Booths Writing Boldly: Part 2
by Colonel Richard Munn
This 10-part series will look at bold written exhortations from William, Catherine, Bramwell, Herbert, and Evangeline. The force of their collective convictions still lands. Often quoted, they have the capacity to pierce straight into the heart of the matter, impatiently swatting aside distractions and equivocations.
Booths Writing Boldly: Part 2
“Female Ministry; or, Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel”
—Catherine Booth
She heard a respected cleric say from the pulpit that men were morally and intellectually superior to women. She wrote to him directly in indignation, refuting his reasoning. Then, she penned the pamphlet that would prove to be the springboard for her own remarkable ministry. Catherine Booth wrote boldly:
“Female Ministry; or, Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel”
Particularly galling to Catherine is the purported biblical sanction that women should not preach. Like a lawyer she forensically peels back the premise. No rant, just clinical efficiency. Dismantle the isolated, peripheral, and culturally specific prohibitions, and stand on the time-honored principle: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
The journey from precocious biblical intelligence and marriage to the more swashbuckling William to her own public preaching was most certainly not a foregone nor inevitable conclusion for Catherine. Basically retiring and reticent at the prospect, she writes of “want of courage,” yet cannot deny the persistent prodding of the Holy Spirit. Finally, as a spontaneous act of sheer obedience, she rises from her pew before a thousand people, approaches an astonished William in the pulpit, and privately utters the memorable phrase, “I want to say a word.” She preaches for the first time that evening.
All the voracious reading, years of personal devotion, sharp rhetorical correspondence with William, and others, pour forth from the pulpit — and Catherine quickly becomes a national figure and sought-after preacher. Her impact leads author Roy Hattersley to believe she is “the most extraordinary woman of the nineteenth century.”
The outcome? Historian Roger Green is clear, noting the “thousands of women who followed her example.” From the beginning, women have served equally alongside men in The Salvation Army and have free access to the pulpit.
Bold indeed.
Sister, do you want to have a word?
Brother, are you enabling a sister to have a word?
Salvationists, are we sufficiently exhorting our sisters to have a word?
View the full Female Ministry text by Catherine Booth.
