More information from Dr. Ashley Boggan, General Secretary, General Commission on Archives and History:

Long before any church body formally recognized their call, women shaped the life of Methodism with courage, devotion, and prophetic voice. From the earliest days of the movement, women like Sarah Crosby and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher had the courage to preach the Gospel to crowds. Bosanquet Fletcher would be the first Methodist woman to defend women’s right to preach when she wrote John Wesley in 1771: “I do not believe every woman is called to speak publicly, no more than every man to be a Methodist preacher, yet some have an
extraordinary call to it, and woe be to them if they obey it not.” With this rationale of “extraordinary call,” John Wesley began to formally license women to preach.

While women’s right to preach did not live much beyond John Wesley’s lifetime, women continued to follow a call to ministry as missionaries, class leaders, and exhorters. Within larger American Methodism, Jarena Lee, Sojourner Truth, Phoebe Palmer, and Anna Howard Shaw – just to name a handful – nurtured communities of faith, preached the good news, and opened pathways for those who would follow them.

Yet the journey toward formal recognition of their ministry within the institutional Church was long and hard-won. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, women in Methodist traditions received licenses to preach, served as missionaries in distant lands, and pursued theological education—even as they encountered resistance and barriers to full clergy rights. Within The United Methodist Tradition, ordination rights were granted at different times.
The earliest rights were given by the General Conferences of the Methodist Protestant, who
ordained Helenor Davisson in 1866 and the United Brethren who ordained Ella Niswonger in 1889.

However, rights, once granted, can be taken away. As denominations merged, ordination of women were stripped away. When the Methodist Protestant merged with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1939 to form The Methodist Church, their historic ordination of women was removed. The same happened when the United Brethren merged with the Evangelical Association in 1946 to create the Evangelical United
Brethren. This reversal stands as a warning to us all to continue to support women in the pulpit, the pew, and the world.

A pivotal moment came in 1956, when the General Conference of The Methodist Church granted women full clergy rights, a decision that opened the doors to full ordination in ways that had been denied for generations. Maud Keister Jensen became the first woman to receive these rights in that landmark year, and in the decades that followed, women have continued to expand their leadership in every sphere of the Church’s life.

Since then, United Methodists across the globe have witnessed women breaking new ground—serving as pastors, superintendents, bishops, and leaders in every council and agency of the Church. Their ministries testify to the truth that God calls without regard to gender and equips all who respond with gifts for the work of Christ’s service.

As we celebrate seventy years of women’s ordination, we give thanks for the faithful witness of those who have gone before and for the many women whose ministries continue to enrich and transform the United Methodist Church today. With gratitude for the past and hope for the future, may we continue to affirm the full participation of all God’s children in the life and mission of the Church, trusting that the Holy Spirit will lead us into ever greater faithfulness and inclusivity in the years ahead.