A paper written for a Foundations of Leadership course:

The October 14, 2009 cover story of Time magazine proclaimed that American women were “more powerful” but “less happy.”[1] If this is so, perhaps our aim has been too low. Perhaps we have been settling for corner offices and company cars, PhDs and personal parking spaces when we should be chomping at the bit for “real”[2] power. Janet Hagberg states that “personal power is the extent to which one is able to link the outer capacity for action (external power) with the inner capacity for reflection (internal power).”[3] Catching sight of a calling beyond credentials, Hagberg beckons us to journey toward becoming “Stage 6: Power by Gestalt”[4] women who “lead from the soul.”[5] According to Hagberg, Stage Six women are “a wonder to behold.”[6] How do we spot these wonder women? Hagberg says, “They have peace even in chaos, they are clear and undiluted, they are compassionate, they are courageous, and they listen to their calling.”[7] This description fit perfectly a 19^th century reformer that I have only recently had the pleasure of discovering: Helen Barrett Montgomery.

Helen Barrett Montgomery (1861-1934) was a college-educated social reformer, prolific author, and woman of many firsts in the world of education and missions. She held public positions of authority, including being the first female elected to the Rochester Board of Education[8] and the first female President of a major Protestant denomination.[9] Her fervent efforts toward “progressive Christianization of culture”[10] had a global impact.[11] Furthermore her husband, William Montgomery, was a man ahead of his time. Egalitarian in perspective, when asked if he would approve of and financially support his wife’s proposed “trip around the world” Mr. Montgomery replied, “When I married Helen Barrett I realized that she had ability and training to do what I could never do. I resolved, therefore, never to interfere with any call that might come to her. If Helen cares to go, I will help her in every possible way.”[12]

As we examine the life of Helen Barrett Montgomery with an eye to discovering evidence of each of Hagberg’s six stages of personal power, trail markers emerge – moments of decision and crisis in which Helen’s high “emotional intelligence”[13] and Spirit-led[14] decision-making drew her continually upward to the higher ground of “leading from the soul.”[15]

“Stage One: Powerlessness”

Even in her earliest childhood days of complete dependence, Helen “Nellie”[16] Barrett was being readied to rise to higher stages of power. According to Mobley, “From her parents, especially from her father, [Helen] gained an early appreciation for education…Helen never wanted to emulate her mother. That honor went to her father.” [17] In her autobiographical reflections on childhood, Helen wrote: “I loved both my parents with all the affection within me. But I am not quite sure that my mother’s authority [power] was completely successful.”[18] In these childhood reflections, Helen reveals her admiration for her father- “he entered the University of Rochester as a sophomore, taught during his junior year, and kept up classes at the same time…he…graduated with high standing…he was a principal of [several] academies…he [studied] at Rochester Theological Seminary…For thirteen years, until his death, he was [a] pastor.”[19] Of her mother, Helen remarks, “My mother was Emily B. Barrows of Trenton, New York” who was “obeyed because she belonged.”[20] Mobley indicates that Helen’s mother was “the epitome of the True Woman – self-sacrificial, subordinate, pious, pure, and domestic.”[21] This did not necessarily mean that Emily Barrett was unhappy. Indeed, Hagberg offers that “many married women are examples of powerless but happy people, secure and dependent, with their own interests and busy lives.”[22] But Helen did not aim to become a “True [powerless] Woman.”[23] She aspired to “New Womanhood.”[24]

It is worth underscoring the significance of the encouragement to pursue higher education for a female in the 19^th century. Reflecting in a book that would become the hottest selling book on missions in the history of the movement, Helen remarked: “Startling is the change which the [19^th] century has wrought in the ideas of the world in regard to women’s education.”[25] Startling indeed! Colleges for women were few and far between. According to Helen, “Mary Lyon [in 1837]…succeeded by sheer force of determination and superb initiative in founding Mount Holyoke [Female] Seminary.”[26] That women should receive an education equal to that of men was an issue hotly debated during Helen’s girlhood. One popular and prolific Christian writer of the time, J.G.Holland, wrote concerning “Women in the Colleges,” in his book Every Day Topics (1876):

The facts still remain, that men are not women, that women are not men, and that for their differing spheres of life and labor they need a widely different training. It certainly is not an object for society to make women more like men than they are, or in any way to divert them from a full and fine development of their womanhood.[27]

In this article Holland was not arguing that women be allowed an education, but rather what kind of education they should receive. The power to decide concerning their own higher education, along with the power to vote had yet to be secured for women.

Helen’s own alma mater, Wellesley College (founded in 1875), had opened its doors just five short years before Helen enrolled at the age of nineteen.[28] Her enrollment would not have been secured without the dedicated encouragement and assistance of her father: “I wanted to go to Wellesley, and in the spring of 1880 my father gave his consent. Before I was fifteen I had read the required Latin, but my preparation needed to be rounded out and my father saw to it himself.”[29] In this reflection, Helen articulates both of the “key personal qualities [which] will ultimately precipitate the…movement to Stage Two: self-esteem and skills.”[30] According to Hagberg, “People have to start feeling good about themselves, and they have to have saleable skills.”[31] As a consequence of her father’s active support and “sympathy,” Helen was able to move on to Stage Two: Power by Association.”[32]

“Stage Two: Power by Association”

Hagberg states that “people at Stage Two usually want to be like someone else. They frequently have a role model or at least identify themselves with other more powerful people.”[33] Helen Barrett’s role model was none other than the president of Wellesley College, Alice Freeman. In many ways, Alice Freeman provided Helen with a female version of the man she “adored:”[34] her father. In a letter home from college during her sophomore year Helen wrote, “Miss Freeman is progressive and is jogging things out of the ruts. She does so magnificently as President. She reminds me of Papa so much in her way of handling the girls…After one of her lectures we go out feeling that we are “moral agents” and not naughty children who have been scolded.”[35]

The role of Alice Freeman in Helen’s life was less that of teacher-administrator and more that of a Stage Two “mentor.”[36] In the fall of her sophomore year, Helen and two of her classmates were assigned to eat at the President’s table. In a letter home Helen wrote, “Three of us, hugging ourselves with joy, sat at Miss Freeman’s table…she was a brilliant talker, and those were the days. Never would there be such days again.”[37] Indeed, Alice Freeman was a brilliant talker. A contemporary[38] wrote of her: “The charm of her personality and the wisdom of her methods have won all hearts; her own enthusiasm is contagious and every student regards her as a personal sympathetic friend to whom she may go at all hours for council and comfort.”[39] In her letters home, Helen referred to her own “long talk[s]”[40] with Miss Freeman concerning future aspirations: “There are so many ways of doing good in the world and so much need in every direction that I feel bewildered in trying to decide in which way to turn my attention.”[41]

This sentiment reflects the “self-exploration” that Hagberg discusses of “Stage Twos.” “A lot of people at this stage,” Hagberg continues, “take the advice of other people rather than trust themselves.”[42] It is also during this stage that Helen Barrett began to appropriate the calling to “New Womanhood.”[43] This model embraced the coupled-calling of public AND private lives for women. Referred to as “domestic feminism”[44] by Mobley, Helen Barrett Montgomery would write in a 1903 tribute to Alice Freeman Palmer, “She was the ideal woman [who] made real to us the possibility of a rounded and symmetrical womanhood. To add to one’s attainment in scholarship, culture; to culture, social tact; to conjoin high enthusiasm with a sense of proportion; it was this that we believed should belong to the ideal of every college woman.”[45]

“The crisis that people experience in moving to Stage Three is one of confidence.”[46] Just moments before receiving the first of what would be many “symbols of personal power,”[47] Helen Barrett confidently delivered her “class-day speech.”[48] What should have been a moment of great personal pride became, instead, a shameful “misfortune:”

We appeared in full glory of cap and gown- the first time that any class [from Wellesley College] had soared to such academic heights. There was a tragedy. My speech was to have included a tribute to our beloved honorary member, President Freeman, but I forgot it. As soon as I sat down I realized from the horrified faces of my classmates that something had gone wrong, and I arose and delivered some kind of an impromptu. For years I could never think of this misfortune without a sick sense of shame.[49]

“Stage Three: Power by Symbols”

Though Helen Barrett showed a strong distaste for many of those things that would be perceived as symbols of power,[50] she clearly exhibited what Hagberg refers to as “Stage Three Leadership” which involves “guiding others by personal persuasion and charisma.”[51] Remarked one lifelong friend, “There was in Mrs. Montgomery an intimacy with others that won over her audiences…Her persuasiveness on the platform was in harmony with her habitual attitude towards people whom she met. She valued the individual.”[52] Though this “personal persuasiveness and charisma” would remain with Helen throughout her life, it would not take long for her to move into what Hagberg refers to as “True Leadership.”[53] According to Hagberg, “Moving to Stage Four is more of an event than it is an achievement… To move to Stage Four, women have to reconfirm themselves, their sense of the balance between the masculine and the feminine.”[54] This event for Helen Barrett came in the form of a marriage proposal. Mobley sums up this transformational event in this way:

At the time of their engagement, William Montgomery did not want to deter Helen from her dreams and goals. When he proposed marriage, he offered to lengthen their engagement five years so that Helen would have time to pursue her career.[55] Helen decided no delay was necessary. In William’s attitude toward her talent and ambition, she found the tension between domesticity and professionalism adequately resolved. William, she discovered, would help her and sympathize with her “in every high aspiration and unselfish purpose.’ She wrote, “I am growing more and more anxious that my life may be given without reserve to God’s service.” After he visited her in Philadelphia before their marriage, she wrote to her family, “he knelt down with me and we consecrated our lives to God’s work in the world, promising to make this work our first thought and asking for His strength to keep us unspotted from the world.”[56]

“Stage Four: Power by Reflection”

Helen was twenty-six years old when she became “Mrs. William Montgomery.”[57] Reflecting on her new estate, Helen wrote:

How wonderfully good God has been to me! First, he put my passionate, wayward little feet into the dearest home where wise and tender hands slowly guided me into a happy life. I can see how otherwise I might have been a most unhappy and unlovely woman. Then He gave me the very best educational advantages, letting me come into contact with great men and women. Then I have had such beautiful friends and so much kindness shown to me, and last of all God has led my heart where I shall be helped and sympathized with in every high aspiration and unselfish purpose. I’d like to preach a sermon on “The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth and the time of the singing of birds is here.[58]

Yet, amidst this wedded bliss, Helen also left behind fragments of that “battle that goes on within [Stage] Fours.”[59] It is during this stage, asserts Hagberg, that “the true self is beginning to emerge:”[60]

I tell you this Christian faith of ours is all shopworn being handled over the counter and mussed and creased and discussed…My own soul is sick with theory – I’m getting so I don’t care how or when or where or whether the Pentateuch wrote Moses or Moses, the Pentateuch. There is good news, the gospel, the love of God, the life of Jesus, and here am I, sinful and selfish and blind as a bat- for the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. I know enough things now to make me a saint if I lived ‘em. I’m going to live more and talk less.[61]

Hagberg also suggests that Stage “Fours are perceived as strong, nearly invulnerable people.”[62] An example of this behavior can be seen during this season in Helen’s life when, “in respectable Victorian fashion,”[63] she rose to the challenge of providing much-needed income[64] for the couple.

According to Hagberg, “the goal of moving to Stage Five is to let go of control, of having to know, of planning all the time.”[65] And- she adds for those wishing to move ahead in the stages-“prepare for a sense of loss.”[66]

“Stage Five: Power by Purpose”

Shortly after her wedding day, Helen Barrett Montgomery mused, “If I ever have children, I wonder if they will grow beyond and away from me. I’d want to be the one they’d soonest be with.”[67] Eight years later, despite a loving and affection marriage, Helen was still without the one ingredient necessary to that calling which she would later refer to as “the one absolutely essential profession.”[68] Helen had no children.

Hagberg, speaking of people in Stage Five: Power by Purpose states that, “Fives have a life purpose that extends beyond themselves. This has resulted from a deep, inner churning, a long, slow, or painful evolution in which the old rules have dropped away…these people have encountered themselves head on.”[69] It is difficult to believe that Helen Barrett Montgomery, a champion of the “profession of motherhood,” who viewed it as the “highest in the world” and referred to mothers as “brave soldiers of the kingdom who, turning their backs on fame and glory…find in a humble home their sphere of service,”[70] would choose, “like many female college graduates of her generation,”[71] to intentionally delay or avoid pregnancy and childbirth. The strong connection between marriage and children for Helen can be seen in her recommendation that “Perhaps not all women should marry. I am quite sure that those who plan to shift the burden of responsibility for the care of their children onto others should not marry.”[72] I would offer instead, that this “thorn”[73] of barrenness and its resultant “sense of loss,” may have been the very “process item”[74] used to draw her up to a “life purpose that extend[ed] beyond [herself.”[75] For it is during the early years of this stage that Helen Barrett Montgomery begins to bloom as a public figure and social reformer.[76] And, it is during this stage that she and her husband decide to reach out and adopt a five-year-old little girl, Edith.[77]

“Stage Six: Power by Gestalt”

Reflecting back to that Time magazine cover referenced earlier in this paper, I am reminded that, while in America today it may “no longer [be] a man’s world,”[78] the equality enjoyed by women in our 21^st century marketplace is still not necessarily offered in contemporary local Christian fellowships…or, for that matter, Christian homes. Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos[79] states that the Galatians 3:28 assertion that “there is no longer…male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,”[80] “remains in many ways an unfulfilled call to freedom in the Christian household.”[81] According to Lorry Lutz, while equality for all may be the “non-traditional” interpretation of this Galatians text, most “traditional” Christians would believe that the verse implied “spiritual equality” only:[82]

Probably one of the saddest accounts of how the attitude of church leaders limited and affected women’s roles in ministry is the story of twentieth-century missions in North America…by 1929, 67 percent of all foreign missionaries from the United States were women and over forty women’s mission boards had been formed. Women recruited single missionaries, sent them out to work primarily with women and children, financed them and organized national prayer movements. The World Day of Prayer was founded by the Federation of Women’s Boards and Councils of Women for Home Missions in 1919.

But leaders of the mainline churches resisted this movement, opposing the appearance of women in public meetings, and their assumption of leadership roles in churches on the mission fields… R. Pierce Beaver writes, ‘The church has always been the bastion on male arrogance and power, and the men were most reluctant to share control and ministry with the women.’

The mainline mission boards began increasing pressure on the women’s organizations to merge. The chief spokesperson for the women’s missionary boards, Mrs. Helen Montgomery asked, ‘Are men ready for it – are they emancipated from the caste of sex so that they can work easily with women, unless they be the head and women clearly subordinate?[83]

By the time Helen Barrett Montgomery asked this probing question – a question answered by a resounding, “No!”[84]- she had published several books on missions,[85] published an original translation of the New Testament from Greek to English,[86] and had been granted “the degrees of Doctor of Laws by Denison University, Doctor of Humane Letters by Franklin College, and Doctor of Laws by Wellesley.”[87] When exactly did she move from being a Stage Five: Power by Purpose leader to a Stage Six: Power by Gestalt? I am not sure when. But evidence suggests that she did.

Hagberg describes a Stage Six as a “sage” whose “energy…comes from a source beyond themselves.”[88] At seventy-one years old, with rapidly declining health, Helen Barrett Montgomery at last laid down her enormous responsibilities with her resignation as chairman of the Committee on Christian Literature for Women and Children in Mission Fields.[89] Hagberg also suggests that “the main reason people won’t move to the most developed stage of personal power is usually a lack of faith.”[90] Faith is clearly evidenced in so much of what Helen Barrett Montgomery was about. Lucy Peabody, her global traveling companion and co-laborer in Christ remarked in a tribute to Helen:

She accepted leadership. Her profound conviction was that the Leader appointed for mankind is Jesus Christ. His leadership, so she believed, is most clearly expressed in the Bible…in the highest sense she was a woman of the world, God’s world, which today cannot be limited to the isolationist conception. God’s Son stressed the scope of the message to every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue, and Helen accepted His Divine plan.[91]

This aspect of Helen also lines up well with Hagberg’s assertion that “Stage Six people…have a larger understanding of the world and the universe than most people.”[92]

Hagberg also remarks that “sixes are the kind of people whose advice rings in the back of our minds over the years.”[93] Less than two years after resigning her last appointment, Helen Barrett Montgomery passed from this world into her eternal rest. Six years later, the president of the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society at that time, Carolin H. Smith expressed in appreciation of Helen a “tribute of sincere affection to a never-to-be-forgotten leader and cherished friend…we wish that she were still with us, and are led by thought of her to Him Whose she was, Whom she served, with Whom her strong and gracious being is forever glorified.”[94]

Personal Relection

Reading about the life of Helen Barrett Montgomery was at the same time humbling and infuriating. She lived such a balanced life, like a surgeon skillfully cutting away the cancers of inequality. I admire her “persistent optimism.”[95] And the sheer volume of evidence left of her global efforts is inspiring. But, why hadn’t I heard of her before? I grew up in an American Baptist Church and I had never heard her name mentioned! As a woman seeking to move forward in my understanding and apprehension of “real power” in Christ, I have found female mentors few and far between. As an evangelical Christian woman who can “speak acceptably on the platform”[96] like Helen could, I have met with great resistance from many of my brothers and sisters in the Lord specifically because I am “a woman.” Yet, I take great encouragement from Helen’s example to walk boldly in proclaiming the gospel in my own “womanly” way. Like Helen, I am blessed in an egalitarian marriage. Therefore, I should rejoice in this freedom and persistently seek and accept opportunities to speak. And, like Helen, I truly want to “finish well.”[97] Her “vibrant relationship with God,” her “sense of destiny” and her “lasting legacy” are all qualities I want to emulate.[98]

I am grateful to have spent the last several months in the company of such a Godly Christian leader. I have learned so much about “true leadership”[99] and “real power”[100] from her example. And I am learning to wield that careful scalpel of discernment, being emboldened by her example to effectively and fervently “minister” the gospel. In the words of Helen Barrett Montgomery,

The Gospel is the most tremendous engine of democracy ever forged. It is destined to break into pieces all castes, privileges, and oppressions. Perhaps the last cast to be destroyed will be that of sex…there is a wider adumbration of the spirit of Christ than we dream. He being lifted up, even as he said, is drawing the whole world unto his perfect charity, justice, friendliness, democracy, to that redeemed humanity in which there shall be no male or female, bond nor free, but only free men and free women, whose lives, like His, are given them not to be ministered to, but to minister.[101]

Barna, George. 1997. Leaders on Leadership. Ventura, CA: Regal.

Bolton, Sarah K. 1888. Successful Women. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company.

Cattan, Louise Armstrong. 1972. Lamps are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s.

Ellison, Edgar J. 1992. Home Grown Leaders. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library.

Gibbs, Nancy. 2009. What Women Want Now. Time.

Goleman, Daniel. 1996. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. London: Bloomsbury.

Hagberg, Janet O. 1994. Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations. Salem, WI: Sheffield Publishing.

Holland, J.G. 1876. Every Day Topics. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company.

Lutz, Lorry. 1997. Women as Risk-Takers for God. Grand Rapids: BakerBooks.

Mobley, Kendal P. 2009. Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1910. Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman’s Work in Foreign Missions. New York: The MacMillan Company.

———. 1915. The King’s Highway. West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions.

———. 1924. The New Testament in Modern English. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press.

———. 1940. Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

Wijk-Bos, Johanna W.H. van. 2005. Making Wise the Simple: the Torah in Christian Faith and Practice. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.

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[1] (Gibbs 2009)

[2] (Hagberg 1994) 149

[3] Ibid. xxi

[4] Ibid. 129

[5] Ibid. 227

[6] Ibid. 204

[7] (Hagberg 1994) 259

[8] (Montgomery 1940) 89

[9] (Mobley 2009) 2. Northern Baptist Conference.

[10] Ibid. 261

[11] (Montgomery 1915)

[12] (Cattan 1972) 66

[13] (Goleman 1996) For example, addressing the “master aptitude” of “emotional intelligence” (optimism) Goleman states that “Optimism, like hope, means having a strong expectation that, in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite setbacks and frustrations”(88). In a letter Helen wrote to her family during her freshman year at Wellesley, Helen already exhibits this perspective when she offers advice to her brother, “By the way, I have a little preachment for you. I have deduced from Anne’s [their sister] and Frankie’s letters that you have withdrawn yourself from their literary diet. Is it so? I think I can see your dear old face with its “this world is hollow expression” and hear you say as sometimes of old, ‘they don’t want me, they never listen to what I say.’…I do so hope that you will not get into your shell and shut yourself in. I can’t tell you how much I want my brother to be a man of power and to become this you must forget yourself. Just go into all the little enjoyments that come in your way and don’t feel for pins in the carpet of your life” (Montgomery 1940, 45).

[14] (Ellison 1992) 95

[15] (Hagberg 1994) 231

[16] (Montgomery 1940) 28

[17] (Mobley 2009) 11, 15.

[18] (Montgomery 1940) 22 Addition of [power] my own.

[19] Ibid. 28

[20] Ibid. 21-22

[21] (Mobley 2009) 15

[22] (Hagberg 1994) 3

[23] Note: Helen did grow to appreciate her mother more. In her reflections on her marriage to William Montgomery, she wrote, “As I grow older I enter more and more deeply into your [her mother’s] life, yours and papa’s. It is such a different love – the child’s and the woman’s. It was a very beautiful thought to me when I first noticed the character of my dear little mother and began to love her not merely because she was Mama but because Mama was lovely. So many years this conception of my mother as a person has been growing within me and every year I find it sweeter and better and dearer.” (Montgomery 1940) 73.

[24] (Mobley 2009) 71 (Note: This concept will be developed more fully in the section on Stage Two: Power by Association.)

[25] (Montgomery 1910) 6

[26] Ibid. 7

[27] (Holland 1876) 239-240

[28] (Montgomery 1940) 31

[29] Ibid.

[30] (Hagberg 1994) 11

[31] Ibid.

[32] (Hagberg 1994) 10. Personal note: In reflecting on my own childhood, I realized that, while I possessed the academic “skills,” I did not have the “self-esteem” necessary to advance my education after graduating from college. Though I applied and was accepted into five different schools, the fear that I would “waste” my father’s money was ever on my mind. After all, I was only a girl “waiting” for marriage and children. I did not end up pursuing an undergraduate degree until I had- through prayer and earnest encouragement on the part of friends, my children and my (second) husband- the self-esteem to believe I was worth the investment.

[33] (Hagberg 1994) 19

[34] (Montgomery 1940) 22

[35] Ibid. 56

[36] (Hagberg 1994) 21

[37] (Montgomery 1940) 34

[38] (Bolton 1888)

[39] Ibid. 231-232

[40] (Montgomery 1940) 62

[41] Ibid. 55

[42] (Hagberg 1994) 24-25

[43] (Mobley 2009) 47

[44] Ibid. 73

[45] Ibid. 41

[46] (Hagberg 1994) 35

[47] Ibid. 45

[48] (Montgomery 1940) 69

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid. For example, while working as a co-principal in Philadelphia, she made the following observations: “In the fashionable parts of Fairmount Park we met a stream of carriages which, without exaggeration, followed each other so closely as to be continuous. There were all shapes and styles and sizes…English-looking dog-carts with footmen perched up behind-elegant carriages with horses glittering with silver, coachmen and footmen resplendent in livery and people gorgeous in costume…they seemed absurd to me…the people in these carriages- the majestic mamas with large arms and very tight sleeves, the elegant young ladies so gracefully posed, the grave looking men whose money had purchased all this folly and whose expression seemed to say that this riding out was a duty they owed their families- with hardly an exception these people seemed to be board and unhappy.” 70-71

[51] (Hagberg 1994) 160

[52] (Montgomery 1940) 98-99

[53] (Hagberg 1994) 149

[54] Ibid. 66

[55](Montgomery 1940) Montgomery wrote, “My chosen career was teaching, and there was an idea that I might return to Wellesley as a member of the faculty. Trustees of two women’s colleges were considering my name for presidencies about to fall vacant, and I found that I could speak acceptably on the platform. My parents were anxious that I should proceed along these lines…[they] were in great doubt whether our contemplated marriage would be a success.” 72

[56] (Mobley 2009) 59

[57] Ibid. 60

[58] (Montgomery 1940) 76

[59] (Hagberg 1994) 77

[60] Ibid.

[61] (Montgomery 1940) 78

[62] (Hagberg 1994) 79

[63] (Mobley 2009) 60

[64] Ibid. When William Montgomery’s Rochester, NY factory was destroyed by fire, Helen gladly offered her services as a private tutor and lecturer to the community, earning as much as $5/week for tutoring and up to $75 for a series of six lectures.

[65] (Hagberg 1994) 96

[66] Ibid.

[67] (Montgomery 1940) 77

[68] (Mobley 2009) 1

[69] (Hagberg 1994) 103

[70] (Mobley 2009) 2

[71] Ibid. 61

[72] Ibid.

[73] NRSV 2 Cor 12:7-10

[74] (Lesson One Lecture on Clinton’s Leadership Emergence Theory)

[75] (Hagberg 1994) 103

[76] (Mobley 2009) 77 For example, in 1893 Helen was chosen as the first president of the Rochester Women’s Educational Industrial Union; in 1896, Helen was elected president of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs; and, in 1899, Helen was elected to the Rochester School Board, becoming the first woman ever to be elected to public office in the city.

[77] Ibid. 61

[78] (Gibbs 2009)

[79] (Wijk-Bos 2005)

[80] NRSV

[81] Ibid. 299

[82] (Lutz 1997)

[83] (Lutz 1997) 35. (italics mine) Lutz’s response to Mrs. Montgomery’s question is “Evidently not,” going on to give examples and outcomes that “took all the initiative and power from the women.” “By 1920,” continues Lutz, “all but a handful of the women’s mission boards had disappeared.”

[84] Ibid.

[85] In addition to Western Women in Eastern Lands (1910) and The King’s Highway (1915), others of her missions works included: Christus Redemptor (1906), Empire of the East (1909), Following the Sunrise (1913), The Bible and Missions (1920), and Prayer and Missions (1924).

[86] (Montgomery 1924)

[87] (Montgomery 1940) frontpiece

[88] (Hagberg 1994) 129

[89] (Mobley 2009) 259

[90] (Hagberg 1994) 126

[91] (Montgomery 1940) 134-135

[92] (Hagberg 1994) 143

[93] Ibid. 142

[94] (Montgomery 1940) 139

[95] (Mobley 2009) 264

[96] (Montgomery 1940) 72

[97] (Barna 1997) 152-153

[98] Ibid.

[99] (Hagberg 1994) 149

[100] Ibid.

[101] (Mobley 2009) 3