shook my hand (who once opposed the doctrine of women preaching) with tears in their eyes & said “I endorsed your sermon Sr. Mitchum, go on & preach & do all the good you can.”6 In Texas, Annie Fisher’s pamphlet Woman’s Right to Preach was a carefully crafted apology, while Emily Ellyson published Woman’s Sphere in Gospel Service. She was later ordained during the Second General Assembly, along with R. T. Williams. The apogee came with Fannie McDowell Hunter’s Women Preachers (1905), published in Dallas, Texas. Hunter laid out arguments from scripture in the first fifty pages. The second half consisted of the call and service narratives of nine women, including Hunter, Cagle, and Mitchum. Other writers included Johnny Jernigan (later a co-founder of Bethany, Oklahoma), and Lillian Pool, the first Nazarene missionary in Japan.7 On the book’s paper cover, under the title, appear these words: “Who gave thee authority?” Who indeed?
Dwelling with God
Given their Wesleyan-holiness faith, these women had to say with the apostle: “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” Dr. Stan Ingersol, Ph.D., is a church historian and former manager of the Nazarene Archives. 1 C. B. Jernigan, Pioneer Days of the Holiness Movement in the Southwest, pp. 332 Donie Mitchum’s Journal, p. 76. Copy in the Nazarene Archives. 3 “Women Preaching,” a MS inscribed: “Sr. Harris preached at Bluff Springs, Oct. 4th, 1896;” in the Donie Adams Mitchum Collection. Mary Lee Cagle was known as Mary Lee Harris at the time she began her ministry. 4 Mary Lee Cagle, Life and Work of Mary Lee Cagle (1928). Her sermon is on pp. 160-176. 5 The Mitchum copy of Phoebe Palmer’s classic work on female ministry is in the Countess Hurd Collection at the library of Trevecca Nazarene University, Nashville, Tennessee. On the newspaper controversy over female ministry, see “As To Women Preachers” in the Milan Exchange (Mar. 27, 1897):5, and “Answers for ‘Sub Rosa’,” ibid.; (Apr. 3, 1897): 5. 6 Donie Mitchum’s Journal, pp. 141, 177-178. 7 Fannie McDowell Hunter, Women Preachers (Dallas: Berachah Press, 1905).
By Mary Rearick Paul
Blessed Are You!
O
ne of the people in scripture I like to ponder is Elizabeth. I think we miss something truly inspirational in this woman who may often be seen as only a footnote to the Gospel story. Thanks to Luke, we know a few pertinent details about Elizabeth, including her respected lineage and the fact that her husband, Zechariah, was a priest. We are also told, rather politely, that this couple was “getting on in years” and that Elizabeth was “barren”—this was decidedly less than polite to point out but reflected the way she was
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viewed by others. As such, in her time and place, Elizabeth would have been seen as having little or no value. While I don’t get the feeling Elizabeth accepted these assessments of her worth, she would, nonetheless, have lived under the weight of these perception of others for many years. In the gospel of Luke, we observe Zechariah serving as a priest and presenting the prayers of the people when Gabriel appears and speaks a new promise of a baby to be born as well as the vocational call this child will have to prepare their people for the coming
NBUSA Quarterly
