Women’s History Month provides occasion to lift up heroines from our own Baptist history... those Baptist women in America who rose up to answer Christ’s call to the Great Commission.

In 1871, Baptist women in New England, unwilling to deny opportunity for single women to serve as missionaries, organized the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society and provided financial support for women they commissioned and sent for foreign missionary service. Four decades later, the Society in the East joined efforts with likeminded Baptist women in the western U.S., giving birth to the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, which would continue to manage and administer women’s work for women in other countries until the middle of the 20th century when its work was consolidated with the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, known as International Ministries.

Baptist women in the U.S. organized in 1877 to address evangelism and education in America and began home mission societies. That very year, the Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society commissioned and sent Joanna P. Moore to the South for missionary work among Negroes. With unmatched zeal, within the first decade, the women’s home mission work birthed the following: 

- work among Native Americans in Oklahoma
- work among Swedish immigrants in Chicago
- the first work among German immigrants in St. Louis
- founded Atlanta Female Baptist Seminary, now Spelman College
- established a Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago to prepare women  for missionary service
- work among Spanish-speaking people in Arizona
- funding for the Christian education of Negroes
- frontier work in Montana
- the first missionary to Ellis Island
- publication of Bible lessons for mothers, children, fathers, and young people
- mission work in Mexico
- mission work in Alaska

In 1955, the women’s home mission work became part of what we know today as National Ministries; many of National Ministries’ mission emphases to this day are rooted in the early work begun by the women.

Today American Baptist women remain heroines of support and empowerment for American Baptist mission in countless ways. AB Women’s Ministries’ current initiative against sex trafficking, Break the Chains: Slavery in the 21st Century” has raised over $468,000 for new mission work with women and children. In fall 2010, project monies will largely fund new ministries begun by American Baptist women.

During this first week of Women’s History Month, we honor Baptist women who were, and are, answering the call of Jesus Christ to serve on the front line of mission.

Virginia R. Holmstrom, Executive Director
American Baptist Women’s Ministries