Wesleyans Help Women's Suffrage

Ready for the USA centennial of women's suffrage on August 26, 2020. John Wesley (1703-1791) founded a spiritual renewal movement within the Church of England, known as Methodism, during the 18th century. The renewal movement gave birth to the Methodist family of churches worldwide. Modern Wesleyans look to John Wesley as a reformer and spiritual forefather. Wesley strongly asserted the radical right of women to become lay preachers. The first women's rights convention in America took place in a Wesleyan Chapel in1848. This chapel is now the center of a national park. Wesleyans formed a significant amount of support for the meeting. This story traces the backing Wesleyans gave to women voting in churches, lay preaching and ordination. Ordination is the authority for a minister to conduct all the services of the church such as marriage and baptism. A selected survey of women and slaves in the Roman Empire and Middle Ages is presented. France is surveyed on women's rights, since it is the only Western country with governmental documents from the 8th century to the present time. Reinstitution of Roman Law after the chaos of the Black Death in the 14th century caused the reversal of what were remarkable positive legal privileges for women in France in the High Middles Ages. These privileges included voting and business licenses. This deterioration and inequality persisted until the 19th century. The story also intertwines the support for abolitionism and freedom of slaves. Wesleyans were the only American religious movement to excommunicate new members who did not free their slaves within 12 months of joining the Methodist Church. This led to the first national rupture over slavery when the Methodist Episcopal Church, with the largest church membership in America, split into North and South sections in 1844. Francis Willard, President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and a Wesleyan, pushed women's suffrage as her most important goal. Historians often ignore the WCTU, but it was by far the largest women's rights organization in the 19th century with ten times as many members as the much smaller secular suffrage organizations. The story of the Salvation Army, a Wesleyan organization, is told. Women officers have always had equal rights and ordination. The number of women officers have exceeded the number of male officers in the history of the Army. While not pushing for suffrage, the aggressive street parades of Army women were credited by later suffragists as inspiring city marches and demonstrations to agitate for the vote. The mistaken ideas that some so-called freethinker women alleged about the warfare of Christianity and science are reviewed as is John Wesley's involvement with science and medicine. Wesleyans advocate the best of science and religion. General ideas about Wesleyans supporting women's suffrage proceed to a specific locale. The first state to grant full women's suffrage with a referendum was Colorado in 1893. The reason for granting women the vote by Colorado men are explored. Wesleyan involvement was central, and their support is analyzed in detail. The involvement of Wesleyan Holiness groups, especially the Wesleyan Methodists, and the Church of the Nazarene are recounted. The Church of the Nazarene, chartered in 1908, has the unique position of being the only church which contains equal rights for women, including ordination, in its founding constitution. The battle between the alcohol industry and suffragists is recounted by a woman amid all the franchise battles, Carrie Chapman Catt. Her 1925 chapter on "The Unseen Enemy" is included. Since she was not a prohibitionist, her views deserve thoughtful consideration. Laced with humor and supported by numerical precision, the author tells a broad historical note of Christian and then subsequent Wesleyan efforts in restoration of equality for women.