Tag Archives: Women in History

The Influence of Women

The Influence of Women

Over one hundred and fifty years ago, Irish writer Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877) noted:

“The progress of Christianity owes much, however, to these women (of the Middle Ages, ed.). .. They had little personal influence, and thus their action was not perceived at first; but the virtues of Christianity, purity, temperance, forgiveness, and resignation were essentially feminine virtues: they were more easily practiced by women than by men; and this gave to the weaker sex a moral superiority over the stronger one, which is visible even through the primitive rudeness of those dark ages.”[1]

A few years ago a well-respected pastor and author, Dr. John Piper said that Christianity has a “male flavor”.  Whatever he meant by describing the Christian faith that way, countless believers interpreted it to mean that God intended for men to have the preeminence in the Church. After all, Jesus and His twelve closest disciples were all males. And of course, they say, women were only created to be submissive helpers to men.

But what should the Christian male be like? And more critically: Is it more important to be Christian or to be male? What about women? Are they lesser Christians because they are feminine instead of masculine? I contend with Julia Kavanagh that throughout the centuries and especially in the 21st century, women actually display the more Christlike characteristics and indeed Christianity has a “female flavor”.  

What is wrong with putting the emphasis on males? First of all, cultural conditioning leads men to believe that they should not be emotional, share their feelings, express doubt, or show weakness. Men are asked to suppress “God-given parts of themselves that lead to human wholeness for fear it will make them less of a man.”[2]This stereotype goes against the portrait we see of Christ. Jesus displayed empathy for the lost and suffering. Jesus was able to share in the grief of others. But today’s men are not supposed to display grief at the injustice shown to others. What a shame because that is what Jesus does. Women are more like Jesus in this way. 

Second, as a leader Jesus was humble and taught His disciples servant leadership. Jesus said, “But I am among you as the one who serves” (Mark 10:45; Luke 22:27). The danger in Dr. Piper’s teaching is not just in gender inequality, it is about what Jesus warned us against – selfishness, abuse of privilege, dominance, and power over others. Men who are taught hierarchical leadership are being misled. Patriarchy is not the gospel message. Jesus wants all of His followers, male and female to work together for the kingdom. So far in history, women have done the better job of displaying the Christlike characteristic of a servant.

God made men and women different. This makes the world fascinating and allows each child of God to use their abilities in unique ways. But men are wronged when they are not told that Christ modeled the characteristics of love, compassion, temperance, self-respect, endurance, gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, and empathy that we usually associate with women. Men limit the work in the Kingdom when they don’t recognize that the requirements that matter for church leadership are the same for men and women. 

Jesus subverts our definition of leadership. Leadership, by biblical standards, comes from humility. True leadership picks up a towel and serves.  Christ-like leaders don’t find a group of allegedly inferior beings to serve themselves. The leadership that God wants us to have is the leadership that is needed to be witnesses for Jesus. The kind of leadership can be displayed by all of Christ’s disciples, male and female.

Third, patriarchal preachers also take advantage of the fact that most men will accept their teaching when they quote from the Bible. When pastors string together Ephesians 5:21 (“wives submit to your husbands”), Titus 2:5 (wives be “subject to their own husbands”), and 1 Peter 3:1 (“wives, be submissive to your own husbands”) without adding Ephesians 5:25 (“husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her”), a distorted picture of what God says about male-female relationships emerges. Men should be told that a more beautiful picture of marriage and church is one where mutuality is taught. With all due respect, Dr. Piper’s message of male superiority is actually harmful to men and the Church as well as to women. 

Fourth, the recent stories about men in church leadership positions who have abused their power have revealed that the church has not always handled moral failures well. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, women who were sexually assaulted and silenced have finally come forward for restitution. It is about time that Christians recognize the fact that men are sinners and often abuse their power in ways that Jesus never would. Women have not treated men the way that men have assumed is the correct way to treat women. Real men are like Jesus and desire to serve not subjugate. When the “male flavor” tastes like Jesus, Christians will have it right.

Julia Kavanagh must be sad as she looks down from Heaven and sees that men are still being misled as to what it means to be a Christian male. Thankfully, many men are realizing the errors in hierarchical thinking and rejecting patriarchy. There is hope yet as women and men take the gospel of peace, love, and joy to a hurting world.

[1]Julia Kavanagh. Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity(New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company, 1869). 55.

[2]Carolyn Custis James. Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015. 20.

Doctor Fanny Jane Butler

These are they which follow the Lamb…..

March is Women’s History Month. We have been reviewing stories of women who made a difference in the world. In the twentieth-first century women can receive adequate medical care – at least in the United States and many western countries. This was not always true in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even in the United States and Europe women died from a lack of care. Some women died because they were too modest to go to a male doctor. Men did not always understand women’s issues and some women died due to ignorance. Thank God for women pioneer doctors like the Blackwell sisters (see last post). We take it for granted now that women can be treated and it boggles the mind think that there was a time when women had to struggle to be given good care.

Even today there are women in other countries, such as Muslim countries, who are not receiving adequate medical care. In the Muslim religion a woman is not allowed to go to a doctor who is not a family member. If a Muslim woman does not have a relative who is a doctor, she can literally bleed to death. Thankfully, there have been many female doctors who have chosen to work among the Muslim women and in other countries such as India where women badly need treatment. 

One woman who answered the call of God in her life to minister to women in India was Fanny Jane Butler. Though she only lived to be 39 years old, Dr. Butler was able to assist in the treatment of thousands of women. She was also instrumental in founding a hospital that is still in existence today.

Fanny was born on October 5, 1850 to Thomas and Jane Isabella Butler. She was the eighth of ten children. Only her brothers received formal education. Fanny was an intelligent girl and had a thirst for knowledge, but she had to be content with teaching of her older sisters until she was nearly 15 years old. 

When Fanny was thirteen she gave her heart to Christ. At fourteen she became a Sunday school teacher. Her attention was directed to missions by her pastor who was very enthusiastic about taking the Gospel to those who had not heard about Christ. Fanny developed a deep missionary spirit. She asked her parents if she could be a missionary but they would not give her their approval at this time.

A little later on Dr. Elmslie, a Scottish medical missionary, was trying to get female medical missionaries to come to India. Fanny’s sister encouraged her to consider this. At first Fanny did not think she could do it. Later she decided to seek God’s will and when she was sure that medical missionary work was for her she again approached her parents. This time they enthusiastically gave their support.

Fanny became a member of the Indian Female Normal Society. She attended the London School of Medicine for Women for her medical training. This was a new school that only recently had accepted women. Fanny passed second out of one hundred and twenty-three candidates applying for the school; one hundred and nineteen of them were men.

She was a top student and received only flattering testimonials from her teachers. She took her final examination in Dublin where her professor said that her paper was the best he had ever had from any candidate. Fanny received the prize of pathology in 1879 and prize of anatomy in 1880. 

In 1880 Fanny went to India as the first fully equipped female medical missionary sent from England. Her first destination was Jabalpur in the central part of India. Owing to some complications she traveled to Bhagalpur. She spent four and a half years in Bhagalpur pouring her whole energy into working in the dispensaries and attending several thousand patients a year. 

In 1887 Fanny returned home to England for a short furlough. After this she accepted an appointment in Kashmir specifically in order to work with the women there. She rented a little house close to Srinagar, the chief city in that area, and opened a dispensary. She was immediately pressed from all sides for help. In the first year she treated five thousand patients. At least two thousand heard the Gospel. 

Fanny opened another small house for a hospital. This house was outside of the city because missionaries had been forbidden to live inside the city. Fanny traveled daily by pony or by boat the four miles into the city to see her patients. She dressed wounds, dispensed medicine, performed surgical operations, read, prayed, and talked to the suffering about the great Healer, the Lord Jesus. 

The government was finally persuaded that Fanny only meant good and they let her have some land for a dispensary, a hospital, and a mission house. Fanny had a longing to build a women’s hospital but no funds. God graciously provided the money.

About this time an English woman named Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop was traveling in India. Even while traveling in the East as a child, Isabella’s heart was saddened by the intense poverty of the women in India. She longed to be used of God to serve them. 

When she grew up Isabella married a Scottish doctor named Dr. John Bishop. After only a few years of married life she became a widow. She again traveled to the East. In 1888 she visited Srinagar and there she met Dr. Fanny Butler. She found out that Dr. Fanny Butler was a pioneer woman doctor serving many thousands of poor women, but she had no hospital. Isabella generously gave the money for the building of the hospital. It was named in memory of her husband – the John Bishop Memorial Hospital.

Dr. Fanny was just as concerned for the spiritual well being of her patients as their physical health. One by one she took many of them to an upper room to talk to them about Christ.

Thinking of how Dr. Fanny served the poor a helper later wrote, “I make my way with difficulty up stairs to receive my instructions from the brave presiding genius of the place, the doctor, Miss Sahib. Here she is, sitting at the table, with a little collection of poor sufferers at her feet. They will look up in her face, with clasped hands, and say, ‘We heard your fame, and have come far, far;’ and again the words come back, ‘I have compassion on the multitudes, … for divers of them came from far.’” Truly Fanny showed the love of Christ to the Indian people.

Constantly pressed from all sides for help the strain became too much. Fanny Butler burned herself out for the love of Christ and the Indian people. In the summer of 1889 she fell so ill that she was unable to do her work. When she recovered she went right back to work because she could not turn down the thousands of women and children begging for medicine. 

By the fall Fanny was suffering so much that she was unable to attend the ceremony where they laid the foundation stone for the new women’s hospital. She continued to grow worse. Her mind remained clear and her last thought was for the work that she loved. Her dying wish was that her post might be speedily filled.

Dr. Fanny finally succumbed to dysentery on October 26, 1889. She was buried in a cemetery in Srinagar. The natives insisted on bearing her coffin to her grave. “They had eaten her salt, and no other arms must bear her.” Many people came to show their respect for this woman who had given her all to help the poor and downtrodden.

Fanny Butler left a blessed legacy for both Indian and international women. She was the first to provide medical care for many women in India. She inspired many women to join the movement for education for women, especially medical education. Even though Fanny did not live to see the John Bishop Memorial hospital completed, she is credited with its creation. The John Bishop Memorial Hospital still exists today, although in a different location. A few years after it was built the hospital was destroyed in a disastrous flood and it was rebuilt in Anantnag.

Dr. Fanny Butler is remembered today for her care in treating Indian women both medically and spiritually. The London School of Medicine for Women established a scholarship in her honor after her death. 

She rests from her labors; and her works do follow her.

Sisters of the Spirit

Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century

Edited with an Introduction by William L. Andrews (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986).


February is Black History Month. In honor of the many black men and women who made significant contributions to society I am dedicating the next few blog posts to three incredible and amazing black women: Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote. I highly recommend the book, Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century. It is sad that so many stories of black women have been lost. In this book we are privileged to read about the women from their own accounts. 

These autobiographies will reveal that the women were products of their time. They understood bondage, but they did not become fanatical. They lived in traditional marriages in submission to their husbands. But they also saw themselves as preachers called by God to bring revival. Being black women, they were on the lowest rung of the social hierarchical ladder, but that did not stop them from following their call from God to preach the Gospel. They believed that the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to whomever He wills irrespective of gender. 

Jarena Lee (1783 – 1864) was born to free but poor black parents. She was the first African American woman to give us an account of her religious experiences. It was first published as The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Leein 1836. (It was later revised and expanded in 1849, but the account in this book is the 1836 account.)

Zilpha Elaw (1790 – ???) was born free, but her parents died when she was twelve. She went to live with a Quaker family where she learned to rely on the Holy Spirit’s power in her life. Her preaching was compelling and many lives were changed. The book, published in 1846 contains her Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, An American Female of Colour

Julia A. J. Foote (1823 – 1900) was born to former slaves in Schenectady, New York. her book, A Brand Plucked from the Fire: An Autobiographical Sketchwas published in 1879. Julia traveled throughout the United States and Canada for more than fifty years preaching in churches, camp meetings, and revivals.