Timeline of women in religion in the United States

Before 1776 1636 to 1643: Though she predates the start of the United States by over 100 years, Anne Hutchinson was highly influential on later American Colonial values with respect to civil liberty and religious freedoms. Circa 1770: Mary Evans Thorne was appointed class leader by Joseph Pilmore in Philadelphia, making her probably the first woman in America to be so appointed. 1774: Ann Lee and her followers arrive in New York City. 1775: Ann Lee and her followers establish the first communal home of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance (aka the Shakers) seven miles West of Albany, NY.

19th century Early 19th century: In the United States, in contrast with almost every other organized denomination, the Society of Friends (Quakers) has allowed women to serve as ministers since the early 19th century. 1815: Clarissa Danforth was ordained in New England. She was the first woman ordained by the Free Will Baptist denomination. 1830: In Harmony, PA, Emma Hale Smith was promised that she would be ordained "to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church, according as it shall be given thee by my Spirit" (Doctrine and Covenants, 25:7). 1844: Elizabeth Peabody became the first person to translate any Buddhist scripture into English, translating a chapter of the Lotus Sutra from its French translation. 1853: Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States. She was ordained by a church belonging to the Congregationalist Church. However, her ordination was not recognized by the denomination. She later quit the church and became a Unitarian. The Congregationalists later merged with others to create the United Church of Christ, which ordains women. 1861: Mary A. Will was the first woman ordained in the Wesleyan Methodist Connection by the Illinois Conference in the United States. The Wesleyan Methodist Connection eventually became the Wesleyan Church. 1863: The Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded in Michigan; one of its founders was a woman, Ellen G. White. American Olympia Brown was ordained by the Universalist denomination in 1863, the first woman ordained by that denomination, in spite of a last-moment case of cold feet by her seminary which feared adverse publicity. 1866: Helenor M. Davison was ordained as a deacon by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, probably making her the first ordained woman in the Methodist tradition. 1866: American Margaret Newton Van Cott became the first woman to be licensed to preach in The Methodist Episcopal Church. 1869: American Margaret Newton Van Cott became the first woman in the Methodist Episcopal Church to receive a local preacher's license. Lydia Sexton (of the United Brethren Church) was appointed chaplain of the Kansas State Prison at the age of 70, the first woman in the United States to hold such a position. 1876: Anna Oliver became the first woman to graduate from a Methodist seminary, receiving a Bachelor of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology. American Julia Evelina Smith's 1876 Bible translation, titled The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues, is considered the first complete translation of the Bible into English by a woman. 1879: The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in New England by an American woman, Mary Baker Eddy.Stark, Rodney (1988). "The Rise and Fall of Christian Science", Journal of Contemporary Religion, 13(2), p. 189.Mary Baker Eddy. Manual of the Mother Church. 89th ed., Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1908 , pp. 17–18. 1880: Anna Howard Shaw was the first woman ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church, an American church which later merged with other denominations to form the United Methodist Church. 1884: Julie Rosewald, called "Cantor Soprano" by her congregation, became America's first female cantor, serving San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El from 1884 until 1893, although she was not ordained. She was born in Germany. 1889: The Nolin Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church ordained Louisa Woosley as the first female minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, USA. Ella Niswonger was the first woman ordained in the American United Brethren Church, which later merged with other denominations to form the American United Methodist Church, which has ordained women with full clergy rights and conference membership since 1956. 1890: On September 14, 1890, Ray Frank gave the Rosh Hashana sermon for a community in Spokane, Washington, thus becoming the first woman to preach from a synagogue pulpit, although she was not a rabbi.

Early 20th century 1907: Anna Alexander of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia became the first (and only ever) African-American deaconess in the Episcopal Church. 1909: The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) began ordaining women in 1909. Women were first elected to the procurer of the Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly of Chicago – the Bahai Temple Unity. Of the nine members elected by secret ballot three were women with Corinne True (later appointed as a Hand of the Cause) serving as an officer. 1911: Ann Allebach was the first Mennonite woman to be ordained. This occurred at the First Mennonite Church of Philadelphia. 1912: Olive Winchester, born in America, became the first woman ordained by any trinitarian Christian denomination in the United Kingdom when she was ordained by the Church of the Nazarene.Women, the Church and Ministry: Celebrating 100 years of women's ordination in the UK. 1917: 1918: Alma Bridwell White, head of the Pillar of Fire Church, became the first woman ordained as a bishop in the United States. 1921: Helen Barrett Montgomery became the first woman to be elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention (NBC), and of any religious denomination in the United States."The Helen Barrett Montgomery Endowed Fund for the Program for the Study of Women and Gender in Church and Society" , Statement for Campaign Support, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, accessed 14 July 2011 1922: The Jewish Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis stated that "...woman cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination."American Reform responsa By Central Conference of American Rabbis, Walter Jacob (pg. 25) However, the first woman in Reform Judaism to be ordained (Sally Priesand) was not ordained until 1972. The American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan held the first public celebration of a bat mitzvah in the United States, for his daughter Judith, on March 18, 1922, at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, his synagogue in New York City.Waskow, Arthur Ocean and Phyllis Ocean Berman. Excerpt from A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC at Judith Kaplan recited the preliminary blessing, read a portion of that week's Torah portion in Hebrew and English, and then intoned the closing blessing. Kaplan, who at that time claimed to be an Orthodox rabbi, joined Conservative Judaism and then became the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, influenced Jews from all branches of non-Orthodox Judaism, through his position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. At the time, most Orthodox rabbis strongly rejected the idea of a bat mitzvah ceremony. The Presbyterian General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America allowed women to be deaconesses. 1924: Ida B. Robinson founded the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America and became the organization's first presiding bishop and president. 1930: The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ordained its first woman elder, Sarah E. Dickson. 1936: Sunya Gladys Pratt was ordained as a Buddhist minister in the Shin Buddhist tradition in Tacoma, Washington. 1938: Tehilla Lichtenstein became the first Jewish American woman to serve as the spiritual leader of an ongoing Jewish congregation, although she was not ordained. 1949: The Old Catholic Church (in the U.S.) started to ordain women.

Late 20th century 1950s 1950: In August 1950, amidst the success of Dianetics, Hubbard held a demonstration in Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium where he presented a young woman called Sonya Bianca (a pseudonym) to a large audience including many reporters and photographers as "the world's first Clear." However, despite Hubbard's claim that she had "full and perfect recall of every moment of her life", Bianca proved unable to answer questions from the audience testing her memory and analytical abilities, including the question of the color of Hubbard's tie. Hubbard explained Bianca's failure to display her promised powers of recall to the audience by saying that he had used the word "now" in calling her to the stage, and thus inadvertently froze her in "present time," which blocked her abilities. Later, in the late 1950s, Hubbard would claim that several people had reached the state of Clear by the time he presented Bianca as the world's first; these others, Hubbard said, he had successfully cleared in the late 1940s while working incognito in Hollywood posing as a swami. In 1966, Hubbard declared South African Scientologist John McMaster to be the first true Clear. McMaster left the Sea Org in November 1969, expressing continuing belief in the Scientology techniques, but disapproval of the way Scientology was managed. 1951: From 1951 until 1953, Paula Ackerman served as Temple Beth Israel's spiritual leader. In so doing, she achieved the distinction of becoming the first woman to assume spiritual leadership of a mainstream American Jewish congregation, although she was never ordained. 1956: Maud K. Jensen was the first woman to receive full clergy rights and conference membership (in her case, in the Central Pennsylvania Conference) in the Methodist Church. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ordained its first female minister, Margaret Towner.

1960s 1964: American Addie Elizabeth Davis became the first Southern Baptist woman to be ordained.Encyclopedia of women and religion in North America, Volume 1 By Rosemary Skinner Keller, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Marie Cantlon (pg. 294) However, the Southern Baptist Convention stopped ordaining women in 2000, although existing female pastors are allowed to continue their jobs. 1965: Rachel Henderlite became the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church in the United States; she was ordained by the Hanover Presbytery in Virginia. 1967: Margaret Henrichsen became the first American female district superintendent in the Methodist Church.

1970s 1970: On November 22, 1970, Elizabeth Alvina Platz became the first woman ordained by the Lutheran Church in America, and as such was the first woman ordained by any Lutheran denomination in America. The first woman ordained by the American Lutheran Church, Barbara Andrews, was ordained in December 1970. On January 1, 1988 the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which continues to ordain women. (The first woman ordained by the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, Janith Otte, was ordained in 1977.Encyclopedia of women and religion in North America, Volume 1 By Rosemary Skinner Keller, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Marie Cantlon (pg. 317)) 1972: Sally Priesand became America's first female rabbi ordained by a rabbinical seminary, and the second formally ordained female rabbi in Jewish history, after Regina Jonas. 1973: Emma Sommers Richards became the first Mennonite woman to be ordained as a pastor of a Mennonite congregation (Lombard Mennonite Church in Illinois). 1974: