First Ordained African-American Methodist Woman and Missionary to Appalachia Sallie Crenshaw was twice a ground-breaker in African-American women’s ordination in the Methodist tradition. In 1936, she was one of the two first African-American woman ordained as a local elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the East Tennessee Conference. Then in 1956 she was one...
Missionary to Korea and First Woman Fully Ordained in the Methodist Church In 1956 the General Conference granted full clergy rights to women by voting that they could be admitted into full ministerial membership in Methodist Annual Conferences. On May 18, within a month of this action, Ms. Maud K. Jensen, a missionary to Korea,...
First Ordained Latino Methodist and Missionary to Mexico In 1873, the first train on the new line out of Vera Cruz carried a Methodist bishop and Alejo Hernandez, the first Latino to be ordained in Methodism, who was the bishop’s choice to establish a mission in Mexico City. But the throbbing power in the locomotive’s...
First Priciple of Chicago Training School and “Archbishop of Deaconnesses” It is said of the first college in the United States to award degrees to women, Oberlin (1841), that it is peculiar in that which is good. A compliment equally applicable to an Oberlin graduate, Lucy Jane Rider. She became a physician when most medical...
Advocate for Missions and Education in the Evangelical Association Distinctive bulges on the bridge of Bishop Orwig’s nose appear in Orwig family members to this day, testifying to the persistence of genetic traits. The bishop himself stood out in a debate over another persistent human trait: sin. He defended the position that only those who...
Missionaries to the Iban people of Sarawak Thomas and Jennie Harris applied for missionary service in 1947, answering a call by Bishop Creighton Lacy to serve the people of China. They were the first African-American couple to be assigned to China by the Methodist Board of Missions. Born and educated in Florida, they were members...
Leader among Central Conference Bishops Born in Tagudin, Ilocos Sur Province, in 1898, Valencia grew up as a Roman Catholic, although he became acquainted with Protestants through the United Brethren mission near his home. He came from a family involved in the Filipino struggle for independence. His uncle was a guerrilla in the conflict with...
First African Bishop in The Methodist Church Born in Mozambique in 1914, Zunguze became a Christian through his wife, Thelma, who was a graduate of the Hartzell’s Girl School in Chicuque. He was educated at a Methodist Episcopal Church school in Inhambane province, at the Cambine mission, and Old Umtali in then-Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),...
Educator and Leader for Abolishing the Central Jurisdiction Thomas was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and was ordained and became an elder in the South Carolina Conference of the Central Jurisdiction in 1944. After serving as a pastor, he taught at Gammon Theological Seminary. He became associate director of the Department of Education Institutions of...
Methodist Educators, Relief Leader, Bishops J. W. Ernst Sommer was born to a German Wesleyan minister father and British mother in Germany. He went to Kingswood, Cambridge University, and the university at Lausanne for his education. He taught in London and married a Briton, Beatrice Dibben. From 1907 to 1912, he was a missionary in...
