{"id":2261,"date":"2014-01-17T10:22:06","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T15:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/?page_id=2261"},"modified":"2021-02-25T21:13:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T02:13:43","slug":"anna-howard-shaw-plaque-dedication-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/anna-howard-shaw\/anna-howard-shaw-plaque-dedication-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Howard Shaw Plaque Dedication Ceremony at Dennis Union Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n

Dennis Union Church in Dennis, MA \u00a0is the church Anna Howard Shaw served. \u00a0They have recently added a plaque commemorating her accomplishments and time of service there.<\/p>\n

The plaque reads:\u00a0<\/strong>
\n“The Reverend Anna Howard Shaw.<\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0Second woman graduate of Boston University School of Theology. \u00a0<\/em><\/address>\n
First woman ordained to the Methodist Ministry. <\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0Called as Pastor of Dennis Union Church<\/em><\/address>\n
1879-1884.<\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0Presented by grateful beneficiaries of her dedication and courage. 2013.”<\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
<\/address>\n

A Tribute to Anna Howard Shaw<\/h3>\n

by Tristan Young<\/h4>\n

As with any reformer, or any person in history who challenges the status quo\u2014it\u2019s easy to label Shaw as a rebel, a rabble-rouser if you will.\u00a0 But, she would not have seen herself that way.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Shaw spent the bulk of her career fighting for women’s suffrage\u2014this was not a cause that she came upon accidentally\u2014it was the logical conclusion to all of her prior experiences. By the time she was 38, she had received her medical degree and began working with mothers, children and prostitutes in the slums of Boston.\u00a0 She realized that she needed to look beyond the symptoms and seek to fix whatever the underlying reasons were for the condition of these women.\u00a0 The combination of this experience and the challenges she faced in becoming an ordained minister led her to the fight for suffrage.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Though Shaw had been a preacher for some time before her ordination\u2014she only served as a minister for five years.\u00a0 Then, she turned her attention to reform because she felt that women could only truly have a voice\u2014both in religion and secular society\u2014if they had the vote.\u00a0 Particularly revealing is the fact that after she left the ministry, she discouraged young women from becoming ministers because it was too difficult \u201cto fight the church in addition to the devil.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 Until women were seen as equals in secular society, it would be impossible for them to be equal in the church.\u00a0 As a result, she entered the fight for women\u2019s political rights.\u00a0 It was then that she believed \u201c[her] real work had begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

The arguments against female ordination are similar to the arguments that were made against woman suffrage.\u00a0 Among them are that women must remain committed to home life, and be the center of the family\u2014ordination or suffrage would be certain to have a negative impact on that role.\u00a0 And, the perception persisted that women were of weaker mind than men, were more emotionally driven, and therefore not capable of holding such leadership positions, or making important political decisions.<\/p>\n

So, Shaw approached the fight for suffrage in much the same way that she approached her fight for ordination.\u00a0 She pointed out the hypocrisies and inconsistencies that existed in the nation.\u00a0 She argued that the \u201cdefinition of the republic was betrayed by women\u2019s disenfranchisement.\u201d\u00a0 What she sought was consistency between the country\u2019s principles of democracy and the practice of the American government. And, she had to prove her point to women as well as men.\u00a0 Her arguments aimed at men were based on the basic tenets of American democracy:<\/p>\n

\u201cGod Created all men equal and endowed them with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness\u2014and no man will deny that they are the rights of myself, as well as the rights of himself\u2014to protect those rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.\u00a0 I have no further argument to offer, it is all there.\u201d<\/strong> And that,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that a republic is a form of government in which the laws are enacted by representatives elected by the people, and since one half of the republic is arbitrarily deprived of all powers to elect their representatives, the fundamental principle of the republic is denied.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

She argued that America was an \u201caristocracy of sex,\u201d and could not understand why women would stand for this\u2014even why women would argue against suffrage.\u00a0 The arguments she made to women also focused on their position in the republic:<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot understand a daughter of the American Revolution who is opposed to the enfranchisement of women, who glories in the death of an ancestor who died for the principle of no taxation without representation.\u00a0 I cannot understand the inconsistency.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Shaw could not fathom the hypocrisy and inconsistencies offered by those who opposed suffrage, just as those who opposed female ordination.\u00a0 To her, the proof was simple\u2014based on textual evidence, and the ideals on which the nation was founded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Union Church in Dennis, MA \u00a0is the church Anna Howard Shaw served. \u00a0They have recently added a plaque commemorating her accomplishments and time of service there. The plaque reads:\u00a0 “The Reverend Anna Howard Shaw. \u00a0Second woman graduate of Boston University School of Theology. \u00a0 First woman ordained to the Methodist Ministry. \u00a0Called as Pastor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7986,"featured_media":0,"parent":42,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7986"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4105,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2261\/revisions\/4105"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}