Women Preachers May Be Needed During the War

1918

WOMEN PREACHERS

Now that there is a shortage of preachers, due to the war — because so many ministers are entering the service as chaplains, and because so many young men who might have entered the training schools for ministers are entering the army we shall see more women occupying pulpits than has been the case in the past.

What effect it will have upon the churches themselves, is not certain. The women have not made a notable success at preaching up to this time. There have been several illustrious female ministers, but it must be said in all truthfulness that they have wielded little influence as public speakers. That was not strange, however, with so many generations of prejudice against them as public speakers to be combated.

But the war isn't going to last always, and when it is over there will be a different story to tell. Men will take to the pulpit as never before. Religion is going to advance; it is not going to be destroyed by the war. We expect to see more young men enter the theological when the war is over — men who have found themselves in the trenches and who have become conscious of the great good that is to be done through the preaching and teaching of the Christian religion. But there will be less of theology and more of religion when this awful blight that is now upon the world, subsides. — Columbus Dispatch, circa June 1918.