Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7Holley, Marietta
General
Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7
Holley, Marietta
Methodism -- Humor; Women in church work -- Methodist church -- Humor; Women's rights -- Humor
Women were made class-leaders, stewards, and Sunday-school
superintendents, and employed in these several capacities long before
the specific interpretations of the pronouns were made. They were so
appointed and employed in Saint Paul's Church in this city during the
pastorate of that sainted man, John M'Clintock, in 1860, and could the
voice of that great leader and lover of the Church reach us to day from
the skies it would be in protest against the views presented in this
debate by the supporters of the committee's report and its amendment.
It is a well-established and incontrovertible principle of law that any
elector is eligible to the office for which said elector votes, unless
there be a _specific enactment discriminating against the elector_. Our
law says that a lay delegate shall be twenty-five years of age, and five
years a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It does not say that a
delegate must not be a woman, or must be a man.
Women are eligible to membership in this General Conference. Women have
been chosen delegates as provided by law. They are here in their seats
ready for any duty on committees, or otherwise, as they may be invited.
We cannot turn them out and slam the door on their exit. It would be
revolutionary so to do by a simple vote of this body. It would be a
violation of the guarantees of personal liberty, a holding of the
just rights of the laity of the Church. We cannot exclude them from
membership in the General Conference, except by directing the Annual
Conferences to vote on the question of their exclusion. Are we ready to
send that question in that form down to the Annual Conferences for their
action? I trust that a large majority of this General Conference will
say with emphasis we are not ready for any such action. The women of our
Methodism have a place in the heart of the Church from which they cannot
be dislodged. They are our chief working members. They are at the very
front of every great movement of the Church at home or abroad. In the
spirit of rejoicing consecration our matrons and maids uphold the
banner of our Lord in every conflict with the enemy of virtue and
righteousness. Looking down upon us from these galleries, tier upon
tier, are the magnificent leaders of the Woman's Foreign and the Woman's
Home Missionary Societies. Our women are at the front of the battle now
waging against the liquor traffic in our fair land, and they will not
cease their warfare until this nation shall be redeemed from the curse
of the saloon. God bless all these women of our great conquering Church
of the Redeemer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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