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Articles
- A Theology of Humor by Cheryl Taylor
- Ministering With Humor by Stephanie Nance
- Christian Leaders Having Fun? by Pam Morton with Kathy Jingling
- The Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter by Dwenda Gjerdingen, MD, MS
Resources
Book Reviews
- Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins
- The Purse-Driven Life by Anita Renfroe
Liberated and Empowered:
The Uphill History of Hispanic Assemblies of God Women in Ministry, 1915-1950
Sunshine Ball
Alice Luce
Nellie Bazan
There is a small but growing body of literature on the important roles of Anglo-American and Black Pentecostal women, but less is known about the history and contributions that Hispanic women have made to Pentecostalism. Furthermore, the little that has been written on Hispanic women in religion has tended to focus on Catholicism or mainline Protestantism with a few notable exceptions.
Women did play an important role in the origins and development of the Hispanic Pentecostal movement, which is the largest segment of Hispanic Protestantism today. The Hispanic Churches in American Public Life national survey in 2003 found that 23 percent of all US Hispanics self-identified as Protestant or "other Christian" and that 64 percent of these Hispanic Protestants in the US are Pentecostal or charismatic. [1]
This article examines the origins and early history of Hispanic Pentecostal clergywomen in the Assemblies of God. The study suggests that although the Latin districts of the Assemblies of God trace their roots to a meeting in South Texas in 1915, only one year after the General Council of the Assemblies of God was founded in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1914, the Latin districts took a very different trajectory concerning the role of women in the ordained ministry in the twentieth century than did the parent organization.
While the Assemblies of God has licensed or ordained Hispanic women to serve as evangelists, missionaries, and pastors since at least 1916, it never witnessed the kind of Golden Age of women in ministry that Charles Barfoot and Gerald Sheppard describe in their germinal article, "Prophetic vs. Priestly Religion: The Changing Role of Women Clergy in Classical Pentecostal Churches." [2]
The history of Hispanic women in ministry is long but checkered. Hispanic women have faced an uphill struggle. Pentecostal women have practiced a kind of paradoxical domesticity whereby they are exhorted to be end-times prophetesses [3] in the public sphere and devoted mothers and good wives in the private sphere.
Despite the seemingly paradoxical lives they lead, Pentecostal women are, by their own accounts, "liberated." In general, the Trinitarian Hispanic Pentecostal movement has adopted a more prophetic attitude (meaning an openness to women preachers and leadership over men) toward women in ministry that has been shaped by the degree of institutional acculturation, education, and cultural orientation to US values and gender roles. As the cultural orientation of Hispanic Pentecostalism has changed, so too has its attitude towards women in ministry.
The Beginnings
The practice of ordaining women in the Latin districts of the Assemblies of God is an outgrowth of the larger Assemblies of God fellowship's position on women in ministry. The Assemblies of God takes a prophetic view of women in ministry and has always allowed women to be ordained to the ministry, although Edith Blumhofer has noted some of the limitations that women have faced nonetheless. [4]
The founder of the Latin American District Council, Henry C. Ball, adopted this prophetic view of women in ministry when he began his work in south Texas. On July 4, 1915, he introduced nine Mexicans to the baptism in the Holy Spirit in Ricardo, Texas. [5] This event gave birth to what later became the Latin American District Council of the Assemblies of God in the US. [6]
The first Assemblies of God women to effectively minister among Hispanics in the United States were Anglo-Americans. Alice E. Luce, Sunshine Marshall (later the wife of H. C. Ball), Florence Murcutt, Carrie Judd Montgomery, and many others ministered to Hispanics in the US Southwest, Texas, Mexico, and Puerto Rico from 1912 to the 1940s. The most important Anglo-American woman to pioneer the work among Hispanics in the US was Alice E. Luce. A former British Anglican missionary to India, Luce was converted to Pentecostalism in India and later felt called to minister to Spanish speakers in Mexico and the United States.
In 1915, Luce and her friend Sunshine Marshall met Henry C. Ball in south Texas and were ordained to the ministry. They, like Ball, were interested in ministering to Mexicans and had planned to set up a Pentecostal work in Monterrey, Mexico. After the bloody Mexican Revolution (1911-1917) drove them back across the US border, they returned to San Antonio and began to help Ball with his evangelistic work among the Mexicans living in South Texas.
Luce pioneered the Latin District Council work in Los Angeles in 1918 where she rented a hall in the Mexican Plaza District in Los Angeles, where Rosa and Abundio López of Azusa Street revival fame had preached twelve years earlier. Luce began conducting evangelistic services along with a Jewish convert named Florence Murcutt. Their work was difficult, not only because Mexicans followed the seasonal harvests, but also because the Oneness group, Asamblea Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús (Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus, Inc.), had already established itself in southern California and was reportedly undermining their work.
Despite the difficulties she faced as a pioneer Anglo-American woman ministering in Mexican Los Angeles, Luce conducted open-air evangelistic services and Bible studies, prayed for the sick, organized testimonials, taught Sunday school, and led door-to-door evangelism and tract ministries. Luce represents one of the clearest examples of a prophetic woman in ministry in early Pentecostalism.
Pioneers
Alice Luce, Sunshine Marshall Ball (Mrs. H. C.), and other Anglo-American women like Aimee Semple McPherson (who held credentials at one time in the Assemblies of God) served as role models for Latina Pentecostal women in ministry. Although they laid a foundation for women's prophetic ministry, the number of Hispanic women that have followed their example has been, until recently, relatively small. Despite their small numbers and in contrast to the Barfoot/Shepherd thesis [7] of a Golden Age of women in the early Pentecostal ministry, the documentary evidence indicates that there have always been ordained Hispanic women actively ministering in the Assemblies of God.
The first Latina we know for certain who was ordained by the Assemblies of God was Dionicia Feliciano. She and her husband Solomon were ordained in California in July 1916. She went on to help pioneer the Assemblies of God work in California, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. She was joined in her evangelistic work in Puerto Rico by Isabel Lugo, who herself was ordained in 1920. [8]
Isabel and Juan Lugo and Solomon and Dianicia Feliciano pioneered the Assemblies of God work in Puerto Rico in 1916. Ball, Marshall and Luce's work with Rodolfo Orozco in the American Southwest, Texas, and northern Mexico in 1915, resulted in the ordination of a number of Mexican American women such as Nellie Bazán, Francisca Blaisdell, Chonita Morgan Howard, Nativadad Nevarez, and others. Most of these women worked alongside their husbands and served as copastors.
Manuelita (Nellie) Treviño Bazán (1898-1995) was one of the first Mexican American women to be ordained to the Pentecostal ministry in the United States. Like many other husband-wife teams, both she and her husband were ordained together in 1920. She ministered along with her husband Demetrio in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, where she regularly preached from the pulpit at least 30 times a year and conducted door-to-door evangelistic work. She also wrote her own autobiography, Enviados de Dios, wrote regular articles for La Luz Apostólica (a publication started by H. C. Ball in 1916 which later became the official publication of the Latin American District Council), composed poetry, and raised ten children. She herself planted three churches in Texas and New Mexico during her 75-year ministry. While she was allowed to exercise her prophetic ministry on a regular basis, she was also expected to submit to her husband's spiritual authority at home.
As at the Azusa Street revival itself, women's roles in the Hispanic Assemblies were somewhat paradoxical — women were exhorted to exercise their prophetic gifts [9] in the public sphere but submit to their husband's authority in the private sphere of the home. Early Hispanic Pentecostals did not believe the point of the prophetic gifts was to erase gender distinctions, but rather to empower men and women for Christian service in the end-time drama in which they found themselves actors. This kind of paradoxical domesticity has remained the norm for many Hispanic Pentecostal women throughout the twentieth century.
Nellie Bazán was soon joined by another pioneer evangelist, Francisca D. Blaisdell (ca. 1885-1941), who worked in Arizona and northern Mexico. The Mexican American Blaisdell began preaching the Pentecostal message in Mexico in 1915 and was later ordained an Assemblies of God missionary-evangelist by Ball and Juan Lugo in 1923. She, along with her Anglo-American husband, Rev. George Blaisdell, pioneered evangelistic work along the Arizona-Mexican border in Douglas, Arizona, and Nacozari, Sonora, Mexico.
Around 1922, Francisca helped organize the first women's group in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. [10] She is important not only because she was one of the first evangelists to pioneer the Pentecostal work in the US and Mexico, but also because she pastored churches in Douglas, Arizona; Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico (1932-1933, 1938-1939); and El Paso, Texas (1933-1935). In these churches, she preached to 40-80 Mexican parishioners every Sunday morning and evening and two or three times a week. Along with her regular work in Arizona and Mexico, she conducted evangelistic tours, often by horseback, throughout northern Mexico and the US Southwest. [11]
Like Francisca Blaisdell, Concepción (Chonita) Morgan Howard (1898-1983) was a Mexican American whose father was an Anglo-American and whose mother was a Mexican. [12] Chonita was converted to Pentecostalism in 1913 in the small mining town of San José de las Playitas, Sonora, Mexico. She was a pioneer Latina Pentecostal evangelist, pastor, and women's leader in the US and Mexico. Not long after her conversion and baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1913, she felt called to the ministry and traveled the dusty evangelistic trail on horseback in northern Mexico and Arizona preaching the Pentecostal message.
She eventually traveled to California where she came under the influence of George and Carrie Judd Montgomery, who had attended the Azusa Street revival in 1907 and were responsible for bringing the Pentecostal work to Sonora. Under their influence, she began evangelistic work in the US around 1915. In 1919, she met and married a young Anglo-American Pentecostal preacher named Lloyd Howard, who was pastoring a small group of Mexicans in the border town of Pirtleville, Arizona. In 1928, the Assemblies of God recognized her evangelistic work and ordained her as an evangelist to the Mexicans living along the Arizona-Mexican border.
In addition to her pastoral and evangelistic work, she served as the second president (after Sunshine Marshall Ball) of the Concilio Misionero Femenil (Women's Missionary Council) from 1941 to 1962. Chonita conducted pioneer evangelistic work in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora, Mexico, from 1915 to 1968. From 1966 to 1968, she pastored Betel Asamblea de Dios in Douglas, Arizona. Her fifty-three year pioneer ministry touched the lives of thousands of Hispanic women and helped establish the Assemblies of God work on both sides of the US-Mexican border.
Although most of the women during the early period were credentialed as evangelists, there were cases of Hispanic women actually ordained as pastors. Nativadad Nevarez, for example, was ordained a "pastor" in 1937 in Los Angeles, where she served as copastor of the famous Aposento Alto church. María Inostroza was ordained in the early 1930s and pastored churches in the 1940s and 1950s.
The pioneer evangelistic work of Mexican American and Anglo-American women in the US served as a source of inspiration to Pentecostal women in Mexico. Ana Sanders was one of the first women to pioneer the Assemblies of God work in Mexico City in 1921. She dedicated the rest of her life pioneering the work in Mexico. By 1928, her prophetic work along with that of Chonita Howard, Francisca Blaisdell, and others inspired Mexican women like Srita Cruz Arenas, Catarina García, Juana Medellín, and Raquel Ruesga to go into the ministry.Together, these women helped pioneer the Assemblies of God work in Mexico.
Acceptance
Despite the fact that Hispanic women have been ordained in the Assemblies of God since at least 1916, prior to World War II it was uncommon for a single Hispanic woman to pastor her own church or even be ordained to the pastoral ministry. More often than not, women were licensed rather than ordained and served alongside their husbands, as interim pastors, or as pastors of small congregations or missions, often in rural or marginal areas. While other Hispanic women were ordained from 1916 to the 1970s in low numbers, there was a sharp increase in the number of ordained women in the Hispanic Assemblies of God beginning in the early 1980s. The exact reason for this shift is unclear. There is little doubt, however, that the progressive tendency of a new generation of leaders like Jesse Miranda has much to do with this trend.
Congruent with Edith Blumhofer's findings, [13] while the Latin districts in the Assemblies of God have officially ordained women for most of the twentieth century, ministry opportunities were limited. Women who did pastor churches often did so in small churches or missions where men were unwilling to go. While these moves can be interpreted as genuine gestures of gender and racial inclusivity, they can also be interpreted as a safe way to theoretically include women that would never be a real threat to the male leadership of the Assemblies of God because they could never garner the nationwide support needed to be elected or make any serious structural changes.
Theological Education
Women in the Assemblies of God have not only been allowed to exercise their preaching and leadership roles in the credentialed ministry, they have also been able to receive ministerial theological training traditionally closed to them in all Catholic and Orthodox and many Protestant denominations in the US prior to the 1950s. The theological and ministerial training that women received at the two Latin American Bible institutes, [14] as well as other Bible schools operated by the Assemblies of God, has opened many otherwise closed doors to the ministry with opportunities to teach at these same institutes and to write for Spanish language periodicals such as La Luz Apostolica and The Word.
The Assemblies of God Bible institutes have provided Hispanic women an alternative professional route to the normal option of mothering by giving them the opportunity to acquire theological training and nurture and to eventually exercise their prophetic gifts alongside men. While the career options after graduation were limited, they nonetheless exercised a certain level of agency that would have been otherwise unavailable to them in the Asamblea Apostólica (Apostolic Assembly) or in most other Protestant denominations prior to the 1950s.
While some used their Bible school training to exercise their gifts of evangelism and pastoring, the majority of women who attended Bible school became copastors, Christian educators, and lay leaders in the church. Regardless of whether or not they used their Bible training, the fact that women could and did receive the same training for the ministry as men allowed women to nurture their prophetic gifts despite the problems they encountered in the Latin districts.
Conclusion
This investigation into the early years of Hispanic Pentecostal women in ministry has only scratched the surface of an important chapter in the story of Pentecostal clergywomen. While there have always been strong female voices within the Hispanic Assemblies of God, they have faced an uphill calling and have often been assigned small, remote, or what some might see as marginal ministries that men were less interested in pioneering. Despite this fact, Hispanic women have generally stayed the course and continue to quietly and skillfully negotiate their own ministries and space in the Pentecostal movement by practicing a kind of a paradoxical domesticity.
Hispanic Pentecostal women heartily believed (and still believe) that the message of repentance, forgiveness, and a born-again, Spirit-filled relationship with Jesus Christ constitute true liberation. Far from being "doormats" suffering from a false consciousness, early Pentecostal women believed they found real freedom despite the problems they faced. If we take seriously how most of these Hispanic Pentecostal women perceived themselves, then they were by their own account "liberated" and "empowered." Although there were clear limitations to their "freedom in Christ," their stories nonetheless challenge conventional interpretations of women and religion, historical agency, and what it means to be a truly liberated woman.
ENDNOTES
[1] Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, Hispanic Churches in American Public Life: Summary of Findings (Notre Dame, IN: Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2003), 16. For trends and the history of Latino Pentecostalism see: Gastón Espinosa, "The Pentecostalization
of Latin American and US Latino Christianity," PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26:2 (Fall 2004): 262-292; Gastón Espinosa, "Ordinary Prophet: William J. Seymour, Race Relations, and the Azusa Street Revival," in The Azusa Street Revival and Its Legacy, Harold D. Hunter and Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., eds. (Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 2006), 1-41; Gastón Espinosa, "'The Holy Ghost Is Here on Earth': The Latino Contributions to the Azusa Street Revival," Enrichment 11:2 (Spring 2006): 118-125; and Gastón Espinosa, "Brown Moses: Francisco Olazábal and Mexican American Pentecostal Healing in the Borderlands," in Gastón Espinosa and Mario T. García, eds., Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 263-295, forthcoming essay.
[2] Charles H. Barfoot and Gerald T. Sheppard, "Prophetic vs. Priestly Religion: The Changing Role of Women Clergy in Pentecostal Churches," Review of Religious Research 22 (1980): 2-17.
[3] Prophetess in this context refers to a woman preacher in a leadership position.
[4] Edith L. Blumhofer, "The Role of Women in the Assemblies of God," Assemblies of God Heritage (Winter 1987-88): 13-17.
[5] Victor De Leon, The Silent Pentecostals: A Biographical History of the Pentecostal Movement Among the Hispanics in the Twentieth Century (Taylors, SC: Faith Printing Company, 1979), 43.
[6] The Latin American District Council of the Assemblies of God, officially recognized as a district in 1925, has grown so large that it now has been divided into eight separate districts: Central Latin American District, Gulf Latin American District, Midwest Latin American District, Northern Pacific Latin American District, Puerto Rico District, Southeastern Spanish District, Southern Pacific Latin American District, and Spanish Eastern District.
[7] Barfoot and Sheppard, 2-17.
[8] Dionicia Feliciano, ministerial file; Gastón Espinosa, "'Your Daughters Shall Prophesy,'" 35; David Ramos Torres, Historia de la Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, M.I. (Rio Piedras, PR: Editorial Pentecostal, 1992), 46.
[9] Prophetic in this context, as well as in the rest of this article, refers to the concept of women preachers in leadership positions (including leadership over men).
[12] Ibid., 146-148; Chonita Morgan Howard, ministerial file; For more on Latinas in ministry see Gastón Espinosa, "Nellie Bázan," "Francisca Blaisdell," "Aimee García Cortese," "Juanita García Peraza," "Chonita Morgan Howard," and "Leoncia Rosseau Rosado" in New International Dictionary of Pentecostal
and Charismatic Movements, Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, eds. Rev. and expanded ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 368, 432, 562-563, 659, 907-908, and 1029.
[14] Many of the Hispanic women who trained for ministry attended one of two Assemblies of God schools named Latin American Bible Institute (LABI). One is in La Puente, California, and one is in San Antonio, Texas. Both schools were established in 1926.
