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Editor’s Note: Honoring 200 Years of the American Unitarian Association
May 26, 2025, marks the 200th anniversary of the chartering of the American Unitarian Association, which played a key role in social justice movements, including abolition and women’s rights.
Theologically, the AUA was distinct from other Christian denominations for its unitarian—rather than trinitarian—understanding of God. And those who worked and worshipped as part of the AUA are the spiritual ancestors of Unitarian Universalists.
As we celebrate this milestone, we honor the AUA’s legacy of liberal faith and progressive values that live on through the Unitarian Universalist Association and in UU congregations. This story reflects that history and reminds us of the continued relevance of the struggle for collective liberation.
Nineteenth century America was not a hospitable place for women ministers. By 1870, men outnumbered women in the liberal clergy by 600-to-5.
Even among the more liberal denominations, the mantle of religious leadership was bestowed rarely, reluctantly, and with skepticism from male-dominated hierarchies of church leadership.
Olympia Brown, the first woman to become a minister with official approval from a national denomination, was ordained by the Universalist Church in 1863. Not long after, despite fierce opposition from a sexist society, more women leaders went through the door that she pushed open.
Marking the AUA’s 200th Anniversary
Find more stories at uuworld.org/aua200.
The Iowa Sisterhood, founded by twenty-one Unitarian women in 1875, launched what was then a radical project: a group of women ministers serving congregations throughout the Great Plains, spreading the gospel of their liberal faith.
The members of the Sisterhood were courageous, free-thinking, and determined to challenge the patriarchal culture that had kept women out of ministry for so long.
Mary Safford, who as a child in the 1850s would deliver sermons to her family from a tree stump, believed women should do the same in church: by age 28 she was an ordained minister. Eleanor Gordon, Safford’s close childhood friend who would go on to launch a church with her in their hometown of Hamilton, Illinois, became a minister as well. In their early twenties, under an apple tree in the Gordons’ orchard, they pledged they would serve the world as a team.
How did the Sisterhood, opposed at every turn by the society around them and even some in their own denomination, manage to make their mark on history? And what is their legacy today, for Unitarian Universalists and all those who seek to build a more inclusive, equitable world?
A Pioneering Ministry—with Many Obstacles
In the northeastern states, near the bulk of Unitarian churches in the nineteenth century, women rarely had the opportunity to serve in full-time ministries. States such as Iowa and Colorado, which were unappealing to male ministers who mostly wanted to work in the northeast, offered a chance for women to lead their own congregations. This did not mean that they were free from prejudice: their religious neighbors, including Baptist and Calvinist congregations, condemned them as heretics.
In addition to being women in a male-dominated field, some were preachers of a visionary gospel of social change, often more progressive than what was preached by their Unitarian colleagues in New England.
The women of the Iowa Sisterhood, though marginalized and mistrusted even by many Unitarians in their own time, embodied a change in the course of American religious history. In addition to being women in a male-dominated field, some were preachers of a visionary gospel of social change, often more progressive than what was preached by their Unitarian colleagues in New England.
Caroline Bartlett Crane, a Sisterhood member who served in South Dakota and Michigan, preached on highly charged issues such as legalized prostitution and prison reform. Undeterred by those who expected women to give safe, inoffensive sermons (if they gave sermons at all), Crane instead believed in “the simple, fearless saying of what one means.”
Not content to accept congregants only “reading poetry or studying modern science,” as was common in some liberal churches, Safford encouraged her flock to engage in philanthropy, civic life, and political activism. Following in the tradition of abolitionist preachers like Theodore Parker, the ministers of the Iowa Sisterhood spoke against the excesses of capitalism, the evils of slavery, and the oppression of women.
As Gordon once preached: “I believe from this pulpit and from these pews will go forth an influence that will make for honor in politics, truth-telling in business, justice in the home, and high ideals of human obligation and responsibility everywhere.” The Iowa Sisterhood called for wide-ranging social reform and did so in parts of the country where their Unitarian theology was viewed with scorn and suspicion.
Despite the historic nature of their leadership, the women of the Sisterhood were not widely celebrated at the time of their ministries.
Despite the historic nature of their leadership, the women of the Sisterhood were not widely celebrated at the time of their ministries. By 1900, they had founded fourteen churches and rescued others, playing a major role in the westward expansion of the Unitarian faith. But powerful figures in the denomination, such as American Unitarian Association president Samuel Eliot, joined in calls for a “manlier ministry” and undermined women who sought to lead churches or gain ordination.
When asked to comment on this denominational sexism, Crane answered “We all feel it. We all know it; men as well as women,” and expressed her wish that AUA leadership would be “frank enough to say it.”
Facing a world largely opposed to women clergy, and undermined at times by their own denomination, which reserved the more desirable jobs for men, most women of the Sisterhood reluctantly left ministry for other fields.
Iowa Sisterhood: A Legacy Reclaimed
Over a century later, these remarkable ministers—largely lost to history—were rediscovered when Safford’s memoirs were found in an archive in 1973. This memoir proved an invaluable roadmap to Cynthia Grant Tucker, a professor of English, who went on to write the definitive chronicle of the Iowa Sisterhood, Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880–1930.
Tucker, who passed away in January of 2025, wrote that she was committed to “giving abridged and interrupted voices their due.” In telling the story of the Iowa Sisterhood, she recorded for history both the prophetic, trailblazing ministry of the Sisterhood, and the withering opposition they faced from a world that was largely not ready to accept them as leaders.
Tucker described the Iowa Sisterhood as “at once influential and impotent, conspicuous and invisible, highly vocal and effectively silenced.” Today, thanks to the efforts of scholars like Tucker, they are silenced no longer.
“The Sisterhood members, like many marginalized people, could see what was going on in the world, the ills of society, and understood full well how to address those.”
Rev. Denise Cawley, a UU community minister based in Milwaukee who has spent years researching the group, described the ministers as “bold and brave” individuals, prophetic in their leadership, who saw the social injustice of their moment with great clarity.
“The Sisterhood members, like many marginalized people, could see what was going on in the world, the ills of society, and understood full well how to address those,” said Cawley. “And they were able to get their voices heard because men of their time had no interest in the pulpits [in Iowa and other Midwestern states] that needed to be filled.”
Regarding their commitment to social justice, Cawley said, “Ministers of the Sisterhood, like Florence Buck, were speaking about inclusivity and DEI well over 150 years ago.”
She added that, “For me, Florence Buck is a justice warrior in the most elegant way,” highlighting her work for women’s suffrage and her provision of free education for children. Buck was a leader in interreligious work, holding a joint Thanksgiving service with a Reform Jewish congregation in Cleveland in 1896.
Cawley also emphasized the Sisterhood’s impact on religious education, which was often entirely their responsibility.
“They were very used to having to preach the Sunday sermon, then having to run downstairs and teach Sunday school,” said Cawley.
In her research, she learned that Buck, for one, introduced the idea of using pictures, pageants, and skits in religious education, noting, “It was revolutionary at the time to use pictures.”
Remembering a ‘Community of Courageous Dreamers’
Reflecting on the Sisterhood today, Cawley expressed the importance of remembering that the fight for equal treatment for religious professionals of marginalized identities is not yet won.
“The struggle,” Cawley said, “is still ongoing—for women ministers to get big pulpits, to not get undermined and discriminated against, and this is felt by many of our queer and BIPOC colleagues.”
Today, over half of Unitarian Universalist ministers identify as women. But the immense opposition faced by early women ministers shows us that the roots of patriarchal culture run deep—and reminds us not to fall into the complacent assumption that women leaders in UU congregations are free of discrimination today.
Working in lonely, arduous conditions, spurned even by the supposedly liberal leadership of their own denomination, the Sisterhood carved out a place in the history of American religion.
The legacy of the Iowa Sisterhood is one of bravery, resilience, and vision. Working in lonely, arduous conditions, spurned even by the supposedly liberal leadership of their own denomination, the Sisterhood carved out a place in the history of American religion. They remind Unitarian Universalists that our movement is made possible by the pioneers who came before us.
Despite the intolerant conditions around them, the Sisterhood made indelible contributions to religious education, social justice, and ministry that can still be felt today. They challenged their liberal denomination to live up to its own ideals—and in doing so, can inspire us to do the same.
As Tucker writes, by reading the stories of the Sisterhood “… we find ourselves part of a timeless community of courageous dreamers, with whom we can anchor our common visions and hopes of a better world.”