S. M. I. Henry: Pioneer in Women's Ministry

Adventist women have always participated in the worship services. Ellen White preached frequently, and she was not the only one. Mrs. S. M. I. Henry was another woman who had a brief but profound impact on the church's women around the turn of the century.

Born on November 4, 1839, Sarepta Myrenda Irish was to say of her childhood, "I do not remember when I was converted. I was given to God honestly by my parents, and was taught that I belonged to Him..."¹ Her father, an itinerant preacher on the Michigan-Illinois frontier, taught her to read from the Bible.

She married Mr. James Henry after attending River Rock Seminary and going just about as far in education as women of her day could. The Henrys had three children before Mr. Henry died in 1871 from Civil War injuries. Mrs. Henry, a painfully shy young widow, took to writing Christian materials to support her family.

The last half of the nineteenth century was a time of ferment over women's rights. While women outside the church were struggling for voting privileges and "rights," a very influential women's missionary movement was developing in evangelical churches of America. Tract societies, missionary societies, Ladies' Aid societies and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union were born.

Mrs. Henry had seen firsthand how homes were being destroyed by liquor. She found herself becoming more and more involved in her local Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Wives of alcoholics had no social recourse. Hard-earned money did not find its way back into the saloon. Not only was desperately-needed money consumed, but through the influence of alcohol, even kindly men turned abusive. Mrs. Henry did not view her work as political but spiritual. She and other women worked with the wives, and they had lunchtime Bible studies with the hardened husbands. They worked to reach the prostitutes of the saloons. But there was a revival work connected to this ministry as well and here is where Mrs. Henry was most closely allied.

After Miss Frances E. Willard became president of National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Mrs. Henry eventually became a national evangelist. This woman who had nearly been a recluse in earlier years became a prominent public speaker. She was equally comfortable speaking to theologians and philanthropists or to vast companies of the poor. Entire communities were stirred to their depths as night by night crowds surged to the meetings to hear Mrs. Henry. When she gave a call, hundreds responded and were converted under her ministry.

"She learned to read her audience and to suit her address to its needs,"² never using a manuscript to preach. At times she would change her sermon as she arose and faced her audience.

Even though she conducted an extremely heavy public ministry, Mrs. Henry never saw herself in a man's role as doing a minister's job. She firmly believed that women were most effective at home. The only reason she felt forced into public labor was "because an emergency like that of a railroad smashup was upon us as a race, and everyone who could get hold of a light must carry it out into the darkness, and take a hand in the work of rescue, regardless of age, sex, or condition."³

Mrs. Henry was at odds with those pushing for equal rights in politics and in the ministry. She saw hers as a spiritual work, not a political one.

Her close friend and coworker, Frances E. Willard, was committed to women's ordination and wrote and spoke extensively on the subject. Mrs. Henry's daughter Mary tells of one of her own conversations with Miss Willard. When Miss Willard heard that Mary was to attend Northwestern University, she was thrilled and "she talked to me with enthusiasm about the wonderful opportunities for girls of my day, and sounded my mind as to any latent ambition I might have to study theology and help compel the ministers to let women into their ordained ranks." What was Mary's reaction? "But I shared my mother's views as to the sphere of woman, and my whole child-being shrank from the thought."⁴

Mrs. Henry was not out for ordination or rights. She used her gifts as a strong leader to the glory of the Lord for the upbuilding of the family through bringing Jesus to individuals.

At fifty years of age, Mrs. Henry's public labor was cut short by a serious heart problem. For seven years she was an invalid. Eventually she was taken to Battle Creek Sanitarium—Dr. Kellogg was a good friend of the W.C.T.U.—where it was hoped that she might find help. Here, the peace of the institution on Sabbaths caught her attention and made her restudy her Bible on the subject of the Sabbath. Mrs. Henry did not parley with specific scriptural truth. She had such a close relationship with Jesus that when she realized the Sabbath's implications for her life she immediately chose to follow Jesus through keeping His day holy. She was baptized as a Seventh-day Adventist in 1896. Soon afterward she began preaching and teaching in churches and camp meetings across the country.

Mrs. Henry had been used to working with strong women of deep spirituality. She was so disappointed to find that Adventist women were not of this same caliber. With timely encouragement from Sister White (who was in Australia at the time), she began a Woman Ministry, to encourage the women of our church. For several years she wrote a weekly column, "Woman's Gospel Work," in the Review and Herald.

Primarily, the woman's ministry was to up build the Seventh-day Adventist family—and through the family to reach the rest of the world. The Woman Ministry was to be comprised of a "quiet, steady, personal home and neighborhood work which consists in living Christ instead of talking doctrine."⁵

They were to have such a thorough study and application of the Scriptures that the truth would be "woven into the brain, and held in solution in the blood which your heart keeps pumping down into your fingers, that you will express it in some way wherever you go."⁶

The chief purpose was to inspire women to personal effort, not to make some grand organizational machinery and instigate a flurry of societies and public meetings.

Mrs. Henry's main thrust in setting up the Woman Ministry was not to get women into public ministry or leadership, but to teach the women of our church to be better mothers and wives, to encourage them in their sanctification and to lead them to true humility. Week after week, Mrs. Henry's articles called women to work for their families and for their neighborhoods. There was no joint effort or "program" passed down. Mrs. Henry encouraged each woman to depend on God to lead her to the place He would have her. The only joint effort was a prayer time at 12:00 noon.

Mrs. White fully endorsed Mrs. Henry's efforts to encourage the women of our church. "There certainly should be a larger number of women engaged in the work of ministering to suffering humanity, uplifting, educating them how to believe—simply to believe—in Jesus Christ our Savior."⁷

She was thrilled that Mrs. Henry had the same longings she had for the women of our church: "I have so longed for women who could be educators to help them to arise from their discouragement, and to feel that they could do a work for the Lord... God will bless you, and all who shall unite with you, in this grand work."⁸

Mrs. White saw the need for a revival in the hearts of the women and for a total self-renunciation as key to this Woman Ministry:

Mrs. White encouraged Mrs. Henry to "Address the crowd whenever you can; hold every jot of influence you can by any association that can be made the means of introducing leaven to the meal." But again, following this injunction Mrs. White stressed that the one-to-one contacts through the "most simple methods" will accomplish more than the "most imposing display." "Personal work must be done; personal sanctification makes each one a partner with the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is invincible. Those who follow in the footsteps of Christ will not be seeking for show and parade."¹⁰