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Howell, Mabel Katherine (1874-1957)

Mission Educator And Administrator

Howell was born in New Jersey in 1874 and earned her Ph.D. degree in sociology from Cornell in 1896. She completed her formal education with a seminary degree from University of Chicago. She taught in Richmond, Kentucky, for four years, coming under the influence of Belle Bennett.

In 1903, Bennett persuaded her to go to Scarritt College, then in Kansas City, as professor of sociology. At Scarritt, she was especially significant in raising consciousness about ‘home’ missions endeavors. The Board of Missions elected her to be the woman missionary secretary for Oriental Fields in 1918. In this role, she was embroiled in several major issues in the China mission and elsewhere. She was one of the authors of the controversial Hay-Pinson-Howell letter in 1923.

In 1926, she returned to Scarritt, then removed to Nashville, as professor of ‘foreign’ missions. Howell retired in 1942, dying in 1957 in Asheville, North Carolina. She was the author of Women and the Kingdom, honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, and other works.

Taken from Robert W. Sledge, “Five Dollars and Myself”: The History of Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1845-1939. (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), p. 351

Wembo, Nyama

Congolese Chief And Supporter Of Methodist Mission

Head of a village of the same name in the Belgian Congo, noted as a warrior and enemy of Europeans in his early days, Wembo Nyama received Bishop Walter Lambuth and his party in his village in 1912. Impressed by Lambuth as a man of his word, the chief embraced Christianity and promoted its growth in his territory and beyond. As a limit of his Christian commitment, however, he refused to divorce any of his two dozen wives, noting that it would be unfair to the women to send any away while keeping only one. The fact that the missionaries tolerated this circumstance is evidence that they sometimes adapted to local situations which deviated from ordinary Christian practice. He could not join the church, but several of his wives did. Wembo Nyama became to Southern Methodists the symbol of the exotic character who was the classic object of missions. The chief died in 1940, with the mission still healthy in his territory.

Onderdonk, Frank Scovill (1871-1936)

Missionary To Mexico And Among Mexican-Americans

Onderdonk was born in Mission Valley, Texas, in 1871. He received his higher education at Southwestern University and then joined the West Texas Conference. From the beginning of his ministerial career, he felt a call to Spanish-language ministry. He served congregations along the Rio Grande. In 1897, Board of Missions Secretary Walter Lambuth secured Onderdonk’s appointment to the English-speaking congregation (composed mainly of railroad builders) at San Luis Potosi.

Onderdonk’s command of the Spanish language was soon adequate for him to assume other duties in Mexico. He became presiding elder successively of the San Luis Potosi, Mexico City, and Guadalajara districts. Onderdonk was a man of imposing size who was dubbed “Pancho y media” (Frank-and-a-half) by his constituents. For mountain travel in Guadalajara, he could not find a horse capable of carrying him. He first mule was a lazy creature, so “I sold it and bought a grayish mule I dubbed Paloma Blanca. On this faithful animal I made my long trips. I remained four years in this glorious work that brought so much joy to my heart. My faithful wife accompanied me in many of these trips, traveling on her own horse.”

The revolution of 1914 forced the Onderdonks out of Mexico. He came back to Texas to find a new situation, for the revolution was forcing the emigration of thousands of Mexicans as well. For the next twenty years, Onderdonk traveled across south Texas as presiding elder and evangelist. He was particularly effective in leading Anglos toward a better acceptance of their Mexican-American neighbors. Onderdonk was a prolific writer, sending regular columns to the Texas Christian Advocate and numerous letters to the missions board. He died in 1936, deeply mourned by those whose language he had mastered and whose souls he had sought.

Howard, Leonora (Leonora Howard King) (1851-1925)

Medical Missionary To China

A native of Ontario, Canada, Howard graduated in 1876 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, her medical education having been paid for by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1877, she went to Peking (Beijing) under WFMS auspices and took charge of the Peking hospital. In March 1879, she was called to Tientsin (Tianjin) to care for Lady Li hung Chang, wife of the viceroy. Lady Li, having recovered, wanted Howard to remain in Tientsin. The viceroy had turned a temple into a medical dispensary under the auspices of the London Missionary Society (LMS), and as an inducement to stay, the viceroy proposed that Howard open a women’s ward.

In 1881, the Methodists opened the Isabella Fisher Hospital (named after the mother of the principal donor, in Baltimore, Maryland) in Tientsin. Howard managed the hospital until her 1884 marriage to Alexander M. King of the LMS, which ended her connection with WFMS. The Kings remained in China; she maintained her contacts with the vice-regal families and then with the Nationalist government until her death, although she never became an official LMS missionary.

By Susan E. Warrick, Independent Scholar in United Methodist Missions History, Madison, New Jersey, USA

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of The Gale Group; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved. It is taken, with permission, from the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity: http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/h/howard-leonora.php

Sources:

Margaret Negodaeff-Tomsik, The Good Fight is a full-length biography (1994).

Information about Howard can also be found in Frances J. Baker, The Story of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (1896) and in Mary Isham, Valorous Ventures (1936).

Nind, Mary Clarke (1825-1905)

Mission Promoter Extraordinaire

By Internet Archive Book Images – www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14781075991/ Source book page: archive.org/stream/maryclarkenindhe00nind/maryclarkenindhe00nind#page/n5/mode/1up

Mary Clarke Nind became a member of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in Winona, Minnesota, in 1866, and in 1879 joined the Minneapolis Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church. Two of the Nind’s five children were in the mission field in the 1880s – Emma Nind Lacy in China, and George Nind in the Madeira Islands. Because of her deep passion for foreign missions, Mary held offices in the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society for thirty years, organized many Minnesota societies, traveled extensively, promoting the WFMS and visiting new mission field. She helped establish women’s work in Singapore and Malaysia, including the Mary C. Nind Home in Singapore, which was named in her honor, organized “flag festivals” to procure American flags for every mission station, and pioneered in promoting equal rights for women. In October 1887, she was elected the first lay woman delegate to General Conference by the Minnesota Conference, receiving the largest number of votes for any delegate even though she was not present at the election. However, the 1888 General Conference refused to seat her and four other women. Mary Nind was known as “the little bishop” for her missionary sermons and as “Mother Nind” to the missionaries. A book, Mary Clarke Nind: A Memorial, written by her children, was published in 1906.

Adapted from They Went Out Not Knowing… An Encyclopedia of One Hundred Women in Mission (New York: Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 1986). Used with permission of United Methodist Women.

Nicholson, Evelyn Riley (1883-1967)

Advocate For Women’s Roles In Mission

Evelyn Riley Nicholson was born in Minnesota. She was president of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society from 1921 to 1940. In 1923, she gave a major address at the International Missionary Council on “The Place of Women in the Church on the Mission Field.” One of the first women to be asked to make such a presentation, her topic proposed new avenues of equality for women. Also, during this period, she was greatly involved in the negotiations for the union of three Methodist denominations. Chairing the Committee on Women’s Work for the 1939 United Conference, Mrs. Nicholson gave skillful leadership in the struggle to secure equal rights for the Woman’s Division in the new Board of Missions. Under her leadership, in 1939 national Methodist women’s organizations of twenty-nine countries signed the Charter of the World Federation of Methodist Women. The new Federation elected her its first president. Her book, The Way to a Warless World, published after World War I, was placed in the cornerstone of the Church Center for the United Nations in 1962.

Taken from They Went Out Not Knowing… An Encyclopedia of One Hundred Women in Mission (New York: Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 1986). Used with permission of United Methodist Women.

Miller, Margaret Ross (1870-1955)

Proponent Of Women Leaders

Margaret Ross Miller helped form church women’s organizations in the Philippine Islands, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, as well as in California. Her husband was appointed to special work in South America prior to his election as bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1924. In 1921, Mrs. Miller helped women in Chile plan an organization similar to the Woman’s Society of Christian Service, which did not come into being until years later. In 1925, she helped the separate women’s groups in Mexico form a national organization. She also helped organize women’s work in Argentina, schools for Indians in Bolivia and Chile, and an international women’s organization in South America. Involved in literacy programs, she wrote many books, one of which was the 1936 study text, Women Under the Southern Cross. Sixteen years of labor and love, during which she traveled by horseback, boat, train, and foot, were the basis for this comprehensive book on the history of Christian work among women in Latin America. In California, she was president of the Pacific Branch of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society. In all her work, Margaret Miller trained other women for leadership.

Johnson, Carrie Parks (c.1866-1929)

Outstanding Proponent Of Human Rights For Women And Persons Of All Races

Born in Georgia, Carrie Parks Johnson grew up in a family of Methodist ministers and became an outstanding proponent of human rights for women and persons of all races. From 1899 until her death, she was actively engaged in promoting conference work, programs of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society and the Woman’s Missionary Council.

Between the years 1906 and 1918, she vigorously and unrelentlessly crusaded for ‘laity rights’ for women in the Southern church. North Georgia Conference chose her as a delegate to the 1922 General Conference, the first to seat women.

In 1920, she launched a crusade to correct racial injustices in the South. Selected to head a committee to study the issues of black women and children at local, district and conference levels, she presented a plan that led to establishing sub-committees on race relations. That same year she was named to direct the women’s work of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC). Through her efforts, resolutions from local societies, church groups, and CIC were published, taking firm positions against lynching, mob violence, and other race-related injustices. The work in race relations among Southern women, initiated by Carrie Parks Johnson, laid the foundation for change that followed.

Harkness, Georgia (1891-1974)

May Peace Abound: The Legacy Of Georgia Harkness

“May truth and freedom come to every nation; may peace abound where strife has raged so long; that each may seek to love and build together, a world united, righting every wrong; a world united in its love for freedom, proclaiming peace together in one song.”

The New Yorker Georgia Harkness, who wrote these words, was born in 1891 and was not only an accomplished poet and writer, but also a well-known pacifist, ecumenical theologian and the first woman to become a full professor at an American seminary. Harkness’s work blazed a trail for generations of women in the Methodist tradition, in particular those who sought to be ordained.

Though she had a wide variety of talents and interests, her primary vocation was as a theologian and teacher. From 1939-1950 Harkness taught systematic theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She also taught at Elmira College and the Pacific School of Religion, among others.

Harkness’s theology was fundamentally liberal—she described herself as “a liberal unrepentant and unashamed”—and she sometimes clashed with the neo-orthodox thought of contemporaries such as Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr. She was devoted to ecumenism and pacifism, even as many of her contemporaries wavered during the tension leading up to the second World War, and she was a lifelong advocate for gender equality and against racism. Though she was ordained as a local elder in 1938, women were not allowed to participate in annual or general conferences at that time, limiting their influence to a local context; later in her life, she would serve as a delegate to General Conference six times.

Before her death in 1974, Harkness wrote more than 30 volumes, primarily theological texts focusing on issues such as ethics, the role of the church in the world, and social responsibility. Her legacy lives on; even now, Garrett-Evangelical women wear red shoes to their commencement ceremony in honor of Harkness and other courageous women.

Today, the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry offers a scholarship for women in Georgia Harkness’s name: “Her emphasis on spirituality and social responsibility encourages a living faith and thoughtful, practical discipleship,” the description reads. “Harkness strove tirelessly for wholeness and truth in her long career as a theologian and as a disciple.”

De Pantelis, Fanny G.

First Female Professor At Methodist Seminary In São Paulo

Visitors to the campus of the Methodist Seminary in São Paulo, Brazil, might not notice the name of one of the large classrooms: “Fanny G. de Pantelis.” But if they do and ask any of the women students about the name, they will find out who she is.

As an International Person in Mission, Fanny was the first woman every to serve full time on the faculty of the Methodist Seminary in Brazil. The few women students found a strong friend and ally in their struggle for full acceptance as future pastors in the church.

As a student from Uruguay at the seminary in Argentina, Fanny met her husband, Jorge, a student from Bolivia. Upon completion of their studies at the seminary Fanny and Jorge began their ministry in Bolivia. Her training and her writing skills became known and were used in developing a Christian Education curriculum which was used across Latin America. At the same time she became a champion for the role of women in the church at all levels.

When the Methodist Church in Brazil requested assistance in finding teachers for the seminary, Fanny and her husband, Jorge, were among the first International Persons in Mission in the region. Her passion for justice for women, including their place in the life of the church, made its mark in the lives of her students. This is why, in her honor, the classroom at the seminary bears her name for all to see.

“Room for Remembrance: Fanny G. de Pantelis,” in People Just Like These: Stories of Persons in Mission Serving Around the World, edited by Elizabeth L. Howard. (Denver, CO, and New York, NY: Global Mission Partners and The World Division, The General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church, 1992), p. 16.