Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 14:4 (Fall 2000)
Article: Book Review: A Hero From Yesterday: Phoebe Palmer
Author: Martha Berg

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Book Review:
A Hero From Yesterday: Phoebe Palmer

Martha Berg

The Promise Of The Father, by Phoebe Palmer originally published by H. V. Degen, Boston: 1859, reprinted by Garland, New York: 1985.

Reviewed by Martha Berg, who was a long-time teacher in Bible Study Fellowship in the U.S. and Japan. She has recently done hospital chaplaincy training and is currently pursuing graduate studies at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago.

I wish I had encountered Phoebe Palmer (1807-74) about 25 years ago when wrestling with the issue of the role of women in the church loomed heavily on my heart and mind, and had surfaced in our church as well.

Palmer’s underlying thesis is that the promise of the Father to pour out his Spirit on all flesh, male and female, and that sons and daughters would prophesy, relates to the role of women in the church today. She goes through many of the New Testament passages related to women’s roles, and she exegetes and interprets them, often citing other scholars who affirm a less-restrictive understanding than was common in her day. She expresses the problem when she says:

[T]here is a wrong, a serious wrong, affectingly cruel in its influences, which has long been depressing the hearts of the most devotedly pious women. And this wrong is inflicted by pious men, many of whom, we presume, imagine that they are doing God a service in putting a seal upon lips which God has commanded to speak (p. 13)

Her words were reminiscent of something I had written as a foreword in a research paper some women in our church wrote in 1974-75:

For too long, the issues of women’s liberation, women’s roles and participation in traditionally male activities have been treated with snickers, tongue-in-cheek remarks, or bare tolerance. Conflict, hurt, and identity crises have been created in the minds of many Christian women who are seeking to integrate Scripture and the realities of twentieth-century culture to find a secure and biblically sound position from which to grow and develop . . .

Things haven’t changed much from Phoebe Palmer’s day in some sectors.

I was surprised at her tone at various points, seemingly really “sticking it to” those from whom she had experienced opposition. While she says, “It is not our intention to chide those who have thus kept the Christian female in bondage . . . ,” she seems to do far more than “chide” in he less-than-subtle pronouncements on those who differ. She tells of a woman’s testimony being rejected, and then writes that “in rejecting her testimony for Jesus, did not Jesus, the friend of the church, take it as done unto himself?”

She then follows this with a devastating poem:

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