Podcast Episode 59
Women's Missionary Societies
with Dr. Anneke Stasson & host Nick Walters
Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple
52+ Episodes a Year.
100% Listener Supported.
We are committed to bringing you fresh historical insights every single Monday, completely ad-free. This work is only possible through the generosity of our listeners. If our weekly episodes have enriched your faith or your understanding of history, consider a gift to help us keep this mission moving forward.
In this episode of This Week in Christian History, we turn to the remarkable rise of women’s missionary societies—organizations that mobilized prayer, funding, education, and global outreach at a scale that reshaped modern Christianity. Long before women were formally recognized in church leadership, they were already organizing, strategizing, and sustaining missionary work across continents.
This week’s episode features an interview with Nick Walters, founder of the Center for Christian History at Mississippi College, followed by a Deep Dive conversation with Anneke Stasson, a scholar of evangelical literature and women’s religious history whose work focuses on how women shaped Christian movements through writing, philanthropy, and voluntary societies. As a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University, Dr. Stasson has examined how figures like Hannah More and other women of the evangelical revival helped lay the intellectual and cultural groundwork for organized female-led mission efforts in the nineteenth century.
At the center of this conversation is the story of women like Sarah Platt Doremus, one of the most influential lay leaders in nineteenth-century Protestant missions. Based in New York, Doremus was instrumental in founding the Woman’s Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands, an interdenominational organization that helped expand the reach of Protestant missions by mobilizing women across the United States. Under her leadership, the society supported female missionaries abroad, particularly in regions where cultural norms limited male access to women and families.
Doremus and her colleagues developed sophisticated systems of organization that included local auxiliaries, coordinated fundraising networks, regular correspondence from the mission field, and the wide distribution of missionary literature. These efforts created a national infrastructure of engagement, allowing women to participate directly in global missions from their homes, churches, and communities. In many respects, these societies functioned as parallel leadership structures within the Church, enabling women to exercise administrative, strategic, and spiritual influence long before such roles were formally recognized.
Drawing on Dr. Stasson’s research, this episode highlights how women’s missionary societies were not simply supportive organizations but central drivers of Christian expansion in the modern era. Through print culture, education, and philanthropy, women helped define the priorities and sustain the long-term work of missions, shaping both the practice and the vision of global Christianity.
The episode also highlights two important moments in Christian history from this same week. We examine the story of Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood, leaders among the English Separatists who were executed in 1593 for their dissent from the Church of England. Their lives and deaths reflect the high cost of religious conviction in early modern England and the struggle for freedom of conscience that would influence later Protestant movements.
We also reflect on the premiere of A German Requiem by Johannes Brahms, a choral work that departs from traditional Latin requiems by emphasizing comfort for the living through Scripture. It remains one of the most powerful examples of how Christian themes have shaped enduring works of Western music.
Together, these stories highlight the diverse ways Christianity has been lived out across time—from martyrdom and dissent to music and global missions. Whether through the quiet persistence of women organizing across oceans or the bold witness of those willing to die for their beliefs, the history of the Church is filled with individuals whose faith shaped the world in lasting ways.
This Week in Christian History is a production of the Center for Christian History, a trusted portal for Christian history committed to safeguarding and sharing the real story of the Church for both the curious and the committed.
Image: Sarah Platt Doremus (1802–1877). Original image: public domain 19th-century engraving. This version has been digitally enhanced and colorized using AI for presentation purposes.
