald was creating her own “plot,”26 shaping her persona to develop her life-long independence as a preacher first and foremost. By eighteen she was calling herself a “missionary” in court testimony over a family land dispute.27

She could easily have identified with her occupation as a wife, but she chose to identify with her ministry instead of her marital role. The divorce of her parents, the separation from her siblings, and her determination to use whatever social norms were available to her to pursue ministry illustrates that Wetherald always saw her ministry tied directly to what she perceived was God’s call for her life.

Wetherald’s marriage is her first of many acts of rhetorical passing. As Morris defines rhetorical passing, it is the ability of the speaker to maintain a double-consciousness in order to survive and resist oppressive cultural practices.28 Wetherald learned very early that to rhetorically pass meant marriage to a man who was devoted to the same profession as she. It was a necessary choice to gain access to a profession still closed to women. Together, she and John formed a ministry partnership that spanned twenty-five years and opened the door for Wetherald to work in collaboration with her husband in ministry. However, early in their ministry it soon became apparent that it was not John who drew the crowds; it was Clara.

The Ministry of Clara and John Wetherald

Between 1866 and 1874, Clara and John Wetherald worked within the Methodist

Episcopal Church. John was an ordained elder and Clara Wetherald held an evangelist’s license.

By 1875, they had formed a friendship with Benjamin Titus Roberts’ cousin, Septer Roberts, 53

who was charged with bringing Free Methodism to Michigan. The Wetheralds and Perry Miller were among the early pioneers of the denomination in the state. The Wetheralds officially switched their membership and ministry appointments from the Methodist Episcopal Church to the Free Methodist Church in 1866. Wetherald’s involvement in the formation of the Northern

Michigan Conference is shown through her participation in meetings in the Hadley Free

Methodist Circuit. Rather than simply being a pastor’s wife, she appears to have been a full member of the circuit leadership, serving as secretary at the early meetings. Additionally, throughout her ministry in the denomination, she and John were often co-appointed as elders on a circuit.29 During this period of Free Methodist history only ordained elders (men) had their appointments recorded in the conference minutes. However, for the Wetheralds, appointments would appear as “Rev. John Wetherald and wife” or sometimes by name, “John and Clara

Wetherald.”30 While women were not allowed to serve as senior pastors, it is obvious that in

Michigan, Wetherald was serving alongside her husband in all ministry appointments. Often these appointments included several small churches where they were expected to preach, and as the ministry report Clara wrote to The Free Methodist for the October 10, 1888 issue illustrates, she and John appeared to travel separately to meet their ministry obligations.

According that October report, Wetherald had been sent to dedicate a new church in

Royalton, Michigan, only to find that the congregation still needed to raise $369, and the building for the church was not completed. “It was a great cross to me to go to dedicate a church, as I consider myself a poor hand to raise money,” Wetherald wrote.31 Despite her qualms, she led the congregation in a time of prayer on Saturday, September 29, 1888, since she was opposed to raising money on the Sabbath. As Wetherald and the congregation prayed for donations, people began screaming out the amounts of money they could give. “The Spirit of God fell with power 54

upon the people. The sister who had subscribed five dollars was so blest that she stood up

shouting glory; holding up both hands she said, ‘I’ll sign five more for my husband; he’s not

here,’” Wetherald wrote.32 The fundraising was a success and $400 was raised for the building.

The ministry report exemplifies her magnetism as she turned a fundraising service into a mini-revival, inspiring the Royalton congregation to respond to the request for money in a very emotional, embodied reaction. Even more important than illustrating Wetherald’s power to stir a congregation to action, her account at the Royalton church provides proof that she was successful passing as a preacher. John is mentioned nowhere in her article. She was clearly able to bridge the social norms and gain acceptance as a leader in the congregations she ministered to without the presence of her husband as she preached. Morris’ idea of double consciousness, the ability to maintain two separate identities, a public and a private identity,33 is noticeably present

in Wetherald’s ministry and her reports submitted to The Free Methodist. She is never a married

woman or a mother in these accounts; she is a preacher first and foremost. Her identity as a

mother is pushed to the background either consciously or subconsciously to maintain her

credibility and gain respect for her work in the denomination.

The Visible and Silent Aspects of the Wetheralds’ Ministry

When the ministry partnership of the Wetheralds is examined, it is quite evident that

Clara was the dynamic speaker, the one with a prophetic voice who used emotional fervor to draw in her audience. John was also a gifted preacher, but he remained in the background and allowed his wife to take the center stage. In John Wetherald’s 1902 obituary in The Free

Methodist, a colleague from the East Michigan Conference reminded Free Methodists of John’s ability to mentor many young men who wanted to be preachers. Yet the same article also notes that wherever John and Clara traveled together to preach, massive revivals followed them.34 55

There is additional evidence that Clara Wetherald was quickly emerging as a star evangelist in

the denomination when she was asked to independently preach at a Free Methodist church in

Indiana.35 Her brother Frank also noted that she traveled from coast to coast on her own,

conducting revival services that were not always associated with the Free Methodist Church.36

Being asked to preach independently of her husband and being the one to write the ministry

reports to the denomination attests to the fact that Wetherald was becoming a well-known

evangelist apart from John.

An additional dimension of Wetherald’s ministry during her time in the Free Methodist

Church is her role as a mother. In 1868, her daughter Henrietta was born37 and in 1872, her

daughter Mary Esther was born.38 As a nineteenth century woman, no one would have expected

her to continue in ministry after the birth of her daughters. Yet Wetherald defied social norms

and continued to minister, which required extensive traveling. Based on family records, it

appears that Wetherald maintained a close relationship to her mother throughout her life and

most likely relied on extended family to care for her daughters when she was unable to take them

with her on her travels. This was not uncommon for nineteenth century women evangelists.

Many hired their children out as domestic servants to strangers, or left them with family, and

would travel for months at a time without seeing their children at all.39 The call of God was most

important and required a willingness to sacrifice all in pursuit of ministry. Because Wetherald

passionately pursued ministry and believed it was her primary call from God, she was

continually engaged in a rhetorical balancing act as a preacher and mother. Her daughters clearly

respected their mother. Wetherald’s daughter Mary’s testimony shows a daughter who esteemed her mother for her faith and persistence in calling people to repentance. Even in writing about

her parents’ relationship and ministry for The Free Methodist, Mary does not describe her 56

mother in domestic terms, thereby bringing Wetherald’s narrative back to the concept of rhetorical passing. Wetherald had the ability to frame herself as minister in all areas of her life, including how her own children viewed her role as a mother and spiritual leader in the family.

She was first and foremost a preacher and second, a mother.

In the April 1888 issue of The Free Methodist, Mary Wetherald wrote her testimony.

Through Mary’s voice, her parents’ ministry and Wetherald’s gift as a revivalist are shown. The conversion narrative also shows the role Clara Wetherald played in ensuring that her daughters followed her godly example:

My folks were on the Hudson and Addison circuit, and I was permitted to be with them

through a protracted meeting at Hudson. One evening mother had entreated sinners to

turn to Christ. I arose and with the Lord’s help asked them too, and the Lord Almighty

blessed me. Of course after sunshine the storm had to come, and the devil planned just

right how to overthrow me, for it worked so. After church my father stepped up to me

and said he was very sorry I had done as I had; I was too forward for one so young, and

the Devil said: “Well, there if a Christian thinks so what does the sinner think?” I went

with it to mother, and she told me it was the enemy trying to overthrow me; that she

knew and felt that I had the Spirit with me, but Satan suggested a great many things and

I gave up in despair and served the devil faithfully for three years the most of the

time.40

Wetherald never gave up on Mary and continually gently reminded her not to give in to Satan

until she returned to her faith in 1888, at which time she submitted her testimony to The Free

Methodist. Mary’s testimony is further evidence to the marital roles John and Clara Wetherald

played. Clara was the dominant one in the relationship. She was the one who was able to not 57

only to persuade large crowds at revivals to convert, but to also persuade her own daughter to

return to the faith. Mary’s testimony was published during the 1880s, during which time

Wetherald regularly wrote to The Free Methodist. The personal testimonies submitted from other ministers and converts continually cite Clara, not John, as the one who inspired the crowds. For example, the March 2, 1887 issue of The Free Methodist included a testimony from Hiram

Montgomery of Topeka, Kansas. Montgomery said, “Last fall Sister Wetherald was holding meetings here, and I went to hear her twice. I believe, and I was convinced I had no religion…. I was determined to break away from the grasp the devil had on me…and praise the Lord! I found it.”41 As with Mary’s testimony, Montgomery’s testimony illustrates the power Wetherald had to

lead individuals to repentance, but it also illustrates her continued rise as an individual

evangelist. Kansas was a special speaking engagement and there is no record that John ever

accompanied her to preach when she traveled around the country holding revivals.

Even when Wetherald appears in her daughter’s narrative as a mother, it is clear from

Mary’s testimony that Wetherald felt one of her greatest obligations to her children was to ensure

their salvation. There is no portrayal by her daughter of her mother performing any domestic

functions, and Mary even mentions that she was allowed to accompany her parents for the

revival, implying that for the Wetherald family, ministry always came first and their children

were not always with them. In all forms of public testimony that Wetherald submitted and

reports submitted by others, they are all carefully crafted to put her in the same sphere as male

ministers, where she is not seen as a wife and mother, but primarily as a preacher.

Wetherald’s influence in the denomination by the late 1880s is even more apparent through her connections to Benjamin Titus Roberts, the denomination’s founder and one of the general superintendents who oversaw the entire denomination. While only one letter survives 58

from their correspondence, it demonstrates the close connection between the two. After the death

of the Lincoln family, Free Methodist missionaries serving in Africa, Wetherald was specifically

asked by Mrs. Lincoln’s father to preach the funeral sermon at their home in Smith’s Creek,

Michigan. Not only did Wetherald preach the funeral sermon for the couple, but her emphasis on

social justice led her to call for an offering at the end of the funeral sermon for the Lincolns’

child who was reported to have been left in Africa with other missionaries. Wetherald solicited

$57 in donations for the child’s return to the United States. Even at a funeral she could not simply preach the standard funeral sermon; she had to include a call to action in all her speeches.

She ended her letter to Roberts by describing the setting for the funeral:

The house was thronged with people, and the deepest sympathy was manifest toward the

bereaved friends, and great reward was shown for the deceased. By request we staid and

preached in the evening. God came in power. Three arose for prayers, and we had a

melting time. Eternity will reveal how much of a success Brother and Sister Lincoln's

going to Africa has been. May God help us to "judge nothing before the time.”42

Wetherald’s funeral sermon, her address at Royalton, and her daughter Mary’s testimony show

Wetherald’s ability to use words to promote change, to continue crafting rhetoric that would

move people by the Spirit to experience religion in a way that was distinctively part of the

holiness tradition. Her messages were not simple sermons but means of spurring social action,

which will be illustrated further in the next chapter in her defense of her ministry and the right of

women to be ordained at the 1890 General Conference.

In what survives of Wetherald’s sermons and denominational writings, one sees that she

continually frames issues in a very gendered context that sets up the theological debate of

women’s role in the church and the larger societal debate of women’s roles in American culture. 59

It is as if she is speaking in defense of all women. Furthermore, her connection to the founder of the denomination illustrates that she was moving in the highest circles of Free Methodist culture.

Her ministry had gained attention, and as Roberts was a strong advocate of women’s ordination, he saw in her a role model of successful women’s ministry.

Even though Wetherald appeared to be a rising star in the denomination, after 1890

General Conference personal problems would unravel her marriage and she disappears from the denominational history. From 1888-1891, Wetherald’s husband, John, had been appointed a traveling evangelist for the East Michigan Free Methodist Conference. The job entailed him to travel extensively, although the family had a permanent home in Clio, Michigan. An article from the February 25, 1891 issue of the Saginaw News reports the demise of John Wetherald.

According the article, on a recent trip to Saginaw, John had fallen for the “gay ladies” of the city.

When he returned to Clio, he confessed his actions at a prayer meeting held at the Clio Free

Methodist Church. “The confession led to such a scandal in the neighborhood that his wife has asked the circuit court for a divorce,” the paper noted.43

Wetherald’s actions led to his expulsion from ministry in the Free Methodist Church and the revoking of his church membership. Clara, who had witnessed her own father’s acts of infidelity and who had been raised by her mother to be a strong, independent woman, chose to remove herself from a relationship that was becoming too much like the family situation she grew up in. After John Wetherald’s scandal, there is one more reference to Clara Wetherald in

The Free Methodist. In the May 17, 1891, issue, a ministry report is sent in praising the success of a recent revival campaign in Holly and Germany, Michigan. Wetherald was asked to preach the Sunday morning service and there was “a larger and responsive audience” present for her message.44 60

The Free Methodist article is significant because news of John’s actions would have been

well-known by this time, as well as the fact that Wetherald had filed for and was granted a

divorce in July 1891.45 However, she was so respected within the denomination that when a

revival was held near her home, she was asked to preach. In regards to church policy on divorce,

the 1886 General Conference had ruled that no divorce except for adultery was Biblically lawful

and “any person guilty of a violation of this rule shall have no place among us.”46 As the

innocent party, Wetherald could have remained within the denomination and continued to serve as an evangelist. The May 1891 revivals show that the denominational leadership did not hold her responsible for John’s faults or condemn her for filing for divorce. Clara was still passing as an evangelist, but her desire to gain acceptance and become an elder in the Free Methodist

Church was unlikely to be fulfilled.

The 1890 General Conference and the likelihood that women’s ordination would be (and

was) voted down again in 1894 pushed Wetherald to leave the denomination. She chose to

pursue ministry in the Congregationalist Church, which ordained women. By 1892, she was a minister on trial (an apprenticeship) at the Gaylord Congregational Church and by 1893, she was ordained by the regional Congregationalist Council. Her ordination made national news in publications such as Lucy Stone’s magazine, The Woman’s Column, and was seen as a step forward for women’s rights and the gaining of access to careers in ministry for women.

Wetherald’s ordination in the Congregationalist Church ended her tenure as a Free Methodist, but it also placed her as an early pioneer for women’s ordination, being heralded by The

Woman’s Column as one of the earliest women to be ordained in the country.47

Perhaps what is most rhetorically fascinating about Wetherald’s time as a Free Methodist

was her ability to craft her denominational identity. She was so well accepted in the 61

denomination that despite her husband’s infidelity, there is no indication that she was forced out of ministry because of her choice to divorce John. Yet her divorce did cause a local sensation and even made The New York Times in 1895 when her second husband, Le Grand Buell, died.48

Nineteenth century culture might have viewed her actions as scandalous – too assertive for a woman of the time – and that certainly did not help her image. However, in regards to her ministry, she was able to continue to create a pastoral identity that permitted her to be accepted and respected as a minister.

Wetherald’s second marriage is completely written out of her narrative in the

Congregationalist necrology report and The Free Methodist obituary written by her brother

Frank. The Congregationalists report she was married to John when she was ordained in the

Congregationalist Church, even though church records clearly have her ordained under the name

Buell.49 The social backlash to her initiating divorce caused both her brother and the

Congregationalists to silence that part of her story, which did not fit into the organizational narrative of each denomination and was not a widely accepted stance for a God-fearing, nineteenth century woman. Yet, even while parts of her story were silenced, Wetherald throughout her life and ministry was able to navigate social norms for women and to finally gain ordination to further her ministry.

Ida Gage’s Ministry and Rhetorical Identity

Early Life of Ida Gage

Unlike Wetherald, Ida Gage did not grow up in a religious home. Her conversion and call to ministry did not occur until after she married and had two daughters. Much of Gage’s life prior to marriage is unknown, but with the help of the memoirs of Gage’s daughter, Edith 62

Tingley, United States Census records, and court documents, there are glimpses of Gage’s life

prior to conversion.

Ida Harley was born in Geauga County, Ohio, on March 30, 1861, to Sarah and A.F.

Harley.50 She married Charles Gage in Maple Valley, Michigan, on July 8, 1879. Gage was

eighteen and Charles was twenty-seven.51 Edith notes that her father was illiterate, while Gage

had worked as a schoolteacher before marrying Charles.52 From early in their marriage a pattern

appeared to develop; the couple would travel as Charles tried to find work. The 1880 U.S.

Census lists the Gages as boarders at a home in Kent County, Michigan.53 In 1881, two years

into their marriage, Gage had her first child, Edith.54 Her second daughter, Almeda, was born in

1884.55

Edith reflects on her mother’s conversion, which occurred when she was four years old.56

Gage was converted when she was twenty-three through the ministry of another woman

preacher, Almeda McShay.57 Unlike Wetherald, who entered ministry having never met another

woman minister, Gage saw women in ministry from the time of conversion onward. She was

aware that there were other women evangelists with successful careers. While Gage quickly

joined the Free Methodist Church and Charles supported her ministry, there is no record in either

the denominational history or the family history of a specific conversion experience for him.

Gage’s decision to go into ministry with two young daughters and a husband who had no

intention of sharing her call to ministry is indicative of her personality. In her conversion

narrative, which she shares at the 1894 General Conference, it is clear that Gage faced countless

obstacles to pursue full-time evangelistic work:

Some years ago when bound by infidelity and atheism, God sent some blessed salvation

planks floating down my way. I experienced religion and enjoyed it for fifteen days. God 63

saw fit to lay his hand upon me. I lost my strength and there he saw fit to make me go

forth and preach the gospel. When I arose from under the influence of the spirit and left

the room, I settled it for time and eternity. I do not think the brethren intend to say things

that hurt, but really my heart has been hurt to the core. My relatives all opposed me, I

waded through my mother’s opposition. I reached the place where it was this way or

Kalamazoo. I was living in Michigan at this time.58

More so than Wetherald, Gage’s experience fits well within the Methodist conversion narrative framework. Salvation was symbolic of both spiritual freedom and freedom from the domestic sphere. Gage alludes to infidelity and atheism, and it is unclear if she is referring to

Charles being unfaithful early in their marriage and perhaps to both of them being atheists before conversion. Either way, Gage relies on the strong, emotional language often used by Methodist women evangelists and lay leaders to demonstrate the dramatic nature of personal reform salvation brought to them. Whereas Wetherald tends to take a more academic approach or focus on the importance of social reform in relation to scripture, Gage’s preaching style is simple, straightforward and combines religious fervor with spiritual language.

Gage’s Ministry in the Free Methodist Church

Both Gage’s words at the 1894 General Conference and her daughter’s memoirs imply that Gage began her evangelistic career soon after her conversion and preached in remote parts of Michigan. However, the records of her ministry that still exist begin with her time in Ohio. In

1891, Rev. W.B. Olmstead, who was the Ohio district elder, heard Gage preaching at a Michigan camp meeting and urged her to move to Ohio where evangelists were desperately needed.59 Gage agreed and moved the family to Bowling Green, Ohio, to begin a church plant. She was 64

appointed to the Bowling Green area from 1892-1893 and began to hold Sunday afternoon meetings in a hall above Cooley’s Grocery on North Main Street.60

In 1893 Gage sent several ministry reports to The Free Methodist. Her first report from

February 1 illustrates the Free Methodist concern for temperance. Clearly Bowling Green, Ohio, was a place of great concern and work for the Free Methodists. As Gage testifies:

We came to this point from conference, looking for victory and we have had it. Bless

God! The work is on the up grade. We held seven weeks of meetings, when I first came,

did more sowing than reaping. God has opened our way. We have a large hall on Main

Street and our meetings are blessed with the presence of the King. Our quarterly meeting

was a success. Brother Olmstead was helped of God. We felt it was good to be there.

Two joined on probation and two by letter. Our watch-meeting was grand. The spirit of

the meeting rose from the commencement until between eleven and twelve o’clock

showers began to fall and the saints rejoiced ‘with exceeding great joy.’ God came down

our souls to greet and glory crowned the mercy seat. Souls are seeking God here. Some

have found and there are more to follow. Pilgrims remember us here. This is an important

point. There are about 5,000 inhabitants, six churches and twenty saloons. Death and

formality reign. We meet with opposition but we are marching on, calling, “Come back!

Come back! To the old paths.” Pray for us.61

Gage’s preaching style and personality shine through in this report. Using numerous exclamation points, dramatic language, and a detailed description of the sins still plaguing the community, she shows her tendency towards the dramatic, fiery writing and preaching that are present in all her writings and speeches. As her daughter commented in her memoirs, “It was plain that mother

‘ruled the roost,’” both at home and in her ministry.62 65

The February 8, 1893 issue of The Free Methodist contained another article from Gage.

Most likely both were sent at the same time and published on different dates. Unlike the

February 1 ministry report, this account was Gage’s personal testimony she sent in to share under the “Experience” section of the magazine. Her regular ministry reports were published under the

“Correspondence” section:

I am saved and cleansed by the blood of Christ. I know I am in the order of the Lord. God

saves me now. I desire the prayers of all the pilgrims, especially those I have become

attached to in Michigan. My coming to Ohio was of God. Bless his name! I have the

victory now.63

Gage’s ministry in Bowling Green, Ohio, was just the beginning. During this time period Free

Methodist elders and evangelists were never stationed in the same area for more than two years at a time. After 1893 Gage was appointed to Hume, Deshler, and Santa Fe, Ohio.64 About three years into her ministry in the Ohio Conference, Gage had gained a reputation as an evangelist who could draw large crowds and successfully start churches. While all ministers regularly switched circuits on a yearly or bi-yearly basis, the fact that Gage was trusted to bring Free

Methodism to new communities with no established church illustrates the Conference’s faith in her ability to preach and establish new churches.

Gage was appointed to Hume for two terms, 1894 to1895. During her time there she was also elected a delegate to the Free Methodist General Conference in 1894 and was the only female delegate recorded to speak in defense of women in ministry. While the 1894 General

Conference did not grant Gage or other women evangelists the right to be ordained elders, the decision did not hinder Gage’s ministry. In fact in many ways it accelerated her popularity and success. Prior to the 1894 Conference Gage was just beginning her career in the Ohio Free 66

Methodist Conference. After speaking publically and submitting regular ministry reports in the

1890’s as Wetherald had done in the 1880’s, Gage brought attention to her efforts in Ohio. She

became a long-serving evangelist in the Conference until her retirement around 1908. Like

Wetherald, Gage never noted her domestic duties in any of her ministry reports, rhetorically maintaining a double consciousness as she was viewed publically only as a minister equal to her male counterparts in both preaching and the physical demands of itinerant ministry.

By 1895 Gage was holding revivals that lasted for weeks at time. An article in the

February 6, 1895 issue of The Free Methodist commented on the revivals Gage was leading in

Hume, Ohio, noting that other ministers had to come in and assist with the revivals because the

response was so great. As Olmstead pointed out in the article, “Sister Gage is in the labors

abundant, and has the confidence and esteem of the people.”65 In March of 1895, Gage herself

sent in a report about the revivals in Hume. Her energetic voice stands out in the report:

We have had a sweeping victory at Hume…. We began to preach a living Christ and

invite the people into Beulah land. We down before God for the anointing, were kind to

all the men; and, glory to God! The wall began to melt. The meetings were deep and

spiritual. Over twenty-five have been saved…. [W]e closed the meeting February 18 with

two at the altar, expecting to begin again there in the near future…. We came directly to

Jackson Center, and I am holding my fifteenth week of continued meetings. God gives

me strength in soul and body. Our hall here is full and we have a very attentive

congregation. We are looking for victory here in the strength of Israel’s God. We are

seeking for the lost.66

Gage’s report on the Hume revivals is evidence that she was most comfortable preaching

and writing in passionate religious fervor. The ability to preach for fifteen weeks straight, her 67

excited recollections of the number of converts, and her continual use of both Old and New

Testament imagery provide a peek at Gage, the evangelist. While her faith and commitment to ministry did not need revivals to sustain it, she clearly excelled when she could preach in the moment, using a fiery style that relied on simple phrasing and emotional appeal to reach her audience, an example being her passionate end to the Hume ministry report where she exclaims,

“We are looking for victory here in the strength of Israel’s God. We are seeking for the lost.”

After her appointment to Hume in 1894, Gage held a series of revivals and meetings in

Cridersville, Ohio, in 1895, and enough money was raised to construct a simple church building there in 1895.67 This is a common theme in both women’s ministry; at times they held revivals that lasted for days and weeks and drew massive crowds, and at other times in their ministries, they were sent into the wilderness to build new churches and make converts. In Gage’s case, after she worked diligently for a year or two to build a congregation, she would move to a new area of ministry to start more churches, while a male, ordained minister would take over the now established church.68

For a denomination that was divided about women’s physical and emotional ability to travel as evangelists, Gage proved that the stereotypes about women’s fragile nature were a fallacy. While Gage’s husband drove her to some of her services, the amount of traveling both she and Wetherald did implies that they often traveled alone. Gage alluded to this in her 1894 address at the General Conference when she refers to traveling alone and preaching in Michigan where “there were none of our people within twenty miles.”69 Wetherald also would have traveled alone, since both she and her husband were appointed to circuits that contained several churches, which have had required that they travel separately to maintain the numerous 68

congregations. Therefore, both women defied the Victorian myth of woman’s delicate constitution.

Women evangelists faced numerous physical and family challenges. The long hours on the road, transplanting their families every two years or less, and no guaranteed salary made the job extremely difficult. Some women had to teach during the day and hold church meeting on the nights and weekends to make enough money to live on.70 Gage had a husband who could supplement her income as a manual laborer, and Wetherald’s husband was an ordained elder; the second income helped to alleviate the financial burden both women faced as female evangelists.

While their marriages made Gage’s and Wetherald’s ministries more financially stable than those of their single counterparts, ultimately both marriages ended in divorce. Unlike Wetherald, who finalized her divorce to John in 1892 and chose to leave the Free Methodist Church, Gage managed to hide her separation from her husband for almost ten years and continue to serve in active ministry within the Free Methodist Church.

The Rhetorical Passing of Ida Gage

Charles Gage was at least initially supportive of his wife’s ministry. Their daughter Edith remembers that from the time the family moved to Bowling Green, Ohio, Charles would drive

Gage to her meetings, build the fires in the church buildings and keep the church clean.71

However, while Edith never witnessed her parents’ fighting,72 there is evidence that the Gages’ marriage was not happy. When Edith was old enough to date, Gage adamantly refused to let her become involved or engaged to Eugene Tingley until he converted to Christianity. As Edith recalled, while the family was at an annual camp meeting in Holland, Ohio, Gage approached her and told her if she wanted to correspond with Eugene, who Edith was dating at the time, then have the letters sent to directly to Edith. Gage told her daughter, “If you insist on writing to him, 69

I want you to have your mail come to you in your own name, but I would rather see you laid in your grave than to see you marry that boy.”73 Gage’s resistance to her daughter marrying an unbeliever very likely stemmed from her own experiences and marriage.74

While this period in Gage’s married life appears to have been difficult, none of this appears to have hindered her ministry. Gage was a master of maintaining a double consciousness

– balancing both secrecy and disclosure to the denomination. Without the memoirs of her daughter, Edith Tingley, the marital discord Gage hid from her congregations and the Ohio Free

Methodist Conference could have remained hidden permanently.

Living in a Continual State of Rhetorical Passing

Edith and Eugene Tingley were married in 1900 after Eugene had converted. Shortly after her daughter’s marriage, Gage was appointed to the Bennett Corner Circuit in the

Cleveland, Ohio area.75 After returning from the Ohio Annual Conference where she received her appointment, Gage packed up the family home in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to Fields Corners,

Ohio, while Charles was visiting family in Michigan. When Charles returned to Toledo to find no wife and no home, he went back to Michigan and the couple permanently separated.76 During this time period, a woman separated from her husband would not have been viewed favorably within the Free Methodist Church, yet for eight years Gage was able to hide or avoid discussing her separation.77 She was able to pass as a married woman and hide her marital problems because Edith’s husband Eugene felt called into ministry. The Tingleys came to live with Gage and assist her in her ministry.78 The appearance of a happy home with mother, daughter and son- in-law working together in ministry could have shielded many questions about Charles’ whereabouts. As with Morris’ fourth persona, where it is necessary to silence one part of a speaker’s identity to gain acceptance in the public sphere,79 Gage used silence as a constructive 70

means to maintain social respectability and approval for her ministry until she decided to retire

and devote time to her grandchildren and daughters.

Choosing to No Longer Fit Social Norms

By 1909 Gage, her two daughters, two son-in-laws, grandchildren and Gage’s mother moved to Los Angeles, California. It was at this time that Gage gave up ministry and began a home nursing career.80 Legally, Gage was still married to Charles, but they had not lived together

in almost ten years and he remained in Michigan when the family moved to California. The

reasons Gage did not pursue evangelistic work in California are unclear. Her grandson, Glenn

Tingley, recounts in his autobiography that by the early 1900s, Gage was actively engaged in

helping Glenn’s mother raise her children and at times, was the sole caretaker for Glenn. Edith

was busy taking care of her ailing husband. Eugene had caught typhoid fever and for several

years struggled to regain his strength.81 Eugene’s poor health was the main reason the family

decided to move to California.82 While the reasons behind Gage’s decision to leave ministry after

moving are not entirely clear, what is certain is that Gage wanted to follow her daughter and grandchildren to California. Rhetorically passing as an evangelist was no longer a priority.

Through her job in California as a home care provider, she met Jesse Wood, a blind,

retired Methodist minister who about the same age as her mother, Sarah Hadley. Tingley recalls

that Gage spent hours reading to Wood and eventually he asked her to marry him. With the help

of Wood’s son, who was a public defender in Los Angeles County, Gage divorced Charles and

married Wood.83 Her marriage was against the wishes of her daughter Edith and illustrate that by

this point Gage was no longer willing to play the game of passing and engage in constructive

silence that Wetherald continued to play throughout her life. 71

A few years after her marriage to Wood, Gage was diagnosed with stomach cancer and

died at age 53 on March 23, 1915. Even though she no longer cared to publically preach, her

final moments with her daughter show that ministry was still an intrinsic part of her identity. In

recounting her mother’s death, Edith says:

About midnight she lay there with her eyes closed and said ‘Get me a paper and pencil.’ I

didn’t know where to get anything and thought she was delirious and didn’t know what

she was saying, so I said, ‘What do you want me write?’ Then she began on the 13th

Chapter of 1st Corinthians, the Charity Chapter, and she preached a sermon.84

Edith interpreted her mother’s final sermon as asking forgiveness for divorcing her father and

marrying Wood, but when read in full, 1 Corinthians 13 is a chapter about loving others without

envy, malice or through self-serving means. Instead of asking forgiveness, my supposition is that

Gage’s final sermon was a summary of how she viewed her life and ministry. It was a ministry

of putting the salvation of others before her own needs. It was a message attempting to convey to

her daughter how years of self-sacrifice and the physical and emotional strain of itinerant

ministry had affected her and perhaps, as Edith noted, it was also asking for understanding from

a daughter who disapproved of her decision to leave ministry, divorce and remarry. As Edith said

in her memoir, “I know she [Gage] was begging that we have charity for her. It was worrying

her. Soon after this her breath began coming shorter and shorter. I ran and called for the rest of

the folks but before they got there, she was gone…. God bless her memory!”85

Gage’s narrative of divorce and remarriage are written out of her obituary in The Free

Methodist, published on May 25, 1915. The obituary notes her conversion, her ministry in the

Ohio Conference, her service as a matron at Spring Arbor Seminary for a year and then her marriage in California to Wood. No mention of her divorce is recorded because, as with 72

Wetherald’s, Gage’s divorce did not fit with the organizational narrative of the Free Methodist

Church.86 In death, Gage’s moments of rhetorical passing and success are recorded, but her

decision to retire from ministry, divorce and remarry are removed from the denominational

records.

Summary

Both Gage and Wetherald were able to rhetorically navigate both social and

denominational norms in nineteenth century American culture by downplaying their domestic

identities in their writings and sermons. Their stories, while unique, are not the only accounts of

Free Methodist women evangelists during this time period. Even beyond Free Methodist culture,

women were beginning to emerge by the mid to late nineteenth century as evangelists. Women

were also becoming self-sufficient in other areas of nineteenth century culture such as law, medicine and travel.87 Hence, the debate about gender roles within the Free Methodist Church

began to intensify during Wetherald and Gage’s tenure as evangelists. Some denominational

leaders struggled to align their own ideology about women’s domestic roles with the rapidly

changing cultural landscape.

As the denomination began to seriously consider ordaining women, certain annual

conferences88 began to position themselves in favor or in opposition of ordaining women as the

1890 General Conference approached. Wetherald’s appointment as a delegate for the Eastern

Michigan Conference in 1890, and Gage’s appointment as a delegate for Ohio in 1894 were

well-calculated appointments. Both conferences viewed Gage and Wetherald as model women

preachers and their election to the General Conference served as a stamp of approval for their

work and an example to Free Methodists from other parts of the country of why women should

be ordained. However, despite the support of women delegates and evangelists in some parts of 73

the Free Methodist Church, at no other time is the tension between rhetorical passing and organizational silencing more present than in the 1890 and 1894 General Conference debates on women’s ordination. Wetherald’s acclaim as a minister resulted in her being chosen as one of only several ministers to preach sermons during the 1890 General Conference. In every chance

Wetherald had to speak, she defended women’s right to ministry and her own ministry. Yet on the floors of the Conference as the issue was debated, her remarks were often left unaddressed in

1890 and mocked outrightly at the 1894 General Conference. Gage’s address at the 1894 General

Conference fell on similar deaf ears with little response from her male delegates who opposed women’s ordination.

74

CHAPTER IV. THE ORDAINING WOMEN DEBATE IN THE FREE METHODIST CHURCH

The role of women in Free Methodism was a contentious issue from the time the denomination was founded in 1860 until the debate on women’s ordination came to the forefront at the 1890 General Conference and 1894 General Conference. Prior to 1890 and through 1894, the discussion on women’s roles continued to maintain a prominent place in denominational discourse. While Wetherald, Gage, and other women were allowed to hold evangelist licenses, they nevertheless had very limited powers in legislative and ministerial roles. By 1886 they were granted the right to serve as delegates to their annual conferences and to serve as delegates to the quadrennial Free Methodist General Conference, but even granting them that much power drew fierce debate at the 1886 General Conference. Furthermore, late nineteenth century Free

Methodist culture was becoming increasingly conservative. Benjamin Titus Roberts, the founder of Free Methodism, had always been a vocal supporter of women’s ordination but he was beginning to find that the opponents to women’s ministry were becoming a much larger and louder group. Thus, when the denomination appointed Roberts as editor of The Free Methodist, the denominational magazine, at the 1886 General Conference, it gave Roberts a four-year platform to allow women and supporters of ordination to have a voice and to educate Free

Methodists about both the Biblical and practical merits of women’s ordination before the issue was to be debated at the 1890 General Conference.

During this time period, Wetherald emerged as the symbolic representative for women’s ministry in the time preceding the 1890 General Conference, and Gage followed her example in

1894. Without the backing of Roberts at 1890 General Conference, the women’s ordination question would most likely never have been considered this early in the denomination’s history.

Thus, the Free Methodist debates on ordaining women come at a crucial point in the American 75

evangelical story and first-wave feminist rhetoric. The issue of women’s role in religious culture was being debated around the country in various denominations and the decision to ordain women varied greatly depending on Biblical interpretation and denominational theology. First to be discussed are the rhetorical performances of Wetherald and Gage, as well as the ideological debates on gender roles at the 1890 and 1894 Conferences. Then the creation of organizational silencing will be examined to illustrate that the Free Methodist debates on gender roles serve as a case study of the discursive construction of gender in evangelical culture at large.

Women’s Role in Nineteenth Century Protestantism

Congregationalists had ordained women at the individual church level since Antoinette

Brown was ordained in 1853, while the Unitarian and Universalist Church had ordained women beginning with Olympia Brown in 1863. Several other denominations, such as the United

Brethren, were considering ordaining women. Additionally, other holiness offshoots from the

Methodist Episcopal Church allowed women to be ordained from their denomination’s founding.

The Church of the Nazarene wrote women’s ordination into its original constitution in 1894, and the Wesleyan Methodist Church allowed conferences the freedom to license and ordain women.1

Still, women were restricted in their quest for equality in Protestant nineteenth century culture.

They began to gain entrance to colleges, the medical profession, law careers, and pursue a life outside the domestic sphere in a number of areas, but the profession of preaching was still essentially outside their reach.

However, the job of a preacher was more than just another occupation; it was a spiritual calling rife with issues of Biblical interpretation regarding gender and leadership roles. Women preachers were seen not only as a threat to traditional nineteenth century roles for women, but also, to some Free Methodists, as a threat to women’s God-ordained role as wife and mother. 76

Thus, the pro-ordination articles published prior to the 1890 General Conference serve as one of the few times in the nineteenth century that women and men spoke out forcefully for women’s ordination. As the 1890s progressed, the debate slowly shifted away from favoring ordination to increased opposition to it, and by 1894 the debate on women’s roles in the church was a debate among men, with women largely silenced on the matter.

Creating a Climate of Silence

Two opposing ideological camps emerged in the years prior to the 1890 General

Conference. Roberts and his supporters pushed a vision of Biblical equality for the denomination, while the two other General Superintendents, G.W. Coleman and E.P. Hart, strongly opposed women’s ordination and gender equality, relying heavily on the rhetoric of the cult of domesticity to justify women’s place as outside the public sphere. Thus, there emerged two different rhetorical visions (one of equality and one of male-only church elders) promoted in the pages of the The Free Methodist. As editor of the publication, Roberts used it to his advantage, promoting the rhetorical vision of equality. Yet as Earnest Bormann explains, all rhetorical visions, when faced with an oppositional discourse, will end with a face-to-face debate between opposing groups on ideological grounds.2 The 1890 and 1894 General Conference debates illustrate Bormann’s point. Two different visions of women’s Biblical and social roles were emerging during this period in denominational print culture and ultimately would come into direct conflict as women’s ordination was discussed at the Conferences.

As this tense rhetorical climate was developing in the denomination, the ability of women evangelists such as Wetherald and Gage to pass became increasingly difficult. It was easier to view them as “just” evangelists when their ministry were seen only on the pages of The Free

Methodist, but when the women appeared in person to debate ordination, their gender became 77

central in the debates and their accomplishments, secondary. Wetherald and Gage could no

longer rely simply on language to gain acceptance. Instead they engaged in a type of

performativity to interrogate the established gender roles of nineteenth century women through

both their words and actions. As Judith Butler explains, gender norms are “sedimented” over

time to promote certain social fictions and corporal styles of performance which make socially

established gender roles seem “natural,”3 or in the case of the Free Methodists, “God-ordained.”

During the 1890 and 1894 debates, both Wetherald and Gage use distinct verbal performative

styles in an attempt to destabilize the discursive construction of gender norms. Through her

sermons and carefully reasoned debates, Wetherald enters into masculine genres, performing as a

man in order to explicitly question the construction of gender itself; whereas Ida Gage refuses to

play by these rules – engaging in a type of performative subversion of the generic conventions of debate by acting out her spiritual experience at the 1894 General Conference. In both cases,

though, these women are ultimately silenced by an institutional discourse that forms around them

through the very debates in which they participate.

The key theory underlying this discursive elision of women’s voices during the General

Conference debates was conducted under the guise of Biblical interpretation. Opponents of

women’s ordination evoked Biblical passages out of context and issued warnings predicting that

ordination would lead to an increasingly progressive theology that was counter to the Free

Methodist mission of upholding “the gospel standard of Christianity.”4 In other words, they

accused the proponents of ordination of radicalism disguised as piety. Opponents of female

ordination were threatened by what they saw as a fundamental re-interpretation of gender roles.

To the susceptible audience of undecided Free Methodists the justifications of ordination

opponents were incredibly convincing. Therefore, Roberts’ power as editor of The Free 78

Methodist during these crucial years became even more important as the voices favoring

ordination were slowly being silenced by the increasingly oppositional rhetorical climate.

The Free Methodist Magazine Debates Prior to 1890

Roberts was a cunning editor of The Free Methodist – he used his position to include more contributions by women without drawing overt attention or animosity from more conservative denominational members. A weekly publication, The Free Methodist had approximately 3,000 subscribers in 1886 prior to Roberts’ taking over as editor.5 While there

were only 3,000 individual subscribers, it was not uncommon for the readership to be much

higher due to single issues being passed among various families within communities.6 In the

May 1890 issue, Wetherald wrote a two page defense of her ministry and a woman’s right to be

part of the denomination’s governing body, entitled “Shall Women be Ordained?” Wetherald

points out, “I think the great difficulty is that man is not satisfied to be the head as God has

designed him, but he seems to aspire to be being neck and arms, and in fact the whole body, and

monopolize the whole seat of authority.”7 She goes on to compare the plight of women and their

pursuit of gender equality with the plight of the slave who was oppressed because of the color of

his or her skin. Wetherald concludes her article with a quote from African-American suffragist

Sojourner Truth to whom Wetherald refers as “a colored lady and a preacher.”8 She notes, “In

speaking on women’s rights she [Truth] said, ‘Men need not make such a fuss about women

having anything to do in the church, for it was God and a woman that produced for the world a

Savior and man had nothing to do with it.’”9 Drawing on the rhetorical eloquence of Sojourner

Truth, Wetherald illustrates correlations in her article between racial and gender equality. By

evoking Truth in her speech, Wetherald is not only drawing comparisons between the quest for 79

gender equality and racial equality, but she is also drawing attention to the power of a speaker

who continually chose to challenge social norms through speech and performance.

The October 1, 8, and 22, 1890 editions of The Free Methodist also included pleas from

other Free Methodist leaders to vote in favor of women’s ordination. Free Methodist elder

W.B.M. Colt, who had supported the resolution to allow evangelists to serve as delegates at the

1886 General Conference, published a historical defense of women in Christian leadership positions from the first century church in the October 1 and 8 editions entitled “Why Not?”

Roberts’ daughter-in-law Emma Sellew Roberts, who was serving as co-principle at Chili

Seminary along with Roberts’ son Benson, followed up Colt’s article in the October 22 edition

with an article entitled “Help it On.” Her article draws attention to the fact that the Methodists,

Congregationalists and other denominations, such as the Nazarenes had already voted to ordain

women by this time. However, she notes that within the Free Methodist denomination, prejudices

still ran high:

Many women among us are filling the pulpits with acceptability, but many more living in

less favorable quarters have a message on their soul, to proclaim which no opportunity is

given. They still cling to the church whose principles they espouse. Every Sunday they

are found at church listening, perhaps to an attempt at preaching, made by one not

especially gifted or blessed. They attend camp meetings, speak words of power in

exhortation and testimony, but their call to ministry and preaching ability are entirely

ignored.10

The push by prominent Free Methodist leaders prior to and during the 1890 Conference (held

during October when Sellew Roberts’ and Colt’s articles were published) illustrates the desire of

many of its founding members, including Roberts, for complete gender equality. In spite of this 80

desire, the denomination was a democracy, albeit a male run democracy, not an autocracy. Thus,

the decision to ordain women had to be made by the denomination as a whole and not its

founders. Since the 1890 Conference only had two voting women delegates (Wetherald from the

Eastern Michigan Conference, and Anna Grant from the North Indiana Conference), the

likelihood of the decision passing in favor of the women was low. With three superintendents

now presiding over the Conference (Roberts, Coleman and Hart) and all holding differing

opinions on women in ministry, the debate in the 1890 General Conference Dailies was to be long, intense and at times, vicious. Yet, by the 1890 General Conference, the significant role of women could be denied by no one in the denomination. In some conferences there were numerous women evangelists.

The Susquehanna Conference was one such example. By 1895 this annual conference had nineteen evangelists listed, nearly all of them women. By comparison, there were forty-three

ordained ministers in attendance. As Snyder notes, this provided a ratio of nearly one woman

evangelist to every two ordained-male preachers.11 While women were able to preach and were

accepted as evangelists, the title and job of ordained elder was seen as a distinctly masculine

role. The additional complication of certain conferences having numerous women evangelists

while others had few, and the ability of women to serve as preachers was not apparent in all

conferences. Thus, the strongest supporters of women’s ordination tended to come from

conferences where women were visibly represented and had proven their abilities as evangelists.

However, despite the number of women in ministry, opponents to women’s ordination

greatly feared that complete gender equality was not in line with sound Biblical theology and

was nothing more than a passing fad as women gained ground in other areas of American

society. Women evangelists were seen by some as a threat to social and spiritual stability. These 81

women were not performing their gender roles “correctly” by performing acts of preaching and church governance that were still seen by opponents as masculine roles. The right to ordination was seen as the final act that was strictly masculine and opponents of ordination were determined to keep it that way. Thus, the stage was set for a contentious debate that would continue through two General Conferences.

The 1890 General Conference Debates on Ordaining Women

As the 1890 General Conference began, it became quite clear that the “woman issue,” as it was referred to in the General Conference Dailies, would not be put to rest. However, while the issue was fiercely debated, the voices of women were notably absent from the debates. At the

1890 General Conference there were two women delegates – Grant and Wetherald. Only

Wetherald speaks on the record through her sermons and speeches at conference in defense of her ministry. Grant is silent on the issue. While there are several very vocal male supporters of women’s ordination, the 1890 and 1894 debates are strong examples of the effects of organizational hierarchy and silencing. As Clair notes, it is important for scholars to read not only the official organization’s history but to search for the overlooked or purposely written out portions of an organization’s narrative:

The power of narratives in the cultural and ideological development and reproduction of

organizations is well documented. In the past researchers frequently selected and

interpreted organizational stories that were easily obtainable due to their public status….

Now it is essential to investigate those stories that do not receive the same public

exposure, legitimation, or respect within the organization that more commonly reviewed

stories reach and receive, that is sequestered stories.12 82

Wetherald had been able to successfully pass and gain acceptance for her ministry, but at the

1890 debates she was quickly silenced and subjected to the opinions of men who openly mocked

the idea of women as spiritual leaders in the church.

Anti-Feminist versus Feminist Arguments Made by Men at the 1890 General Conference

The official debate on women’s ordination was to take place on Wednesday, October 15,

1890, but the debate had been ongoing for several days prior. Supporters of women’s ordination knew that gaining more votes during the Wednesday session was crucial to passing the resolution. Therefore, the night before the debate, Wetherald preached at First Church to delegates and guests of the conference on I Corinthians 14:34-35 – one of the most contested passages in the Bible on women’s role in the church. “Let your women keep silence in the church: for it not permitted unto them to speak.” Wetherald noted that only two verses (the

Corinthians passage) in the Bible refer to women remaining silent, yet those two verses were continually being used to repress women’s ability to preach. The hypocrisy was evident:

I once spoke to a woman on the subject of pride, and she told me that she had searched

the Bible and had only found 144 passages speaking that subject; and yet with all this

said against pride the church will hardly conform to the plainness in dress; yet one or two

passages are sufficient in the minds of many upon this subject. But I was not going to

preach on the subject of pride. Paul was the best educated of all the apostles and he was

well versed in scripture and knew these facts, and he would not present a doctrine or

standard contrary to these passages quoted, and that would make him contradict himself.

I pity any woman who is down on her own sex. I suppose there are some; God help

them!13 83

Wetherald went on to address how Paul, the author of I Corinthians, was aware that when the

Holy Spirit descended from heaven and blessed the early Christians at Pentecost, God did not distinguish between genders. Therefore, the single passage asking women to remain silent must be taken in the historical context of addressing issues in the early church and at Corinth, to whom the letter was written. Wetherald framed the right to ordination from a historical and cultural reading of the Bible, in the same way Roberts framed his opening remarks the next day. Yet, due either to sloppy reporting or purposely delayed publication, Wetherald’s sermon on women’s role in the church was not published until the end of General Conference in the October 22 issue of the General Conference Dailies. This October date was well after the denomination would have read the remarks for and against ordination by the other delegates.

While the publication of Wetherald’s sermon was delayed, her attempt to find a way to both challenge the beliefs of opponents and establish common ground through the topic of women remaining silent in the church is impressive. Wetherald was standing alone in her defense. The only woman to preach at the General Conference and the only one to speak in the defense of women’s rights in the denomination, she was attempting to find a way to bridge the divide. As Audre Lorde says, “It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.”14 Wetherald would not see Free

Methodist women ordained in her lifetime but her courage to stand alone as an outsider at the debate set the groundwork for future generations of women to pursue ministry as a profession and spiritual calling.15

84

Roberts’ Opening Remarks and the Resolution that Started the Debate

By the time the 1890 General Conference began, the sixty-seven year old Roberts was suffering from exhaustion and poor health. He likely knew he would not be around much longer and wanted to see one of his main goals for the denomination, women’s ordination, accomplished in his lifetime.16 He therefore proposed a resolution that would require no change to the Free Methodist Discipline (the denomination’s book of guidelines for membership and church administration); it only required affirming that women could be ordained. As the Roberts amendment read:

Resolved, That the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the provisions which it makes, and in the

agencies which it employs for the salvation of mankind, knows no distinction of

nationality, condition or sex: therefore, no person who is called of God, and who is duly

qualified should be refused ordination on account of sex, or race or condition.17

This resolution sparked a debate over policy, governance and scriptural interpretation that continued for days at the Conference. The competing rhetorical visions of the pro-ordination and anti-ordination opponents would repeat themselves over and over again in the coming debates.

There was little “persuasion” occurring at the 1890 and 1894 General Conferences; it was simply a restating of the vision of both opposing ideologies with much dissonance created and no compromise accomplished.18 Delegates came to the Conferences with their beliefs on women’s role in the church and the home firmly established and while the debates on women’s ordination raged on for days at the Conferences, a compromise on the issue was never reached and opponents to ordination were rarely persuaded to change their minds.19

In reality, it was primarily because Roberts held considerable sway as both General

Superintendent and founder of the denomination that the issue came to the floor of the 85

Conference at all. He was not well, but as one of the denominations’ founders and one of the respected supporters of women’s ordination, he had to speak. Wetherald clearly felt the support of Roberts throughout the Conference. She was asked to preach at one of the Conference’s evening services, she spoke on the record twice in defense of her ministry, and her presence served as the example of a successful woman evangelist. Yet it is doubtful her example would have been as influential if Roberts did not also argue for women’s ordination. His frustration regarding opposition to the measure is evident in his opening remarks:

It is hard to speak to men’s stomachs for they have no ears to hear. It is a very hard thing

to speak to men’s prejudices. They are stronger than the sense of justice. They are

stronger than the love of truth, even in many good men. We can hardly estimate the

power of prejudice, and yet I think as Christian men we ought to conquer our prejudices

and adhere to truth however it may be in conflict with our training. Prejudice on this

subject are the growth of centuries. Truth may be in conflict with our training and

prejudice on this subject. We have been brought up to regard woman as inferior to man,

and are not willing the same rights to be given to her…. Some of men’s prejudices are

one way and others are another. My prejudices are one way and those of many of you are

another; and I think I can make it clear from the Bible, if you will listen candidly to me,

that the resolution before us ought to receive a unanimous vote.20

As with Wetherald, Roberts’ plea to move beyond prejudice, to consider the social and spiritual

rights of women fell on deaf ears as other delegates spoke in opposition to women’s ordination.

It did not seem to draw much sympathy or support for women’s ordination when, after his

opening address, Roberts was on the verge of physically collapsing and had to be escorted out of the room by friends.21 As with the debates in other denominations during this time period, 86

opponents based their arguments not on the nature of God and what the Bible said regarding women’s roles, but on the nature of woman and her “natural” inferiority. 22

The Anti-Feminist Justifications

O.M. Owen, a delegate from Susquehanna, New York, acknowledged the right of women to own property and have social equality to men, but in regards to being granted Biblical equality and the leadership abilities of men, he vehemently disagreed:

We would acknowledge her to be the equal of man in intellect, equal in ability, but not

equal in authority. She has her sphere of labor, and in that sphere she may equal and

sometimes excel man, in this sphere. That God never intended woman to be the leader in

the church, nation, or family may be seen from the law and the testimony.23

Owen based his argument on a very literal interpretation of the Bible and only the English translation, while Roberts and Wetherald both took a historical/cultural approach to biblical interpretation. Roberts referred to original Greek texts as justification for why women should be ordained. The opponents to ordination continually relied on their ignorance of biblical interpretation to justify their opposition. Wilson Hogue, a delegate from Genesee, New York, argued that they were not learned men, and as they were not all Greek scholars, they had no reason to believe Roberts’ explanation of biblical Greek translations. As Hogue exclaimed, “A discussion about Greek roots and verbs and nouns is an inexcusable waste of time. Five words of plain English on this subject are worth ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.”24 The ignorance and inability of the anti-ordination camp to seriously consider the question of women’s ordination with scholarly rigor the placed the debate at a stalemate.

Relying on the rhetoric of the cult of domesticity, the opponents began to justify their opposition by citing the numerous rights women were gaining in other areas of American 87

culture. Superintendent E.P. Hart, one of the more influential men at the General Conference, appealed to the delegates’ patriotism and knowledge that women were not so oppressed as the pro-ordination advocates made it appear:

We are not in England or in Germany, but in republican America – in the land where the

question of human rights and equality is being solved on a basis of right and equity as it

is no other land. The women of America may in their sphere weld [sic] an influence for

good that can be equaled under no other condition. It is the soft hand of woman that rocks

the cradle of the nation. This question stripped of all that is foreign to it should be

discussed on the bases of New Testament teaching.25

Hart’s appeal to strip the debate of “all that is foreign” was a subtle stab at Roberts’ attempt to refer to New Testament writings in Greek, the original language in which much of the New

Testament was written. With so much opposition and refusal to expand the debate beyond a literal interpretation of the English version of the Bible, the question of women’s ordination was bound to fail.

Buried deep in the anti-feminist rhetoric at the Conference was an underlying fear by the male delegates of having their power usurped in the denomination. As Kimmel notes in his study on turn of the twentieth century anti-feminist rhetoric, the social impact to men was at the center of the debates on women’s roles. Within American Christian culture there was also increased emphasis on creating a “muscular Christianity” that emphasized the stereotypical distinctions that God only had masculine characteristics and emphasized the role of male leadership in the

Bible. “Muscular Christianity” began to gain traction in the late nineteenth century but continued to gain popularity through early twentieth century revivalist Billy Sunday and his images of

Jesus as a “no dough-faced, lick-spittle proposition… but the greatest scrapper who ever lived.”26 88

Such a blatantly masculine interpretation of the Bible allowed little room for women to be

viewed as equal in ability, equal in calling, and equal in worth in the eyes of God.

The voices of women on the ordination question are silent. During the heated debates on

Wednesday, no woman was recorded in The General Conference Dailies as speaking on the

matter. With only two women delegates, there was far from equal representation on the subject.

Wetherald is not recorded to have spoken on the conference floor regarding ordination during the

Wednesday session, although she spoke the day after the vote. Roberts and a few other male delegates were left to take up the cause on women’s behalf. Thus the debate on the conference floor, while about women’s roles, was argued entirely from a male perspective. The women were either intentionally or unintentionally organizationally silenced.

Wetherald Weighs In

Though there were technically two woman delegates to the 1890 General Conference, it was only Clara Wetherald – the most famous and outspoken of the two – who contributed to the debates on the conference floor. In response to anti-feminist arguments that sought to locate their opposition to women’s ordination in the rhetoric of flawed Scripture interpretation and cultural norms, Wetherald turned the debate around and focused the attention on the physical and financial hardship women evangelists faced:

For twenty-four years I have preached the gospel and have never been laid aside from the

ministry but six months. I have had people come many miles to have me marry them, and

I would not do it. I have labored many years for $100 a year. The railways refuse to grant

permits to women who are not ordained, no matter if they are licensed. I do not stand

here because I want to be honored. That is all taken out of my heart. There are those who

have been saved under my labors who have desired to receive the Lord’s Supper from my 89

hands; but I could not administer it. God has given us this right, but the conference

refuses it.27

In her address, Wetherald centers the debate on the inequality between ordained elders and

evangelists. Wetherald traveled extensively, preaching around the country, but her role as

minister was limited by church rules prohibiting her from performing all the duties of an

ordained elder. While she alludes to the financial gender disparity, she also subtly mocks the

belief that ordaining women will upset the “natural” order.

Wetherald’s speech and the speeches of the other delegates were published in the

General Conference Dailies, providing Free Methodists who could not attend with information about conference proceedings. However, the editor of The General Conference Dailies, J.G.

Terrill, included numerous editorial comments that attempted to provide an interpretation of events on the conference floor. As he noted in regards to Wetherald’s speech, “We call particular attention to the speeches of Rev’ds B.T. Roberts… and Rev. Mrs. Clara Wetherald…. [W]e speak of the above speeches, not from any special favoritism to the parties, or to either side of the question, but because of their being more elaborate and more fully discussing the question.”28

Rhetorically, his reference to Wetherald as “Rev.” is interesting, illustrating her prominence in

the denomination. She was not an ordained elder as Roberts was, but she is referred to by the

same title. Ironically, while she is respected for her ministry, she is viewed more as an anomaly

than a norm for women evangelists. Other women, including women missionaries, at the

Conference are referred to as “Miss” or “Mrs.” in The General Conference Dailies. The respect

Wetherald is shown by calling her a “Rev.” is not typical for denominational writings of the time

period.29 90

As the most vocal advocate of women’s right to ordination at the 1890 General

Conference, Wetherald serves as an example of someone who intentionally chose to live in the margins of social and theological acceptance in the denomination. She strongly voiced her opinion in a discourse that was being created as Wetherald, Roberts and other ordination supporters shared their arguments. A culture of rhetorical silencing was being generated as

Wetherald spoke to other delegates who opposed ordination at the Conference. As bell hooks notes in her essay “Choosing the Margin,” what Wetherald was doing was intentionally placing herself in a position of resistance. She had succeeded in rhetorically passing – crafting a professional identity that had gained her respect and attention within the denomination – but regarding the issue of ordination, she was not willing to continue to disguise her strong support for furthering ministry opportunities for women. In other words, she intentionally used language that was strongly oppositional and incredibly controversial because she knew this was her chance to pursue change. Her addresses at the Conference focus on women’s “God given right” to preach, which was subverting the language of “natural” roles for women to argue for “naturally equal” roles instead of a “natural inferior” role for women. As part of a culture that was partially egalitarian, Wetherald’s role was to be both a cultural insider and also an oppositional force – a role that contributes to the increased silencing she encountered in the 1890 debates. hooks notes:

Language is a place of struggle. We are wedded to language, have our being in words….

Dare I speak to you in a language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination –

a language that will not blind you, fence you in or hold you? Language is also a place of

struggle. The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite,

to renew. Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance.30 91

As the debate unfolded in 1890, it became increasingly clear that to gain attention at the debates,

one had to speak in the language of the oppressor and perform in a masculine manner. Wetherald

had to reason with her opponents using the very Biblical passages they used to denounce her

ministry. Yet, when she fought to persuade her opponents of her worth as a minister, she also

openly demanded they recognize her as a woman. Before 1890 her rhetoric had attempted to

focus on her role as a preacher first and foremost. Now, with the debate focusing on women’s inability to be a wife, mother and preacher, Wetherald had to reframe her identity in hopes that by acknowledging her ministerial accomplishments, she could begin to be identified as a woman and emphasize that being a woman did not make an evangelist less capable of having a successful ministry. For example, Wetherald uses a story of a female sheep dog that is both able to leave her pups to find the sheep and return home to care for her puppies. As she says, “Let women be considered in the matter. They say woman is not adapted to the regular ministry. I think she is peculiarly fitted to care for souls.”31

Wetherald was engaged in breaking, as Butler calls it, “subversive styles” of gender.32

She was attempting to construct both a performative and rhetorical identity that would help

persuade other delegates that she was first and foremost an evangelist by repeatedly breaking the

stereotypical mold for women and addressing the male delegates as their equal. However, despite

Wetherald’s best efforts, language and performativity were bound to work against her; language

was bound to silence her in an organizational culture that did not fully recognize her gifts. For as

Catherine MacKinnon explains, “Words and images are how people are placed in hierarchies,

how social stratification is made to seem inevitable and right, how feelings of inferiority and

superiority are engendered, and how indifference to violence against those on the bottom is

rationalized and normalized.”33 The language of Protestant culture had already placed women in 92

a social hierarchy where their contributions were expected to be different from the contributions of men. Male supporters such as Roberts and other delegates, along with Wetherald, were facing an insurmountable battle against a long established hierarchy of language and Biblical interpretation.

Finally, as Clair notes in Organizing Silence, “People are named into certain subject positions, but the notion that those positions carry with them privilege or disprivilege is silenced…. [T]o complicate matters, no individual carries a single subject position.”34 Wetherald carried multiple identities – a successful evangelist, a respected denominational leader, and also the identity of a woman. Her privileged existence as an evangelist is quickly silenced as the delegates begin to view women evangelists as women first and foremost, disregarding their spiritual and professional impact up to this point in the denomination’s history.

The Final Vote

The 1890 debates on women’s ordination dissolved in chaos with delegates not sure how to vote or even what they were voting on. The Roberts’ resolution, as it was called, failed by two votes – 40 opposed 38 for women’s ordination. Terrill in his editorial notes on the conference, describes the scene:

It is not for those who favor the ordination of women to be discouraged, nor for any who

are opposed to it, if there be such, to glory in its defeat. The vote Wednesday evening was

not decisive of that question. There was involved with it other questions, that distracted

the minds of some, and caused others to apparently vote contrary to their pronounced

positions. There are some among us who believe there is nothing natural or scriptural in

the way of ordination of women. But they hold that we are not prepared for it until the

church as a body has expressed its opinion on the subject; and they therefore favor its 93

being submitted to the annual conferences; and because the ordination of women is such

a wide departure from the custom of the church universal, they think it best that more

than a majority should decide it.35

Yet the issue of women’s ordination was not dead, despite the conference delegates voting it down. It was put on hold for four years as annual conferences across the country would voice their opinion and send delegates back in 1894 to cast the deciding vote on the issue. However, before the 1890 Conference concluded, Wetherald took one more chance to persuade her fellow

Free Methodists to support women’s ordination. On Thursday, October 16, the day after the

Roberts’ Resolution was voted down, Wetherald spoke out about the issue of women’s natural duties and the arguments raised in opposition of women preaching:

I know we have responsibilities that others do not have; and I think of all others we

should have the support of the church. I do not see why the heavens should fall and

everything be turned bottom side up if five elders should lay their hands on my head and

say, “Take thou authority to preach the word of God and to administer the holy

sacraments in the congregation.” I know that the Lord has laid his hand upon my head,

and he will carry me through. You say that the financial question should not come into

this discussion. Why not, if it comes in with the men? I say it is a question of equality. If

it is said that it means males only when it says “he,” then we must all sit down without

hope of salvation. But I deny that it has that meaning. A man said to me, “There is no

salvation for woman in the Bible. There is no place in the Bible where it says she has a

soul.”36

Directly attacking her opponents, Wetherald makes the bold claim that if ministry is not open to women because the Bible prohibits it, then what is to prevent salvation being interpreted in only 94

the masculine context as well? No response to Wetherald’s address is recorded, and within four months after the Conference ended, she was the center of public controversy as her husband, an ordained Free Methodist minister, confessed to adultery and she filed for divorce. Wetherald knew that ordination for women was not coming soon to the Free Methodist Church and the family scandal she was involved in made it difficult to remain in the denomination.

By the time of the 1890 Conference, Wetherald was no longer trying subvert the discourse or pass within the denomination. On a larger societal scale she still was attempting to place her role as an evangelist ahead of her gender, but within the Free Methodist Church such a distinction was not possible. Wetherald’s final address at the 1890 General Conference is her last recorded address within the denomination. By 1892 she had left the denomination and become a ministerial candidate in the Congregationalist Church, leaving the defense of women’s ordination in the hands of Ida Gage, a rising evangelist in the Ohio conference, whose revivals and success at church planting were attracting attention across the region.

Ordaining Women and the Debates Between Conferences

After women’s ordination was narrowly defeated at the 1890 General Conference,

Roberts returned to his home in North Chili, New York, and in 1891 turned his arguments for women’s ordination into a self-published book, Ordaining Women. The book received mixed reactions within the denomination and Free Methodist General Superintendent G.W. Coleman published a lengthy review in the June 17, 1891 issue of The Free Methodist, arguing against

Roberts’ premise that women were morally, intellectually, and socially equal to men. In the same issue, an unidentified woman also wrote a rebuttal to Roberts’ arguments. The unnamed woman, who identifies herself as a woman evangelist with a husband who is an ordained Free Methodist elder, rejects the claim that other women evangelists desire ordination. Directly attacking Mariet 95

Hardy Freeland, a strong female supporter of ordination who hoped Ordaining Women would

deliver women in the same way Uncle Tom’s Cabin delivered the African-Americans, the author notes a “great deliverance implies clearly as great an oppression? .... She [Freeland] says,

‘especially in the Free Methodist Church.’ This surprises me still more. Are the sisters of our loved Zion really oppressed in any degree like unto the bondage of the colored race? Are they under whip and lash deprived of their liberty, and waiting for the ‘ordination of women’ to set them free? I cannot ‘accept the situation.’”37 The author’s comment and mocking tone shows the

deepening tension and opposition to ordination within the denomination. Additionally, it

illustrates the increasing confusion over Biblical interpretation within the denomination by both

men and women. What was Biblical – ordaining women or keeping them in their homes? If they

were to stay at home why was the denomination willing to grant them an evangelist license?

The author of the article says she writes with humility and love as a fellow woman who

knows that any man saying what she says would be immediately considered opposed to women’s

ordination. Because Roberts was no longer the editor after the 1890 General Conference, it was

rare for original articles by women to be published in The Free Methodist between 1890 and

1894. Those women who did write to The Free Methodist were often strongly opposed to

women’s ordination. During this time the language of The Free Methodist was often used to

elevate women onto a domestic pedestal where her superiority to man made her incapable of

serving as a minister. The very language that attempted to elevate women was actually degrading

to women, as well as manipulating and confusing to Free Methodists, which was exactly what

ordination opponents wanted.

In a special issue of The Free Methodist, Superintendent G.W. Coleman, who was a vocal

opponent of women’s ordination, wrote a special insert in the June 17, 1891 issue illustrating 96

why ordaining women was not Biblical. Coleman’s special issue serves as one example of

rhetoric both elevating and degrading women. On the first page of Coleman’s insert is a poem

outlining gender roles. While not a exceptional example of poetry, it does show how language

was twisted to appear to honor yet devalue women simultaneously:

Woman completes what man begins;

Tis hers to polish and refine;

But if she builds alone she sins

Against her art and God’s design.38

If they could use such poetry and essays to seemingly put women on a pedestal but restrict her

role to the domestic sphere, then they could effectively defeat ordination.39

In response to Coleman’s critique of Ordaining Women, Roberts wrote a defense of the

book in the August 12, 1891 issue of The Free Methodist. Included in the issue were positive

reviews from other periodicals such as The Pentecost, The Union Signal, The Wesleyan

Methodist and the Evangelical Messenger. However, within the denomination, Roberts’ book was seldom advertised in The Free Methodist and some annual conferences banned its sale at their conventions.40 The lack of denominational support, especially from the denomination’s

superintendents, points out the continuing organizational silencing of gender equality.

As Roberts noted in a sermon at the 1890 General Conference, the impact of Free

Methodism was greater outside the denomination than within. In fact, as other denominations

began to more openly embrace or consider women’s ordination, the Free Methodist Church

began to sink into a period of dogmatism, legalism, and fundamentalism that went directly

against the dynamic, spirit-filled revivalism of the denomination’s early years and its founding

principle of equal access to the gospel for all. 97

As with the months leading up to the 1890 General Conference, the summer and fall of

1894 saw the pages of The Free Methodist once again filled with articles for and against women’s ordination. However, unlike the 1890 magazine debates, men wrote most of the articles, with only a few women entering into the debate. Roberts died suddenly in 1893 and after his death, the tide quickly turned in strong opposition to women’s ordination. Only a few men and women were still openly supporting it and the three Free Methodist General Superintendents were all opposed to the idea. Additionally, during the four-year interim, the annual conferences had voted on women’s ordination and the denomination was split almost equally on the issue.

The 1894 General Conference Debates on Ordaining Women

Prior to the 1894 General Conference, Ida Gage was relatively silent on the issue of women’s role as preachers. She did regularly publish a yearly ministry report for several years each February, including in 1894, but her grueling travel schedule likely limited the time she had to write ministry reports to the denomination. However, as a delegate at the 1894 Conference, she was ready to defend her ministry. Representing Ohio, which had voted 18 to 14 to approve ordaining women,41 Gage was a natural spokesperson for woman evangelists. Interestingly, the

East Michigan Conference, which had sent Wetherald as a delegate at 1890, voted decisively in opposition of ordaining women – 56 to 17 –an immense change from the Conference’s position in 1890. This was perhaps due in part to the scandal of John Wetherald’s affair and subsequent divorce in 1891, which may have prompted Wetherald to leave denomination to become a

Congregationalist. Additional changes at the 1894 Conference included more women delegates.

Mrs. N. Barnhart of the Pittsburg Conference, Ida Gage of Ohio, Clara Sage of Wabash, Indiana, and Mrs. M.L. Coleman of Wisconsin (Superintendent Coleman’s wife) were among the 98

delegates. All the women delegates came from annual conferences that supported ordination,

except Coleman. The Wisconsin conference was evenly split 22-22 on the issue.

Silencing in 1894

With the death of Roberts in 1893, women’s voices within the denomination, especially on the question of ordination, were becoming increasingly silenced. Instead of encouraging women to speak on their own behalf, the debate devolved into men arguing over women’s roles

in the church and the home. In reality the debate had become larger than women’s ordination and

now focused on if the Free Methodists were going to follow the larger social trend of granting

women equality in the public sphere or remain entrenched in the cult of domesticity from earlier

in the century. As C. M Damon said in the September 19, 1894 issue of The Free Methodist, the woman question,

[w]ill not down; and unless we are prepared to roll back the march of progress by closing

the doors of the institutions of higher learning, which have lately been opened to woman,

we may as well adjust ourselves to the trend of events in all civilized nations, and prepare

to meet the oncoming participation and influence of women in public affairs. That this

trend is toward her emancipation, elevation and enfranchisement, needs no proof to the

thoughtful student of the times.42

Damon stressed that both the lack of legal and spiritual equality were grossly under

acknowledged and understood, and that the church could no longer stand by and allow the

inequality to continue. However, in September 1894, George M’Culloch wrote to The Free

Methodist saying that “The advocates of woman’s ordination are working for a state of things

which is entirely unknown to Methodism (as a body) or to any other truly evangelical church; but 99

which is mainly found in the practice of the Universalists, the Unitarians and the Adventists. Do

we wish to pattern after them?”43

Arguments like M’Culloch’s were fairly common as Free Methodists forgot that the

Wesleyan Methodist Church, another holiness offshoot, had allowed women’s ordination almost

since its inception in 1843, and the Nazarene Church had written women’s ordination into its

charter that very year (1894). Yet, as in 1890, the debate was narrowing down to the belief that

women were morally superior to men but not suited for public roles. They were instead expected

to serve as the moral compass in the home. Additionally, there was a growing fear about

secularization in the church. As women gained rights in the public sphere some Free Methodists

viewed women’s ordination as an issue broader than simply allowing women to preach; rather, it was an attack on what they perceived to be God-ordained roles for men and women.

More so than in 1890, the 1894 debates illustrated that the rhetorical power rested in the hands of men. Women had little control over the language and only when they were willing to use the language of the dominant hierarchy were they granted any attention. The women evangelists were on the margins of social acceptance and had a choice. As bell hooks questions, would they choose to position themselves on the side of the colonialist power or resist and continue to push for “revolutionary change?”44

Elevating Women’s Sphere above Ministry

As the debate about women’s ordination officially began at the 1894 General Conference,

D.J. Santinier from New York stood up to denounce women’s preaching as contrary to the

natural order. Referring to a story that “a woman at the last general conference” told (Wetherald

in 1890), he retold the story of a sheep dog and her puppies, noting that “In this illustration the

dog represents the woman and the puppies her children. Now I want to say if that dog is to 100

represent my wife and the puppies my children she shall stay at home and take care of the

puppies.”45

The story Santiner chose to represent women’s domestic role is the same illustration

Wetherald used to argue that women were able to balance both a career in ministry and her family duties. Yet, while Wetherald’s address had been published in the 1890 General

Conference Dailies and Santiner would have had to read it in order to quote it in 1894, he refused to name Wetherald, illustrating another example of some Free Methodists silencing her ministry after she had left the denomination. Santiner continues on in his address to passionately argue for the cult of domesticity: “God’s word declares, ‘I will therefore that the young women marry, bear children, guide the house, give no one occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.’ Those to be ordained it declares, should be men. If this be not so our opposers must show that women have wives and are commanded to rule over their households.”46 With

Roberts gone, the delegates were more open in their opposition to gender equality. O.M. Owen,

who spoke in opposition to ordination at the 1890 General Conference, once again strongly noted

how women’s ordination was not in line with women’s Biblically mandated roles:

My contention is that God designed that man should be the leader and ruler, and just as

the word says, ‘woman shall be a helpmeet unto him.’ We have a president of the United

States and a vice-president, and no one would contend that the vice-president was equal

in authority to the president. He is simply a helper in official matters.47

Owen draws similar conclusions as Santiner. Women are “helpers,” not “leaders.” In response to

the strong hostility to women’s ordination, only Gage spoke on the record in defense of her

ministry.

101

Let a Woman Speak

Unlike Wetherald in 1890, who was at first attempted to subvert the discourse on gender and still rhetorically pass, Gage makes no attempt at playing by the rules of masculine rhetoric.

As Butler notes, those who chose not to “do their gender right” are punished,48 and Gage’s refusal to be silent and to confront the faulty logic of two opponents was not in line with “right” social behavior for women. She addresses Owen’s comments directly and Santiner’s use of

Wetherald’s story indirectly in her remarks:

Referring to what my brother from the Susquehanna conference [Owen] said with regard

to the president and vice president of the United States, if I have a proper understanding,

the vice president has the authority to perform all the duties of the president in his

absence. I come to you as a vice president, and I wish that this question could be settled. I

am not an enthusiast on this subject. I am in sympathy with the brother who is in the

canoe with the sisters, because, of course, their situation seems to be perilous at times.

My brother who spake on my left favorably referred to a certain illustration, which to my

mind, was out of place [Santinier] and yet, looking at it in the light that when our sisters

leave their children with their neighbors to go berrying, or help their husbands dig

potatoes, no one criticizes it at all. But when they go out to rescue the lost and unsaved,

there is a great deal of comment made. I feel very much like the colored man when he

thanked God for the ‘sperience.’ My brother says this is not a testimony meeting, but I

want to say just a few words. I have ‘sperience’ on this line.49

As with the earlier articles in The Free Methodist equating the oppression of women to the oppression of slaves, Gage drew on the comparison between the African-American man who is 102

treated as inferior and the woman who is treated as weak in both mind and body and should be grateful for whatever “sperience” she is given.

Gage gave her testimony and concluded that while so many of the delegates claimed women are not up to the task of preaching or serving itinerant ministry, since her conversion the

Lord made her strong, she could now tell herself that “I can stand as much as an iron woman.”50

Gage’s remarks went unaddressed by her male colleagues as others stood up and spoke in opposition of women’s ordination. She noted that delegates were encouraged not to refer to personal experience as part of their public address, but she denounced this. She insisted that her personal experience was valuable and necessary to understand why her ministry was important and why the arguments of her critics are flawed. Gage would not be silenced or conform to the masculine rhetorical style present at the 1894 Conference.

Evoking the Spirit of Roberts

Towards the end of the debate, F.D. Brooke, a delegate from the Illinois conference, which supported women’s ordination, summarized the long-standing debate on women’s roles in the church. As Brooke noted, people have always left the church in opposition to granting women additional rights. When women were first granted evangelists licenses at the 1882

Burlington General Conference, a delegate left the denomination in protest, and at the 1886

General Conference in Coopersville when evangelists (including women) were allowed to serve as delegates to annual and general conferences, another Free Methodist delegate left the denomination in protest. As Brook put it:

Now the question is one of consistency. We must go ahead or go back. Go back? Never.

But here we find the same old spirit that was defeated at Burlington and buried at

Coopersville. Now it cries, ‘We let woman preach and we let her in office, what more 103

does she want?’ Her friends contend for all her rights, and sooner or later all her rights she

shall have. But let it be remembered that it was not through the clemency of her opposers

that she gained the rights now possessed; but she, with her friends, fought her way in the

teeth of the bitterest opposition and took the field by force. Now her dearest friend, her

most able defender, lies in habiliments of death [B.T. Roberts], but be ye assured that ‘he

being dead, yet speaketh,’ and that this battle will never cease until the minister of the

gospel in the Free Methodist church, who meets the requirements of the Discipline, shall

be ordained without distinction of sex.51

Brook’s quote “he being dead; yet speaketh” was repeated several times by Roberts’ supporters.

While so many delegates more openly opposed women’s ordination than in 1890, the memory of

Roberts was not dead. In his honor the delegates placed his portrait in the conference hall and

included the framed portrait when they took the photo of all the delegates. Yet while Roberts’

image was present, his message of equality was quickly being silenced. As one of the more

controversial reforms he had attempted during his lifetime, the denominational leadership chose to push the issue aside soon after his death. Thus, when the final vote was taken at the 1894

General Conference, only 35 delegates voted for women’s ordination and 65 against.52 Full

denominational equality for women would not be granted for another eighty years, in 1974.53

Summary

While Free Methodism was a small denomination, the debates over women’s ordination and

women’s role, or lack of role, illustrates the broader social and theological tensions emerging at

the end of the nineteenth century. As with any feminist critique, the purpose here is draw

attention to the forgotten recesses of the past and to show their relevance to the rhetoric, ideology

and role of women in today’s culture. The remarkable preservation of the Free Methodist debates 104

serves as a case study today for similar theological denominations, as other churches emerge

from the holiness tradition that ordain women, but still face cultural opposition to elevating

women to leadership positions. Gage and Wetherald could no longer successfully pass as

evangelists when their gender was prominently on display at the Conferences. The competing

rhetorical visions and the deeply entrenched anti-feminist rhetoric was too forceful, too silencing to be effectively defeated. Gage, Wetherald, Roberts and other supporters of gender equality and women’s ordination were pushed to the margins. Even after the defeat of women’s ordination, these Free Methodists did not change their views. As bell hooks calls out to the oppressed:

This is an intervention. A message from that space in the margin that is the site of

creativity and power, that inclusive space where we recover ourselves, where we move in

solidarity to erase the category of colonized/colonizer. Marginality is a site of resistance.

Enter that space. Let us meet there. Enter that space. We greet you as liberators.54

As the early Free Methodist leaders moved on or passed away, the importance of women’s role

in the denomination was forgotten and attempts to redefine/resist the role of elders as only men

diminished. Yet through the archives, their rhetoric and accomplishments live on. By

interrogating the past, drawing attention to the oppressive rhetorical vision of the anti-ordination

camp, there remains hope that current evangelical society can liberate itself from the continued

repressive rhetorical vision of male headship and masculine culture.

The rhetoric of Gage and Wetherald raises numerous questions about the connections

between rhetoric and performativity. What is perhaps most important to emphasize in their

discourse is that they chose to work within the cultural framework that existed around them;

while they were forced to the margins of acceptance, they still chose to remain a part of Christian

culture. By engaging and attempting to change the definitions of what were masculine and 105

feminine roles within denominational leadership, they were working to change the script of gender both within the denomination and in late nineteenth century American culture. Wetherald was able to continue this quest outside the Free Methodist denomination, but what must be emphasized is the fact that if they had chosen to leave and not fight at all, if Roberts had not chosen to push his peers towards reform, the sedimentation of cultural roles might have been deeper and women might have waited longer than 80 years for ordination. What the rhetoric and performance of Gage and Wetherald show is that change comes from within and from not abandoning a culture and tradition that has oppressive elements. Change came slowly, but it did eventually come.

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CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS

The need for communications research that recognizes feminist and religious theory as compatible is imperative. The rhetorical narrative of Gage and Wetherald within the Free

Methodist Church could not fully be explored without a complex feminist and religious framework. Helen Sterk draws attention to the need for such scholarship in a special issue of The

Journal of Religion and Communication. As she notes, more articles written using feminist theories and categories should be published and valued in the Religious Communication

Association.1 Sterk pushes for increased scholarly attention to gendered communication practices

and principles in religious life and research. It essential to communications scholarship to

understand how language empowers or constrains individuals in religious traditions; both topics

are addressed in this dissertation.2 While Sterk’s call for increased intersections between feminist

and religious communication research is warranted, the acceptance of such scholarship is still not

widespread. When scholars, like myself, operate interdisciplinarily between and among

paradigms, they are often placed in a position similar to a tightrope walker. If we lean too far

towards religious scholarship, the feminist scholars are skeptical, but by leaning too far into

feminist theory the religious and communication scholars and the religious communities studied

become skeptical. One wrong move and you fall off the wire.

Following is a brief personal example illustrating the importance and challenges of

bridging disciplinary divides. For the past two years I have built connections within my

denomination and shared my ongoing research about Free Methodist women’s rhetoric. As a

result of my research and connections, I had the opportunity in the summer of 2011 to share my

dissertation topic with a group of ordained Free Methodist women. As I told the stories of Clara

Wetherald and Ida Gage, I saw the ministers’ eyes light up with excitement at what Wetherald 107

and Gage accomplished. As I finished talking, I was asked, “Where is our history published?

Why have the contributions of Free Methodist women been overlooked?” That question has haunted me throughout this entire project. The stories of Wetherald and Gage provide inspiration and encouragement to women within the denomination and beyond. Their stories illustrate that women have been and will continue to be dynamic, influential leaders in Free Methodism. On a larger level, the stories of these women are the starting point for further exploration into the contributions of religious women in nineteenth century social movements. There is a vast amount of unexplored literature written about and by women from various denominations. Retrieving these narratives will add depth to research on the first-wave feminist movement.

Therefore, this dissertation has participated in the quest to uncover the lives and rhetoric of forgotten women. As Carol Mattingly notes in her essay, “Telling Evidence: Rethinking What

Counts in Rhetoric,” the rhetorical historian has to be careful not to rewrite or emphasize certain historical moments in a manner that reflects the views of the present or values one person’s contributions to history over another’s. Mattingly urges scholars to consider heretofore undiscovered people and new perspectives when researching women’s rhetorical history.3 As this dissertation has shown, understanding the rhetoric of religion and women’s accomplishments involves analyzing various aspects of culture. It requires a layered approach to research that addresses questions about the rhetorical significance of women’s contributions within their religious communities and in nineteenth century society at large. It requires a basic understanding of the theology that influences the rhetoric, and it requires intensive archival research to uncover the rhetoric of women who have been overlooked for so long that their stories were almost permanently forgotten. 108

Answering the question, “Where is our history?” also involves answering why that history has been ignored. To answer that question we must return to the late 1890s and the question of women’s ordination. It is impossible to know how many women evangelists left Free

Methodism after women’s ordination was defeated in 1894. Wetherald, who left in 1890, went on to become an ordained Congregationalist minister in 1893 and preached almost thirty years in that denomination. Her total career spanned fifty years – only about half of that was with the

Free Methodists. While we cannot know how many other women chose to follow Wetherald’s example and continue preaching in denominations which would ordain them, we can see some of the other long-term effects of refusing women ordination.

The 1890s marked a time of theological transition in the United States and the role of women within religious discourses and institutions was at the heart of these shifts. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Free Methodist Church began to fall into an extended period of legalism. The dynamic revivalism that led women, such as Gage and Wetherald, to align with the denomination disappeared. The trends in Free Methodism were common in other evangelical denominations of the time period. Thus, the role of women evangelists, the debates about ordination, and the fight for gender equality in the Free Methodist Church have much broader social and organizational implications. At the heart of debates on women’s ordination is the continuing debate about gender roles in Christian culture.

Feminist Social Movements and Women’s Ordination

In the United States the debate on women’s ordination was most intense in the 1880s and

1890s as the first-wave feminist movement began to take off.4 While earlier debates on women’s

public ministry focused on claiming that women preachers were not “typical” females, following

Wesley’s position that it took an “extraordinary call” to preach, late nineteenth century debates 109

began to include women’s ordination as part of the larger fight for gender equality. Within Free

Methodism, Roberts framed his Biblical arguments in support of women’s ordination from a

stance of complete gender equality. As he concludes in his book Ordaining Women (original text

was capitalized):

The gospel of Jesus Christ, in the provisions which it makes, and in the agencies which it

employs, for the salvation of mankind, knows no distinction of race, condition or sex,

therefore no person evidently called of God to the gospel ministry, and duly qualified for

it, should be refused ordination on account of race, condition or sex.5

According to Roberts, ordination was no longer seen as something only certain women were

called to, but something that every woman and man could be called by God to pursue.

While by the turn of the twentieth century the first-wave feminist movement narrowed its focus to suffrage, it is still important to frame the 1880s and 1890s debates on women’s ordination in relation to the women’s rights movement. At the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention,

“The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments” specifically included a statement about equal rights in the church and ordination. As the document proclaims, “He allows her in Church as well as

State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.”6

By the late nineteenth century the goal of attaining equality in all professions was becoming

central to the burgeoning women’s movement.

However, while some progress was made during the first-wave movement, it was not

until the 1960s and 1970s, when women were entering the workforce in record numbers and

various social movements were drawing attention to gender equality issues, that the doors of

ministry opened widely to women in some denominations. Because the second-wave movement 110

remained relatively broad in its quest for social reform, many Protestant denominations, including the Free Methodists, changed their stance. The Free Methodist Church officially ordained women as elders in 1974, and the connection to the larger feminist movement cannot be ignored in this decision. As sociologist Mark Chaves explains, “Social movements punctuate historical time with periods of extensive activity. These movements group together during certain periods, making those periods of time particularly extensive collective action.”7 When looking at the ordination debates in the Free Methodist Church, the influence of these social movements is evident.

First-wave feminism began the conversation on women’s ordination and did result with women being granted the right to become deacons in 1911,8 but it took the next large women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s to bring about ordination, thereby illustrating that denominations do not exist outside the boundaries of larger social movements. However, while ordination was opened to Free Methodist women in the 1970s, the number of women who pursued and are currently pursuing ordination has remained relatively small and stable. As of

2010 in the U.S. Free Methodist Church, there were 991 senior (lead) pastors but only 52 were women. Additionally, in other ordained pastoral roles there were 133 associate pastors, but only

53 were women, and 482 staff pastors with only 122 being women. Staff pastors are commonly put in specialized areas of ministry such as children’s or women’s ministries, which might account for higher numbers of women pastors in this category. Yet it once again illustrates continued issues regarding women’s ordination and leadership in the church.9

In all the categories of pastoral ministry within the denomination men greatly exceed women in filling these important and visible leadership roles. The lack of progress in encouraging Free Methodist women to enter ministry and obtain senior leadership positions 111

raises questions regarding how current social movements in evangelical culture might be negatively influencing women’s desire to pursue full-time ministry. Hence, this issue draws attention to another concern this dissertation brings up – the influence of fundamentalism and complementarianism (male headship/leadership) in evangelical culture today.

Religious Fundamentalism and Women’s Ordination

The debate between embracing modern culture, as many of the mainline Protestant churches did, and resisting change still remains central to understanding opposition to women’s ordination. Not much has changed since the 1890’s. True, women are granted the right to be ordained but that does not mean the path to ordination and their acceptance as ministers is any easier. Since the 1970’s, popular Christian rhetoric about gender has returned to the reasoning that women are “different yet equal to men,” meaning that women are valued, but not in the same leadership roles as men. This rhetoric has become so prominent that, as rhetorician Helen

Sterk explains, the vast majority of Christian co-cultures seek Biblical interpretation and spiritual leadership in an almost exclusively male context.10 Sterk argues that Christian culture understands personal identity and religious experience primarily through narrative. The Bible, as the key source of personal understanding, is written largely from a narrative perspective with various parables, stories and letters to the early church, providing a framework for understanding self-worth and spiritual vocation. Therefore, if the organizational rhetoric has remained predominantly masculine, the role of women in the leadership narrative will be undermined and devalued. Sterk notes:

Churches make full use of women as support persons, to run nurseries, Sunday Schools,

vacation Bible schools, food services, Bible studies women, to do the cleaning, to play

the organ and the piano, and to type the bulletin and the newsletter. Women, excluded 112

from the biblical narrative, poorly featured in sermons, systematically excluded from

positions in which they can affect church policy, and not represented in religious or

liturgical language develop a constricted self-concept, one which keeps them from

expressing their Christian gifts.11

The problem is no longer access to ordination, but rhetorically diminishing the worth of women so they do not pursue the call to ministry. However, it should be noted that while access to ordination exists, there are still numerous roadblocks that keep many women from becoming senior pastors, limiting many to assistant pastoral roles. This issue will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. Research connecting the rhetoric of Christian fundamentalism and organizational culture is practically non-existent. Yet, without examining how rhetoric is limiting and defining gender within denominations, scholars and Christian leaders cannot begin to work on re-defining gender roles and educating congregations.

The roadblock to gender equality in Christian culture is often not at the denominational level but in individual congregations. The denomination is frequently viewed as a distant organizational structure, whereas the local church directly impacts individuals’ Biblical interpretation, nurtures spiritual gifts, and picks who will visibly lead the congregation.

Sociologist Paul Sullins’ research on women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church illustrates the influence of rhetoric and organizational culture at the local level. While the Episcopal Church began ordaining women in the 1970s, just as the Free Methodist Church did, Sullins found that resistance to women clergy was a result of “embedded cultural values” in individual congregations.12 It can be implied that those cultural values stem from fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. However, without further study connecting organizational and rhetorical research, it is difficult to draw correlations. Still, the research Sullins conducted is not 113

unique to the Episcopal Church. In two different studies (1997 and present), the Free Methodist

Church has found that outside cultural values could be preventing women from pursuing ordination and being given senior pastoral positions in churches. The 1995 Free Methodist

General Conference issued a statement on the problem:

The General Conference of 1974 passed a resolution "giving women equal status with men

in the ministry of the church.” […] During the intervening twenty years, the

denomination's position has not changed. However, outside the denomination, the voices

opposing women in ministry and limiting the leadership roles of women in the local

church have become more assertive. Some of those voices are respected evangelical

leaders who seem to be ignorant of Wesleyan/holiness church history, inferring that

anyone who differs from them is playing fast and loose with Scripture. This is confusing

to many. On the other hand, within the denomination there is growing concern over the

fact that, though women officially have access to full ordination and any role in the

church, few women are in leadership positions. At a time when women are entering

formerly male-dominated professions in increasing numbers and providing community

leadership, the percentage of women among Free Methodist pastors… is not growing as

would be expected.13

Two decades of access to ordination had passed by the time this statement was issued and women were not pursuing ordination as rigorously as the denomination had hoped. The 1997 study found that only sixteen percent of ordained women served as senior pastors and when the study was replicated in 2011, it had only increased by a percentage point.14 Today in the Free

Methodist Church, a woman has yet to be elected to the church’s most senior leadership position

– bishop. Additionally, only one in 23 superintendents is female, and in 2010, women filled a 114

mere five percent of senior pastoral positions. This contrasts with their forty percent representation in associate pastor roles.15

Women today face the same challenges Gage and Wetherald faced over a century ago. To gain acceptance women are going to have to rhetorically pass and perform in a manner that is socially acceptable. Ironically, while Gage and Wetherald had to speak and perform in a more masculine capacity to gain credibility, today’s women have to perform the reverse. The rhetoric of male headship and the notion of “equal yet different” in the evangelical culture makes women who perform nontraditional gender roles devalued. For example, except for progressive evangelicals, few individuals in Christian culture have heard of the Christians for Biblical

Equality President, Mimi Haddad. Haddad has a doctorate in historical theology and speaks regularly about Biblical gender equality.16 On the opposite end of the spectrum is Joyce Meyer, a televangelist whose ministries reach millions. Meyer both preaches and represents the “equal yet different” rhetoric through her books, such as The Confident Woman, which encourages women to embrace their God-given uniqueness.17

Organizational research has shown that people, especially men, respond best to women leaders who are able to balance a warm and pleasant personality with subtle approaches to taking leadership. A direct, commanding personality is met with repulsion.18 The performance has reversed to make a successful woman leader one who is capable of passing as a nurturing, warm, supportive woman. Even if gifted with a direct leadership style, to gain acceptance a woman must hide or somewhat suppress that personality trait. The act goes on as the rhetoric of male dominance continues to bridge denominational and theological barriers. Fundamentalism has always been able to use populist theological innovation through Christian publishing, music and the movie industry. So, where does the research go from here? The rhetoric of organizational 115

culture and theology are incredibly intertwined. My case study offered in this dissertation

analyzes historical rhetoric and social movements that help inform current gender issues. Thus,

my work contributes to feminist critiques of Christian rhetoric in today’s culture.

Directions for Feminist/Religious/Communication Research

Along that line, research into Christian rhetoric and gender can further explore the

rhetoric of women’s ordination and the historical rhetoric of women preachers. First, with the

research I have provided in this dissertation, feminist rhetorical scholars and historians now have

a basis with which to revisit nineteenth century rhetoric and create a more comprehensive and

inclusive history that incorporates the contributions of women evangelists, such as Wetherald

and Gage. Gage and Wetherald are just two of dozens of influential Free Methodist women.

Because all their stories remain barely explored and largely untold, continued intensive archival

research is needed to resurrect their contributions.

Imagine the exciting discoveries and contributions to gendered rhetorical history that

presently await scholarly archival attention. There are many women from numerous religious

organizations whose stories are still waiting to be added to nineteenth century rhetorical history.

Kathryn Kish Skylar notes this challenge in her article, “Organized Womanhood,” the

Progressive Era in the United States (approximately 1890-1920) has scores of women whose

stories have not been told.19

In addition to continued research into nineteenth century women’s rhetoric, there needs to

be an increased emphasis in combining organizational research and theory with rhetorical

scholarship. As I demonstrated in Chapters Three and Four, historically, women were restricted from ministry due to organizational silencing. Today, there continues to remain a restrictive organizational climate in many evangelical communities, prohibiting women from serving in 116

visible leadership roles. If rhetoricians acknowledge that rhetoric is culturally situated,20 is it not

also fair to note that rhetoric can be organizationally situated? In regards to religious rhetoric

there is both a cultural and organizational (denominations and theology) element that influences

the language of gender. Rhetorical and composition scholars Lisa Ede, Andrea Lunsford and

Cheryl Glenn emphasize the need to recognize that rhetorical scholarship lives on the borders of numerous other disciplines,21 including organizational communication research. More research

needs to be done to better understand the connection among language, cultural norms and

organizational rules.

As my dissertation has illustrated, the rhetoric of gender roles and male headship is not a

new development in evangelical culture. It must be critiqued from both a current and a historical

context. Understanding the present without understanding the influence of the past will only

generate lopsided research. As this chapter’s opening story about ordained Free Methodist

women shows, there is a lack of knowledge about rhetorical history within one’s own

denomination. My research lays the groundwork for others to resolve this challenge.

Many evangelical women, without thought, accept the fundamentalist rhetoric of male

headship. Therefore, a comprehensive rhetorical history showing women have not and do not

have to remain docile homemakers is desperately needed. The survey research by the Free

Methodist Church and the 1995 General Conference statement also draw attention to the critical

need to explain the harmful influence of male-headship rhetoric in discouraging women from

pursuing full-time ministry.

Furthermore, we need religious research studies by people within various faith traditions.

Feminist scholars acknowledge that research can be culturally situated, such as the research of

Audre Lorde or Jacqueline Royster who research their own heritage as African-American 117

women. Communication scholar Quentin Schultze also draws attention to the need for

researchers exploring their own faith traditions because “Their knowledge of their own religious

traditions gives them special insights – almost like participant observers.”22 As Schultze notes

and fully expects, the future of religious communication scholarship should include more

scholars participating and using their own experience as data.23 My research attempts to answer

the call for scholars to be open to including their own religious faith as important to the analysis

process.

In conducting this research I have learned that it is critical to remember religion is more

than just a spiritual identity – it is a cultural context that creates a sense of belonging within individuals. The call of Schultze and Sterk illustrates this connection. Both are communication scholars and Christians. Their faith influences their scholarship and cultural perspectives.

Schultze’s call for researchers to use their personal religious experience as a framework for study directly addresses the cultural insight such scholarship can offer.

The lives Gage and Wetherald also illustrate the connections of faith and culture, how despite the opposition they faced, they chose not to abandon their faith but to believe there was room for change within their religious tradition. As noted earlier, this dissertation took a nuanced theoretical or methodological approach. It was a layered analysis, relying on multiple rhetorical frameworks, theories and research spanning numerous disciplines.

In this dissertation, rhetorical silencing and rhetorical passing were used as the rhetorical frameworks. While the works of Morris and Cloud were excellent foundations to begin the analysis, incorporating the feminist theory that was foundational to Cloud’s null persona was essential to understanding organizational silencing in the nineteenth century Free Methodist

Church. Additionally, using Fisher’s narrative paradigm as an overarching framework for the 118

dissertation allowed Wetherald’s and Gage’s religious experiences and ministry to be told from a culturally sensitive perspective and allowed the women’s voices to frame the narrative. No single theory or method alone could have effectively helped me analyze the complex rhetorical situations and contributions of the women in the dissertation.

Too often rhetoricians feel they must fit their research within a grand rhetorical theory or specific genre such as metaphor, public memory, mythic, feminist, or queer perspectives. Yet, as

Zarefsky urges, we need to consider rhetoric in a broader context:

The claim that public address studies should contribute to theory is sometimes

misunderstood in an overly mechanistic way: that one should take a general theory such

as Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism or Richard Weaver’s theory that sound rhetoric

is grounded in a preceding dialectic, map the terms and categories of the theory onto a

specific case, and conclude that the theory applies to the case…. More valuable

contributions to theory will be made by studies of public address that extend or limit the

reach of lower-level, falsifiable theoretical claims.24

When scholars try to squeeze a case study into a framework that does not fit the text, we strip away the very elements that made the study interesting and relevant. Hence, my hope is that this dissertation will provide a roadmap for other scholars to begin studying rhetorical history in a way that accounts for women’s goals, structural or organizational, and cultural limitations. The impact of Wetherald, Gage and the Free Methodist debates on women’s ordination cannot be easily explained through a single theoretical lens. In my study of Wetherald and Gage I have allowed the text and rhetorical situation to influence the theory and method, not the theory and method influence the text.

119

Summary

As I labored for days in the archives, pouring over materials to understand who Gage and

Wetherald were and the challenges they faced as women evangelists, I knew I was doing

something that was not only enriching religious communication and rhetorical history research,

but I was employing my own experiences as a lens through which to study the texts. Within the field of religious communication research more scholars need to take the approach I set out in this dissertation. Our own religious heritage is an asset, not a detriment to our research. It provides us with a rich understanding of the cultural, theological and historical issues surrounding the rhetoric. What might take an outsider years to understand we understand because it is part of our identity.

The field of religious communication is slowly changing, and I optimistically view this dissertation as a starting point for continued religious scholarship that fearlessly and persistently is willing to intersect diverse theories and methods to create stronger, more culturally sensitive research. Numerous topics related to women’s roles in the church and Christian society still need to be explored. Scholars must continue working to liberate the Christian tradition. As Wetherald pleads in her final address at the 1890 General Conference, “The time has been when woman did not occupy the position God designed that she should, and only as the light prevails does she arise to her noble and exalted place. I pray that she may never misuse her privileges. God only knows how much opposition is met by a woman in her work of souls. Only those do know who have passed through it.”25

120

ENDNOTES

CHAPTER I.

1. Donald Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson

Publishers, 1976), 94.

2. The Pentecost, “What is Said About This Book,” The Free Methodist, August 12, 1891, 3.

3. By a Woman, “The Other Side of the Question,” The Free Methodist, June 17, 1891, 4.

4. “Rev. Clara L. Harbridge,” The Free Methodist, August, 1921, 10-11.

5. Edith Gage Tingley, Memoirs I, Unpublished manuscript (n.d.), 55. A private memoir written

to Edith Gage Tingley’s children and grandchildren. Sent via mail to author by personal

request to Florene Turner.

6. Myrtle De La Mater, ed., “Role of Ministers” in The First Hundred Years – Gaylord

Congregational Church (United Church of Christ), Self-published, June 1974.

7. Research on Quaker women includes: Katherine Adams & Michael Keene, Alice Paul and the

American Suffrage Campaign (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008); Stephen

Browne, Angelina Grimke: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination (Lansing, MI:

Michigan State University Press, 1999); Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for

Her, Vol. II. (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing, 1989).

8. Kathryn Kish Skylar, “Organized Womanhood: Archival Sources on Women and

Progressive Reform,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 177.

9. Sue Morgan & Jacqueline deVries, “Introduction,” in Women, Gender and Religious Cultures

in Britain 1800-1940, eds. Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVires (New York: Routledge,

2010), 2. 121

10. The terms “Wesleyan” and “Methodist” are almost interchangeable. However, Wesleyan

theologian Karen Winslow notes in “Women’s Roles in the Church” that the term

“Wesleyan” usually refers to offshoots of the Methodist church – such as Nazarenes, Free

Methodists and Wesleyans. However, it can also be used to refer to Methodist culture as

a whole. (This definition is in a three-volume set of feminist theology that Karen

Winslow is helping compile and write the chapter on Wesleyan feminist theology). E-

mail message to author, April 13, 2011.

11. The ministry of the Free Methodist women in this dissertation took place during the

Progressive Era of American history, a time when various social movements were

pushing for reform on issues such as temperance and women’s suffrage.

12. Linda Buchanan & Kathleen Ryan, “Walking and Talking Through the Field of Feminist

Rhetorics,” in Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics, eds. Linda Buchanan & Kathleen

Ryan (West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010), xiii. Buchanan & Ryan define feminist

rhetoric as follows: “First, feminine rhetorics describes an intellectual project dedicated

to recognizing and revising systems and structures broadly linked to the oppression of

women. Secondly, it includes a theoretical mandate, namely, exploring the shaping

powers of language, gender ideology, and society” (Ibid.). The analysis of the shaping

power of language and revising systems linked to women’s oppression is what this

dissertation defines as the purpose and definition of feminist rhetorical history.

13. Susan Jarratt, “Speaking to the Past: Feminist Historiography in Rhetoric,” in Walking and

Talking Feminist Rhetorics, eds. Linda Buchanan & Kathleen Ryan (West Lafayette, IN:

Parlor Press, 2010), 20. 122

14. Lisa Ede, Cheryl Glenn & Andrea Lunsford, “Border Crossings: Intersections of Rhetoric

and Feminism,” in Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics, eds. Linda Buchanan &

Kathleen Ryan (West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010), 59.

15. Jennifer Lloyd, Women and the Shaping of British Methodism: Persistent Preachers, 1807-

1907 (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 89.

16. Vicki Tolar Burton, Spiritual Literacy in John Wesley’s Methodism (Waco, TX: Baylor

University Press, 2008), 158-161.

17. Christine Krueger, The Reader’s Repentance: Women Preachers, Women Writers, and

Nineteenth Century Social Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 27.

18. Ibid., 35.

19. Ibid., 60.

20. Patricia Bizzell, “Frances Willard, Phoebe Palmer, and the Ethos of the Methodist Woman

Preacher,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36 (2006): 380.

21. Phoebe Palmer, “Tongue of Fire on the Daughters of the Lord,” in The Rhetorical Tradition:

Readings from Classical Times to Present, eds. Patricia Bizzell & Bruce Herzberg

(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 1107-1108.

22. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, eds. “Phoebe Palmer,” in The Rhetorical Tradition:

Readings from Classical Times to Present (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2001),

1088.

23. Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1986), 156-157. 123

24. Frances Willard, “Woman in the Pulpit,” in The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from

Classical Times to Present, eds. Patricia Bizzell & Bruce Herzberg (Boston: Bedford/St.

Martin’s Press, 2001), 1133.

25. Howard Snyder, Populist Saints: B.T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodist (Grand

Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 344.

26. Leslie Ray Marston, From Age to Age A Living Witness: Free Methodism’s First Century

(Indianapolis, IN: Light and Life Communications, 1960), 167.

27. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, ed. Thomas Jackson (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker,

2007), 11:396.

28. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Vol.1 (London: Mason, 1862), 713.

29. Snyder, Populist Saints, 241.

30. Timothy Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: In Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (NY:

Abingdon Press, 1957), 146.

31. Browne, Angelina Grimke, 7.

32. David S. Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011),

27.

33. Donald Dayton, Holiness Tracts Defending the Ministry of Women, (New York: Garland

Publishing, Inc., 1985), viii.

34. Snyder, Populist Saints, 666.

35. Ibid., 544. The Earnest Christian began publication in 1860 and by 1866 had 6,000

subscribers. During this time period the average subscription for most magazines was

12,000 subscribers. Many periodicals were published and then faded quickly during this 124

time period, but The Earnest Christian was able to maintain a respectable subscription

base and stay in print until after Roberts’ death in 1893.

36. Ibid., 666.

37. Michael Kimmel, “Men’s Responses to Feminism at the Turn of the Century,” Gender &

Society 1, no. 3 (1987): 269.

38. Harriet D.W., “Woman’s debt to Christ,” The Free Methodist, August 7, 1889, 498. 39. Mariet Hardy Freeland, “Why?” The Free Methodist, September 5, 1894, 2.

40. Elyria Reporter, “Here and There,” November 14, 1901, 7; Elyria Reporter, “Here and

There,” March 11, 1902.

41. General Conference Daily, October 10, 1894, 8.

42. Janette Hassey, No Time for Silence (Minneapolis, MN: Christians for Biblical Equality,

1986), 215.

43. Lisa Gring-Premble, “Writing Themselves into Consciousness: Creating a Rhetorical Bridge

Between Public and Private Spheres,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84 (1998): 42-44.

44. Lucy Stone, “The Progress of Fifty Years. Speech to the Congress of Women at the World’s

Fair” (1893), 3.

45. First-wave feminism in the United States began with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848

and continued until the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote

in 1920. During this period women began to develop a rhetorical voice, speaking in

public against slavery, in support of temperance and the suffrage movement (Patricia

Bizzell & Bruce Herzberg, eds., The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical

Times to Present (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 987).

46. Carol Mattingly, “Telling Evidence: Rethinking What Counts in Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society

Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2002): 100-101. 125

47. Lisa Strange, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible and the Roots of Feminist

Theology,” Gender Issues, Fall (1999): 22.

48. Priscilla Pope Levinson, “A ‘Thirty Year War’ and More: Exposing Complexities in the

Methodist Deaconess Movement,” Methodist History 47, no. 2 (2009): 68-85.

49. Elizabeth Grammer, Some Wild Visions: Autobiographies by Female Itinerant Evangelists in

19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

50. Stephen Browne, Angelina Grimke: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination

(Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1999).

51. Katherine Adams & Michael Keene, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign

(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008).

52. Dayton, Holiness Tracts, 88.

53. Chas H. Barfoot, Amiee Semple McPherson: And the Makings of Modern Pentecostalism,

1890-1926 (London: Equinox, 2011), xi-xxv.

54. Jacqueline Jones Royster, Traces of a Stream: Literary and Social Change Among African-

Women (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2000), 12-14.

55. Patricia Hill Collins, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of

Black Feminist Thought,” in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, ed. Sandra Harding

(New York: Routledge, 2004), 105.

56. Nan Johnson, “Reigning in the Court of Silence: Women and Rhetorical Space in

Postbellum America,” in Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics, eds. Linda Buchanan

& Kathleen Ryan (West Lafayette, IN: West Parlor Press, 2010), 279.

126

CHAPTER II.

1. Robert Shuter, “The Cultures of Rhetoric,” in Rhetoric in Intercultural Contexts, eds. Alberto

Gonzalez & Dolores Tanno (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2000), 12.

2. Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value

and Action (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Press, 1987), 17.

3. Ibid., 58.

4. Barbara Warnick, “The Narrative Paradigm: Another Story,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73

(1987): 180.

5. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration, 75.

6. Margaret P. Jones, “From ‘The State of My Soul’ to ‘Exalted Piety’: Women’s Voices in the

Arminian/Methodist Magazine, 1778-1821,” in Gender and Christian Religion.

(Woodbridge: Suffolk, 1998), 276-277.

7. Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early

Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008), 9.

8. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration, 18.

9. Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000), 36.

10. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early

England (New York: University of Oxford Press, 2008), 321-327.

11. Ibid., 180.

12. David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (London: Hutchinson

Co., 1984), 29.

13. Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 59. 127

14. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Vol. 1 (London: Mason, 1862), 713.

15. Howard Snyder, Populist Saints: B.T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodist (Grand

Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 161.

16. Mack, Heart Religion, 133.

17. J.D Terrill, ed., “Mrs. Ida Gage,” General Conference Daily, Oct. 17, 1894, 81.

18. J.D Terrill, ed., “Tuesday Night at May Street Church,” General Conference Daily, Oct. 22,

1890, 191.

19. Mack, Heart Religion,133-135.

20. Charles Morris III, “Pink Herring and the Fourth Persona: J. Edger Hoover’s Sex Crime

Panic,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 2 (2002): 230.

21. Sarah Wells, Out of the Dead House: Nineteenth Century Women Physicians and the Writing

of Medicine (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 192.

22. Morris, “Pink Herring and the Fourth Persona,” 230. Morris himself notes that the act of

passing is not a “beacon of safety” but, as Cloud and Wells note in their research, is

constraining and often ends up excluding the speaker.

23. Robin Patric Clair, Organizing Silence: A World of Possibilities (Albany, NY: New York

University Press, 1998), 41.

24. Dana Cloud, “The Null Persona: Race and the Rhetoric of Silence in the Uprising of ‘34,”

Rhetoric & Public Affairs 2, no. 2 (1999): 179.

25. Clair, Organizing Silence, 74.

26. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay on Phenomenology

and Feminist Theory,” Theater Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 524. 128

27. bell hooks, “Choosing the Margin,” in Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics

(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1990), 149-151.

28. Kathryn Kish Skylar, “Organized Womanhood: Archival Sources on Women and

Progressive Reform,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 177.

29. Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981), 35.

30. Neil Lerner, “Archival Research as a Social Process,” in Working in the Archives; Practical

Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition, ed. Alexis Ramsey, Wendy Sharer,

Barbara L’Elplattenier, et. al. (Carbondale, IL: Southern University of Illinois Press,

2010), 203.

31. Elizabeth Birmingham, “‘I see Dead People’: Archive, Crypt, and an Argument for the

Researcher’s Sixth Sense,” in Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process 2008,

eds. Gesa Kirsch & Liz Rohan (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press), 145.

32. Edith Gage. Memoirs I. Unpublished manuscript, 79.

33. “To Preach at Her Husband’s Funeral,” The New York Times, June 25, 1895.

34. Tuchman, Practicing History, 20.

35. Janette Hassey, No Time For Silence: Evangelical Women in Public Ministry Around the

Turn of the Century (Minneapolis, MN: Christians for Biblical Equality, 1986), 215.

36. “Clara Harbridge Necrology Report,” Minutes of the Michigan Congregational Congress at

the Eightieth Annual Meeting, May 1922, 50-52; Frank A. Miller, “Clara Harbridge,” The

Free Methodist, 1922, 794-795.

37. Doug Showalter, E-mail message to author, August 23, 2011. 129

38. Vicki Tolar Collins, “Women’s Voice and Women’s Silence in the Tradition of Early

Methodism,” in Listening to Their Voices, ed. Molly Meijer Wertheimer (Columbia, SC:

University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 245-246.

CHAPTER III.

1. Clara Wetherald had four names throughout her life. She was born Clara Miller, married John

Wetherald, then Le Grand Buell, and finally Edward Harbridge. For the purpose of

consistency and since this dissertation focuses primarily on her time in the Free

Methodist Church as “Clara Wetherald,” she will be referred to here as Clara Wetherald.

Ida Gage also had three names throughout her life. She was born Ida Hadley, married

Charles Gage and then married Jesse Wood. As a Free Methodist she was known as Ida

Gage; therefore, she will be referred to as Gage throughout this dissertation.

2. The Woman’s Column 5, no. 46, November 12, 1892, 4. According to the magazine, Clara is

named as Clara Buell when she was ordained a Congregationalist minister, not Clara

Wetherald as her Congregationalist necrology report says.

3. “Roll Call of 1890 General Conference,” General Conference Minutes; “Roll Call of the 1894

General Conference,” General Conference Minutes.

4. Charles Morris III, “Pink Herring and the Fourth Persona: J. Edger Hoover’s Sex Crimes

Panic,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 2 (2002): 230.

5. Michigan Congregational Conference, “Clara Harbridge Necrology Report,” Minutes of the

Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Michigan Congregational Conference, Ann Arbor, MI

(1922), 50.

6. Door C. Demaray, “Rev. Frank A. Miller: Special Number,” Evangel: The Children’s

Evangelistic Union, October 1938, 2. 130

7. Gertrude Evangeline Miller, Adam Miller Known Progenitor of The Branch of the Miller

Family (Miller Family Genealogy Collection, Evanston, IL, 1961), 42.

8. Dale Woods, ed., “Burton,” in East Michigan’s Great Adventure: A History of the East

Michigan Conference of the Free Methodist Church 1884-1894 (Winona Lake, IN: Light

and Life Press, 1984), 280.

9. Franklin Ellis, History of Genesee County Michigan (Philadelphia, PA: Everts & Abbott,

1879), 444; Norm Luppino, “Harvey Miller Land Purchases,” (Miller family history,

unpublished manuscript); Norm Luppino, e-mail message to author, January 1, 2012;

Miller Family Geneology: Miller Family Bible (owned by the Miller family) – the births

of all of Harvey Miller’s children beginning with Perry Miller are recorded in the front of

the family Bible. Harvey’s second marriage and birth of children begin in 1861 with

Cirus Miller.

10. James Birney, Divorce Petition: Esther A. Miller vs. Harvey Miller, Saginaw County, MI,

March 1862. Accessed via personal e-mail correspondence with Norm Luppino (n.d.).

11. Frank Miller, “Rev. Clara L. Harbridge,” The Free Methodist 11, 1921, 794-795.

12. Clara Harbridge, “Obituary: Esther Smith,” 1903. Scanned newspaper clipping, sent via

email from Norm Luppino to author, August 21, 2011.

13. Gertrude Miller, Adam Miller, 43b.

14. Clara Harbridge, “To the Commission on Pensions,” (January 17, 1916), e-mail

correspondence with Norm Luppino, August 26, 2011. A letter sent on behalf of her

brother Commodore Perry Miller, asking for his military pension for his service in the

Civil War. 131

15. Frank Miller, personal letter testifying to his account of Harvey Miller’s death. Notarized in

Los Angeles County, CA, n.d. E-mail correspondence with Norm Luppino, August 21,

2011.

16. Genesee County, MI. General Affidavit: Original Widow’s Claim No. 670760. April 21,

1891, e-mail correspondence with Norm Luppino, August 21, 2011. This was Clara’s

testimony about witnessing her mother’s marriage to Wm. H. Smith in 1862. They only

had a religious ceremony at a Methodist Episcopal Church in Maplegrove, Saginaw

County, Michigan. Because Clara was present at the wedding it indicates that she stayed

with her mother until her marriage to John Wetherald in 1866.

17. Clara Harbridge, “Esther Smith,” 1903.

18. Ibid.

19. Michigan Congregational Conference, “Clara Harbridge Necrology Report,” Minutes of the

Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Michigan Congregational Conference, Ann Arbor, MI

(1922), 51.

20. Sarah Miller, “Letter about father Harvey Miller,” Family Correspondence to Mr. Geo W.G.

Smith, Genesee County, Michigan (n.d.), e-mail correspondence with Norm Luppino,

August 21, 2011. In this letter Sarah Miller refers to her father’s life-long connection to

the Methodist Episcopal Church and the family attending a small Methodist Church when

she was a child and her mother helping lead the choir.

21. Frank Miller, “Rev. Clara L. Harbridge,” 794.

22. Ibid., personal letter testifying to his account of Harvey Miller’s death.

23. Clara Harbridge, “Esther Smith,” 1903.

24. Frank Miller, personal letter testifying to his account of Harvey Miller’s death. 132

25. Gertrude Miller, Adam Miller, 54.

26. Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value

and Action (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Press, 1987), 18. As Fisher explains, existing

institutions, such as the church denomination, provide the “plots” that help tell the stories,

but the people are full participants in making and sharing the messages they create as

Wetherald did with her self identification as a “missionary.”

27. C. Perry Miller vs. I.S. Ferguson and the Estate of H. Miller deceased, Stockbridge, Ingham

County, Michigan, July 15, 1867, e-mail correspondence Norm Luppino (n.d.).

28. Morris, “Pink Herring,” 230.

29. M. De Voist, “Hadley Society,” in History of the Eastern Michigan Conference of the Free

Methodist Church (Owosso, MI: Times Printing Company, 1925), 355; Hadley Circuit

Meeting Minutes (1875-1890).

30. Dale Wood, “Hadley Circuit,” “Farrandville and Forrest” and “South Lyon and Milford,” in

East Michigan’s Great Adventure: A History of the East Michigan Conference of the

Free Methodist Church 1884-1894 (Winona Lake, IN: Light and Life Press, 1984), 84,

285, & 316.

31. Clara Wetherald, “Dedication at Royalton, Michigan,” The Free Methodist, October 10,

1888, 5.

32. Ibid. 33. Morris, “Pink Herring,” 230; Sarah Wells, Out of the Dead House: Nineteenth Century

Women Physicians and the Writing of Medicine (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin

Press, 2001), 192.

34. J.F Calkins, “John Wetherald,” The Free Methodist, January 13, 1903, 7.

35. “The City,” The Daily Sentinel (Fort Wayne, IN), March 3, 1885. 133

36. Frank Miller, “Rev. Clara L. Harbridge,” 794-795.

37. James Gibson, “Ellington, Michigan – Tuscola County,” United States Census Records, July

11, 1870.

38. James Mothersill, “Holly, Michigan – Oakland County,” United States Census Records, June

1, 1880.

39. Elizabeth Elkin Grammar, Some Wild Visions: Autobiographies by Female Itinerant

Evangelists in 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 43-45.

40. Mary Wetherald, “Mary Wetherald, South Lyon, Mich.,” The Free Methodist, April 1888, 6.

41. Hiram Montgomery, “Experience,” The Free Methodist, March 2, 1887, 7.

42. Clara Wetherald, “Letter to Benjamin Titus Roberts - Biographical Sketch of Brother and

Sister Lincoln,” October 4, 1888.

43. “Fell from Grace: Result of Clio Pastor’s Visit to Saginaw,” Saginaw News (Saginaw, MI),

February 25, 1891; “Clarissa Wetherald,” Genesee Democrat (Genesee County, MI),

February 28, 1891.

44. Le Grand Buell, “Holly & Germany,” The Free Methodist, May 17, 1891.

45. “Circuit Court,” Flushing Observer (Michigan), July 9, 1891; “He Sold Buckwheat,” The

Democrat (Flint, MI), July 4, 1891.

46. T.B. Arnold, General Conference Daily, no. 4, October 18, 1886, 1.

47. The Woman’s Column 5, no. 46, November 12, 1892, 4.

48. “To Preach at Her Husband’s Funeral: Mrs. Wetherell-Buell May Possibly Explain Why She

Secured a Divorce,” The New York Times, June 25, 1895.

49. Myrtle De La Mater, ed., “Role of Ministers,” in The First Hundred Years – Gaylord

Congregational Church (United Church of Christ). Self-published, June 1974. Clara is 134

ordained at the Gaylord Congregationalist Church under the name Clara Buell and served

from 1892-1893.

50. Burton Vincent, “Ida L. Wood,” The Free Methodist, May 25, 1915, 14.

51. State of Michigan Marriage Records, Montcalm County, 1879.

52. Edith Gage Tingley, Memoirs I, Unpublished manuscript, 38.

53. Ibid., 2.

54. Ibid. The date of birth for both of Gage’s daughters is calculated from family records

regarding how old both Henrietta and Edith were at the time Gage converted and went

into ministry.

55. Ibid.

56. Vincent, “Ida L. Wood,” 14.

57. Ibid.

58. J.D Terrill, ed., “Mrs. Ida Gage,” General Conference Daily, Oct. 17, 1894, 81.

59. Ibid., 80-81; Tingley, Memoirs I, 2.

60. Ida Gage, “Bowling Green, Ohio,” The Free Methodist, February 1, 1893; “Local Items,”

Wood County News (Ohio), October 21, 1892, 3.

61. Ibid.

62. Tingley, Memoirs I, 38.

63. Ida Gage, “Experience,” The Free Methodist, February 8, 1893.

64. S.K. Wheatlake, “Hume, Ohio,” The Free Methodist, October 3, 1894, 4.

65. W.B. Olmstead, “Hume, Ohio,” The Free Methodist, February 6, 1895, 5.

66. Ida Gage, “Hume, Ohio,” The Free Methodist, March 6, 1895, 4.

67. O.L. Spencer, “Dedication at Cridersville Ohio,” The Free Methodist, February 9, 1897. 135

68. Ibid.

69. Leslie Marston, From Age to Age A Living Witness: Free Methodism’s First Century

(Indianapolis, IN: Light and Life Press, 1960), 433. In 1874 the Free Methodist

Discipline officially recognized a class of workers called “evangelists.” These people,

like Wetherald and Gage, were to promote the gospel and spread it throughout the area

they were appointed to, but they had no official governance role in a local denomination

as did an ordained elder. Women such as Gage often blazed the trail and established a

congregation that an ordained male elder would then take over once the church was

established.

70. Walter Sellew, Clara Leffingwell: A Missionary (Chicago: The Free Methodist Publishing

House, 1913), 34. Sellew notes in his biography of Free Methodist missionary Clara

Leffingwell that prior to going to the mission field Leffingwell served as Free Methodist

evangelist. No salary was guaranteed to an evangelist and it was not uncommon for an

evangelist to have a second occupation, such as teaching, to provide a stable income.

71. J.D Terrill, ed., “Mrs. Ida Gage,” 81.

72. Tingley, Memoirs I, 2.

73. Ibid., 38.

74. Ibid., 30.

75. “Ida Gage Ministry Records,” Ohio Conference Appointments & Tingley, 38.

76. Tingley, Memoirs I, 38.

77. Ibid.

78. Tingley, Memoirs I, 55.

79. Morris, “Pink Herring,” 230. 136

80. Tingley, Memoirs I, 63 & 79.

81. Glenn V. Tingley & Judith Adams, Against the Gates of Hell (Harrisburg, PA: Christian

Publications, 1977), 17-24.

82. Tingley, Memoirs I, 59.

83. Tingley, Memoirs I, 79; Superior Court of Los Angeles County, CA, Divorce Petition Ida

Gage vs. Charles Gage, June 11, 1912.

84. Tingley, Memoirs I, 82.

85. Vincent, “Ida L. Wood,” 14.

86. Tingley, Memoirs I, 82.

87. Precious McKenzie-Stearns, “Venturesome Women: Nineteenth-century British women

travel writers and sport” (Dissertation, University of South Florida, 2007), 8-9.

88. Annual conferences in the nineteenth century Free Methodist church normally consisted of

individual states or several states where decisions were made regarding ministerial

appointments and other church business in between the general conferences, which were

held every four years.

CHAPTER IV.

1. Janette Hassey, No Time for Silence (Minneapolis, MN: Christians for Biblical Equality,

1986), 52-53.

2. Earnest Bormann, “Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social

Reality,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 54, no. 4 (1972): 398.

3. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay on Phenomenology and

Feminist Theory,” Theater Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 524.

4. Doctrines and Discipline of the Free Methodist Church (1866), pp. iii-xii. 137

5. Howard Snyder, Populist Saints: B.T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodist (Grand

Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 544.

6. R.D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public,

1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 323.

7. Clara Wetherald, “Shall Women be Ordained?” The Free Methodist, May 14, 1890, 2–3.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Emma Sellew-Roberts, “Help it On!” The Free Methodist, October 22, 1890, 2.

11. Snyder, Populist Saints, 858.

12. Robin Patric Clair, Organizing Silence: A World of Possibilities (Albany, NY: New York

University Press, 1998), 74.

13. J.D. Terrill, ed., “Tuesday Night at May Street Church,” General Conference Daily, October

22, 1890, 190.

14. Audre Lourde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister

Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkley, CA: Crossing Press, 1991) Kindle edition,

1872.

15. Mark Chaves, Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 160-163. Chaves notes that there

were two distinct social movements that helped open doors to women in ministry: the

first-wave feminist movement and the second-wave feminist movement. Wetherald’s

example during the first-wave movement helped keep the issue present in the American

culture. Ultimately the work of nineteenth century women helped pave the wave for 138

many denominations ordaining women during the second-wave movement in the 1960s

and 1970s.

16. Jack D. Richardson, “B.T. Roberts and the Role of Women in Ministry in Nineteenth-

Century Free Methodism” (Master’s Thesis, Colgate Rochester Divinity School, 1984),

101; Wilson T. Hogue, History of the Free Methodist Church, Volume II (Chicago: The

Free Methodist Publishing House, 1915), 201. Hogue notes that prior to Roberts’ death in

1893, he had been ill for several years, diagnosed with “neuralgia of the heart” (201).

Hogue also describes the scene as Roberts speaks at the 1890 General Conference:

“During the somewhat long and very heated discussion of the subject, owing to his great

weariness and to the intensity of his interest in the question, he showed signs of being

near a physical collapse, and personal friends and to lead him from the room” (192).

17. J.G. Terrill, ed., “An Important Resolution,” General Conference Daily, October 11, 1890,

43.

18. Bormann, “Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision,” 394.

19. Snyder, Populist Saints, 864. Roberts’ defense of women’s ordination did win over fellow

superintendent E.P. Hart who had at first opposed the resolution and then voted in favor

of it. However, by 1894, Hart had switched back to opposing ordination.

20. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Seventh Sitting – B.T. Roberts,” General Conference Daily, October 18,

1890, 114-117.

21. Hogue, History, 192.

22. Hassey, No Time for Silence, 40.

23. Terrill, “W.T. Hogue,” 119-122.

24. Ibid. 139

25. Terrill, “E.P. Hart,” 122.

26. Michael Kimmel, “Men’s Responses to Feminism at the Turn of the Century,” Gender &

Society 1, no. 3 (1987): 266-267.

27. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Sister Wetherald,” General Conference Daily, October 13, 1890, 61.

28. Terrill, General Conference Dailies 1890, 63.

29. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Notes,” General Conference Daily, October 16, 1890, 107.

30. bell hooks, “Choosing the Margin,” in Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics

(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999), 146.

31. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Speech of Mrs. Clara Wetherald,” General Conference Daily, October 21,

1890, 171.

32. Butler, “Performative Acts,” 520.

33. Catherine MacKinnon, Only Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 31.

34. Clair, Organizing Silence, 41.

35. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Notes: The Meaning of the Vote,” General Conference Daily, October 17,

1890, 125.

36. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Speech of Mrs. Clara Wetherald,” 171.

37. A Woman, “The Other Side of the Question,” The Free Methodist, June 17, 1891, 4.

38. A.D. Yocum, “The Crown of Womanhood,” The Free Methodist, June 17, 1891, 1.

39. MacKinnon, Only Words, 13.

40. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Norrington of Canada,” General Conference Daily, October 16, 1894, 68.

Norrington notes in this speech that the discussion on the women’s ordination question

had been suppressed at some annual conferences, and electioneering had gone on with

“informed persons to induce them to vote against the measure.” He also noted that one of 140

the general superintendents and a chairman lightly spoke of Roberts’ book on women’s

ordination and its sale was forbidden there [at that annual conference]. Other ordained

opposers to Roberts’ book “said sneeringly, ‘Oh! I wouldn’t waste time with such a

book.’”

41. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Delegates to General Conference & Vote on Ordination of Women,”

General Conference Daily, October 11, 1894, 8.

42. C.M. Damon, “The Woman Question,” The Free Methodist, September 19, 1894, 2-3.

43. George M’Culloch, “Ordaining Women,” The Free Methodist, September 12, 1894, 2-3.

44. hooks, “Choosing the Margin,” 15.

45. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Santiner,” General Conference Daily, 1894, 62.

46. Ibid.

47. Terrill, “Owen,” 67.

48. Butler, “Performative Acts,” 522.

49. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Mrs. Ida L. Gage,” General Conference Daily, October 17, 1894, 80-81.

50. Ibid.

51. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Brooke,” General Conference Daily, October 18, 1894, 94.

52. J.G. Terrill, ed., “Outcome of 1894 Vote,” General Conference Daily, October 17. 1894, 74-

75.

53. R.L. Page, ed., “First Lady Elder in Free Methodism,” The Pittsburgh Conference Herald 35,

no. 1, 1.

54. hooks, “Choosing the Margin,” 152.

141

CHAPTER V.

1. Helen Sterk, “Faith, Feminism and Scholarship: The Journal of Communication and Religion

1999-2009,” Journal Communication and Religion 33, no. 2 (2010): 208.

2. Ibid., 213.

3. Carol Mattingly, “Telling Evidence: Rethinking What Counts in Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society

Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2002): 100-101.

4. Mark Chaves, Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 64-66.

5. Benjamin Titus Roberts, Ordaining Women (Rochester, NY: Earnest Christian Publishing,

1891), 104.

6. Sally McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2008), 239.

7. Chaves, Ordaining Women, 61 & 63.

8. Leslie Ray Marston From Age to Age A Living Witness: Free Methodism’s First Century

(Indianapolis, IN: Light and Life Communications, 1960), 419.

9. Janet Dawson, E-mail message to Beth Armstrong and author, April 14, 2010.

10. Helen Sterk, “How Rhetoric Becomes Real: Religious Sources of Gender Identity,” Journal

of Communication and Religion 12 (1989): 30.

11. Sterk, “Faith, Feminism and Scholarship,” 31.

12. Paul Sullins, “The Stained Glass Ceiling: Career Attainment for Women Clergy,” Sociology

of Religion 61, no. 3 (2000): 261. 142

13. Free Methodist Church of North America, “Statement Adopted by the 1995 General

Conference of the Free Methodist Church of North America: Women in Ministry,”

(1995): 1.

14. Beth Armstrong, “The Stained Glass Ceiling: Description, Debate and Discussion”

(candidacy final paper, Gonzaga University, 2011), 13.

15. Dawson, email message.

16. “Mimi Haddad,” Christians for Biblical Equality, accessed March 8, 2012,

http://www.cbeinternational.org/?q=content/leadership#dr-mimi-haddad.

17. “Bookstore,” Joyce Meyer Ministries, accessed March 8, 2012,

http://www.joycemeyer.org/productfamily.aspx?category=books.

18. Alice Eagly and Linda Carli, “Women and Men as Leaders,” in The Nature of Leadership,

ed. John Atonaskis, Anna Cianciolo & Robert Sternberg (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publications, 2004), 294.

19. Kathryn Kish Skylar, “Organized Womanhood: Archival Sources on Women and

Progressive Reform,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 77.

20. Robert Shuter, “The Cultures of Rhetoric,” in Rhetoric in Intercultural Contexts, eds. Alberto

Gonzalez & Dolores Tanno (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2000), 12.

21. Lisa Ede, Cheryl Glenn & Andrea Lunsford, “Border Crossings: Intersections of Rhetoric

and Feminism,” in Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics, eds. Linda Buchanan &

Kathleen Ryan (West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010), 55.

22. Quentin Schultze, “The Nature and Future of Religions Communication Scholarship,”

Journal of Communication and Religion 33, no. 2 (2010): 197.

23. Schultze, “The Nature and Future of Religions Communication Scholarship,” 198. 143

24. David Zarefsky, “Public Address Scholarship in the New Century,” in The Handbook of

Rhetoric and Public Address, eds. Shawn Parry-Giles & Michael Hogan (Oxford: Wiley-

Blackwell, 2010), 75.

25. Clara Wetherald, “Tuesday Night at the May Street Church,” General Conference Daily,

October 22, 1890, 190.

144

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APPENDIX A. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE HOLINESS MOVEMENT

Nineteenth century western New York was the birthplace of many religious and reform movements. It was an area where revivalism and religious fervor were part of the cultural landscape. Religious movements such as Mormonism, Charles Finney’s revivals, and the Free

Methodist Church all sprang up in this region. Additionally, western New York was an area deeply devoted to social reform and was the birthplace of the women’s rights movement at the

1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Thus, it is no surprise the region became known as the Burned-

Over District as various social, political and religious movements continually swept through the area like incessant forest fires throughout the nineteenth century.1

Among the many religious movements that originated in western New York during this

time period, some of the most prolific were the Methodist off-shoots. It appealed to the average

citizen with its emphasis on free will, universal atonement and the belief in an individual’s

religious perfectibility. Methodism’s focus on social reform and building the kingdom of God on

earth contributed to Methodist involvement in numerous social reform efforts of the nineteenth

century. Temperance, helping the poor and providing access to education all accounted for

Methodism’s rapid growth and appeal in nineteenth century American culture.2 Yet by the mid-

nineteenth century, divisions were emerging within the Northern Methodist Episcopal Church as

pastors and parishioners became increasingly middle class. Pews were paid for by yearly

subscriptions and the wealthiest members would sit in front of the church on Sundays, often

excluding the poor from public worship. For some of the more radical members of the Methodist

movement, the neglect of the poor, the lack of response to slavery and a de-emphasis on

Christian perfection led to several new Methodist offshoots during mid century. 155

In 1841 Luther Myrick and a band of Methodists in western New York left the Methodist

Episcopal Church in disagreement over the issues of slavery and Christian perfection to form the

Wesleyan Methodists.3 The Wesleyan Methodists also took a strong stance on gender equality and supported the Seneca Falls Convention by allowing the meeting to take place in their church in Seneca Falls, New York.4 The divisions within Methodism continued to increase. In 1857

Benjamin Titus Roberts, a young Methodist Episcopal minister in western New York, published a series of articles in the Northern Independent, a newspaper published by noted abolitionist

William Hosmer. In the articles Roberts denounced the dominant leadership in the Methodist

Episcopal Church for their worldliness and doctrinal laxity. He urged a return to what he called

“Old School Methodism,” which relied heavily on the beliefs of Methodism’s founder John

Wesley and an emphasis on social reform.

______

1 Whitney Cross. The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic

Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950),

138, 151 & 354.

2 Timothy Smith. Revivalism and Social Reform: In Mid-Nineteenth-Century America. (NY:

Abingdon Press, 1957), 24-25.

3 Smith, 116.

4 Sally McMillen. Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement. (NY: Oxford

University Press, 2008), 71.

5 Howard Snyder. Populist Saints: B.T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodist. (Grand

Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 505-538.

156

APPENDIX B. BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE OF CLARA WETHERALD AND IDA GAGE

157

APPENDIX B. CONTINUED

158

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159

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160

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161

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162

APPENDIX C. PHOTOS OF CLARA WETHERALD AND IDA GAGE

Top row (left to right): Clara Miller (Wetherald), Sarah Miller Bottom row (left to right): Harvey Miller, Perry Miller, Frank Miller

Left to right: Edward Harbridge and Clara (Wetherald) Harbridge 163

164

APPENDIX C. CONTINUED

Top and bottom photos: Ida Gage