Female Ministry in the Thought and Work of Catherine Booth

Abstract

As with other professions, the ministry has a long record of excluding women from its ranks. Virtually all women, unlike all men, have been categorized as laity, although they have failed even to achieve that designation on occasion. George Bernard Shaw, in The Doctor's Dilemma, observed that “every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.” Certainly this has been the case among lay women aspiring to become members of the clergy. But Shaw recognized in his play, Major Barbara (1905), a new kind of Christian minister, one who contested her business-tycoon father on a significant contemporary issue of how best to relieve poverty in Britain. Indirectly Shaw was paying tribute to the influence of Catherine Booth (1829–1890), co-founder of the Salvation Army, who recognized women's powers of intellect and innate equality and elevated them to clerical parity with men.

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