"The Iowa Sisterhood."

Rev. Dr. Morris Hudgins.
May 7, 2000.

Introduction
Today's sermon is part of a series I have been giving this year on important historical events in the history of our denomination. I would like to weave several stories together. The first incident took place in 1983. I was working on a Doctorate of Ministry at Lutheran Theological Seminary. I had an appointment with David Parke, the head of publications for the Unitarian Universalist Association. David was coming through Philadelphia and wanted me to work on a project. He had already asked me to rewrite the Lutheran curriculum on the History of Unitarian Universalism Now he had a big project in mind—The History of the Iowa Sisterhood. My response was quick and direct. I did not have the resources. Someone needed to be in the Midwest to do this work. As much as I would have loved to be that person, it was not possible.

As it turns out someone had already been working on this project and she lived in the Midwest. Her name was Cynthia Grant Tucker, a professor of English at Memphis State University. In 1989 Cynthia would publish a book telling this story. The book was titled, The Prophetic Sisterhood. I met Cynthia in that year and heard her talk about the Iowa Sisterhood. It is a fascinating story that I will tell you this morning.

Before I tell you this story I will tell you another story. When I attended theological school in 1968 there were few females in seminary and even few females serving as pastors in churches. Most women served in specialized ministries or were steered toward Religious Education. This began to change in the 1970's.

Last year was a historical year in our denomination. In 1999 women ministers became the majority of our denomination. The pattern of two churches I have served Raleigh, North Carolina and Northern Hills, will become the norm in our denomination. Both of these churches have been served by as many women as men. Women are beginning to serves as ministers in our larger churches, and some have become our most dynamic preachers. Things have changed. As we know in the political arena, change does not occur without courage and sacrifice.

The modern UU minister, especially the women in our ministry, can look to the Iowa Sisterhood for models of courage and sacrifice. The story I am going to tell you this morning is a much different story. In the 19th century our denomination had the possibility of welcoming women into the ministry in large numbers and did not take advantage of that possibility. The story of the Iowa Sisterhood is a sad chapter in the long history of Women and Religion.

When I first learned of the Iowa Sisterhood many questions came to mind. Why the Midwest? Iowa is not viewed as the hotbed of liberalism in 2000. Why did women flourish in the ministry in Iowa in the 1890's? Who encouraged these women? What difficulties did they encounter? What was the nature of their ministry? What theology did they preach? How did they impact the churches they served? What was their relationship with the males in other churches? Finally, and probably the most important, why did they stop serving as ministers? These are the questions I will try to answer this morning.

The Pioneers
Let's look at the Iowa Sisterhood. What is the Iowa Sisterhood? Why did they emerge in Iowa? The Iowa Sisterhood was a group of female minister who emerged as organizers of small churches in Iowa in the 1880's. Their influence spread throughout the Midwest, so much that by the end of the century the Western Conference of the Unitarian Association was controlled by this group of approximately 20-25 women. They held every office in the Conference including the President, organized, built and paid for over 20 new churches, attempted to organize many more church congregations, influenced the theology and architecture of these churches, and stirred a controversy in the American Unitarian Association that would continue for decades.

We all know the first female ministers did not emerge in the 20t` century. The Quakers and Baptists had encouraged females to preach in England several centuries before. But we also know this was not encouraged and in fact cause great concern in Protestant churches both in England and America in the 18th and 19'h centuries. The first woman to be ordained in the U. S. was Antoinette Brown who attended Oberlin College and graduated in 1853. Unfortunately, the administrators of Oberlin who accepted women as students did not feel they should be ordained as ministers.

Antoinette was a Congregationalist so she began looking for a church. She was called by the Congregationalist Church in South Butler, New York and was ordained by them. Again she ran into diffculty. Her denomination would not recognize her ordination. She was frustrated in South Butler, left the congregation and became a Unitarian. This is why both of our denominations claim her as the first woman to be ordained in America.

The Universalists rightly claim Olympia Brown, no relation to Antoinette, as the first denomination to ordain a woman-June 25, 1863. The story of these two women is a fascinating story of courage and bravery. Charlotte Cote in her book, Olympia Brown: The Battle for Equality, writes of the diffculties experienced by Olympia to break this gender barrier after the Civil War. She writes about her frustrations at St. Lawrence University, another pioneering school in the area of education for women. Cote writes:

There were times when (Olympia) felt isolated and lonely... Some of her classmates were friendly and helpful, but two of them were quite contrary. They delighted in belittling her simply because she was a woman. "What church will hire a woman preacher?" they taunted. "Who would ever go to hear a woman preach?" One of their favorite strategies was to get beneath her window at night and mimic her voice, which was soft and high-pitched. This practice grew increasingly painful to her because she knew of no way to improve her voice. (p. 54)

These men would also criticize her sermons required each week. "One of the nicest remarks they ever made about one of her sermons was, `Well, it was very good but I should hardly call it a sermon."' This kind of treatment would prepare Olympia for the kind of discrimination she would experience in the ministry.

One of the small victories described in Cote's book is the fact that Olympia returned to St. Lawrence the second year but the two men who belittled her did not. The story of these female ministers in the 19th century is full of courage and bravery but also of sorrow, defeat and bitterness. I will tell the sad ending to the Iowa Sisterhood in a few moments, but first more about their beginning.

The stories about Antoinette and Olympia were now history and many women found their lives an inspiration. Many young girls were shocking their parents with their dream of preaching from Protestant pulpits. Their parents were rightly concerned about how their daughters would be treated. Cynthia Tucker writes:

Not only did frontier parishoners face the problem of poverty, sickness, and climate, but they were regarded as heretics of the worst kind by their orthodox neighbors, the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Calvinist Congregationalists, all of whom had precded them in the region. Non-Trinitarians were ostracized and persecuted; they were made the object of scorn at public revivals and had their businesses boycotted. (pp. 4-5)

It is not wonder that in 1870 there were old five female ministers in the United States. In 1890 there would be over 70 women of the approximately 101,640 Protestant clergy listed in the 1890 census. Of the seventy ordained women the Universalists had the largest number-32; the Unitarians were next with 16 and the Methodists and Congregationalists combined for 15.

Safford and Gordon
With all the barriers to climb how would these numbers begin to change in less than 20 years? The first answer lies in the models to inspire others. The first women ministers in American would also need strong encouragement to enter the mine fields ahead. This encouragement came from the Secretary of the Western Unitarian Confernece, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, a radical in his own right, who challenged the control of Boston, and developed his own way of approaching liberal religion in the Midwest. Jones became the mentor of the women ministers, participated in their ordinations and encouraged them to recruit more women. The story of the rise and fall of the Iowa Sisterhood is also the story of the rise and fall of Jenkin Lloyd Jones and his challenge to the control of the Eastern establishment in the American Unitarian Association. We all know who won that particular war, that continues to be fought in some churches across the Midwest.

There are some other factors that contributed to the struggle of women in the ministry in our Association. The advent of women ministers in Iowa in the 1880's was partly a matter of necessity. The Harvard trained men in the East would not accept a call to the ministry for less than $80 a month (I don't want to give our finance committee any wild ideas here). The Iowa churches were offering closer to $40 a month. Many women saw $40 as an increase and were willing to accept it at least to begin their ministry.

Don't get me wrong. I do not want to belittle these women who accepted these small churches. They were women with tremendous courage, ability, and dedication to liberal religion. Just like the men they were inspired by the great liberal thinks of the early part of the 19th century—William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker. Their heroes were Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. They were true rationalists. As Tucker explains, they believed:

God had created the universe to run by natural laws and did not perform miracles, or intervene in people's daily lives and that nothing was served by believing in Christ's divinity, people's corruption, or the Bible's status as divine revelation.

With their forebears these women believed in ethical living as the basis of Christianity. They challenged biblical infallibility, supported abolition and the new Darwinian theories. Many of their sermons challenged the Apostle Paul's views toward women. They were women truly ahead of their time.

All historical movements require leaders who inspire others to follow their example. The leaders of the Iowa Sisterhood were Mary Safford and Eleanor Gordon. As with Luther and Wittenburg, Germany, the women needed a place to focus their dedication and practice their religion. The unlikely place to start this 19th century reformation was Humboldt, Iowa. Mary Safford and Eleanor Gordon were raised on farms, but both aspired to enter the ministry.

Encouraged by Jenkin Lloyd Jones the women started a church in Humboldt in 1880. Why Humboldt? It was a pocket of the most liberal dissenters surrounded by staunch evangelicals. Humbolt was founded by Stephen Taft a former Methodist who founded a colony dedicated to "freedom and unity in religion" temperance, social responsibility and equal rights for all, blacks and whites, males and females alike.

On June 29, 1880, Mary Safford was ordained by the new Humboldt Unity Church. Jones gave the ordination sermon and another supportive male minister, Oscar Clute, from Keokuk, Iowa, gave the Right Hand of Fellowship. Many of the other churches started by women ministers would follow the example of Humboldt and use the word "unity" in their name.

The motto of the church was that used by the Western Conference: "Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion; Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth." That motto could be ours today. These female ministers were the forerunners of the egalitarian movement that has continued until this day in UU churches. Other churches organized by the women would take the name of "All Souls" or "Peoples" churches showing their egalitarian influence.

Of the female ministers who would follow in the Midwest between 1880 and 1900, all would be influenced if not recruited by Mary Safford and Eleanor Gordon. Unity Clubs often existed in their churches which emphasized the role of education in the church. In addition to full Sunday services the women would attract many people to hear lectures and take part in discussion during the weekpatterned after the Transcendental Club of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.

Mary Safford turned out to be a tremendous organizer and fundraiser for Liberal Relaigion. I wish she were alive today so I could invite her to Cincinnati. She would make Phil Schoner's job much easier. One parishioner characterized the ministry of Mary Safford and Eleanor Gordon with these words:

When Mary Safford's charm and emotion appeal did not reach. . .the heart of "the practical businessman," the scientific knowledge, touch of humor and "hard common sense" of Miss Gordon appealed to his reason and opened his purse.

In the five years they were to serve the Humboldt Church they paid off all but $300 of the $1500 they borrowed to build the church. In addition to the building goals they set out to achieve, they also reached out to serve their community. They contributed to organizations to help abandoned and destitute women, the human society, the Unitarian Women's Conference, and the Post Office Mission to reach the unchurched.

One of their goals they set out to accomplish was to become independent of Boston. They were very suspicious of these men who they felt patronized them and discouraged them from fulfilling their mission of equality. They felt the men at headquarters did not understand the Midwest, and their traditional theology was too conventional.

Without Boston's encouragement they recruited other women and created a web of support for each other that was sadly lacking in the larger Unitarian community. Safford and Gordon would welcome the younger women in their home, encourage them to continue their education, and tutor them when needed to learn the work of the ministry. They also aspired to start a seminary for women ministers but that never got off the ground.

Humboldt became the hub for a network that would spread through the Midwest and finally to the West. Some of the women went to Colorado and California. Women such as Ida Hultin, Anna Norris, Margaret Titus Olmstead, Estella Elizabeth Padgham, Helen Grace Putnam, Helen Wilson, Celia Parker Woolley and Mary Colson became a part of their sisterhood. Between these women we can count over 200 years of service to the denomination in very difficult circumstances, in cities such as Sioux City, Algona, and Perry, Iowa, La Porte, Indiana, Beatrice, Nebraska, and Moline, Illinois.

Until recently you did not find the Sisterhood in our history books. What Cynthia Tucker learned from her research is that the AUA did what they could to discourage these women in their minister, would not recommend them for pulpits when they wanted to move up to a large parish, and most of them were forced to retire early.

Many were left frustrated and bitter toward the denomination they worked so hard to develop in the Midwest. Their life stories were not told in the AUA. Many were lonely and tired of the struggle after only a few years. When the call came for them to join the Women's Suffrage Movement most responded. Others felt they were appreciated more in the social settlement movement that took place during the beginning of the 20th century. The Hull House in Chicago would become their center of action.

As Tucker says:

"They remained a tiny and spread-out dissenting minority who wrestled daily with terrible feelings of loneliness and inadequacy." (p. 5)

They found their parents and society often frowned at them because of their decision to enter the ministry, colleagues often rejected them or failed to affirm their hope to be ordained, and the AUA set barriers against their success in the ministry.

All they had was their dream of what liberal religion ought to be and their support for each other. Their web of friendship, support and love made it possible for most of them to continue the struggle. Even when there was conflict, as there was between Safford and Gordon, late in their ministry, they would continue to be available to each other when needed.

Marie Jenny described the Sisterhood as a "wide spread web whose little centers" were fastened by women and joined by a common thread spun out of their "service and sympathy." You can see why the women who have made the decision to become ministers in this era find the Iowa Sisterhood an inspiration as well as models for courage and bravery.

Half of the Sisterhood did not marry. Those that did found it difficult to run a church because some of them worked 18 hour days. They were also discouraged by their sisters in the Suffrage Movement from marrying or going into the ministry because that would take away from their energy to give to the cause. Like many women today they found it difficult to be professionals and have a happy married life as well. (p. 66)

Many saw their relationship with their church as a marriage. They also saw their church as a type of home. The image of house and home permeated their sermons. Many described the churches they built as large mansions as opposed to the gothic buildings designed by the men that preceded them.

The Fall
Why did the women who had dominated the Western Conference before the turn of the century, begin to decline and finally disappear completely from the ministry after WWI? I would give several reasons for this decline.

1. First and foremost, was the treatment given to them by the denomination. With the Presidency of Samuel Elliot at the turn of the century, the AUA became more and more centralized. The priorities of the AUA became the university towns and the urban centers of the East, leaving the small rural churches in the past. That priority has not changed in our UUA since that time. The only change is that it has spread beyond the East coast. Now the South and the West are our place of the most growth.
2. Second, the woman found it more difficult to get pulpits. If they took a break to have children or had problems getting a church off the ground, they could not move on to a larger church as their male colleagues could. So they either retired early, wen into social service, back to teaching or worked in Women's Suffrage.
3. Third, America became more and more masculine in its approach to life. The ultimate symbol of this masculinity was Teddy Roosevelt, our leading "Rough Rider."
4. Fourth, one of the characteristic strengths became a weakness. Some of the women were very stubborn. They wanted it their way or not at all. Mary Safford was adamant about not receiving any help from Boston. In my view this dad to hurt in the long run. It would have been better if she could have taken Eleanor Gordon's advice and accepted money when it was available. This was the reason the two women had conflict in their last attempt at ministry in Florida.
5. Fifth, I believe that many of the women suffered burnout, if not in the ministry, in the social work or suffrage work they would do after the ministry. The distance between them also added to their problems. Since they did not have the support of most of their male colleagues, they depended on their Sisterhood for new energy. As they became more spread out this became more and more difficult.

The Women's Suffrage movement took much of their energy. Even when they did not leave the ministry they found themselves pulled in different direction. Some of them built churches of about 300 members. I cannot image working 2030 hours a week on the Suffrage Campaign and trying to prepare sermons, working in the community, and attending all the committees of the church. Many of the churches began to complain that their minister was spending too much time away from the church. My male colleagues received this same complaint when they became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. There is only so much time in a day and so much to be done. The words of Jack Mendelsohn, written in the midst of the Civil Rights era, speaks to the Iowa Sisterhood:

A Unitarian Universalist minister is a person who continually runs out of time, out of wisdom, out of ability, out of courage and out of money. We are hurtable. Our tasks involve great responsibility and little power.

The Iowa Sisterhood experienced this frustration in the 1890s and many chose to get out of the ministry. The ones that stayed became frustrated and bitter. I wonder how they stayed in the ministry as long as they did, especially when the new masthead for the Unitarian magazine promised its readers, "A Verile Optimism in Religion." These women were indeed a half century ahead of their church. They had a President, Samuel Elliot, who wanted to put women in their place, back in the school and in the home. Our denomination alienated these women and those they wanted to encourage in the liberal ministry.

The sad ending for our denomination became a gift to the suffrage movement. Tucker describes it this way:

. . . the suffrage crusade provided the sisterhood with an arming community that perpetuated this sense of "active ministry." Shunned by the Unitarian ministers' fellowship, among suffragists they were not only highly respected as females but courted as leaders and as women of the cloth and asked to represent their chosen profession. . .in the fight for the vote the secular struggle never replaced but rather provided a new format for the women's religious commitment to symmetry, wholeness, and greater power for good in society. (p. 211)

The next chapter of this story is the logical conclusion to what happened before. Between 1906 and 1917 no women were ordained into the Unitarian ministry. What was our loss was the gain of the suffrage movement. During the two World Wars and the Depression it became even more difficult for women to enter the ministry.

The final chapter of the story is the victory that would come during the second half of the 20'h century, following the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement. We are now learning that women can be excellent preachers and pastors. They are reaching to the top of our ministry and I predict it will not be long before we have a female President of our Association. We have come a long way since Samuel Eliot tried to systematically discourage women from the ministry.

Conclusions
For the last twenty years our denomination has been growing because we have opened our doors to women, to African-Americans, to Gays and Lesbians. Along with this change we have had a more inclusive history that has faced the sad stories of our past. Even though we were a liberal religion, at times we have been slow to change. The stories of early women ministers are being told and are inspiring more women to enter the ministry. More than half of our ministers are now women and more young college students like Nancy McDonald are entering the ministry. Women like Sharon Dittmar are now serving our established churches. They can thank the Iowa Sisterhood for the pioneering work they did over a century ago.

Two years ago our denomination held its annual General Assembly in Rochester, New York, in the heart of the Women's Suffrage Movement. At this General Assembly we all honored women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Lucretia Mott. We also honored the members of the Iowa Sisterhood for the role they played as pioneers in our denomination and in our society. The fruits of their labor would result in the women's right to vote, and then later would change the face of our ministry. Our example has also spread to most of the Protestant churches across the land.

I am proud to be part of a denomination that has helped change the face of ministry. I have seen the changes in my 28 years of ministry. We have moved from prejudice and discrimination to equality and increased colleagiality. May we not forget this story. May we tell it to our children and our new members. Someday it is my hope that our example will spread to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Now that is a day that I will celebrate. When that day comes I will tip my hat to the Iowa Sisterhood. Thank you.