Phoebe Palmer: Fountainhead of Evangelical Egalitarianism in Canada Shelley Siemens Janzen
About noon, on the Lord’s day, she was called upon, without previous notice . . . to speak to a congregation of several thousands. Curiosity soon gave way to a higher and nobler feeling. Breathless attention was given. . . . Those in the rear of the congregation, placed their hands behind their ears, that not a word might be lost.1 Such was the description of Reverend W. Young of the Methodist Church following Phoebe Palmer’s first visit to Canada West in 1853.2 Despite Palmer’s American Methodist heritage, she precipitated the Third Great Awakening3 during her visit to Canada and became one of the founders of the Canadian Holiness Movement. Palmer also contributed to first wave feminism due to her influence on Canadian and global leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Although powerful movements and individuals worked to oppose the public activity of women in Canada’s history, Palmer emerged as a mainstream evangelical leader who successfully resisted these forces. While other evangelical egalitarian voices existed, Palmer was prominent due to her clear public presentation of egalitarian theology and her profound influence on the future of evangelical women as leaders in Canada. This brief article will not attempt a detailed discussion of Palmer’s Canadian activity.4 Instead, a review of her ministry in Ontario (focusing on her impact in Hamilton, Ontario), in Quebec, and in the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick provides significant evidence for her impact. Ultimately, Phoebe Palmer became a Canadian fountainhead of evangelical egalitarianism through both her theology and exemplary ministry.
Early Ministry Phoebe Worrall Palmer (1807 – 1874) was the fourth child of a devout Methodist family living in New York City. She married Dr. Walter Palmer in 1827 and they had six children, tragically losing two sons and a daughter as infants. In 1837, after ten years of diligently seeking the entire sanctification taught by John Wesley, Palmer joyfully described her experience of this “second work of grace” and began to exposit a “shorter way” to sanctification than the classic Wesleyan version. At this time, she also assumed leadership of her sister Sarah Lankford’s Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness, which became a magnet to as many as three hundred weekly attendees and, uniquely, allowed men to participate. Here Palmer spoke to a wide variety of laity, clergymen, and theologians. Eventually hundreds of similar meetings patterned after her Tuesday Meeting launched around the world.5 Palmer initiated a broader public ministry at this point, preaching to hundreds of thousands in North America and
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the British Isles at various camp meetings, churches, colleges, and revival services. Her humanitarian efforts included the establishment of the Five Points Mission in a New York slum and leadership in organizations to aid the homeless, orphans, and those in need of medical care. Palmer published nearly twenty books. Her multifaceted work as theologian, revivalist, feminist, and humanitarian developed further as she served as managing editor of the widely read Methodist Guide to Holiness, which achieved a circulation of up to 37,000 with Ontario as the leading region of subscribers.6
Missions to Canada Prior to Confederation in 1867, Palmer would have encountered a predominantly British and American evangelical Protestant population in Ontario, while Quebec largely consisted of Catholic settlers with a high commitment to papal authority. The Maritime provinces were predominantly an amalgamation of Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. Despite limitations on itinerant preachers from the United States following the 1812 victory of British Canadian forces over the United States, Canadian Protestants were generally regarded as balancing the more revolutionary and populist American expressions with the hierarchal orderliness of British denominations. Even so, for women in Victorian Canada, “though it was widely assumed that female piety was the mainstay of religion . . . women’s voices, unlike those of their menfolk, became largely muted in the official church.”7 A key development in Palmer’s career was her initiation of a long series of regular missions to Canada. As early as 1853, Palmer visited an evangelistic camp meeting at a farm in Nepanee, Ontario. This meeting was notable: The “Mayor of Kingston was powerfully blest, over five hundred professed conversion, and nearly as many obtained the full assurance of faith. . . . The Wesleyan Methodist Conference reported an addition of six thousand that year, – mostly from the region where the camp-meeting had been held.”8 This work anticipated Palmer’s subsequent visits, which included other destinations in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces. As she travelled through these areas, her reputation as a compelling and effective speaker spread. During the summer of 1857, Palmer “wrote of conversions by the hundreds and crowds of 5,000 – 6,000 at obscure camp meetings in Ontario and Quebec.”9 Ultimately, however, it was the spontaneous events that occurred in Hamilton, Ontario, in October of 1857 that led Palmer to label this year as her Annus Mirabilis or “year of wonders.”10 Following a large event in Oakville, Ontario, which she attended with her husband, unexpected issues with the Palmers’ baggage at a Hamilton train station obliged them to
Priscilla Papers | 35/3 | Summer 2021 • 3
