Helen Barrett Montgomery

Helen Barrett Montgomery (July 31, 1861 – October 19, 1934) was an American social reformer, educator and writer. In 1921, she was elected as the first woman president of the Northern Baptist Convention (and of any religious denomination in the United States). She had long been a delegate to the Convention and a policymaker. In 1893, she helped found a chapter of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Rochester, New York, and served as president until 1911, nearly two decades. In 1899, Montgomery was the first woman elected to the Rochester School Board and any public office in the city, 20 years before women could vote.

Montgomery was an activist for women's and overseas missions and a successful fundraiser; in 1910-1911, she raised one million dollars by her national speaking tour (the funds raised were equivalent to $23.7 million in 2010), used chiefly to support colleges for women in China. In 1921 as president of the Women's American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, she gave their "Jubilee" contributions of more than $450,000 to the National Baptist Convention. In 1924, she was the first woman to publish a translation of the New Testament from the original Greek. Living mostly in Rochester, New York, she was influential in national and international progressive movements.

Since 1995, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School has held an annual conference on Women in Church and Society, named in honor of Helen Barrett Montgomery. In addition, the School is establishing an endowed fund in her name for its Program for the Study of Women and Gender in Church and Society.

Early life and education Helen was the eldest of three children born to Amos Judson Barrett and Emily Barrows Barrett, both of whom were then teachers. She was born in Kingsville, Ohio. Her parents moved to Rochester, New York when she was a child so that her father could attend the Rochester Theological Seminary. After he graduated in 1876, he was called as pastor of Lake Avenue Baptist Church in the city. He served there until his death in 1889, when Helen was 28.

Helen Barrett studied at Wellesley College, where she graduated with teacher certification in 1884. She had studied and excelled in Greek, leading her class. (Later she would write and publish a translation of the New Testament.) She taught in Rochester and then at the Wellesley Preparatory School in Philadelphia.

Marriage and family On September 6, 1887, Barrett married a Rochester businessman, William A. Montgomery, owner of North East Electric Company. (This eventually became the Rochester Products Division of General Motors.) They adopted a daughter, whom they named Edith Montgomery. As president of the Women's American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, she had given their gift of more than to the NBC. She was elected after having demonstrated her successful fundraising. During her year as president of the NBC, Montgomery spent considerable time in trying to prepare the churches for a new "statement of faith." She worked to prevent the Convention from being taken over by fundamentalists and requiring an official confession. Her correspondence during this period showed that she was motivated by her "defense of the cherished Baptist principle of liberty." She strongly believed that women had an active role to play in the church and society.

Social reforms to benefit women Montgomery worked on social reforms in the United States, especially those to benefit women. In 1893, she joined with Susan B. Anthony, the activist for civil rights who was nearly 40 years older, in forming a new chapter of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) in Rochester. Montgomery served as president from 1893-1911, which "enabled her to exert broad influence in the city's social and political affairs." She and Anthony worked together for more than a decade on women's issues in Rochester. Following the example of chapters in Buffalo and Boston, the WEIU of Rochester served poor women and children in the city, which was attracting many Southern and Eastern European rural immigrants for its industrial jobs. The WEIU also founded a legal aid office, set up public playgrounds, established a "Noon Rest" house where working girls could eat unmolested, and opened stations for mothers to obtain safe milk, which later developed as public health clinics. It developed as one of the most important Progressive institutions in the city.

Montgomery's translation was notable for her practice of inserting chapter and section titles (as seen in photo), a pioneering feature now commonly used in Bibles in many languages. She included interpretations supporting enlarged roles for women in the church, which was influenced by her reading the works of Katharine Bushnell, a Methodist missionary. (Bushnell's work was rediscovered by theologians in 1975.) Montgomery had reviewed an edition of Bushnell's collection God's Word for Women in 1924, but likely first came across the work when it was published in 1919.

Montgomery: "It is fitting that a woman should pray to God with her head unveiled."

NASB: "Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?"

KJV: "Is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?"

Christian missions Montgomery supported missions by a variety of activities: her national speaking tour (1910–1911) raised $1 million for the mission fund (worth $23.7 million in 2010). Much of the money was used to establish colleges for women in China. 1995, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School started the annual Helen Barrett Montgomery Conference on Women in Church and Society.

Works An autobiography was assembled posthumously from her papers and published in 1940, along with tributes by friends and associates, as Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship, New York: Fleming H. Revell.

The following is a partial list of writings by Helen Barrett Montgomery: (1906) Christus Redemptor: The Island World of the Pacific. (1910) Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman's Work in Foreign Lands, New York: Macmillan. (1913) Following the Sunrise: A Century of Baptist Missions, 1813–1913. Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis: American Baptist Publication Society. (1915) The King's Highway: A Study of Present Conditions on the Foreign Field, West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. (1920) "The Bible and Missions", The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions (1924) Prayer and Missions (1924) Helen Barrett Montgomery's Centenary Translation of the New Testament, Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, available online. (1925–26) "Translating the New Testament". The Baptist 651-52. (1929) From Jerusalem to Jerusalem. Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. (1931) The Preaching Value of Missions: Being the John M. English Lectures Delivered at the Newton Theological Institution, Philadelphia: Judson Press.