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Presbyterianpolity is a method of church governance typified by the rule of assemblies of presbyters, or elders. Each local church is governed by a body of elected elders usually called the session or consistory, though other terms, such as church board, may apply. Groups of local churches are governed by a higher assembly of elders known as the presbytery or classis; presbyteries can be grouped into a synod, and presbyteries and synods nationwide often join together in a general assembly. Responsibility for conduct of church services is reserved to an ordained minister or pastor known as a teaching elder, or a minister of the word and sacrament.
Spiritualism is a new religious movement based on the belief that the spirits of the dead exist and have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living. The afterlife, or the "spirit world", is seen by spiritualists, not as a static place, but as one in which spirits continue to evolve. These two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans—lead spiritualists to a third belief: that spirits are capable of providing useful knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about the nature of God. Some spiritualists will speak of a concept which they refer to as "spirit guides"—specific spirits, often contacted, who are relied upon for spiritual guidance. Emanuel Swedenborg has some claim to be the father of Spiritualism. Spiritism, a branch of spiritualism developed by Allan Kardec and today practiced mostly in Continental Europe and Latin America, especially in Brazil, emphasizes reincarnation.
Olympia Brown was an American minister and suffragist. She was the first woman to be ordained as clergy with the consent of her denomination. Brown was also an articulate advocate for women's rights and one of the few first generation suffragists who were able to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Harriet E. Wilson was an African-American novelist. She was the first African American to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was published anonymously in 1859 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was not widely known. The novel was discovered in 1982 by the scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who documented it as the first African-American novel published in the United States.
Mary Church Terrell was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street School —the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1895, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1892). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1923).
Mother's Day in the United States is an annual holiday celebrated on the second Sunday in May. Mother's Day recognizes mothers, motherhood and maternal bonds in general, as well as the positive contributions that they make to society. It was established by Anna Jarvis, with the first official Mother's Day celebrated through a service of worship at St. Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908. Popular observances include holiday card and gift giving, churchgoing often accompanied by the distribution of carnations, and family dinners. In the United States, Mother's Day complements similar celebrations honoring family members, such as Father's Day, Siblings Day and Grandparents Day.
Washington Gladden was a leading American Congregational pastor and early leader in the Social Gospel movement. He was a leading member of the Progressive Movement, serving for two years as a member of the Columbus, Ohio city council and campaigning against Boss Tweed as religious editor of the New York Independent. Gladden was probably the first leading U.S. religious figure to support unionization of the workforce; he also opposed racial segregation. He was a prolific writer who wrote hundreds of poems, hymns, articles, editorials, and books.
Westminster Seminary California is a Reformed and Presbyterian Christian seminary in Escondido, California. It was initially a branch campus of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia until 1982 when it became fully independent. It currently has thirteen full-time faculty members and enrolls approximately 155 full-time students.
A spiritualist church is a church affiliated with the informal spiritualist movement which began in the United States in the 1840s. Spiritualist churches are now found around the world, but are most common in English-speaking countries, while in Latin America, Central America, Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa, where a form of spiritualism called spiritism is more popular, meetings are held in spiritist centres, most of which are non-profit organizations rather than ecclesiastical bodies.
Emma Hardinge Britten was an English advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement. Much of her life and work was recorded and published in her speeches and writing and an incomplete autobiography edited by her sister. She is remembered as a writer, orator, trance clairvoyant, and spirit medium. Her books, Modern American Spiritualism (1870) and Nineteenth Century Miracles (1884), are detailed accounts of spiritualism in America.
Peter Marshall was a Scottish-American preacher, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. and was appointed as Chaplain of the United States Senate.
The National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) is one of the oldest and largest of the national Spiritualist church organizations in the United States. The NSAC was formed as the National Spiritualist Association of the United States of America (NSA) in September 1893, during a three-day convention in Chicago, Illinois. Although American Spiritualists had previously tended to resist institutional or denominational organization, early NSA leaders hoped organization would help promote the truths of the religion both spiritually and practically. Organization could help non-Spiritualists distinguish genuine mediumship from the rapidly proliferating varieties of fraudulent mediumship, increase communication among Spiritualists, prevent the legal prosecution of spirit mediums under fortune telling and medical licensing laws, and counterattacks by "orthodox" ministers in the press. To these reasons, early leaders added the material support of spirit mediums and healers, just as other religious groups provided for the support of their clergy.
Addie L. Wyatt was a leader in the United States Labor movement, and a civil rights activist. Wyatt is known for being the first African-American woman elected international vice president of a major labor union, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union. Wyatt began her career in the union in the early 1950s and advanced in leadership. In 1975, with the politician Barbara Jordan, she was the first African-American woman named by Time magazine as Person of the Year.
Ida B. Robinson was an American Holiness-Pentecostal and Charismatic denominational leader. She was the founder, first Senior Bishop and President of the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America, Inc. Robinson formed the organization in response to her vision and Divine Call to secure an organizational home where women preachers would be welcomed and encouraged. Mount Sinai Holy Church of America is the only organization founded by an African-American woman that held consistent female leadership from its founding in 1924 until February 2001.
Doris Collins (1918-2003) was a British spiritualist and psychic medium.
Olivet Baptist Church is a church located in Chicago, Illinois. The congregation first formed in 1861 through the merger of two African-American congregations.
Lydia Emelie Gruchy was a French-born Canadian who became the first woman ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada. She was the first woman to enroll in theological studies, to graduate from a Presbyterian theological college and also the first woman to be granted an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in Canada.
Amanda Deyo was an American Universalist minister, pacifist, and correspondent. She was also a founder of women's right societies.
Fanny Huntington Runnells Poole (1863–1940) was an American writer. She was a book reviewer for Home Journal, 1894-8, and the author of A Bank of Violets (verse), 1895; Three Songs of Love (music), 1906; and Mugen (verse), 1908. She also compiled an unpublished poetical anthology. Poole enjoyed singing, teaching, the care of little children, the culture of flowers, embroidery, and old book and picture collections. But her absorbing passion was poetry.
Barbara Louise Andrews was an American Lutheran pastor.
References
- 1 2 "Flower, Amanda Cameron (1863-1940) - Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
- 1 2 Susan Hill Lindley; Eleanor J. Stebner (2008). The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-664-22454-7.