Women and Wesley's Times

John Wesley received much of his early spiritual and academic training from his mother Susanna Wesley. That Susanna was a strong, intelligent, spiritually mature woman may be a reason why Wesley supported such women leaders in the Methodist movement.

While John Wesley, for the most part, did not technically allow women to preach ("exhort"), he recognized and encouraged women to be leaders in a variety of ways. An infuriated Wesley told some of his followers in London that he did "exceedingly disapprove" of excluding women when the society met to pray, sing, and read the Scriptures.¹ Another example is when one clergyman accused Wesley of keeping women in Bristol so busy that they were not giving their families proper attention. "William Fleetwood dismissed the Methodists, or 'Perfectionists,' as he called them, as a group of 'silly women.'²

In his book John Wesley: Holiness of Heart and Life, Charles Yrigoyen, Jr., observes:

Methodists flourished under the direction of class and band leaders, persons of spiritual strength and insight. Most of them were women! ....

In effect, [Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet (right), Hannah Harrison, Eliza Bennis, Jane Cooper, and others]... were engaged in preaching, and many people experienced conversion as a result of their testimony and proclamation of the gospel.... In 1787, despite the objections of some of the male preachers, he officially authorized Sarah Mallet to preach, as long as she proclaimed the doctrines and adhered to the disciplines that all Methodist preachers were expected to accept.[3]

For Further Study

• A Moment With John Wesley, a skit by J. Ann Craig
• Susanna Wesley, church leader, mother of Charles and John
• Charles Wesley's Epitaph for Susanna (1670-1742) from J. B. Wakeley, Anecdotes of the Wesleys: Illustrative of Their Character and Personal History (19th century)
• Susanna Wesley and the Unauthorized Meetings, a story from J. B. Wakeley, Anecdotes of the Wesleys: Illustrative of Their Character and Personal History (19th century)
• Mary Bosanquet Fletcher (1739-1814), one of the first deaconesses in Methodism
• Jane Cooper: "My Jesus Is All in All to Me", a Methodist leader in 18th Century England
• Grace Murray, Model Leader and John Wesley's True Love
• Sarah Gwynne Wesley, musician and wife of Charles Wesley

Next: Susanna Wesley and the Unauthorized Meetings

[1] Paul W. Chillcote, She Offered Them Christ: The Legacy of Women Preachers in Early Methodism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), p. 22.

[2] Chillcote, p. 25.

[3] John Wesley: Holiness of Heart and Life, p. 9.