Women In American Pentecostalism

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FOCUS:

WOMEN AND

Women

in American

Edith L. Blumhofer

Guest Editor

is required.

19

PENTECOSTALISM

Pentecostalism

in American Pentecostalism is

denominations

The

story

of women’s involvement

complex

and

confusing.

For the most

part,

Pentecostal

have not

readily

affirmed women as

pastors.

Women have thus been formally

excluded from institutional

positions

for which full ordination

And in the few Pentecostal denominations that offer women full

ordination,

that ordination has not

generally

translated into

equal access to

positions

of denominational

leadership.

On the other

hand, most Pentecostal denominations have

historically supported

female evangelists

and home and

foreign

missionaries. And women have

immeasurable cultural

authority

in Pentecostal

congregations.

valued individual testimonies of God’s

working

in participants’

that God

might

choose to manifest the

gifts

of the

Holy Spirit through any Spirit-filled believer,

female or

women at least some voice in

exercised

Early

Pentecostals

lives,

and

they

believed

male. These two

premises Pentecostal services.

assured

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism.

The scholar who decides to

study

the role of women in American

quickly

learns that there is no

single narrative,

but there are

many

stories. For

every story

of affirmation there is another of frustration or

repression.

The material in the

following pages presents only

a few of the stories. Its

scope

is limited to Trinitarian

Anglo

My opening

reflection is culled from a paper given in a session on Gender and

Meaning

at the

January

1995 annual

meeting

of the American

Society

of Church

History.

The next two short

pieces by David Roebuck and Deborah Gill consider women’s collective

in two denominations-the Church of God

leadership experiences

(Cleveland)

and the Assemblies

of God. Kurt Berends has been

Fruits, the network

Pentecostalism in

Newfoundland,

working

in some

recently

discovered issues of The

Sheaf of

the First

to which Alice

Garrigus,

belonged.

an

early

leader of His

essay explores

the

biographical prominent

spiritual

formation of an

early

female

evangelist. Wayne

Warner’s

sketch of

Kathryn

Kuhlman documents the life of a

woman of a later era.

1

20

Perhaps

evangelist pastors;

.

extraordinary

dependence

on

by-laws

unpublished correspondence

of

policy. Frey

evangelistic

work. Scholars wide

discrepancies sometimes occurred.

most

suggestive

is the section of this issue devoted to selections from the

previously

Pentecostal

evangelist

Mae Eleanore

Frey.

The letters selected from her ministerial file contain

revealing nuggets

about the life of a female

who was also a wife and mother. Her

experience

with male

her encounters with the Ku Klux Klan and with E. W.

Kenyon; her occasional frustrations with Assemblies of God

policies;

her

advice from denominational

headquarters all

emerge

in these letters. Assemblies of God leaders

evidently endorsed

Frey’s ministry, and,

at a time when their constitution and

denied women the office of elder

(or pastor),

the denomination’s General

Secretary

saw no reason that

Frey

could not be a

pastor.

His

astonishing disregard

for the

personal dynamics

involved in settling a female

pastor

in a district that she knew did not want her is matched

only by

his

apparent disregard

for official denominational

was saved a showdown

by

the

unexpected

death of her husband which

opened

the

way

for her to continue in non-controversial

should be forewarned of the

possibility

of

between what

regulations

Pentecostalism.

mandated

and what

nor

representative.

It

of

Black and

Hispanic

stories that inform attitudes Pentecostal

community.

This FOCUS section is neither

comprehensive

admittedly ignores

the rich

experiences

female missionaries as well as those of women in

Oneness, independent,

In some of these

cases,

scholars do not

yet

have adequate

accessible sources to

begin

to unravel the relevant stories. With

only

one

exception,

these

essays

are

forthrightly

historical.

They do not deal with

change

over

time,

nor do

they

consider the attitudes toward women in the

contemporary growing independent

Pentecostal sector.

They do, however,

offer

glimpses

into different eras and

aspects

of the

story

of women and

Anglo-American

in so doing, they suggest

different

renderings

toward women

Pentecostalism. And for the

many richly

textured

within the American

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