2) ‘Leadership’ did not necessarily involve preaching. The class meeting, held weekly under the guidance of a class leader, was a crucial component
of Methodist spirituality. All Society members were expected to meet in class: the class could include people ‘seeking salvation’ as well as those ‘pressing on to perfection’, and the class leader’s skilled task was to enable the testimony of the latter to bring the former to the point of assurance of salvation. In theory women led classes composed entirely of women: detailed research into local situations shows that they led mixed classes also.[3]
3) Leadership was also called for in the organisation of active discipleship. The life of the person ‘pressing on to perfection’ was marked not only by personal devotion and holiness but by acts of service. From its earliest days Methodism was (and is) highly activist. Women had opportunities to take up overt leadership roles in organisations specifically addressing the needs of women, such as Childbed Linen Societies, and to occupy highly active and important roles in others such as Strangers’ Friend and Benevolent Societies where institutional leadership was confined to men.
In the ‘Wesley’ period, therefore, the fluidity of a rapidly growing revival movement, combined with Wesley’s own sympathy for women’s faith and spirituality, gave considerable scope for women in leadership roles. To what extent, however, did these characteristics persist in later generations?
Consolidation and division, 1791 – 1850 approx.
1) Evolution from ‘revival movement’ to ‘church’ took place at varying speed in the different branches into which Methodism split in this period. The change overall was characterised by the professionalisation of ministry and a membership increasingly constituted by birth rather than conversion, with the expected consequences for women’s opportunities to exercise leadership.
2) Preaching: women in the largely undivided Methodism of the time were restricted in 1803 from preaching other than in their own circuit and to women-only groups. At this time around 25 women were preaching publicly. The Primitive Methodist and Bible Christian branches, separating in 1811 and 1815 respectively, continued to allow women to be itinerant preachers. Rather than forbidding their preaching, these Connexions allowed female preaching to wither away as they became more institutionalised: severe decline set in in the 1840’s and the last (extremely long-lived) PM woman preacher, Elizabeth Bultitude, died in 1890. But even within Wesleyan Methodism (which from 1836 ordained its (exclusively male) itinerant ministers by the laying on of hands) ongoing research indicates that women’s preaching persisted. [4]
3) Women continued to fill a variety of leadership roles. In situations of expansion, particularly in rural areas, throughout the 1830’s, 40’s and 50’s, even in Wesleyan Methodism, they acted as circuit stewards and treasurers, preached at revival meetings, made significant gifts for chapel building and led mixed classes, acted as pastoral leaders for ministers who infrequently visited large rural circuits, as well as exercising leadership in traditionally ‘female’ areas such as Sunday Schools.
4) Women’s leadership was increasingly confined to female contexts, but some of these, such as Sunday Schools, became increasingly important in the life and mission of the denominations. The support of overseas missions in particular opened up new leadership possibilities for Wesleyan women. Missionary Auxiliary Societies run by and for women proliferated from 1813 on. Bureaucratic procedures such as maintaining accounts and forwarding donations gave training in administration, while the presentation of missionaries’ wives as responding to a calling of their own, rather than merely tagging along with their husbands’, encouraged women to aspire to this highly glamourised form of service.[5]