Women’s History Month: generations of persistence
Seventy years ago, a single sentence changed the course of Methodist history.
On May 4, 1956, the General Conference of The Methodist Church voted to affirm that “women are included in all the provisions of the Discipline referring to ministry.” The vote was 389 to 297. Within days, Maud Keister Jensen was admitted to the Central Pennsylvania Conference as a deacon. More than 300 women became newly eligible for conference membership overnight.
“It was not an epiphany,” said Rev. Emily Nelms Chastain, Ph.D., assistant professor of Christian History & Methodist studies at Perkins. “It was the end of a very long paper trail.”
Nelms Chastain presented in early March at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Albright-Deering Lecture in a lecture titled, “She Preached Anyway: How Methodist Women Turned Print and Polity into Power.” Her lecture draws on years of research into the newsletters, petitions and gatherings that led to the 1956 decision.
That history continues through the work of scholars and students at Perkins. Chastain’s research and the leadership of Th.M. student Michaela Calahan (’26) reflect how the legacy these women stepped into still shapes ministry today.
The infrastructure behind a pivotal moment
“The story of Methodist women’s ordination is not primarily a story about charismatic individuals finally being heard,” she said. “It is a story about infrastructure.”
That infrastructure developed over decades. Women organized through newsletters, petitions and annual gatherings. They shared strategy and built networks. At the center was the Association of Women Preachers (AWP), founded in 1919, which connected women’s calls to the life of the church.
“They mentored younger women in the mechanics of church bureaucracy,” Nelms Chastain explains, “teaching them how to read a committee report, write a memorial, and interpret rejection not as evidence that their call was false but as evidence that the institution had not yet caught up.”
Through publications like The Woman’s Pulpit, the AWP created what Nelms Chastain calls a shared grammar. The newsletter circulated through theological arguments, petition templates and guidance for navigating institutional processes that hindered women’s ecclesial rights.
After many years of advocacy, as support grew and new delegates took up the cause, more than 2,000 memorials had been submitted by 1956.
“The sentence that passed that May was not an act of institutional generosity,” Nelms Chastain said. “It was the accumulated pressure of thirty-six years of patient, intentional, unglamorous work finally breaking through.”
Her work points to a broader truth. The Spirit moves beyond sanctuaries. It is present in meeting rooms, publications and sustained advocacy.
“When institutional habits fall short of the sentence the Discipline now contains,” she said, “faithful people can and must organize, write, persist, and keep the record.”
Pushing forward: a new generation of leadership
Calahan explores how theology is lived and embodied. Her research examines power, gender and the ways religious ideas take shape in public life.
“I am consistently interested in how religion helps organize public feelings and social imagination,” Calahan said. “What strength looks like, who belongs, whose authority feels natural.”
At the bedside, those questions become immediate.
“The bedside has made my theological questions more dire, more honest,” Calahan reflects. “Families are not asking theoretical questions… They are asking what holds, what matters.”
Her work is shaped by proximity to suffering and the demands of holy presence in moments of crisis. She also names the realities women continue to face in ministry and scholarship.
“There are still many spaces… where women have to prove credibility in ways men do not,” she says. Yet those challenges have clarified her voice.
“I do not want to borrow someone else’s authority performance. I want to speak with clarity, rigor, humor, and conviction in a way that is fully my own.”
A shared legacy across generations
As Women’s History Month comes to a close, women’s entry into ordained ministry stands as a turning point in Methodist history. Through Emily Nelms Chastain’s scholarship, we see the sustained, often unseen work that made that moment possible. In the work of leaders like Michaela Calahan, we see how that legacy continues to take shape today.
Though they exist across different generations, fields and even denominations, they are connected by a shared commitment. Each reflects the ongoing work of women who organize, write, lead and persist.
It is a story still unfolding.
This Women’s History Month, we celebrate both the milestones and the work behind them — and how that work continues to be embodied in today’s leaders.