In 1956 the Methodist Church added a single sentence to its rulebook — and finally opened the pulpit fully to women. Seventy years later, the whole denomination is celebrating the anniversary. Here is how long the road was, and who walked it.

Reviewed by the Beaverton First UMC editorial team · Fact-checked July 2026

Some revolutions arrive with trumpets. This one arrived as a line of committee prose. On May 4, 1956, at the Methodist General Conference in Minneapolis, delegates voted to add one sentence to the Book of Discipline: all the paragraphs governing ordained ministry “shall apply to women as well as to men.”¹ With that, women in the Methodist Church — a forerunner of today’s United Methodist Church — received what the church calls full clergy rights. This year, 2026, United Methodists around the world are marking the seventieth anniversary of that vote.²

What actually changed in 1956

Women had preached in Methodist pulpits long before 1956 — some had even been ordained. What they lacked was standing. Without full conference membership, a woman could not vote in her annual conference and was not guaranteed an appointment to a church; she served at the margins, revocable at any time.¹ The 1956 vote changed that: ordination plus membership plus a guaranteed place to serve. Two weeks later, on May 18, 1956, Maud Keister Jensen — a missionary and seminary teacher in Korea who had held a license to preach since 1929 — was admitted by the Central Pennsylvania conference (on trial, and in absentia, since she was serving in Korea), making her the first woman to receive the new clergy rights; she attained full conference membership in 1958.³

Women had preached in Methodist pulpits long before 1956. What they lacked was standing.

The long road to Minneapolis

The vote was less a beginning than an ending — the last mile of a road women had been walking for ninety years. In 1866, Helenor M. Davisson was ordained a deacon by a Methodist Protestant conference in Indiana, the first ordained woman in the Methodist tradition.⁴ In 1876, Anna Oliver became the first woman to earn a divinity degree from an American seminary.⁴ In 1880, Oliver and Anna Howard Shaw asked the Methodist Episcopal Church for ordination and were refused; Shaw walked across the street, denominationally speaking, and was ordained by the Methodist Protestant Church that same year.⁴

Progress came in grudging half-steps. The Methodist Episcopal Church licensed women as local preachers in 1920 — the same year American women won the vote — and in 1924 granted them limited clergy rights, without conference membership.⁴ Then the church’s own women organized. The Woman’s Society of Christian Service petitioned the General Conference for full clergy rights in 1944, in 1948, and in 1952, and was turned down each time.⁴ In 1956 they asked a fourth time. That time, the answer was yes.

From the pulpit to the bishop’s chair

When the Methodist Church merged into the new United Methodist Church in 1968, the united denomination affirmed full clergy rights for women from day one.⁴ Twelve years later came the moment many thought they would never see: in July 1980, after twenty-nine deadlocked ballots, Marjorie Matthews was elected bishop — the first woman bishop in the UMC and, by most reckonings, in any mainline Protestant denomination in the world.⁵ In 1984, Leontine T.C. Kelly became the first African American woman elected bishop.⁴

The line kept lengthening: the first Hispanic woman bishop in 2004, the first European woman bishop in 2005, the first African woman bishop in 2008, and eight women elected bishop across the denomination in 2022 alone.⁴ And in April 2024, Bishop Tracy S. Malone took the gavel as president of the Council of Bishops — the first Black woman ever to lead the denomination’s episcopal leadership.⁶

Still, the arc is unmistakable. A church that once revoked women’s preaching licenses has since been led, at its highest level, by a woman — and the granddaughters of the generation that petitioned and lost, petitioned and lost, petitioned and lost, now stand in pulpits every Sunday as a matter of course. It is a history women themselves built, and one reason our support for women in ministry is not a position we hold so much as a story we belong to.

Questions people ask

What are “full clergy rights”?

Ordination plus full membership in an annual conference — meaning a vote, a voice, and a guaranteed appointment to serve. Before 1956, Methodist women could sometimes preach or even be ordained, but without conference membership they held none of those guarantees.¹

Who was the first ordained woman in the Methodist tradition?

Helenor M. Davisson, ordained a deacon by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church in 1866.⁴

Where does Beaverton First stand on women pastors?

Wholeheartedly in favor — women preach and lead here, and we have written a full statement of why.

Curious what this tradition looks like today, seventy years on? You are always welcome to join us on a Sunday.