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Deats, Richard
Advocate For Peace And Justice
Deats grew up in a Methodist family in Texas and attended McMurry College in Abilene, Texas, in the early 1950s. There he became active in the Methodist Student Movement which was beginning to voice concerns about civil rights and racial justice, holding its first interracial meeting at McMurry. A visit from Muriel Lester, who was active with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, changed his life. She talked about the inner life of prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, bringing to Deats and others her passion for world peace. He was inspired by the vision of ‘the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God’ and bought and read all of her books. While attending Perkins School of Theology to study social ethics, he met Walter Wink. They began to talk about going to Brazil as missionaries. When Deats made contact with the Methodist Board of Missions and began to explore the idea further, the Philippines was mentioned. The idea of ministering there appealed to him because the culture shared Roman Catholic and Hispanic elements with Texas.
Following seminary graduation and marriage, he moved to Boston University, where he completed requires for his Ph.D. in 1959 before leaving for an assignment as a student worker in the Philippines. When he arrived there, however, he received a telegram from Bishop Jose Valencia that read: “Assignment as pastor at Knox begins this Sunday.” Knox was in downtown Manila, the largest English-speaking church in Asia; it had four congregations, each with its own pastor who preached in his own language. In his congregation was the president of the seminary, who invited Deats to teach a course. By his second year in the Philippines, he was the full-time social ethics professor at the seminary.
The philosophy with which he entered missionary service was shared by many in the church. As the war in Vietnam began to heat up, he got together with a small group to form a committee of Americans for Peace in Indochina. They sent a letter to other missionaries, asking them to take seriously the political situation and the stance of their faith. A group of seventeen met together to stand vigil outside the U.S. embassy. Their actions galvanized William Pickard, who had followed Deats at Knox. He sent out a counter-statement, seeking support for the war. Deats and his friends were in turn shocked at this uncritical response to the actions of the United States. They viewed imperialism wherever it occurred as a sin. With such thinking by others in the church, he appreciated the support he received from Tracey Jones, Charles Germany, and others on the Board of Missions.
Not all his efforts went into teaching or even actions for peace. He and his family learned as much as they could about Filipino culture. His wife, Jan, a professional musician, taught music at the seminary. She also wrote books about Filipino music. Like others of his generation, Deats believed that part of his job description was to work himself out of a job. So when Larry Gomez, a Filipino, finished his Ph.D. students, Deats and his family prepared to leave the Philippines. Richard eventually went to work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, from which he retired in 2005.
Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 244-5.
Thomson, John (1843-1933)
Preacher of the first Spanish-language Methodist sermon in Argentina
By 1866 the Argentine mission was prospering but the most important step had not yet taken place. This was such a constant preoccupation for Rev. Goodfellow, the Superintendent of the Conference, who in his report of April 1865, a kind of premonition abruptly erupted:
We need a Spanish service in this city (Buenos Aires). Large congregations would gather to hear the gospel in that language. We pray for such laborers to be raised up. We have met in the fulness of our hearts to ask what can be done for this object, but so far nothing opens before us.[1]
That was the necessary key for the complete accomplishment of the mission. The specific vehicle for such an important step, was at that time studying Theology, at the Ohio Wesleyan University, a twenty-two-year-old John Francis Thomson.
Thomson had been born of Scottish parents in England in June 3rd,1843, just when Rev. Norris inaugurated the First Methodist Church at Buenos Aires. He was taken to Glasgow, Scotland when he was a child, and remained in that city until he was eight years of age.
In 1851, he sailed with his parents emigrating to Buenos Aires, where his maternal grandmother and her family resided. There he went to school and worked at his uncle’s store. It is said by Varetto that he was named by the guys of the neighborhood, “the little English boy” and “Caramel,” because of his red hair. [2]
He learned very quickly to speak a fluent Spanish, not only the formal, but the language of the streets, the vernacular one. His father had been met by the Methodists, so, the Thomsons began to attend the Methodist Church in Cangallo Street, despite the fact that they came from Presbyterian tradition, and his mother’s family attended the Presbyterian Church in Buenos Aires.[3]
At the age of twelve he joined the Methodist Episcopal Sunday School. According the narration of Reid, at the age of sixteen, he was about to pass over into Uruguay to begin sheep-farming with one his uncles.
Then, he was met by Rev. Goodfellow on the street and asked if he would like to receive an education in the United States. According to Reid’s record, “the project seemed too big, too far off, and too expensive for the lad, and so he said; but his kind pastor assured him that all that was needed was a resolute will, and every difficulty would vanish, and bade him talk the matter over at home, and report at the parsonage.”[4]
During the week of prayer of January, 1860, Thomson was converted by the preaching of Rev. Goodfellow. From that moment he wanted to be a preacher. During that year, and for several years after, together with other young men of the mission, he went out on Saturday afternoons two by two, visiting people, holding house-prayer meetings, reading the Bible, and addressing brief expositions.[5]
By 1862, thanks to the mediation of Rev. Goodfellow, Thomson’s application was accepted to attend the Ohio Wesleyan University. During his stay at Delaware, Ohio he was lodged first at the house of Profesor Goodman, and then for a longer period in that of the University President, Dr. Frederick Merrick.
Thomson said about this experience:
God never gave better friends to any young man, and well might the son of a prince have coveted the influence and instruction of such a circle as gathered round President Merrick’s table and hearthstone. This noble man did more by his students as to the truth of Christianity than the books they studied on that subject.”[6]
Thomson was recommended to the Conference for ordination by the Saint Paul Methodist Episcopal Church at Delaware and was received by the Erie Conference in 1866. Ordained Methodist minister under the missionary rule by Bishop Janes, at Bedford Street Church, New York, the same year. Thomson arrived back to Buenos Aires on October, 1866.[7] He had been married in the United States to Rev. Goodfellow’s nice, Ellen Goodfellow.
In 1867, his name began to appear in the Annual Report of the Missionary Society as an associated missionary for the South American Mission. Thomson would give continuity to the mission work in the Rio de la Plata region throughout the last quarter of 19th.century. While other missionaries were itinerants, he spent sixty-seven years as pastor in Buenos Aires and Montevideo from 1866 until his death in the South of the Province of Buenos Aires, in 1933.
Superintendent Goodfellow had been the man who made the South America mission field prosper, and under his leadership, spread the message of Methodism to different places in the interior of Argentina, especially in Rosario where work has begun in 1864, as well as in Santa Fe and Entre Rios among German and French colonists.
But, certainly John Thomson was the man who helped the mission to developed into an actual South American deeply-rooted Methodist church. This process was realized, not only through the occurrence of Spanish Language services which he began, but also because of his conviction of placing South American Methodism, together with other liberal societies, at the center of the storm of the ideological battle against Catholicism.
In one of his reports quoted by the Missionary Advocate, Goodfellow stated:
On last Sunday night (1867) Brother Thomson delivered his first sermon, in this city in Spanish. The church was full. Of course not many of our own people were present [English speaking people] but a large number of natives were there, who heard their first protestant sermon. There was marked attention and a very prospect of good. We have no Spanish Hymn Book, but we had the hymns printed on slips of paper as a program, and the organ and choir led the large concourse to the tunes of Hebron, Mozart, and Old Hundred. Brother Thomson’s fluency and self command with a new language on his lips, surprised everyone, and only the most critical could detect the fact that he was not using his native language. Next Sunday night is our missionary meeting night, and after that we hope to occupy Sunday evening with Spanish preaching.”[8]
In a later report, Goodfellow stated June 9th[9] as the day of the first sermon in Spanish. That would mean that the one of May 25th had been considered more a presentation introduction rather than a formal worship.
Written by Daniel Bruno
Sources:
[1] Annual Report MS, (1866), 104.
[2] Juan C. Varetto. El Apóstol del Plata: Juan F. Thomson. (Buenos Aires: Ed. La Aurora, 1943), 46.
[3] Ibid. 47.
[4] Reid, 346.
[5] Reid, 324.
[6] Reid, 347.
[7] Ibid.
[8] The Missionary Advocate, (August 1867), 39.
[9] “On June 9 Rev. Thomson preached his first sermon in Spanish in our church in a well- filled church, of whom about forty people were Spanish. He has continued ever since to occupy our church every Sunday evening.”The Missionary Advocate,(November, 1867),67.
Bangs, Nathan (1778-1862)
First Executive Of Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society
Nathan Bangs, 1778 -1862, was the primary organizer and first administrator of the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society, founded in 1819. He was concurrently for almost a decade the head of the denomination’s Book Concern. Thus, Bangs had a major impact on the origins of two of the United Methodist Church’s major continuing organizations, the General Board of Global Ministries, the successor of the Missionary Society, and the United Methodist Publishing House, which continues the work of the early 19th century Methodist Book Concern.
Just In time for the mission agency’s bicentennial celebration, a new biography of Bangs by historian Jared Maddox has been published by the church’s General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. Bangs was also the second president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Maddox’ book, “Nathan Bangs and the Methodist Episcopal Church,” is subtitled, “The Spread of Scriptural Holiness in Nineteenth-Century America”. (Hyperlink: https://www.gbhem.org/article/latest-book-release-gbhem-publishing-challenges-assumptions-about-middle-class-methodism%E2%80%99s)
Bangs exerted strong influence on early Methodism in both the United States and Canada. Born in Stratford, Connecticut, he was the son of a prominent New England Anglican family but found his religious home in the Methodist movement while working as a teacher and land surveyor in Upper Canada (today, the area along the Ontario-Québec boundary.) He was ordained deacon and elder in the New York Conference and returned to Canada as a missionary circuit rider. He would serve circuits in Canada and the US and would become the equivalent of today’s district superintendent. He did not aspire to the episcopacy when recommended for the office.
The young preacher was based in New York City when on April 5, 1819 the Missionary Society was organized. The following year, after the society was authorized by the General Conference to raise money for mission, he became the first employed executive. The work fit well with that of his role as book agent since the Book Concern was one of few Methodist entities equipped to receive and disperse funds.
Bangs did not hold a college or university degree but was extremely well self-educated, writing extensively on theology and early American Methodism. His multi-volume “History of the Methodist Episcopal Church from its Origin in 1776 to the General Conference of 1840” appeared the year before he resigned from the Missionary Society. He also edited publications that would become widely distributed and identified with American Methodism, including the (New York) Christian Advocate and the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.
He left the Society at age 62 in 1841 to become the president of Wesleyan University, a school with then strong Methodist ties in Middletown, Connecticut. His skills did not fare well in higher education. In 1842 he was back in New York City where he devoted himself to writing and pastoral work, although he remained on the Wesleyan board of directors until his death.
Bangs in 1806 married Mary Bolton of Edwardsburgh Township, Upper Canada, and they had 11 children. He died on May 3, 1862 in New York City.
______
This brief profile was written by Elliott Wright, using several print and online sources, including the many entries on Bangs in the standard history of Methodist missions, “Early American Methodism: 1769 -1844, Volume one: Missionary Motivation and Expansion,” by Wade Crawford Barclay, New York, 1949.
Brown, Leila (Lee) and Tom
Missionaries To India And Malaysia
Leila (Lee) come out of Middleville Methodist Church in Michigan, a small-town rural congregation that was on the cutting edge of theology and was proud of its contributions to Methodist ministry and mission. She first heard about the short-term program from the Reverend Charles Swann, her college sociology professor, whose parents had been missionaries in India, because he featured stories about India in many of his lectures. Yet when she announced her intention to enter missionary work, not only were her parents surprised, but also her other sociology professor told her it was not a very usual thing to do and asked what she was running away from. The “3’s” (three-year missionaries) were part of the same training program as long-term missionaries, spending six weeks in Hartford in training sessions of the Methodist Board of Missions led by the Germanys. There Lee met Tom Brown, who was in training for work in Malaysia.
She first went to a school at Lal Bagh in Lucknow, India. There she was assigned to teach art. Lal Bagh, a secondary school, was located in the heart of Lucknow, so she and her students were able to walk to all the art exhibits that came to town. Such public visibility was frowned on by the families of some of the students. Lee told of one Muslim student who refused to wear her burqa, considered necessary covering when in public. The other girls in the class carefully surrounded her whenever they had to walk to an exhibit so that no relative would ever know that she had been out in public. But such acts of subterfuge were rare. Indian independence was still new, and most missionaries were aware of the need to affirm in “Indianness” of their endeavors.
Lee left India to marry Tom, who had finally reached Malaysia after two years of delays because of difficulties with his draft board. Her marriage meant transferring from the Woman’s Division to the World Division.
Malaysia had not yet achieved independence from the British. The Browns lived in a compound with other Methodists, including the Tamil-speaking and English-speaking ministers. After a furlough in 1959, the Browns lived in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. They saw the church and its members becoming more and more independent of foreign workers and recognized that the time had come for change. Returning to the U.S. in 1965 did not end their ministry or the effects of their time with the Board of Missions. Because of their experiences in Southeast Asia, the Browns were asked questions about Vietnam and become involved in antiwar meetings.
Taken from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 266
Gray, Ulysses Samuel (1913-2009)
Methodist Missionary to Gbarnga, Liberia
GCAH Mission Albums Africa #16, P. 72.
The Rev. Ulysses Samuel Gray served as a missionary with the Methodist Board of Missions at the Gbarnga Mission Station in Bong County, Liberia, for nearly 27 years (1948-1974). His wife, Vivienne Newton Gray, also served the station as a teacher and administrator (see her biography https://methodistmission200.org/gray-vivienne-newton-1917/). Ulysses, known as “U.S.,” served as mission superintendent, pastor for the Gbarnga church and agricultural advisor for the mission station. He and Vivienne, one of a few African American couples assigned as international missionaries by the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church in the 1940s, oversaw the building and management of the church, homes, school, and the first gymnasium is the region. In 1959, U.S. Gray built the Gbarnga School of Theology where he taught and encouraged his students to become pastors in the Liberian Methodist Church.
Ulysses Gray was an ordained pastor of the Texas Annual Conference. Born in 1913 to James Gray, Jr., and Ora Glass Gray in Franklin, Texas, he received his local preacher’s license at age 13. He attended Wiley College for two years and then transferred to Clark College in Atlanta. At the same time, he attended Gammon Theological Seminary on the campus. He met Vivienne Newton on the campus of Gammon and they were married in 1945. In 1947, he graduated from Clark College with a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a year later, from Gammon with his Bachelor of Divinity.
Ulysses and Vivienne Gray were honored with the Liberian Star by the Liberian government for their nearly 27 years of work in mission in Gbarnga. The Liberian Star medal is the highest honor that can be awarded to a civilian in the country. After retirement, the Grays returned to the United States, where Rev. Gray served as a pastor in the Texas Conference. Ulysses Samuel Gray passed away in 2009 at the age of 96.
Biography compiled by Christie R. House.
Sources: “What Good Does United Methodist Mission Do?” by Boyce Bowdon, “New World Outlook,” September-October 2010.
“Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church 2010 Journal, Memoirs,” by Bishop Bennie T. Warner.
Wilkins, Ann
Outstanding Early Missionary To Liberia
Ann Wilkins was a missionary to Liberia from 1837-1857. She was the first American Methodist female missionary sent out by the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a missionary herself and not as a missionary spouse. She founded the first Methodist girls’ school outside of the United States (the Millsburg Female Academy). She was one of the longest-serving missionaries of the first generation of American Methodist foreign missionaries, avoiding the malaria and other health complications that doomed many of her peers. Historian Dana Robert has referred to Ann Wilkins as “The most outstanding of the early overseas missionaries.”
Ann Wilkins was born in the Hudson Valley of New York in 1806. She experienced conversion at age 14. At age 17, she married Henry F. Wilkins, who later abandoned her. As an adult, Ann moved to New York City, worked as a teacher there, and attended Bedford Street MEC.
Wilkins first offered to go as a teacher to Liberia in 1834, but the Missionary Society took no action on her application at the time.
Then, two years later, she attended a Methodist camp meeting in Sing Sing, NY. John Seys, then serving as the superintendent of the MEC mission in Liberia, preached at the camp meeting. Upon hearing him, Wilkins’ desire to go as a missionary to Liberia was renewed. She sent a note to Nathan Bangs of the Missionary Society declaring, “A sister who has but little money at command, gives that little cheerfully, and is willing to give her life as a female teacher, if she is wanted.” This time, Wilkins’ application was accepted, and she left for Liberia in 1837.
After teaching in the White Plains Manual Labor School and at the Liberia Conference Seminary (now the College of West Africa) during her first year and a half in Liberia, Wilkins founded the Millsburg Female Academy, which would be the focus of her ministry for the remainder of her time in Liberia. In addition to its innovative work in girls’ education, the seminary was notable as one of the first mission institutions dedicated to serving indigenous Liberians and not just Americo-Liberian settlers.
Wilkins’ work in Liberia was sustained by Mary Mason, head of the New York Female Missionary Society, and its members. They supported her through prayer, through fundraising, through sending supplies, by advocating on her behalf to the Missionary Society, and by moral and emotional support.
Wilkins returned twice to the United States for health issues, once in 1841 and once in 1853. Both times she recovered and returned to Liberia. She returned to New York a final time in 1857, again for health reasons. Seven months later, she died a hero to the early Methodist mission-minded community.
Written by David W. Scott
Sources consulted:
“Ann Wilkins (1806-1857),” Portraits of American Women in Religion, The Library Company of Philadelphia, http://librarycompany.org/women/portraits_religion/wilkins.htm, accessed November 19, 2018.
Dana L. Robert, “Called and Sent: United Methodists as Missionaries,” New World Outlook (October 2018), https://www.umcmission.org/find-resources/new-world-outlook-magazine/2018/october/called-and-sent-united-methodists-as-missionaries, accessed November 19, 2018.
Rev. J. P. Durbin, “Mrs. Ann Wilkins,” The Ladies’ Repository 19 no. 11 (Nov. 1859), pp. 641-642, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acg2248.1-19.011/683, accessed November 19, 2018.
Susan E. Warrick, “’She Diligently Followed Every Good Work’: Mary Mason and the New York Female Missionary Society,” Methodist History 34:4 (July 1996): 214-229.
Crenshaw, Sallie A. (1900-1986)
First Ordained African-American Methodist Woman And Missionary To Appalachia
Sallie Crenshaw was twice a ground-breaker in African-American women’s ordination in the Methodist tradition. In 1936, she was one of the two first African-American woman ordained as a local elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the East Tennessee Conference. Then in 1956 she was one of the first two women to be received into full membership of the East Tennessee Conference, part of the segregated Central Jurisdiction.
Yet Crenshaw’s groundbreaking ministry extends further. Born of African American and Native American ancestry, she studied theology at Gammon Theological Seminary. In 1930, she was appointed as a licensed preaching missionary of the Board of Missions, an appointment that allowed her to get around prohibitions against female ordination. She was assigned as a missionary to the coalfields of Appalachia in eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, and West Virginia. She served as a supply pastor to over a dozen churches during this phase of her ministry.
Then in 1947, the East Tennesse Conference asked her to explore ministry opportunities in the Chattanooga area. She founded the St. Elmo Mission in the neighborhood of the same name, initially holding services in a rented tavern. By the following spring, she had rented an old house and opened a day care and feeding program for children. The daycare was initially called the Good Shepherd Fold day care, but was renamed in Crenshaw’s honor as the Sallie Crenshaw Bethlehem Center in 1968. Crenshaw remained a board member of the organization she founded even after her retirement in 1971.
Sources:
Guy Moore, “Rev. Sallie Crenshaw was a woman ahead of her time,” Times Free Press (April 17, 2016), https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/opinion/columns/story/2016/apr/17/moore-rev-sallie-crenshaw-8211-womahead-her-t/360197/.
“Sallie A. Crenshaw,” General Commission on Archives and History, http://gcah.org/history/biographies/sallie-a.-crenshaw.
“History of the Bethlehem Center and our United Methodist Roots,” The Bethlehem Center, https://www.thebeth.org/104.23.
“Bethlehem Center Annual Breakfast Fundraiser Will Be Feb. 22,” theChattanoogan.com (Feb. 13, 2007), https://www.chattanoogan.com/2007/2/13/101624/Bethlehem-Center-Annual-Breakfast.aspx.
“Sallie A. Crenshaw,” The Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=51691.
Jensen, Maud (1904-1998)
Missionary To Korea And First Woman Fully Ordained In The Methodist Church
In 1956 the General Conference granted full clergy rights to women by voting that they could be admitted into full ministerial membership in Methodist Annual Conferences. On May 18, within a month of this action, Ms. Maud K. Jensen, a missionary to Korea, became the first woman to be admitted into full conference membership in the Central Pennsylvania Conference. She was admitted on trial, in absentia, as she was in Korea at the time. She spent forty years in Korea as a full-time and retired missionary.
A native of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, Jensen was drawn to missionary work while a student at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1926, she was sent to Korea by the Methodist Episcopal Church. She had met her future husband, A. Kristian Jensen, when they were both missionary candidates, and they married in 1928. By 1946 Jensen earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the seminary at Drew University. Her education at Drew continued in her later life when she completed a Ph.D. at the age of seventy-four. Drew also conferred upon Jensen an honorary doctorate and an outstanding alumni award.
During the Korean War, her husband Reverend A. Kristian Jensen, was a prisoner of the Communists from 1950-1953. The couple resumed service in Korea in September, 1954, and Mrs. Jensen taught at the Methodist Theological Seminary. Jensen was honored twice by the Korean government for her contribution to social welfare work in that country.
Upon finding herself the first full-fledged female minister in The Methodist Church, Mrs. Jensen cabled:
“I am deeply grateful for the privilege, but the honor was completely unexpected and due entirely to the early meeting of my Annual Conference. I feel that Georgia Harkness and other active women ministers deserve first recognition after their long struggle and able contributions to the church. I am praying for wisdom and spiritual development.”
Taken from “The First Woman to Receive Full Clergy Rights and Conference Membership in the Methodist Church – 1956,” General Commission on Archives and History, http://gcah.org/history/biographies/maud-jensen.
Hernandez, Alejo (1842-1875)
First Ordained Latino Methodist And Missionary To Mexico
In 1873, the first train on the new line out of Vera Cruz carried a Methodist bishop and Alejo Hernandez, the first Latino to be ordained in Methodism, who was the bishop’s choice to establish a mission in Mexico City. But the throbbing power in the locomotive’s boiler had a sturdier container than the body that accommodated the pulsating zeal of Hernandez’s spirit. Within eighteen months, he suffered a massive stroke, which left him unable to move more than his head and hands.
Yet during his brief ministry, Hernandez inspired Spanish-speaking people, both in Mexico and Texas. His preaching sparked revivals, and sometimes his impassioned oratory brought whole congregations to their knees. But this was not the kneeling that he had been taught as a child.
Alejo, the child of a wealthy Mexican family, had been sent to college to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. During his freshman year, however, he lost his faith, left school, and, without telling his parents, joined the soldiers who were fighting the French forces that invaded Mexico in 1862. Taken prisoner by the French, he eventually escaped and made his way to the Texas border.
While still a prisoner, he had stumbled upon an anti-Catholic tract, which he read in the expectation that it would reinforce his atheism. Instead, it inspired him to make his own study of the Bible. If only he had one! That problem was solved when he came into contact with Methodists in Brownsville, Texas. Not only was he given a Bible, but during a Methodist worship service he experienced conversion, even though the English spoken by the preacher was not his tongue. Hernandez says:
I felt that God’s spirit was there. Although I could not understand a word that was being said, I felt my heart strangely warmed…. Never did I hear an organ play so sweetly, never did human voices sound so lovely to me, never did people look so beautiful as on that occasion. I went away weeping for joy.
In that instant, it was said later, “he became a missionary for ever, so full was the flood of holy passion in his soul.” Soon he received a preacher’s license from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and began his ministry in the Corpus Christi area. In 1871, he took the first step into annual conference membership, received deacon’s ordination from Bishop Enoch Marvin, and was appointed to work among Mexicans along the Rio Grande. Following his death, Bishop John Keener said: “He was ready for any enterprise in the Master’s service?to go alone, and on an hour’s notice, if need be, to the ends of the earth.”
A change in Mexico’s laws?previously they prohibited Protestant preaching and the distribution of Bibles?made it possible, in 1873, for Bishop Keener to visit Mexico City, purchase property for a church, and charge Hernandez with the responsibility of opening a Methodist mission. With the result, as described by the secretary of the Board of Missions:
Brother Hernandez has been subjected to the dire necessities of poverty, to the persecutions of superstitious ignorance and bigoted power, and to the no less potent influences of flattery. But out of all the Lord hath brought him by his power.
And a handful of Mexicans began to study the Bible for themselves, sing Methodist hymns, lift up their hearts “in earnest, fervent prayer,”and to experience conversion.
When a debilitating stroke ended Hernandez’s Mexico City ministry, he returned to Corpus Christi, where, along with his wife and two small children, he lived, almost totally paralyzed, until his death on September 27, 1875.
Taken from “A Mexican Soldier Who Became A Methodist Missionary 1842-1875,” by John G. McEllhenney, General Commission on Archives and History, http://gcah.org/history/biographies/alejo-hernandez.
Meyer, Lucy Rider (1849-1922)
First Priciple Of Chicago Training School And “Archbishop Of Deaconnesses”
It is said of the first college in the United States to award degrees to women, Oberlin (1841), that it is peculiar in that which is good. A compliment equally applicable to an Oberlin graduate, Lucy Jane Rider. She became a physician when most medical schools barred their doors to women. She revived the ancient female diaconate in America. And she refused to close her eyes to theories about how the Bible was composed.
Born in Vermont, Lucy Rider taught in a North Carolina school for freed slaves, went to college in Ohio, and studied medicine in Pennsylvania. When the man died, whom she expected to marry and work with as a medical missionary, she threw herself into a succession of activities.
She taught chemistry at the prep school and college levels, authored The Fairy Land of Chemistry, wrote songs for children, spoke at religious conferences, organized Sunday schools, and attended the 1880 World Sunday School Convention in London. In 1885, she became the first principal of the Chicago Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions.
Her first brush with fundamentalists came when they attacked the school, saying that all the training women needed for the Christian work they could do was provided by church and Sunday school. Mrs. Meyer–she married Josiah Shelly Meyer, a former Y.M.C.A. secretary, in 1885–defended her school’s curriculum that included biblical studies, theology, church history, sociology, economics, basic medical training, and courses chronicling the accomplishments of women. She argued that women needed thorough intellectual training in order to minister to the temporal and spiritual needs of urban Americans.
Meanwhile, she had studied the ancient female diaconate and its revival in Germany (1836) and England (1861). Based upon biblical precedent, the office of deaconess was fully developed by the fourth century. Deaconesses cared for the poor and the sick, were present at interviews of women with clergy, instructed women preparing for baptism, and assisted at their baptisms. Then the office disappeared for centuries.
Mrs. Meyer, seeing the possibility of reviving it in America, asked the Training School’s executive committee to allow some of the students to remain in Chicago during the summer of 1887, to concentrate on a ministry of visitation in tenement communities. A few of these moved into a house, soon called a deaconess home, and began to do all they could to alleviate the plight of recent immigrants to rapidly industrializing America–health care, instruction in child care and homemaking skills, and Christian education.
Lucy Meyer’s second encounter with fundamentalists came when she designed a deaconess uniform, which they criticized as a step toward Roman Catholicism. She countered that it clarified the deaconesses’ role and helped to make them welcome. In 1888, her denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, recognized the office of deaconess. By late in her career, her achievements had achieved such recognition that she could be introduced as the “Archbishop of Deaconesses.”
But the fundamentalists found another avenue of attack. Meyer’s biblical studies led her to the conclusion that the Bible had not been dictated by God, but written by a host of inspired authors and assembled by editors, who sometimes blended several older documents to create an expanded narrative. She defended her conclusions, even in the face of her husband’s objections.
Mrs. Meyer retired as head of the Chicago Training School in 1917 and died five years later, honored as a woman who had been peculiar in that which is good.
Taken from “The “Archbishop of Deaconesses” Who Took On The Fundamentalists 1849-1922,” by John G. McEllhenney, General Commission on Archives and History, http://gcah.org/history/biographies/lucy-rider-meyer.