Anna Oliver: Methodist scholar, preacher, and advocate

John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, authorized several women to preach during his lifetime.  After his death, however, views on women’s roles in the church shifted in a number of Methodist denominations. In American Methodism in the late 19^th century, few women served as preachers and even fewer were ordained as clergy. Anna Oliver was the first woman among the Methodists to graduate from seminary and press the matter of ordination and full clergy rights for women.

Born Vivianna Olivia Snowden, Oliver was well educated. She received a master’s degree from Rutgers Female College, a private women’s seminary, in 1862. Following her graduate studies, she began teaching school in Connecticut and became involved in the temperance movement.

After the Civil War she moved south to be a missionary teacher for Black children in Mississippi. Her time there was brief. When she discovered about a year later that the Mission Board paid male teachers twice as much as female teachers, she resigned in protest. 

She left the South and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to continue her studies, this time in art. While there, she felt called to the ministry. While her family was unsupportive, her brother — rector at a prominent Episcopal church in Brooklyn — was especially upset over her decision to pursue the ministry, calling it a public disgrace. In response, to avoid further embarrassment to her family, she changed her name to Anna Oliver.

Oliver attended the Boston University School of Theology, the Methodist seminary in Boston, and in 1876 earned the Bachelor of Divinity, the first woman in America to attain that degree. She was one of four students chosen to address the graduates at graduation.

As a new seminarian with a local preacher’s license granted by the Boston district, Oliver became pastor of a Methodist Episcopal church in Passaic, New Jersey. The congregation was struggling after the stock market crash of 1873.  While there, she collaborated with Amanda Smith, a Black evangelist, for the care of needy children and limits on alcohol sales. The women’s efforts significantly increased the membership of the church in just a year. Despite their success, they were replaced by an ordained male pastor the next year.

News of her success as a woman preacher spread quickly. Oliver received an invitation to deliver a sermon at a meeting of New York Methodist preachers. The Rev. James Monroe Buckley, pastor of a large church in Brooklyn and a strong opponent of women’s rights, argued against allowing her to preach, saying, "I am opposed to inviting any woman to preach before this meeting. If the mother of our Lord were on earth, I should oppose her preaching here." Oliver’s invitation was subsequently withdrawn.

In 1879, Oliver was invited to pastor another struggling congregation, Willoughby Heights in Brooklyn. This church also prospered under her leadership, growing Sunday school and church membership into the hundreds within the year.

In 1880, Oliver petitioned the New England Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church to approve the ordination of women. She was recommended for ordination as a deacon by the Jamaica Plain District and the alumni association of Boston University School of Theology.

She was not the only woman sponsored for ordination in that conference that year. Anna Howard Shaw was also being put forward. Bishop Edward G. Andrews refused to allow either of them to be presented to the clergy session as candidates because church law did not authorize the ordination of women.

When they asked Bishop Andrews for further explanation and counsel, he advised them to leave the Methodist Episcopal Church if they wanted to continue pursuing their dream. Shaw did just that and later that year was ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church. Oliver took the path of resistance and decided to continue her fight to the highest legislative body of the church, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

The 1880 General Conference met in Cincinnati. Oliver brought a suitcase full of pamphlets she had created to distribute to the delegates, appealing the decision of the bishop and requesting ordination. In her petition, she explained the sacrifices she made to be in ministry, including losing the esteem and support of friends and family. She addressed the General Conference: “It presses me also, and the Church and myself must decide something. I am so thoroughly convinced that the Lord has laid commands upon me in this direction, that it becomes with me really a question of my own soul’s salvation.”

Despite pleas from her Brooklyn church and several clergy supporters, the General Conference not only refused to make any changes to allow women to be ordained but also revoked the preaching licenses of all women who held them, including Oliver, stating that “the Discipline of the Church does not provide for nor contemplate the licensing of women as local preachers.”

Oliver continued to serve her local church, which referred to her as "The Rev. Anna Oliver," despite her lack of ordination, license, or a regular appointment. However, the church’s finances began to suffer, and it closed three years later. Oliver kept herself in a life of public speaking through her work with the Women's Christian Temperance Union, even as her health began to suffer. She died in 1892.

It took 75 more years before full clergy rights were granted to women. In 1920 the Methodist Episcopal Church granted women the right to be licensed as local preachers, and in 1924 it granted them limited clergy rights as local elders or deacons, but without conference membership. It was not until the 1956 General Conference that women were granted full clergy rights, effective in 1957.

Anna Oliver, a courageous and faithful servant called by God, who bravely and persistently advocated for including the gifts of women in the leadership of the church, continues to be an inspiring example today.

In 1989, the Southern New England Annual Conference apologized for the actions of the 1880 General Conference and granted Anna Oliver and Anna Howard Shaw posthumous clergy membership.