The Christian Woman’s Board of Missions (CWBM) was founded October 21, 1874, during a meeting of the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS) at Richmond Street Christian Church in Cincinnati. Its purpose was to share the gospel message and improve the lives of women and children in the United States and abroad. Although CWBM was one of thirty-three denominational missionary societies established during a thirty-year period beginning in 1860, it was the first to serve both foreign and domestic missions, to employ both men and women, and to be managed entirely by women.
CWBM was a grassroots organization, made up of a large number of local church societies, supported with many small contributions, and committed to educating women and children about mission concerns. Many CWBM members were also active in other nineteenth-century reform efforts, principally suffrage and temperance, but CWBM was the “grand passion” in the lives of many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian Church women who devoted their spiritual, intellectual, and financial resources to its work.
CWBM’s founder, Carolyn Neville Pearre (1831-1910), became aware of mission needs at home and abroad and saw an untapped potential for response in Christian Church women. She asked Thomas Munnell (1823-1898), then secretary of the ACMS, to allow women from local missionary societies to meet together and discuss formation of a churchwide board. Munnell replied, “This is a flame of the Lord’s kindling and no man can extinguish it.” Isaac Errett, editor of the Christian Standard, J. H. Garrison, editor of The Christian-Evangelist, and Mrs. M. M. B. Goodwin (d. 1885), editor of The Christian Monitor, offered vital editorial support and publicity during the organization’s early years. CWBM’s first officers were Maria Butler Jameson (d. 1911), president; Nannie Ledgerwood Burgess (1836-1902), treasurer; Sarah Wallace, recording secretary; and Caroline Neville Pearre, corresponding secretary.
In 1876 CWBM established its first mission post in Jamaica and sent out its first missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. W. H. Williams. Jennie Laughlin, the first single woman missionary, followed in 1878. CWBM’s major efforts, however, were in India, beginning in 1881, and included establishing schools, orphanages, hospitals, churches, and evangelizing in zenanas (the small part of the household to which women and children were restricted). Maria Graybiel, Ada Boyd, Mary Kingsbury, and Laura Kinsey were the first missionaries to India. CWBM also supported work in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Japan.
In the United States, CWBM served the mountain schools of Appalachia, established Bible Chairs in five universities, developed outreach programs for Asians living in California, built educational opportunities for African Americans, and did settlement work among the urban poor. In both the United States and abroad, CWBM missionaries were particularly effective working with women and children in areas where it would be awkward or impossible for men to go.
At the end of the nineteenth century, many women still had little access to educational opportunities. Missionary Tidings, published by CWBM beginning in 1883, contained letters from missionaries, financial appeals, and news of the organization and provided women with home and church study materials. The College of Missions, established by CWBM in 1910 in Indianapolis, gave women missionaries needed theological and practical training. Women whose opportunities were limited in the United States studied there, then responded to their call to preach, evangelize, teach, or become physicians through missionary service.
Involving children in mission work was an important CWBM goal. Nancy Burns Atkinson established the first children’s missionary society in Wabash, Indiana, in 1874, and Charlotte McGrew King was the first secretary of the CWBM Young People’s Department. Pennies collected from children helped establish a church in Japan and orphanages in India. CWBM also published mission magazines for children — Little Builders at Work, Junior Builders, and King’s Builders. In the last year of CWBM’s existence, 30,000 child members in more than 120 children’s societies had raised $500,000 for mission work.
Fundraising was vital to the ongoing work of CWBM. Elmira Dickinson, a faculty member at Eureka College and its first woman trustee, was motivated in her effective CWBM fundraising by her own unrealized desire to become a missionary. Rosetta Butler Hastings raised mission money from poor rural farm wives and mothers in the West. Her initial request was for 15¢ per month per member.
Although there were separate black and white CWBM organizations, they did work cooperatively. Sarah Lue Bostick (1868-1948) organized CWBM chapters among African American churches, the first in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in 1896. Other prominent African American CWBM leaders were Rosa Brown Bracy, Rosa V. Brown, Mary L. Mead, Eliza Graves, and Mrs. J. B. Parsons. Contributions from African American auxiliaries supported such efforts as the endowment of the Bible Chair at the University of Michigan and the work of Jacob Kenoly (1876-1911), an African American missionary in Liberia. CWBM also took over the management of the Southern Christian Institute in 1900 and established Jarvis Christian Institute (later Jarvis Christian College). By the turn of the century, African Americans were holding a separate convention, the National CWBM, which later evolved into the National Christian Missionary Convention.
There were also CWBM societies in Canada, the first organized by Carrie Angle in Wainfleet, Ontario, in 1884. One of many notable missionaries was Dr. Susie Carson Rijnhart-Moyes, the first Canadian woman to earn first-class honors in medicine, who served with her husband in Tibet. In 1913 the Canadian CWBM and the United States CWBM merged.
On October 20, 1919, after five years of study, CWBM joined with several other groups to form the United Christian Missionary Society. CWBM brought the bulk of the financial resources and membership into the new organization and insisted that the new organization have equal numbers of men and women on its committees.
During its forty-five years, CWBM established local mission societies in 43 states, enrolled over 100,000 members, contributed over $7 million to mission work, and supported mission fields in 10 countries, with 974 missionaries serving 68 churches, 284 schools, and 9 hospitals.
See also American Christian Missionary Society; College of Missions; Jarvis Christian College; Missionary Tidings; Munnell, Thomas; National Christian Missionary Convention; Pearre, Caroline Neville; Southern Christian Institute; United Christian Missionary Society
BIBLIOGRAPHY Christian Woman’s Board of Missions: United Christian Missionary Society Golden Jubilee, 1874-1924 (1924) • Elmira J. Dickenson, Historical Sketch of the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions (c. 1911) • Douglas A. Foster, “Feminism vs. Feminization: The Case of the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions,” Discipliana 64:1 (2004): 17-30 • Ida Withers Harrison, History of the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions (1920) • Ian McCrae, Paul Diebold, and Julia Fangmeier, Mission Accomplished: The Missions Building, Its History and Its People (1995).
DEBRA B. HULL
Foster, Douglas A.. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (pp. 682-686). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
This entry, written by Debra B. Hull, was originally published in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Edited by Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pages 200-202. Republished with permission.