Chosen by God: women pastors on the frontiers of the seventh day baptist denomination: we sat in the warm July sunshine, taking a break from the afternoon camp activities. Suddenly Courtney swung her body around and looked across the picnic table at me. She had just heard another adult address me.

Why are you called Pastor Pat?" She fired the question at me as only a ten-year-old can. "Because I am a pastor--a minister--and I lead a church," I responded with a laugh. "You do!?" she exclaimed. With widened eyes and a voice raised in pitch, she continued, "You mean a woman can lead a church?" I looked at her and said firmly, "Oh, yes, Courtney, women can be pastors and they can lead a church."

In Women's Place in Baptist Life, Carolyn D. Blevins raised the thought-provoking question: "Within Baptist life, what is women's place?" Blevins then urged her readers to discover the answer to that question by undertaking three basic tasks: (1) ask questions and be willing to find unexpected answers, (2) study the diverse heritage of women in Baptist life and learn from it, and (3) answer God's call to use their abilities. (2) When one undertakes these three tasks, one enters into an amazing journey of historical discovery and self-discovery.

These Seventh Day Baptist women ministers--single, married, and widowed--have been extraordinary in their obedience to God and to his call to serve as pastors and to serve as "one who has spiritual oversight over a congregation of Christian believers in a church or Christian community." (3) Their sacred stories are particularly striking considering that: (1) Sabbath keeping Baptists have been in existence for about 355 years; (2) the Seventh Day Baptist denomination in the United States is small, with approximately 70 Conference registered churches, 23 non-Conference registered fellowships, and 5,000 to 6,000 individual members; (3) negative attitudes toward female pastors have prevailed in some local Seventh Day Baptist churches; and (4) the local church has the authority over hiring and firing ministers.

The Frontiers of the Denomination: Migrations, Missions, and the Church

The word "frontier" usually implies the border or advance region of a settlement and civilization. Often a place that is different and farthest out from the center, it signifies or symbolizes the beginning of something new. A frontier is a place or state of being filled with unknown dangers, hardships, and risks, as well as excitement, exploration, growth, advancement, and new knowledge. Seventh Day Baptist female pastors have always functioned on the frontiers by the fact that they themselves are "different." They are female Christians in a world often hostile to Christianity, obeying an inner call by God, being bold to preach, teach, and lead in pastoral roles traditionally claimed by men, and celebrating worship on a day other than the one chosen by the Christian world at large.

Few people are aware that since the 1600s some Baptists have honored and kept the biblical seventh day. This group believes that baptism upon profession of faith, the priesthood of all believers, and observance of the seventh day Sabbath are vital truths that Christians should practice and uphold. They believe in congregational polity, separation of church and state, liberty of conscience, guidance by the Holy Spirit, and the authority of the Bible for faith and practice.

In America, the first Baptist Sabbatarian churches were organized in the areas of Newport, Rhode Island; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Piscataway, New Jersey. Seventh Day Baptists began migrating outward from these three American centers in order to establish settlements in which they could live and worship together. They spread into "central and western New York, western Virginia, the states of the Old Northwest Territory, across the Great Plains, into the Rocky mountains and on to the Pacific coast." (4) Their migration patterns created situations of isolation due to the great distances between the settlement churches and the unique Sabbathkeeping habits and commitments of the people. Pushed to the fringes of geographical frontiers, travel and communication became even more difficult. If a Seventh Day Baptist pastor died or moved on, the church and community were often left without a spiritual leader. In some churches, women pastors willingly filled such voids. Migration patterns, isolated Sabbathkeeping individuals and communities, education, and a lack of home missionaries contributed to the need for and the small, but rising number of women pastors from the late 1800s to the 1930s.

Equality of Women in Education

Historically, Seventh Day Baptist men and women have considered education to be an important undertaking, and "in many early communities where Seventh Day Baptists established churches, they organized schools to provide educational opportunities before the public school system was able to meet the demands." (5) One Seventh Day Baptist school system in particular played an important role in the education of the first ordained female pastors in the denomination. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Seventh Day Baptists migrated to and settled in the high hills of Allegany County, New York, and established the village of Alfred. The group founded a select school in 1836. In 1843, the Alfred school became an academy, and in 1857, it was chartered as Alfred University.

At its beginnings, the academy was remarkable in that it accepted women as students and "nourished and supported its women to an unusual degree, with less dispute and resistance, before and after the Civil War, than has been described at other institutions.... The conviction derived from natural rights philosophy that male and female intellects were equal in capacity--'thought knows no sex,' said Jonathan Allen, who served as the university's president from 1867 to 1892. (6) Women could attend all classes, could participate fully, and could read their papers aloud. Alfred University and its School of Theology would eventually have at least three graduates who became Seventh Day Baptist women ministers, including Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick, Angeline Abbey Allen, and Elizabeth Fitz Randolph. The historical importance of higher education for Seventh Day Baptist female pastors has continued to the present time. Since the 1870s, when Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick completed her education at Alfred University, most every female pastor has completed advanced educational studies and formal training for the ministry.

Evangelism and Home-Front Missions

As needs arose, educated female pastors willingly accepted the challenges of multiple pastoral assignments, even those that sent them to the Seventh Day Baptist settlements located in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and beyond. In August 1901, evangelist missionary pastor Malvina Townsend sent this report to the Sabbath Recorder: "Three weeks of labor [preaching and tent meetings] in New Auburn, Minnesota, through heat of from 96 to 106 degrees in the shade for ten days." (7) In a December 1902 article, she reported from areas known for fierce winds, deep snows, and subzero temperatures: "At Pleasant Prairie a severe snow storm had the right of way, so no services were held ... at Rock House [there was] no storm so hard that a team [of horses] and someone of the Atkins family could not take me where I needed to go ... I begin meetings in this place [Coloma, Wisconsin] tonight. The weather is so inclement that I can make no calls for a day or two." (8) Townsend preached passionately, wrote countless newspaper and magazine articles, organized new Christian societies, was active in the Women's Temperance League, and led home prayer meetings and public revivals. Her territory for ministry spread throughout the states of Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Beginning in 1912, another evangelist missionary, Angeline Abbey Allen, traveled the broad expanses of the Northern Plains, attending to isolated Sabbathkeepers and communities in the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Formally educated as a nurse and a pastor, Allen's primary passion was to support and minister to isolated Sabbathkeepers, and she accomplished this through countless personal visits, correspondence, and a newsletter. This mission, carried out until her death, had been started in 1893 when she was newly married and living as a lone Sabbathkeeper herself. In addition to her work as a traveling evangelist, Allen also served as full-time pastor for churches in New Auburn, Minnesota (1916-1920), and Fouke, Arkansas (1923-1926). In 1926, she organized and then was voted in as pastor of a church in Edinburg, Texas, and served there until 1929.

She Could Not Keep Silent

Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick, born in 1852 to Seventh Day Baptist parents, grew up in the deep woods of Berie County, West Virginia. Even as child, she felt God's call to preach the gospel but felt dread about her calling because she was not a boy. In later years she wrote:

   No church influences helped me to decide the vital question, for
   my home church, during my girlhood and early womanhood, was
   in West Virginia, where the people felt that "women as pastors do
   not succeed, and it is not wise to encourage young women to
   prepare themselves for the ministry." The church of which I was a
   member fek yet more strongly and believed "it would be wicked for
   a woman to try to preach." For over 25 years my longing to enter
   the ministry was a profound secret between myself and God. (9)

In 1882, when she was thirty-two-years old, this highly respected teacher finally announced her calling as a minister, and she began to preach in public. She obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Alfred Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1885. A biographer wrote that, at the time of Burdick's unexpected death in 1906: "Records show that she has conducted fifty weddings, ninety funerals, and ten years ago had preached eight hundred and ninety sermons.... At the time of her death she was pastor of the Seventh-day Baptist church at New Auburn, Wisconsin, where her work was very efficient and greatly appreciated by all who came under her influence." (10)

Like so many female pastors throughout the ages, Burdick, or Reverend Perie as she was affectionally called, was a wife, a mother, and a tireless servant of God. Fulfilling these three roles was significant, but there is little doubt that her commitment to her Lord and Savior was her spiritual priority, and fulfilling her calling came at great cost. In a handwritten letter dated December 10, 1904, and sent from New Auburn, Wisconsin, Burdick wrote to her husband and daughter back in New Auburn, Minnesota:

"My Dear Ones at Home, How are you this evening? I wish I could just get a hold of you both." She then expressed her love for her daughter, Genevieve, who was celebrating her twelfth birthday that day. Burdick also wrote about her health and noted that she suffered from severe headaches. She concluded the letter with these poignant words: "I wish I was coming home this week. To me there is no place like home. I do hope Leon you won't be running around the country after night. Do be careful in the woods. Genevieve, be very careful and don't take cold. Pray for me. Write often and much. Your loving Wife and Mother, Perle R. Burdick." (11)

At the time she wrote this letter, Burdick was attending to her people in her church in Wisconsin, while her husband, also a pastor, was with his congregation in Minnesota. Like most Decembers in the northern United States, the weather was bitterly cold, and Burdick struggled emotionally because she was over 150 miles away from her family. The wife and mother parts of her ached with loneliness and concern; the servant and saint part of her managed to stay strong as she focused on her work. She was obeying her God, even if it meant that she had to be separated from her family, travel about in a horse and carriage through deep and heavy snows, pastor an isolated church and congregation, and be painfully lonely in the process. She had said yes to God and she had meant it with all of her body, mind, soul, and spirit.

Diverse Environments and Divine Assignments

Born in 1890 to Seventh Day Baptist parents living in Alfred, Elizabeth Fitz Randolph grew up in a home where higher education and liberal theological thought were encouraged and supported. Of superior intellect and highly educated, Randolph was equally passionate about attending "to the lonely, homeless, and disadvantaged people of all ages, classes and races." (12) Throughout her fifty-four years of active service, she focused her ministry on compassionately taking care of all people whom God put in her charge.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Randolph willingly took on the title of "Promoter of Evangelism" and toured the southern states, living in a house trailer much of the time. She helped organize and develop two churches in Florida, and served as pastor for eleven churches in both rural and urban settings, including the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Washington, D.C., and the all Black People's Seventh Day Baptist Church of that same city. She was the first white woman ever invited to pastor a black church. (13) The list of Randolph's accomplishments is amazing, yet her diary revealed a humble woman often torn by feelings of inadequacy but totally reliant on God. A March 18, 1955, prayer from her diary read: "Kneeling at my altar in my home.... A confession of failure to achieve all, but thankful for a vision of things to be done. I ask for forgiveness. Oh help, clear Father, Holy God! Direct me to put first things first and thereby find peace with Thee. I must improve and make adjustments to a more exalted standard. Amen." (14) As Randolph prepared to retire in 1963, two other Seventh Day Baptist women, separated by thousands of miles and completely different cultures, environments, and styles of ministry, and yet sisters in Christ, were beginning their ministries.

Mary Craig Johnson, an African American hair dresser, preached, prophesied, and taught in Algiers, Louisiana. In the early 1950s, Johnson came to believe that the seventh day was the day meant for God's holy day of worship. She conducted her first church services in her small, home beauty parlor. By the early 1960s, she had enough members to purchase a building, register as an official church, and join the Seventh Day Baptist Conference. Tragically, Johnson's church, "God's Lighthouse of Prayer Seventh Day Baptist Church," was firebombed on December 2, 1969. Through prayer and great effort, the church was restored and rededicated, but on December 2, 1972, an arsonist set fire to the church, and the building was destroyed to such a degree that its members could not rebuild it. Johnson died not long after this incident.

Johnson accomplished what others believed to be impossible. She truly was an amazing saint of the Lord, and yet her work and life story have been forgotten and buried away. With minimal education and finances, she organized a church, took steps so that the church would be officially affiliated with a national denomination, and watched as her church began to grow. She then helped organize a second African American Seventh Day Baptist church in Hammond, Louisiana, and helped to found a Seventh Day Baptist Association in Louisiana. She was also a woman of great integrity. In a Sabbath Recorder article, published twenty-seven days after the first fire bombing, the reported noted that "along with the letter asking for help [for their damaged church], she has sent a money order to pay for the Helping Hand [lesson booklets] used by her Sabbath School." (15) In spite of the destruction of her church and her own pain and struggles, Johnson had sent money to the denomination to pay her church's bill.

As the final chapters of Johnson's sacred story were being lived out in Louisiana, Helen Ruth Green was far north, completing advanced degrees at several schools, teaching home economics, and working in her church. Ordained and accredited in 1978, Green was first the pastor of the DeRuyter, New York, Seventh Day Baptist Church. Despite her commitment and hard work, this church was forced to close. Green then moved into prison ministry, for God in 1975 had placed upon her heart a powerful passion for this challenging area of chaplaincy. Prison ministry would consume her for the rest of her active years of ministry, and she gave herself and much of her income to "this ministry of love." (16) To insure that her ministry continued, she organized a Prison Ministry Program, located in the Verona Seventh Day Baptist Church of New York.

Today's Female Pastors: Stepping Forward While Standing on God's Promises

In 2005, four of the 127 Seventh Day Baptist pastors are women. Three of these women hold full-time pastoral leadership positions: Patricia Bancroft is pastor of the First Seventh Day Baptist Church of Alfred, New York; Jeanne Yurke is pastor of the Raritan Valley Seventh Day Baptist Church in New Jersey; and JoAnne Kandel is pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Hebron, Pennsylvania. The fourth woman, Shirley Morgan, is the associate pastor of Evangelical Outreach at the Miami, Florida, Seventh Day Baptist Church.

The future for women in the Seventh Day Baptist denomination is uncertain. The affirmation, licensing, ordination, and accreditation of Seventh Day Baptist women to the gospel ministry has become a complex issue riddled with emotionalism and controversy. As the denomination wrestles with new issues regarding identity and polity, the outcomes will have an effect on whether women are accepted and supported in the pulpit and in positions of pastoral authority. The potential is open for either choice to be made.

The voices of the female Seventh Day Baptist pastors and preachers from the past blend in chorus with the voices of today's Seventh Day Baptist female pastors in affirming the words written by Experience Burdick in a letter postmarked October 19, 1906: "Though I am but a weak worker, I have the consciousness that I am in the work which my Savior has called me to and if I fail it is not because God did not call me into the work, neither is it because I am a woman, but because I am not faithful to the commission given to me, a commission which Christ gave first to Mary at the tomb." (17) With God at our side, whether there is only one Seventh Day Baptist female pastor or four or forty-one, we will continue to travel to frontier places without fear. We want the world to hear, see, and know that "we serve a risen Savior, he's in the world today!" (18)

(1.) Following is a list of Seventh Day Baptist women recognized by the denomination to be pastors, chaplains, preachers, and evangelists. Historical Files containing personal documents, writings, journals, and printed materials for some of these women, including Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick, Malvina G. Townsend, Lena Greene Crofoot, Angeline Prentice Abbey Allen, Marian Howard Hargis, Minnie Green Churchward, Elizabeth Fitz Randolph Mary Craig Johnson, Helen Ruth Green, Madeline Robinson, Mary-Esther Jones, and Sharon Wauls, may be found at the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Research Library in Janesville, Wisconsin.

(2.) Carolyn D. Blevins, Women's Place in Baptist Life (Brentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2003), 5-6.

(3.) Donald K. McKim, "Pastor," Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms (Louisville, KY John Knox Press, 1996), 152.

(4.) Don A. Sanford, Conscience Taken Captive: A Short History of Seventh Day Baptists (Janesville, WI: Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society, 1991), 13.

(5.) Ibid., 39.

(6.) Susan Rumsey Strong, "The Most Natural Way in the World": Coeducation at Nineteenth Century Alfred University (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, ProQuest Co., 2002), 10-11.

(7.) Malvina Townsend, "To the Editor of the Sabbath Recorder," Sabbath Recorder 57, no. 32 (August 12, 1901): 502.

(8.) Malvina Townsend, "TO the Editor of the Sabbath Recorder," Sabbath Recorder 58, no. 52 (December 29, 1902): 825.

(9.) Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick, "How Preachers Are Developed," Sabbath Recorder 62, no. 51 (December 17, 1906): 803.

(10.) A. H. Lewis, "Rev. Perle R. Burdick," Sabbath Recorder 62, no. 50 (December 10, 1906): 793.

(11.) Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick, letter to husband Leon and daughter Genevieve Burdick, December 10, 1904, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Research Library, Janesville, WI.

(12.) Elizabeth Fitz Randolph, Sabbath Recorder 206, no. 2 (February 1984): 31.

(13.) Albert N. Rogers, "Personality Profile: Rev. Elizabeth Fitz Randolph," Sabbath Recorder 202, no. 6 (June 1980): 9.

(14.) Elizabeth Fitz Randolph, "Personal Diary," January 1955-September 1957, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Research Library in Janesville, WI.

(15.) Algiers Church Damaged, The Sabbath Recorder 187, no. 24 (December 29, 1969): 14.

(16.) Helen Green, "This Single Ministry to Many," Sabbath Recorder 213, no. 11 (November 1991): 10.

(17.) Experience Fitz Randolph Burdick, "How Preachers Are Developed," 803.

(18.) "He Lives," Words and Music by Alfred H. Ackley, 1933.

Patricia A. Bancroft is pastor of the First Seventh Day Baptist Church of Alfred, New York.

                                                     Approximate
                                   Received Formal   Years of Active
In the Pulpit                      Recognition       SDB Service

Burdick, Experience (Perie)        Ordained 1885     1882-1906
  Randolph (1852-1906)

Townsend, Malvina G.               Licensed 1899,    1899-1907
  (1843-1930)                      1900

Churchward, Minnie Green                             1909-1940/50
  (1880-1967)

Allen, Angeline Prentice Abbey     Ordained 1919     1912-1946
  (1872-1953)                      & Accredited

Crofoot, Lena Greene                                 1919-1929
  (865-1951)

Fitz-Randolph, Elizabeth           Ordained 1922     1919-1963
  (1890-1983)

Robinson, Madeline                 Ordained 1922     1922-1953
  (birth/death dates not known)

Hargis, Marian Howard              Ordained 1941     1920-1949
  (1893-1968)                      & Accredited

Johnson, Mary Craig                Carried title     1950-1974
  (birth/death dates not known)    & Reverend

Green, Helen Ruth                  Ordained 1978     1971-1990s
  (1931-)                          & Accredited

Jones, Mary-Esther                                   1987-1989
  (birth/death dates not known)