Chapter 9 The Non-Western Church: Lowly Bible Women and Renowned Educators
Chapter 9
The Non-Western Church: Lowly Bible Women and Renowned Educators
From the Western perspective, Christianity in the Third World is often viewed in light of the missionary enterprise. American and European missionaries are cast as the leading characters while nationals play supporting roles or serve as stand-ins in a drama that is western in everything but the setting. Such a portrayal distorts the true picture of the non-Western church. Although the grandiose schemes of paternalistic missionaries often overshadowed the faltering efforts of nationals, most of the real success of church growth in the Third World has been accomplished by nationals—a high percentage of whom have been women. The work of evangelism and church planting in certain areas relied almost exclusively on women, some of whom were illiterate and had to rely on their own personal testimony, memorizing portions of Scripture in their determination to spread the gospel.
This story of national involvement in evangelism and church leadership has yet to be told. Both men and women of the Third World have been shortchanged in the historical account. The Church and Women in the Third World, edited by John and Ellen Webster, focuses on some specific aspects of women nationals in church leadership but does not provide the overview that is so sorely needed. Outstanding leaders have been featured in biographies, but there is no well-documented historical account that ties the story together. Moreover, many of the missionary accounts of nationals give a distorted and self-serving portrait.
Indeed, as important as women nationals were in spreading and exemplifying the faith in their homes and community, they no doubt fell far short of the portrayal of them made by some missionary women in stories and biographical accounts. Like the Western missionaries themselves, nationals suffered from a distorted reputation of super-sainthood. A realistic picture, it was feared, would reflect negatively on the super-saint missionary on whose ministry the saintly converts depended. Margaret Burton, for example, described Oriental Christian women as “attractive, intelligent, refined, spiritual, kind, truthful, helpful, energetic, ambitious in good ways.”1
In actuality, there were often problems between women missionaries and women nationals—neither being the super-saints they were described to be. Speaking of Chinese women, Shirley Garrett writes:
in the flesh…she was quite human, and some of her real characteristics were at odds with the cheerful picture the church presented to the public. She was superstitious, believing stubbornly in magic, native gods, and the spells and portents of wind and water and often sullenly resisting attempts to convert her. She was capable of hate and vengefulness, often using threats of suicide to get her own way.2
Conversion to Christianity certainly brought about significant behavioral changes, but serious problems remained. Bible women on occasion rebelled against the authority of the missionaries, and on more than one occasion girls went on strike in mission schools.3
The Effect of Christianity on Third-World Women
The most powerful argument in support of women missionaries before they were accepted in their own right was that they would be the means of uplifting pagan women who were subjected to the tyranny of religious and cultural strictures against their sex. In many instances Christianity, indeed, offered women freedom and opportunity for public service that was denied them in other religions. This was true, for example, of women who were converted from various tribal religions of the Pacific Islands. “In most Oceanic societies,” writes Charles Forman, “women were not normally accepted as participants in religious ritual. Hence, the presence of women in Christian services marked a significant change for most island women.”4
An even more significant influence that women missionaries had in ameliorating the social and legal injustices against women in the Third World involved such areas as education, marriage, widowhood, and home life. In India, as elsewhere in developing nations, “the first battle was a legal one, to clear away space enough in the tangled jungle of oppression for the women to stand on while they fought for better conditions.” According to Helen Barrett Montgomery, “in this hard-fought fight missionary women were the leaders, and the arousers of a public sense of shame.” Legislation permitting the remarriage of widows and restricting “the hideous evils of marriage consummated between adult men and little children were only passed because of the irrefutable testimony of medical women missionaries.”5
The Influence of Christianity on Education
It was in the sphere of education perhaps more than any other that women in the Third World were influenced by women’s missionary work. In 1910 Montgomery wrote, “The educated woman in India is still
A Bible Woman of Ceylon Teaching Women and Children. From Helen Barrett Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 21.
a very rare bird.” She quoted The Indian Social Reformer of 1897, which indicated that some six out of every one thousand women were deemed literate and that fewer than ten girls per thousand were then being educated. It was the women missionaries who were taking the lead in female education, and as a result “the greater number of the new women of India [were] Christian”—a fact that concerned some Hindus. An early twentieth-century writer reflected this concern in The Hindu, a religious paper: “While the educated Indian has not yet got beyond the talking stage in the matter of female instruction, the Christian missionary has honeycombed the country with girls’ schools.”6
Some of the most anti-Christian Hindus had nothing but praise for what Christianity had done for women and were critical of their own religious traditions in the education of women. J. W. Pickett, who served as a missionary to India for many years, wrote of this attitude among Hindus:
A member of the often militantly anti-Christian Arya Samaj said to the writer in a village in West Godavari that the greatest value the Christian movement has brought to Andhra Desa is freedom for the minds and souls of women. He added, “A degenerate Hinduism had enslaved our women. They were condemned to illiteracy, idolatry, superstition, suffering, drudgery and dullness. The lovely things of life were all kept from them. Through Christian Missions the folly and the wrong of this treatment of our women has been convincingly demonstrated.”7
The Influence of Christianity on the Home
Christianity also affected the attitude toward women in the home, as is evidenced by a statement made by a Hindu in the Punjab: “Before these people became Christians they bought and sold wives like we buy and sell buffalos. Now they choose one woman and remain faithful to her as long as she lives.” This opinion was supported by a survey conducted by Mrs. Graham Parker, a Presbyterian missionary to India. To the question “Do Christian men treat their wives differently?” 143 responded in the affirmative, and only 20 responded negatively. To the follow-up question, asking, “If so, how?” there were varied responses: “They help wives in their work.” “They don’t fight.” “They don’t abuse us in words or actions.” “They let us have the money we earn.” “They are kind and pray for us and our children.” “They don’t make us do what we know isn’t right.” “They forgive our faults.” “They give their wives their rights.” “In Christian homes husband and wife obey each other.”8
This change was also true in Africa, where Christianity had a powerful impact on marriage customs and the home. Here, as elsewhere in the world, missionaries generally advocated freedom of choice for marriage partners rather than traditional arranged marriages. “This freedom contributed to respect for the woman in the marital relationship, to an emphasis on her value as a person rather than on the dominantly functional role which she played.” Some observers have suggested that the dignity accorded women in Christianity was one of the major reasons so many women were attracted to the faith.9
Negative Influences of Christian Missions
Although there is considerable evidence indicating that Christianity has uplifted womanhood in the Third World, not all scholars agree on the specifics and to what extent the status of women has actually been raised. One problem is the reliability of the sources. Along with concrete evidence there are exaggerations that must be viewed with skepticism. Many reforms called for by missionaries were long overdue and no doubt would have been instituted without the influence of the missionary community. Likewise the personal influence that Western women had over nationals has no doubt been overdrawn. Jane Hunter, in her book on women missionaries in China, speaks of this: “Missionaries liked to exaggerate the extent to which unattached Chinese women depended on them for protection from angry fathers or husbands.” She cites the case of China missionary Emily Hartwell, who wrote gripping accounts of how she rescued women from life-threatening family situations—one from a wicked mother-in-law, another from her “opium fiend father,” and another from being sold to strangers by her parents.10
But not only is there evidence of exaggerated claims of missionaries, there is also evidence that would indicate that in certain instances the missionaries’ influence lowered the status of women. That was true among certain tribes in Africa, according to David Barrett. He has pointed out that “in many African cultures, women have long held prominent positions. They have been traditionally dominant among the Swazi, Luapula and Lunda, to name only three…Many societies are matrilineal; some are matriarchal.” As such, “certain categories of women…stood to lose much of their traditional status when missionary work began.” This was true in the home as well as in the church, where “women were not permitted in the ministry nor in the hierarchy of its executive structure.” In many instances, argues Barrett, “the rigidity of institutionalized churches…was felt primarily by women,” and “the missions appeared to be practicing an unjustified form of social control.”11
In the minds of some Third World women, Western Christianity has taken more credit than it deserves for emancipating oppressed women of the world—especially in religious affairs. This sentiment was expressed by the moderator of a women’s conference when she was introducing a speaker from the West: “Now don’t tell us about your women’s organizations, because we know all about them; and the one thing we do not want is to become second-class citizens as you have become in the church.”12
Church Attendance and Participation
As was true in the Western church, women in the Third World church generally far outnumbered men. They typically responded more readily to the Christian message and, as Christians, were more steadfast in the faith than were their male counterparts. This has been particularly true in most African denominations that originated in the West. Yet, despite their strong numerical superiority, women rarely filled leadership roles. “Their involvement in the politics of the church,” according to Joyce Siwani, was “almost nonexistent.” Assessing the situation in 1984, she continued, “They are relegated on the one hand to the level of children, whereas they are expected to keep the financial wheels of the structure running smoothly, on the other.”13
The Effects of Polygamy
In spite of the fact that women rarely held leadership roles in the churches, they wielded a significant influence. Indeed, the characterization of women as the backbone of the church has probably been more true of the Third World church than it has been of the church in the West. There were a number of reasons for this pattern, one of which involved lifestyle and tribal rituals. Polygamy is an example. Concerning the situation in West Africa, Penelope Campbell writes, “Polygamy was a great hindrance only in converting men because, whereas a confirmed Christian man could not be a polygamist, wives of polygamists were allowed full participation.” There were exceptions, however, to this practice. In Uganda, the church required women to leave a polygamous household and become a member of a Christian household before being admitted to the catechumenate. Although “the missionaries half realised that this put the women in an impossible position,” they supported efforts to eradicate polygamy from the church.14
In many instances where the polygamous husband became Christian he was allowed to be baptized only if he sent away all but one of his wives. The fate of these women, according to David Barrett, “was tragic.” They were “sent away under the stigma of disgrace,” and “many found a livelihood in prostitution in the new cities.”15
Moral Qualifications for Church Membership
Typically, however, women in polygamous situations fared much better in the church than did men. And there were other reasons for women outnumbering men in the churches.
Women were important in sustaining congregations and in establishing Protestant Christianity permanently in equatorial West Africa because they were better able than men to meet the strict standards of conduct required of church members. Quarrelling, drunkenness, and adultery are not sins limited to one sex, certainly, but men were much more exposed to these and other temptations, which could result in discipline or suspension.16
The “Female Factor” and Church Weakness
It was not only because of their numbers and dedication, but also because of their influence in the home that women were such a vital factor in the growth of the African church. Yet it was the “female factor,” as much as anything else that kept the African church weak and dependent on the Western missionaries. Women were rarely permitted to hold church offices, so when men were not available or qualified, the churches simply functioned without indigenous lay leaders.17
Because of the restrictions on women in holding church offices and professional leadership positions, there was less effort extended toward female education. According to Mercy Amba Oduyoye, this was a serious problem among the Methodists in West Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The teachers for girls’ schools were frequently unqualified, and the primary subjects were sometimes no more than “singing” and “needlework.” It is no wonder, then, that female nationals were often too poorly qualified to assume leadership positions in the church.18
Women’s Meetings and Clubs
One of the important benefits Christianity offered Third World women was a cause around which to gather for social and religious purposes. In many areas, at the urging of women missionaries, a system of networking quickly developed among women that crossed tribal, territorial, and even caste barriers. Such a feeling of camaraderie among women of Africa and Asia was uncommon outside Christian circles during the nineteenth century and paved the way for broader-based women’s movements.
An example of this kind of networking developed around the turn of the century in Portuguese West Africa, where an annual congress of Christian mothers was attended by hundreds of women. So eager were these native women for Christian fellowship that it was not uncommon for them to walk a hundred miles to participate. The program consisted of Bible studies as well as instruction on health, hygiene, and child care. Although such topics were clearly not designed to foster feminist ideology or to threaten the place of the husband in the family, the movement was referred to as a “revolt of the Mother,” and women did gain an awareness of the problems and needs of their sex as they never had before.19
The “Red Blouse” Movement
Another such movement developed in Southern Rhodesia and in Bechuanaland (now Botswana)—a movement whose primary purpose was to teach concepts of Christian morality and home life to women whose only understanding of marriage and sexuality came from tribes that encouraged polygamy and promiscuity. It was a uniformed organization called the “Red Blouse” movement, and by the 1950s there were some six thousand members. Although it had been started by a woman missionary, it was led by national women who were trained a local Bible schools.20
Women’s clubs were likewise very prominent in denominational churches, particularly in South Africa. According to Barrett,
a large majority of the powerful Manyano groups (Union of Women, or Mothers) in South African churches are still linked with the mission churches. In the early 1950s, the Methodist Church of South Africa had some twenty thousand Mayano members, and the Anglican diocese of Johannesburg alone had some four thousand members.21
Women’s Organizations Imported From the West
Some of the women’s organizations were imported from the West. A case in point was the Young Women’s Christian Association. This organization was planted by missionaries in Asia and filled a need that could not have been met by a church per se. The movement generally appealed to young and well-educated women. Its agenda was not as narrow as the agenda of many Christian women’s organizations, and sometimes non-Christian women from other world religions were included. This was true of the YWCAs founded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years following the bombings. Many of the women viewed the organization as a forum to promote the cause of world peace, while others argued that the purpose should be social interaction and entertainment.22 Like the YMCAs, the YWCAs gradually became more and more involved in secular concerns, and some entirely lost their Christian distinctives.
Personal Evangelism
One of the most striking features related to the growth of Christianity in the Third World has been the spontaneous evangelistic outreach by converts—especially in regions where powerful religious traditions have made Christianity anathema. Countless are the stories of Christians risking their family ties, their wealth, and their very lives in an effort to share the gospel with those they knew best. The pressure to recant the faith was enormous. When persuasion failed, persecution often followed, and as a result some denied the faith. In many cases, however, family members and friends were eventually converted because of the persistent testimony and refusal to bend in the face of persecution. As important as “professional” and organized lay evangelism were, it was often personal family evangelism that had the greatest impact on the growth of Third World Christianity.
Christiana Tsai
A remarkable example of personal evangelism in the Third World is that of Christiana Tsai, whose story is told in her autobiography, Queen of the Dark Chamber. This high-born Chinese woman, whose father was the vice-governor of the province of Kiangsu, grew up in Nanking in the early twentieth century knowing only luxury and ease. Each child in her large extended family had two personal servants, and the family chef had fifteen assistants. The family was deeply religious and, like most Chinese families, clung tenaciously to the traditions of ancestral worship. New Year’s Day marked the beginning of the festivities each year as the family made a processional to the Ancestral Hall.
Paintings of our ancestors hung on the walls, and before each picture was a bowl, a cup, chopsticks and a spoon for that person’s spirit to use. Long tables were covered with steaming food—whole roast pigs, ducks, chickens, fish, and so on—offerings for the spirits. We all knelt in order of rank and kowtowed, after which the servants brought yellow bags of paper money, one for each ancestor, and gave them to Father, who burned them one by one in a great brass urn, and threw a cupful of wine on the ashes in farewell. When the ceremony was over we all went to the great hall for the feast. We seldom slept at all on New Year’s Eve. In the morning of the New Year the doors were all opened, a barrage of firecrackers was set off, and we were free to do what we liked for eighteen days, except that we must still worship our ancestors each day of that period.23
It was out of that religious setting that Tsai was converted to Christianity. As was the case with so many Asian girls, education was the first step in her pilgrimage toward Christianity. Although she had studied under private Buddhist instructors, she was eager to go beyond what their tutoring offered. She enrolled in a local mission school, vowing that she would never convert to Christianity, but so anxious was she to learn English that she joined an optional English Bible class. When she transferred to another mission school, she was required to attend religious services, but she did so with deep resentment.
This only increased my resistance, and I made up my mind that I was not going to “eat” their Christianity, so I used to take a Chinese novel with me to chapel and read it as I knelt at the bench. I did not like the preaching. I thought it was unpleasant and openly opposed it. Another girl, a Miss Wu, from a high-class family similar to my own, hated this teaching too, and we…started to write a book denouncing all Christian teaching, insisting that Confucius and Buddha were our teachers and that we did not want Christ.24
The resistance, however, eventually wore down. “God used my love for English to draw me to Himself.” Through reading the Bible and listening to preaching in English, she was converted to Christianity, and through her testimony and influence Miss Wu also became a Christian. Family persecution immediately followed for both girls. When Tsai’s family insisted that she participate in an ancestral ceremony for her deceased father, she did so, prostrating herself on the ground surrounded by Buddhist monks, but not without painful feelings of guilt, and “a cloud of spiritual defeat hung over” her. Her response was to publicly confess her faith through baptism and church membership, but that further alienated her family. She was bitterly rebuked for disgracing the family, and one of her older brothers grabbed her Bible and hymnbook out of her hands and tore them up. Her mother was particularly devastated because she depended on her children to offer food and incense to her spirit after she died.25
Despite the hostility of her family members, they were converted to Christianity one by one through her testimony. For her mother, conversion to Christianity involved breaking a long-held opium-smoking habit, and that remarkable change sparked the interest of other family members. Soon after that, she, along with two of her sons and their wives and two cousins, was baptized. She then opened her home for a family and neighborhood prayer group, and others were converted. Indeed, so enthusiastic was she in her newfound faith that at the age of sixty she learned to read Chinese so that she could read the Bible for herself.26
After Tsai graduated from high school—an extraordinary accomplishment for a Chinese girl in the early twentieth century—she began teaching in a government school. Here she used her position and influence in bold evangelistic endeavors. She talked personally with students during class breaks and opened her home for group Bible studies. So effective were her efforts that out of her two hundred students, seventy-two professed faith in Christ. Not surprisingly, the reaction of parents was one of outrage, as was observed in a newspaper article: “The Government normal school has employed a music teacher and gotten a Christian evangelist instead, who is teaching all the girls to cry, ‘God! God!’ and making Christians of them. The parents are up in arms!” The new dean of the school, Miss Plum, searched the dormitories and confiscated the New Testaments that the girls had hidden in their mattresses and threatened expulsion to any students caught attending a Bible study. The faith of the students, however, was infectious, and eventually Miss Plum herself was converted to Christianity.27
Although Tsai worked closely with missionaries and the local church, she never sought to become a “professional” evangelist. She was most effective when she simply shared her personal testimony as a lay woman—a fact that was born out by the remarkable response from students, neighbors, and family members. She was convinced that it was not training or ability that led to success, but simply dedication to God—a philosophy that she summed up in relation to her ministry to her family:
So the brother who tore up my Bible and persecuted me in the early days at last confessed my Lord. In all, fifty-five of my relatives, adults and children, have become God’s children and expressed their faith in Jesus. I have never been to college, or theological seminary, and I am not a Bible teacher; I have only been God’s “hunting dog.” I simply followed at the heels of my Master, and brought to His feet the quarry He sent me after.28
It is significant that the impact Tsai had on her family included the male members as well as the female. Indeed, in many cultures where women were accorded a low status generally in society, they have had an unprecedented influence in religious matters—particularly within the extended family. B. V. Subbamma wrote of this phenomenon in Andra, India: “Women believed in the Lord first and then won their husbands and other relatives to the Christian faith.”29
Organized Lay Evangelism
The success that Christiana Tsai experienced in personal evangelism was not necessarily typical. More often women encountered setbacks and prolonged frustration in their attempts to evangelize family and friends. To facilitate their efforts they often formed support networks and often worked in teams. This has been particularly true in Africa. In the 1930s Methodist women in Nigeria, with the blessing of the male leadership in the church, developed a volunteer evangelistic outreach—so effective that it was reported at a missionary meeting that “Ijebu womanhood was coming into its own…” The women were deeply concerned for their “Mohammedan sisters,” and expressed their enthusiasm in witnessing by saying the “mouth [is] not wide enough to tell of all the goodness of God.” They organized street processions, city-wide rallies, open-air campaigns, and retreats, demonstrating effectively what could be done in the area of female lay evangelism.30
“Women of the Good News”
One of the most far-reaching women’s evangelistic organizations to arise in twentieth century has been the “Women of the Good News,” which began in Zaire in the early 1970s. It was the brain child of Virginia Jones, an American missionary, and Rebeka Eliya, a Zairian pastor’s wife, who during their exile from the Congo at the time of the Simba Rebellion became familiar with a women’s evangelistic movement, “Quali ti tene Njoni,” which had been started by Grace Brethren missionaries in the Central African Republic. Their paths separated in 1965, but the dream of a woman’s evangelistic movement did not die, and in 1970 they were reunited when Virginia and her husband were reassigned to Banda in Zaire. At that time, before the women had opportunity to make further plans, Rebeka announced that “Madamo Jones had come with a new women’s program, “Ade Wene Pangbanga.” The decision had been made, and Virginia immediately made preparations to translate the program into Pasande. Thus the movement began in the Zande district with some one hundred women eager to participate.31
From the unpretentious beginning in 1970 the movement grew rapidly. In the years that followed, through the combined efforts of women missionaries and women nationals, the program was translated into other tribal languages and the movement was initiated in several other areas of Zaire. After a decade of activity, the number of women involved in the movement had grown to over fifteen thousand, and by 1984, that figure had surpassed thirty thousand in the churches associated with the Africa Inland Mission. The total number of women involved, however, far exceeded that number. By the mid-1970s, the movement had crossed denominational lines, and there were thousands more connected with other missions and churches.32
The popularity of “Women of the Good News” was due in part to the social outlet it offered African women, but the primary focus was ministry—perhaps the most attractive feature of the program. In many African churches social custom excluded women from leadership positions, but this parachurch organization provided the unparalleled opportunities for organized ministries that were sanctioned, and indeed welcomed, by the church leadership. On the local level, women were organized in groups that met weekly for Bible studies conducted by several women on a rotating basis. Bible memory was also emphasized, with each member expected to complete a booklet of required memory verses. Each group was subdivided into as many as five smaller groups that carried out different outreach assignments: (1) visiting the sick (providing water, food, wood, and words of both witness and encouragement), (2) bringing the gospel to unbelievers, (3) ministering to those who had left the church fellowship, (4) maintaining the church building and grounds, and (5) visiting elderly people.33
Women also organized on a wider scale. A yearly three- to four-day district conference gave delegates the opportunity to be challenged with biblical messages and fresh ideas for ministry. In addition, two days each year were set aside as a Women’s Day of Prayer and a Women’s Rally Sunday, the latter to acquaint the local church with the ongoing ministry of the organization. Every two years, leadership training seminars were sponsored by the districts for key women who were selected by their local group to attend.34 Besides the evangelistic and humanitarian outreach of Women of the Good News, there were other achievements that were equally significant, according to Virginia Jones. The organization “brought unity of its women to the entire church of over 1,000 congregations,” and it gave “women a place of active involvement” in a structured environment. It also “provided an excellent training ground for women in leadership.” In the years since its founding, women missionaries have been replaced by nationals in leadership positions, the former continuing to serve, but only in the capacity of consultants.35
Professional Evangelism and Church Planting
In the Third World, unlike the West, much of the evangelism and church planting has been conducted by an army of paid church “professionals”—namely male evangelists and Bible women. Most of these workers were faithful to their ministry, and contributed significantly to the evangelistic thrust among their own people. Yet their work was not entirely without controversy.
Bible Women as Missionary Assistants
The term “Bible women” was the common designation of Christian female nationals who were employed for a pittance by the indigenous church or by women missionaries to function as teachers, interpreters, Bible readers, and evangelists. Their impact on church growth was enormous. In her book Western Women in Eastern Lands, Helen Barrett Montgomery wrote, “The Bible woman has become an institution. Her work is indispensable; she multiplies the missionary’s influence, goes before to prepare the way, and after to impress the truth. One of the humblest, she is at the same time one of the mightiest forces of the Cross in non-Christian lands.”36
In Japan Bible women worked very closely with the female missionaries. According to Winburn Thomas, “she acquired a reputation of being a personal servant to the woman missionary, so closely did her efforts supplement those of the foreigner.” Rosalind Goforth, who ministered in China at the turn of the twentieth century, developed this kind of a relationship with the women nationals she worked with during her tenure as a missionary. She was nearly always accompanied by a Bible woman who usually made the initial contacts that would have been inappropriate for Goforth herself to make. She wrote of a Mrs. Wang as “my dear Bible woman, in whom I had complete confidence.”37
Mrs. Lau, a Chinese Bible Woman. From Light and Life for Women 31:2 (February 1901): 57.
Bible women were also employed by organizations to carry out evangelistic work. The British and Foreign Bible Society, for example, in 1913, had in its employ thirty-six Bible women hired specifically to distribute Bibles and literature. According to Kenneth Scott Latourette, this practice continued for many years not only with the BFBS but also with other Bible societies. Another area of ministry that depended heavily on Bible women was hospital evangelism. Edith Dreyer, who served with the China Inland Mission, told the story of an encounter in a packed hospital waiting room between “Patient No. 125” and a Bible woman. The two women debated the validity of Christianity before a hushed crowd until the patient’s number was called. Although no apparent headway had been made during the waiting-room encounter, the next morning the woman’s son returned to the hospital with the message that his mother, who had “not slept all night…wants to walk in the Jesus Way.” The Bible woman was summoned and accompanied the boy to his home.38
Independent Bible Women’s Ministries
Although Bible women generally functioned as assistants to Western missionaries or were employed by organizations, they also served independently in certain ministries that were closed to Westerners. Margaret Burton, an American missionary of the early twentieth century, described this role in her book Women Workers of the Orient: “Often she may enter doors which do not yet swing open for the foreign missionary. She goes from zenana to zenana and house to house, teaching the women and girls to read, telling them the story of the Good Tidings…Wholly new ideas and purposes spring up in the home where these humble, consecrated workers have patiently gone.”39
Bible women often made enormous sacrifices to maintain their ministry. The hours were long, the work was difficult, and the pay was barely enough to subsist on. Likewise, there were family pressures that added to the sacrifice, especially in the Orient where family ties were deeply embedded in culture. Even when the Bible women were unmarried or widowed, there were often aged parents who expected care, and leaving them in order to conduct a ministry was sometimes the supreme sacrifice. There were physical dangers that Bible women encountered as well. Rosalind Goforth wrote of a Mrs. Chang, a Buddhist preacher-turned Bible woman who was persecuted during the Boxer Rebellion. “During the terrible ordeal of 1900, she was faithful almost unto death, being strung up by her thumbs by the Boxers, but saved through the intervention of neighbors.”40
A Bible Woman From India. From Light and Life for Women 32:5 (May 1902): 207.
The distinction between Bible women and women evangelists has never been clearly defined, but there were women nationals who, like western women missionaries, traveled with their own Bible women. An example is that of Phoebe Rowe, a Eurasian, whose mother was Indian and whose father was English. She was educated at Isabella Thoburn’s school in Lucknow, and while she was there, she was outstanding in evangelistic endeavors. “In 1847 chiefly through her agency all the boarders in the school became Christian.” After leaving the school, she became an itinerant evangelist, traveling with a native preacher and a Bible woman—the preacher to conduct the baptisms that resulted from her evangelistic messages, and the Bible woman to conduct work among the women, who were often segregated from the men.41
In Japan, Bible women played a crucial role in the development of the Christian church. According to Winburn Thomas, the Bible woman was the “female equivalent of a male evangelist,” but because of the low position of women in Oriental society, her place in the church—especially in the early years—was not as secure as was that of the male evangelist. Yet as early as the 1880s there were nearly forty Bible women employed by seven different missions in Japan. Many others were supported by local churches. Writes Thomas, “Of many it was said that their services were no less indispensable than those of the pastors. Some of them became so well known that their names were household words.”42
Elsewhere Bible women also made a significant contribution to evangelistic work. The Reverend James L. Barton wrote of the more than three hundred Bible women he became acquainted with during his travels in India and Ceylon at the turn of the twentieth century:
Some of them are well educated, and are doing the work of missionaries as they go into the homes, carrying the light and peace of the gospel. Not a few of these able and devout workers have won places for themselves in the confidence, if not the affection, of almost the entire community. Many of them are women of deep faith, of much prayer, and as they remain in the work they grow bold in the service. The people show them honors, and recognize their power of leadership.43
Barton told of a religious meeting, made up largely of men, that he attended in Ceylon: “One native preacher spoke at that service, but the impassioned, earnest appeal which held that large, motley throng in complete silence, and with fixed attention, was the address of the Bible woman.” He also told of “a great heathen festival” near Madura where Bible women pitched tents to live in while they spent the festival days preaching the gospel to the “heathen throng.”44
Opposition to a Paid Indigenous Ministry
As important as Bible women were in the Third World church, their role was not without controversy, as was the case with male evangelists. Indeed, according to Dr. John L. Nevius, the nineteenth-century missiologist most credited for the rapid growth of the Korean church, one of the most serious flaws of the “Old System” of missionary work was the employment of “professional” evangelists. Such a practice, he argued, not only took the most capable nationals out of their home environment where they would have been most effective, but also left the impression that evangelism was the job of paid professionals. This problem caused some to question the widespread use of Bible women. “Their very existence tended sometimes to cause the women of a church to say that evangelism was ‘Biblewomen’s work,’ and not only to excuse themselves from it on these grounds but to despise it as a lowly occupation.”45
Fatima Hanum, a Turkish Bible Woman. This woman was forced to flee Constantinople because of persecution. From Light and Life for Women (April 1902): 158.
Women’s Evangelistic Ministry Among Men
Evangelism conducted by women in the Third World was generally focused on other women, but there were always exceptions—exceptions that sometimes dismayed missionaries who had argued that certain cultures simply did not allow the possibility of women influencing men in such a way. A striking example of this was told by J. W. Pickett in his book Christ’s Way to India’s Heart, published in the late 1930s:
Early in this study we sat one day with 400 others in a temporary structure erected at the expense of a group of prosperous Hindu farmers for a series of evangelistic meetings. The most prominent Hindu of the village was in the chair. He introduced as the preacher of the afternoon an aged widow. For thirty-five minutes that preacher held the attention of her audience. Her sermon, in a language which the writer does not understand, was said to be logical, forceful and eloquent. At its close, the chairman thanked her and remarked that times were changing when a Hindu audience would listen with interest, respect and profit to an address on religion delivered by a woman.”46
Education
A natural outcome of the strong emphasis that Western women missionaries placed on female education in the Third World was the interest in education among Third World women themselves. Government officials frequently lured the young women who had been trained in mission schools into teaching roles in public education, but many became actively involved in Christian education for girls, and some founded successful schools of their own.
Pandita Ramabai
One of the most outstanding Christian educators of the Third World was Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922), the daughter of a wandering Hindu guru who took his family with him on his pilgrimages to temples and other sacred places in an endless effort to appease the gods. It was a life of misery for young Pandita, except for the fact that her father had broken Hindu tradition and encouraged his wife and daughters to become Sanskrit scholars. Indeed she credited her father for her own commitment to female education:
I am the child of a man who had to suffer a great deal on account of advocating Female Education, and who was compelled to discuss the subject, as well as to carry out his own views, amidst great opposition…I consider it my duty, to the very end of my life, to maintain this cause, and to advocate the proper position of women in this land.”47
Ramabai’s heritage gave her an advantage over other Indian women and it led her into an intensive search for God. After her parents died, she and her brother continued their lives as religious pilgrims, which she later wrote about: “I cannot describe all the sufferings of this terrible time. My brother and I survived and wandered about, still visiting sacred places, bathing in rivers, and worshiping the gods and goddesses in order to get our desire…After years of fruitless service we began to lose our faith in them.”48
Disillusioned with their search for the truth, Pandita and her brother settled in Calcutta, and there she came in contact for the first time with Christianity. She began studying the Bible and at the same time accepted a challenge from some leading Hindu scholars, who recognized her brilliance, to lecture to high-caste women in their duties according to the Hindu scriptures. In her study she discovered that the various scriptures contradicted themselves in virtually every area except in their view of women. The various Hindu writings and their interpreters all agreed
that women of high and low caste, as a class, were bad, very bad, worse than demons, as unholy as untruth, and that they could not get Moksha as men. The only hope of their getting this much-desired liberation from Karma and its results…was the worship of their husbands. The husband is said to be the women’s god; there is no other god for her.49
It was this discovery that launched Pandita on the path of reform. She was influenced by other reformers who were seeking to dismantle the caste system and other relics of Hindu tradition, but her focus was on women. She soon became known throughout India for her outspoken challenge to Hindu beliefs and her efforts to raise the status of women—particularly of widows whose misery exceeded that of married women. This concern was heightened after the death of her own husband of only nineteen months. From that time on she dedicated her efforts to reforming society so that her infant daughter would never have to endure the same degradation. She traveled from city to city, lecturing and forming chapters of a society she founded, Arya Mahila Somaj, which served the needs of oppressed women. It was during this time that she came in contact with a Baptist missionary and began her pilgrimage toward Christianity. For a time she joined the Brahmo Samaj cult, a syncretistic religion that combined Christianity with Hindu belief.50
In 1883 Ramabai visited England, where she lived with a friend, Sister Geraldine, who was a member of the Anglican Community of St. Mary the Virgin at Wantage. Although she had vowed before she left India, “Nothing will induce me to embrace Christianity,” she found herself irresistibly drawn to Christ and the faith of the Bible. When the news of her baptism reached India, there were cries of outrage that India’s foremost woman reformer would betray her people and her culture.51
For Ramabai, however, her new faith was not a betrayal of her cultural heritage, and her insistence on that created conflict with her friends in England. She abhorred the idea of being part of the Church of England. She considered herself simply a Christian and deeply resented the efforts of the Sisters to make her conform to their lifestyle. Indeed, she remained very independent in her Christianity as her fascinating letters to Sister Geraldine illustrate:
I am, it is true, a member of the Church of Christ, but I am not bound to accept every word that falls down from the lips of priests or bishops…I have just with great efforts freed myself from the yoke of the Indian priestly tribe, so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke by accepting everything which comes from the priests as authorized command of the Most High.”52
Ramabai’s questions and doubts regarding Christianity and the various denominational positions were upsetting to her Anglican friends in England who believed that she had committed herself to the Anglican faith at the time of her baptism. Ramabai argued that it was not possible for her to fully understand her faith at the time of her baptism. Again to Sister Geraldine she wrote:
I regret that I have been the cause of making you feel yourself wrong for the part you acted in my baptism. I wish I knew that your Church required a person to be quite perfect in faith, doubting nothing in the Athanasian Creed, so that he had left nothing to be learnt and inquired into the Bible after his baptism.53
She was likewise accused by Sister Geraldine of “clinging to caste prejudice which ought to have been thrown to the winds when you embraced Christianity.” One such prejudice was her refusal to eat puddings made from eggs. Ramabai responded, “You may, if you like trace my pride in pies and puddings…I confess I am not free from all my caste prejudices, as you are pleased to call them. I like to be called a Hindu, for I am one, and also keep all the customs of my forefathers as far as I can.” Then, with more than a hint of sarcasm, Ramabai turned the tables on Sister Geraldine, “How would an Englishwoman like being called proud and prejudiced if she were to go and live among the Hindus for a time but did not think it necessary to alter her customs when they were not hurtful or necessary to her neighbours?”54
Pandita Ramabai, a Great Christian Educator and Evangelist From India. From Helen S. Dyer, Pandita Ramabai (London: Pickering & Inglis, n.d.).
It was with that spirit of independence that Ramabai developed her educational ministry in India. She continued giving lectures and even accepted invitations to preach in Hindu temples, where she read from the Hindu scriptures and shared her Christian faith. For this she was heavily criticized by fellow Christians and Hindus alike, but at times she seemed to thrive on the controversy. To Sister Geraldine she wrote, “I am having a right good time in the storm of public indignation that is raging over my head.”55
Initially, Ramabai insisted on an open-minded approach in the school at Poona that she founded for child widows. She was convinced that the only way to bring Christianity effectively to India was to avoid making it alien to the Indian culture and the Hindu scriptures. The Hindu scriptures were available to the girls as was the Bible, and she did not seek to coerce them to convert to Christianity. In fact she insisted that the school be secular even though it was supported to a large extent by American Christians. She was critical of missionary schools, particularly the ones founded by Mary Carpenter, because they did not demonstrate proper respect for Indian culture and traditions. “These schools,” she wrote, “were opened to women of every caste, and while they have undoubtedly been of use, they have not realized the hopes of their founder, partly because of the impossibility of keeping caste-rules in them.”56
Such criticism was disturbing to many Christians, but even greater controversy arose later when a number of the girls in her own school requested Christian baptism. Hindu reformers accused her of proselytizing, and newspapers reported that she had misrepresented her secular stance, and as a result many families removed their daughters from the school. Soon after that, in 1898, she abandoned her secular policy and openly introduced the Bible and Christian principles in the school. The work expanded considerably in the years that followed, especially during a famine in 1900, when the needs for child widows magnified. She opened additional facilities, and there was a major spiritual breakthrough that was evidenced when more than a thousand girls professed faith in Christ.57
Despite her success, criticism of her work persisted, but Ramabai continued her open educational policy of living the Christian life before her students and responding to their enquiries, yet refusing to give into demands that the school would actively seek to evangelize its students as did other mission schools. In many ways her concept of how to bring Christianity to India was more acceptable to the people than that of many Western missionaries. Christianity had to be presented not in the form of Western denominations but as a faith that was compatible to the Indian culture and one that was focused on Christ and a very personalized faith rather than institutionalized dogma. This philosophy was seen in her deep longing for revival:
I was led by the Lord to start a special prayer circle at the beginning of 1905. There were about seventy of us who met together each morning and prayed for the true conversion of all the Indian Christians, including ourselves, and for special outpouring of the Holy Spirit…In six months from the time we began to pray in this manner, the Lord graciously sent a glorious Holy Ghost Revival among us, and also in many schools and churches in this country.58
Writing and Translation Work
Because of the high rate of illiteracy in the Third World, writing ministries for women were not common, but women who did write, often had opportunities for a far-reaching influence that would not otherwise have been available to them. This was true of Kazue Miki, the daughter of the president of Japan’s Osaka Stock Exchange.
Kazue Miki
Born in the early years of the twentieth century, Kazue Miki enjoyed educational advantages that were not available to the majority of Oriental women. Through the ministry of missionary Irene Webster-Smith and her Sunrise Home, Kazue began attending Bible classes and soon made a profession of faith in Christ. Through her testimony during the months that followed, the members of her family forsook their Buddhist faith and also turned to Christianity. It had been a painful break for many of the family members, and the transition from one set of values to another was difficult. For Kazue, however, the struggle to live the Christian life was complicated by other factors. Her marriage to a professing Christian man turned into a virtual prison sentence when she was forced to live with her mother-in-law who bitterly resented her Christian faith. She was abused and locked in a closet until she became so ill that she had to be hospitalized, and not long afterward she died. Yet her ministry lived on. During her time of stress she kept a diary that was later published under the title Kazue’s Diary. Its distribution throughout Japan, according to Russell Hitt, “was instrumental in leading many to a knowledge of Christ.”59
Language Informants
Another area of ministry that Third World women became involved in was Bible translation. They frequently served as language informants for women missionaries. Although their language proficiency was generally inferior to that of males in their tribe, it was they who, for reasons of cultural propriety, were chosen as informants. Eunice Pike, who served with Florence Hansen under Wycliffe Bible Translators in Mexico among the Mazatec Indians, found Marta to be invaluable in the tedious process of learning the Mazatec language.
Marta sewed while she acted as informant, and with her mind on her sewing she repeated, without impatience or comment, anything we asked her. One time I thought I had been particularly boring. About two hundred times she had repeated a sentence, each time substituting a different noun for the subject. I had been listening to the repetitions, ready to record any variations in the tone of the sentence. I was tired, and I was sure that she must be. In the way of apology, and to show a bit of sympathy, I said, “I’m a big nuisance.” Marta, without a change of expression, and without looking up from her sewing, polly-parroted back, “I’m a big nuisance.”60
Securing a competent informant who could endure the hours of tedium has been one of the most difficult problems missionary translators have faced. Men were particularly vulnerable to boredom, because language work often took them away from more exciting activities. Women, on the other hand, would sew or do other sedentary work while doing their job as an informant. Marta was an exceptional informant, in that she not only exhibited patience but also a keen interest in the work. She
seldom tired of repeating, and she especially enjoyed helping us to translate Bible stories. Her eyes shown as she saw each story develop. Eloisa, her sister, liked them too, and she listened while sewing or cooking nearby, and added her suggestions whenever Marta hesitated. Although only sixteen years old, Eloisa herself developed into a very able informant, and when Marta was busy she frequently took over.61
Foreign Missions
Despite the rapid growth of the church in certain areas of the Third World, the vast majority of foreign missionaries continue to be from the West. This has not always been true—especially in the South Seas where evangelistic endeavors to unreached islands was accomplished largely by native evangelists. Women were actively involved, accompanying their husbands as full partners in the missionary enterprise. According to Charles Forman, “the great period for indigenous missionary wives was the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries.” More than a thousand men and women from Samoa Tonga, Fiji, and the Cook Islands volunteered for crosscultural ministries mainly in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. The women went as missionary wives, but they “shared fully in the hard work involved. In places where women had little voice in society, missionary wives showed new possibilities.” Like their European counterparts, many of these women died young in childbearing, but those who returned to their native islands “were treated as heroines,” according to Forman, and their public speaking in the home churches set the example for other women and opened up new avenues of public service for women on the home front.62
Another area of the Pacific island world that was evangelized in part by women from the non-Western church was Hawaii. According to Alice Chai, “Bible women were on board almost every ship that brought [Korean] immigrants to Hawaii.” The story of one such evangelist has been recorded by her granddaughter:
My Grandmother was 28 years old when she left Korea with her eight-year-old daughter in 1903. Her own family had thrown her out of the house because of her Christian beliefs. She was estranged from her husband. With no future in Korea, she decided to go to Hawaii as a “Bible woman.” She helped so many of the immigrant women, counseling them and encouraging them…In the church you could see her standing with the men. They respected her convictions. My family often said, “Grandmother should have been a man!”63
China Native Evangelistic Crusade
The difficulty in raising financial support and the evangelistic needs in the homeland have limited the number of Christians to go abroad. These obstacles have been overcome, however, through financial aid from the West and through utilizing creative opportunities. In the 1940s the China Native Evangelistic Crusade, directed by N. A. Jepson, an American, sent out “thirteen gospel bands made up of Chinese evangelists, Bible women, and students” to unreached areas of China. In one area, north of Tibet, which was closed to the gospel, evangelism and church planting was conducted by the wife of a government official. “While her husband fulfilled his official duties, Mrs. Lee witnessed and taught the Bible, and soon a church was established.”64
Burmese Women’s Mission Societies
The church in Burma has been one of the most missionary-minded churches in the Third World. Here women’s missionary societies, patterned after those in the West have flourished for more than a century. By the turn of the century there were such organizations in each of the major language groups. The Burmese Baptist Women’s Society was supporting five full-time women evangelists in the early 1950s, while the Karen Society was supporting home missionaries in Lower Burma and foreign missionaries in Thailand, and the Methodist Women’s Society was carrying out similar work. “All the work of the organization,” wrote Kathleen Bliss, “is done by the women themselves on a voluntary basis.”65
Women’s Home Missionary Society of India
In India, support for missions also ran high among women. There the National Missionary Society depended heavily on local women’s organizations for support. In the hilly region of Assam, the Women’s Home Missionary Society made regular offerings for missionary work. “Our women take up a collection which is a handful of rice set apart from each meal. This handful of rice at the end of the week comes to about two pounds. This is brought to church and later sold at a little cheaper rate for the support of our evangelists.”66
Humanitarian Ministries
Humanitarian services were from the very beginning a vital part of women’s missionary work in the Third World—a work that would have been far less effective without the selfless sacrifice of nationals. Health care, refugee work, orphanages, and homes for prostitutes were all areas of ministry that captured the imaginations of Third World women. Indeed, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries non-Western Christian women patterned their social work after that of women in the West. Although their cultures were vastly different, many of their concerns were similar. For example, Christian women in Japan formed a Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and a Mrs. Yajima, the president, was described as “a Japanese Frances Willard.”67
Hilda Lazarus
Women’s medical work in India was stimulated as much by Dr. Ida Scudder as any other individual, and her most enduring legacy was the development of a large medical training facility to train nationals in a Christian atmosphere. As an American, however, she was unable to function as effectively in dealing with the Indian government during the difficult period following independence as was a national, and thus in 1947 Dr. Hilda Lazarus assumed the responsibilities of principal and director of the Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital. She held seven medical degrees and had previously served in the Indian army as a chief medical officer, but equally important was her strong Christian faith. Her two Brahmin grandfathers, despite intense opposition, had become Christians, and it was her vision to share that faith throughout India. As an administrator she was able to do what no foreigner would have been able to do. “She was not only an instrument and product of the new free India. She was its living embodiment. Her experience in government made her ideal for the task of piloting Vellore through this period of crisis.”68
Kieko Yammamuro
An organization that specialized in humanitarian ministries overseas as it did in the West was the Salvation Army, and female officers often played a leading role. An example was Kieko Yammamuro, who helped lead the fight against prostitution in Japan in the early twentieth century. Young girls were frequently bought or kidnapped and forced to work as prostitutes in the notorious Yoshiwara district of the city, and through the publicity and work of the Salvation Army, which stirred up public opinion and government intervention, more than a thousand girls were rescued. For Kieko, freeing the girls was only the beginning of her ministry. She directed a Salvation Army home that offered the girls education and training in a Christian atmosphere and a chance to turn their lives around.69
Although she was weak physically and had a husband and children to care for, Kieko did not limit her ministry to the home for prostitutes. Indeed, her greater ministry was establishing a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, for whom there was no room in the Salvation Army hospital. It was a task that seemed beyond her capabilities, but a challenge she could not ignore. She wrote of this struggle in her diary:
It seems too adventurous perhaps, but God is able. I have no one save the Holy Ghost to rely upon. My weak health and lack of ability seem to deny me success, but when I am weak, God is strong. Depending upon Him alone, I go forward to establish the Sanatorium. To be with the children makes me happy and perhaps some will call me neglectful of my duty as a mother. But though my eyes are wet with tears, I must go forward. O Lord, fill me with the Holy Ghost. Give me power to move the people. Amen.70
Dohnavur Fellowship
In India, Amy Carmichael depended almost entirely on women nationals to carry out the work of Dohnavur Fellowship in caring for the girls who were rescued from temple prostitution. In fact, many of the girls whom she rescued later became the leaders in the institution. In 1916, she and seven of these Indian girls formed the Sisterhood of the Common Life. It was a spiritual union, but it had very practical goals—to steer young women into a single-minded ministry that was not encumbered by family responsibilities. One of these faithful women was Arulai. Of her, Carmichael wrote, “She has shared in every part of the work from the beginning and knows everything from the inside…Her faithful heart has never swerved from the most flawless loyalty.” For nearly forty years she served alongside Carmichael, conducting meetings, teaching classes, and preparing young women to enter the Sisterhood, which grew to over nine hundred by 1952.71
Protestant Sisterhoods
The sisterhood that Amy Carmichael developed on Indian soil was independent of church control and was focused on one particular social problem. There were other Protestant sisterhoods, however, that were tied to the church and that were involved in a wider range of social and religious activities. One of those was the Order for Women in the Church of South India, founded in 1952. The Church of South India was a union of Protestant churches that recognized soon after its formation the need for women to be officially incorporated into professional church ministry. In the early years there were more than a thousand such female professionals involved in evangelistic and humanitarian endeavors, but the number dropped to two hundred and twenty-four by 1978.72
One of the reasons for the decline of women in professional ministry was the lack of control women had over their ministries. The bishop of the diocese assigned them to specific duties—duties that were considered appropriate for women. By the mid-1960s, many women were concerned about their lack of financial security and were questioning their status in the church in relationship to men. During the 1970s, the issue was brought before the synod of the church and a recommendation was made by the Executive Committee to ordain women. The proposed changes were initially delayed because of a failure to obtain a two-thirds majority of the dioceses, but in 1982 the measure passed, and women were ordained along with men.73
One of the decisive points that influenced the decision to give women equality in the church was the cultural factor. Although the Theological Commission had published a biblical and theological defense of women’s ordination, it was societal changes that were given the most weight when the final consideration was made. The commission argued that denying ordination to women was not compatible with the “new understanding of the dignity of womanhood” in India. Pragmatic concerns were also voiced. The report concluded that there were certain types of pastoral work “for which women pastors are better suited.”74
Roman Catholic Sisterhoods
From early in the nineteenth century when Anne-Marie Javouhey began commissioning the Sisters of St. Joseph to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there was a conscientious effort to train nationals to share equally in the work. As female religious orders spread from the West into the developing nations, more and more nationals became involved.
One internationally acclaimed sisterhood that has drawn heavily from the Third World for its sacrificial volunteers has been the Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa. Indeed, the mission was born in India in 1949 after Sister Teresa left the security of her religious community and, with the help of a few Bengali volunteers, began her life of ministering to the “poorest of the poor.” The first woman to join the movement was Subashini Das, one of Sister Teresa’s former students. With the needs so great in India, the practice of cloistering nuns seemed to make little sense to Sister Teresa and her followers. Their focus was on the streets where teeming millions were oppressed by the effects of poverty. “Young women flocked to the Missionaries of Charity. Soon teams of Sisters spread out into fifty Indian cities, opening free clinics, antileprosy clinics, free schools, and vocational training centers.”75
In the decades that followed, the Missionaries of Charity spread out all over the world. By 1981, there were more than two hundred houses functioning throughout the world, most of which had been founded by small teams of Indian women. In that year Mother Teresa established teams in such diverse geographical locations as East Berlin, Egypt, and Macao, off the coast of China. Other Indian sisters went to Korea, Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Haiti.76
Charismatic Ministries
A significant area of ministry for women in non-Western churches, as had been the case in the Western church throughout church history, was that involving charismatic phenomena. Generally such charismatic ministry was more characteristic of the independent national churches than of the denominational and mission churches that were heavily influenced and sometimes controlled by Western missionaries. In fact, one major reason for the birth and growth of independent churches in Africa was the fact that they offered women a wide range of meaningful opportunities for ministry.
Women have had a significant religious influence in South Africa, particularly among the Zionist and Apostolic churches during the first half of the twentieth century, where they held prominent positions as healers and prophetesses. Typically such a woman claimed authority from God, testifying of a personal “call” that came “in the form of dreams or visions and usually after a history of illness of which she was cured.” That her ministry was authenticated by a call, however, did not presume that she would have supernatural abilities or knowledge. Indeed, many of these women began a long process of training that gave them a reputation of being the most well-versed Bible teachers in the churches. In some instances these women founded their own churches and functioned as the pastor. Some of these women were considered lay preachers, but others were ordained and fully qualified to administer the sacraments. In most cases, however, the ministries of these women were limited to women’s organizations that operated in conjunction with an established church and its male pastor.77
Even though the independent women’s organizations functioned outside the local church, they wielded a powerful influence on the church, and pastors were frequently “heavily dependent on the women for a host of personal services.” Fundraising was a significant aspect of their organizational activity, and churches and pastors knew the value of being in their good graces. Other than providing needed funds for the church, the main activity of these organizations was caring for their own in time of sickness. Occasionally, the women leaders were employed by the churches as evangelists, but the main ministry of the prophetess or healer was to lead the women’s meetings. Here they exercised considerable freedom of expression in their religious worship. One woman after another would be “taken by the Spirit,” which was generally characterized by violent shaking and high-pitched chanting and exhortation.78
African Independent Movements
Many of the African independent movements were founded by women, and some of these attracted large followings. Mai (Mother) Chaza founded the City of God movement in 1952, and Alice Lenshina founded the Lumpa church two years later, each of which had followings of nearly one hundred thousand. The vast majority of such movements, however, were much smaller, some no more than a single congregation. The number of such female leaders has numbered in the hundreds in recent decades.79
Alice Lenshina, the head of the Lumpa church, was an unusual character, but in many ways she typified independent female leadership. She “gained her reputation as a Ngulu-possessed girl, with an unhappy married life, who suffered from fainting fits. She rebelled against the elders’ verdict that her visions were not genuine, and that as a woman of the catechumen class she could not be allowed to preach.” She was excommunicated from the church and after that formed her own movement.80
The St. John’s Apostolic Church located near Johannesburg was also founded by a charismatic woman—“Ma Nku, the vigorous, outgoing, immensely popular healer and prophetess.” Although she has been described as “powerful, ebullient, one of those African women who can lead thousands and exercise authority as one born to it,” she struggled in maintaining leadership in her church. Men served in the office of bishop, and after her bishop husband died, she endured years of conflict with the succeeding leaders of “her” church.81
Unlike many other Third World Christian women’s organizations, the women leaders in these independent churches ministered especially to their own people—other Christian women. But even through that type of ministry they reached out. The enthusiastic and charismatic character of their meetings attracted outsiders, and the result in many instances was rapid numerical growth.
Charismatic Revival in Indonesia
There were other areas besides Africa where the charismatic ministry of women was a significant factor in the Christian community. Indonesia is an example, especially during the revival movements of the 1960s. It was then that Mother Li, an uneducated woman with eleven children, claimed a divine call to missionary work. Before going overseas, however, she began a charismatic prayer ministry among her own people. As leader of a prayer group, she focused her followers’ attention on communion, claiming that God had given her the assurance that for a two-year period he would perform a miracle during each communion service, such as changing water into wine. She also developed a ministry of reconciling pastors whose strife was wreaking havoc on their pastoral work, claiming God had given her direct authority to act as peacemaker. “Traveling continually by foot, Mother Li has journeyed from one end of the island to the other reconciling pastors and elders and other Christians to each other, as the Lord has directed her.”82
Another Indonesian woman who had an influential charismatic ministry was simply known as Sarai. She began preaching on the same night that she received her visionary call. She began at six o’clock in the evening and continued on, as neighbors gathered, until three o’clock in the morning. “During her preaching the spirit of prophecy suddenly came over her, and she began to tell the people present what fetishes they had in their houses, and where they were hidden. Those concerned hurried away and fetching their amulets and charms, they brought them back to the meeting and threw them into a heap.” She also became deeply involved in a healing ministry, traveling from village to village on the islands of Timor and Rote.83
Pastoral Ministries and Church Leadership
Although full equality for women in church ministries has been resisted in most areas of the non-Western world even more than it has been in the West, there were exceptions such as those that were seen in the Independent churches of South Africa and Rhodesia. In other instances, although women’s equality in theory was fiercely opposed, women nevertheless played a key role in conducting the affairs of the church. By the mid-twentieth century the church in Manchuria, for example, had many Bible-school-trained women—some of whom had given up promising careers—who were actively conducting itinerant ministries.
They sometimes do all the work of a pastor except administer the Sacraments. Others have been responsible for superintending the work of the Church in a whole district, traveling round, staying in one place for several weeks, organizing women’s meetings and preparing candidates for baptism.”84
Women Pastors in Oceania
In most areas of the Third World women have had more difficulty being accepted in the pastoral ministry than in the West. Oceania is a case in point. The first female ordinations came in the mid-1970s, and they involved women who were trained for specialized ministries rather than for the pastorate. Because of strong opposition, the pastorate has for all practical purposes remained closed to women. Yet women have risen to the highest leadership positions in church organizations. In 1971 and again in 1977, women were chosen to serve in the position of general secretary for the Pacific Conference of Churches.85
Women Pastors in Japan
The situation was similar in Asia. In the early 1950s, Kathleen Bliss reported that “no Indian women are ordained even in those churches which ordain women to the ministry in the West…Thus social custom may make it impossible for the question of women’s ordination to be raised although there is no theological barrier.” In rare instances, however, women overcame strict social barriers and held high positions in the church. That was the case in Tokyo, where Bliss reported that “a woman is the minister of one of the largest churches.” More often, though, because of the large female majority in church membership, women “pastors” served the needs of the women parishioners. One way for women to overcome social barriers was to work closely with their husbands. In Japan, the pastor’s wife developed considerable influence, and sometimes served with her husband in the pastoral duties of two churches.86
An example of a contemporary Japanese female ordained minister is Yoshimura Sensei, who in 1984 at the age of eighty was still teaching the women’s Bible studies she had begun more than forty years earlier. After becoming a Christian as a young woman she felt called to become a minister, but seminary education and ordination for women were at that time strictly prohibited. She became actively involved in lay ministries but did not give up her dream, and finally in 1962, when she was fifty-two years old, enrolled at Tokyo Union Theologate, which by that time had more than twenty women students. After her ordination she continued her teaching at a Japanese Christian school.87
Li Tim Oi Ordained in Hong Kong
In some instances women were ordained by church leaders over objections from their parent denominations in the West. This occurred in 1944 when Anglican Bishop R. O. Hall from Hong Kong ordained Li Tim Oi as a priest. He justified the unprecedented move on the basis that there was a severe shortage of male priests, and his local synod supported him. Although she was qualified to serve, her ordination was ruled invalid by York and Canterbury, and she agreed to relinquish her position.88
United Congregational Church in South Africa
One unlikely place for a woman—especially a black woman—to gain recognition as a church leader has been South Africa. Most denominational churches have been very reluctant to ordain or permit them to serve in high office in the church. An extraordinary exception, however, was the 1981 election of Rev. M. Constable to the presidency of the United Congregational Church in South Africa. She entered office at a crucial time when the church was reformulating its stand on various aspects of apartheid.89
Roman Catholic Women Leaders
The position of Third World women in the Roman Catholic Church has in some significant instances exceeded that of Western women. This situation has resulted because of a shortage of male priests and has been most common in areas of Latin America. “The service women lend the church is reflected in the Latin American Conference of Religious,” writes Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. “Of 160,000 members about 130,000 are women. Due to the shortage of priests, the pastoral roles of many women members of religious communities go far beyond what they do in the U. S. In many areas women religious are indeed ‘pastors’—their exclusion from the ministry of the sacraments is all that keeps them from functioning as priests.”90
Some Latin countries were more dependent on “women religious” than others. During the 1970s in Chile, for example, there was only one priest for every four thousand baptized Catholics, while in the United States there was one per eight hundred. Because of this severe shortage of priests, some ten thousand lay women were trained as “Mother Catechists” to teach children the faith. But even more significant was the promotion of sisters to the position of “sister administrators.”
They took over those tasks traditionally reserved to clergy: planning and conducting paraliturgical ceremonies and carrying the entire burden of religious formation of adults and children—pre-baptismal talks for parents, prematrimonial formation of couples, the formation of basic communities for Christian living, parochial administration, and a limited participation in the administration of the sacraments. By 1976 there were nearly 80 of these “sister administrators” in parishes all over Chile.91
B. V. Subbamma
One of the most influential women leaders in the Third World Christian church in recent decades has been B. V. Subbamma, who has become recognized in the field of missiology for her New Patterns for Discipling Hindus. Equally significant, however, has been her ministry among her own people. She has served as the principal of the Charlotte Swenson Memorial Bible Training School and as an evangelist, drawing crowds of men and women sometimes numbering several thousand.92
House Churches in China
Perhaps the most striking example of women in church in recent years has been in the church of China since the 1950s. After visiting China in 1981, Arthur Glasser stated that he was convinced that women were a key to the survival of Christianity under the Chinese Communist regime. “Fully 85% of the leaders of the house churches thriving in the People’s Republic of China are women.”93
Ecumenical Activities
One of the most outstanding Third-World women in ecumenical circles during the early twentieth century was Lilavati Singh from India who served as a teacher in, and later president of, the Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow. In 1900 she visited the United States and gave an address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York, where she passionately presented the educational needs of women in India. “So profound was the impression that no one was surprised when ex-President Harrison said that if he had given a million dollars to evangelize India, and this wonderful woman were the only convert, he should feel that his money had been well expended.” In 1907 Singh represented the Young Women’s Christian Associations of India at a world conference of university students held in Tokyo. Helen Barrett Montgomery writes, “She probably made a profounder impression of spirituality and intellectual power than any other woman of the conference.” The following year she traveled to England and the Continent to speak to student volunteer conferences. Her untimely death in 1909 while she was on a speaking tour in the United States was a profound loss to the cause of educational and ecumenical work among women in the Third World.94
Lilavati Singh, Acting President of Lucknow College. From Helen Barrett Montgomery. Western Women in Eastern Lands (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 186.
A Future Built on the Past
The success and acclaim that accompanied Singh’s ministry was not the norm for Third World women. Some did rise above the cultural and sex barriers and were recognized for their service, but the vast multitude of women who gave their lives in Christian ministry have been buried in obscurity without even a mention of their names on the rolls of the church. Yet the legacy they left lives on and serves as a shining example to the West, and for that reason as much as any other, their story needs to be written. Indeed, the history of the church will never be complete until proper recognition is given to Christianity in the non-Western world.
What does the future hold for women in ministry in the non-Western world? Geographical and denominational factors will continue to have a significant bearing on the role they have in the churches, but there are signs of rapid change on every continent. Latin America is a prime example. “A few years ago,” writes Elisabeth Isais, “a typical conscientious Latin American father would never allow his daughter to study medicine or law…But today in Latin America women are increasingly surfacing as doctors, lawyers, diplomats, or administrators.” The churches—particularly the Evangelicals—have been slower to welcome change than secular institutions, but even here the evolutionary transition is noticeable.
True, most capable women are still found in the weekly Ladies’ Missionary Society, singing in the choir, or teaching Sunday school. But some are teaching in Bible institutes, directing large choirs, leading Christian education programs, and even pastoring churches. In Mexico one very large denomination is led by a soft-spoken little lady named Febe Flores.”95
History has demonstrated the potent force women can be in world evangelism, and the future growth of the Christianity in the Third World depends to a large extent on how women are incorporated into the total life and ministry of the church. As significant as the Bible woman was a century ago, that lowly position does not adequately meet the needs of the contemporary non-Western woman who desires a career ministry in the church. Protestant and Roman Catholic women alike are seeking meaningful ministries that reflect their higher level of education and training and that will more effectively meet the needs of modern society.