Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:3 (Summer 2024)
Article: Book Review: "Silenced: The Forgotten Story Of Progressive Era Free Methodist Women" By Christy Mesaros-Winckles (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
Author: Kimberly Dickson

PP 38:3 (Summer 2024) p. 29

Book Review: Silenced: The Forgotten Story Of Progressive Era Free Methodist Women By Christy Mesaros-Winckles (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

Kimberly Dickson

Kimberly Dickson, who has a Masters in Public Health (MPH), has studied and worked in the Middle East, East Africa, India, and in her home state of California. She has seen the welfare of communities transform when those who are traditionally marginalized are brought into the center of community decision making. She hosts the “Women in Scripture and Christian History” theme on CBE’s podcast, Mutuality Matters.

Christy Mesaros-Winckles’s book, Silenced: The Forgotten Story of Progressive Era Free Methodist Women, carefully charts the changes in the American religious landscape that led to the silencing of women in the Free Methodist Church in the United States. Through painstaking research in denominational magazine articles and women’s field reports, Mesaros-Winckles has traced how a church founded on equality and social reform in the 1860s became a church that silenced and sidelined women’s ministry from 1890 until 1974. Using the voices of those who fought on both sides, Mesaros-Winckles reveals an untold story of church history.

Founded in 1860 by Benjamin Titus Roberts in reaction against the Episcopal Methodist Church, the Free Methodists “embodied the ideals of equality and the value of every person to God” (5). They purposefully sought to bring equality to slaves, women, and the poor because they believed the Episcopal Methodists favored the wealthy against the poor, marginalized, and oppressed. As Roberts saw it, the Free Methodists were returning to “Old School Methodism,” which was founded upon John Wesley’s understanding of spirituality and sanctification.

Mesaros-Winckles does not cover Wesley’s study of the ancient beliefs still practiced in Eastern Orthodoxy that led to his novel (in Protestantism) understanding of sanctification, but she does explain its impact on the Free Methodist Church. Namely, Wesley’s theology of sanctification is that, over one’s lifetime, one could become free of intentional sin. Importantly, this means that truly following God’s law leads to radical love of God and neighbor. Practically, this means believers “would seek social and religious reform and devote much of their time to these efforts” (6). As Mesaros-Winkles states: “Radical social reform was at the heart of an individual’s quest for Christian perfection” (6). As this merged with the Holiness Movement of the 1860s, the Free Methodist Church grew rapidly. Mesaros-Winckles’s thorough explanation of the Free Methodist Church’s founding principles and theology proves essential to understanding the conflict that emerged in the churc...