Women Who Shaped the RCA
Countless women have helped shape the Reformed Church into what it is today--a church that accepts and celebrates all of the gifts of women.
Three women stand out as pioneers for the extraordinary risks they took to pave the way for others in ministry.
One of the first women to have a denomination-wide impact on the RCA was Sarah Doremus. A member of a Reformed church in New York City and mother of nine children, Doremus opened her home to visiting missionaries, including, in 1834, RCA missionary to China David Abeel, who advocated for women working in mission. In 1861 Doremus organized the Woman's Union Missionary Society. The organization was interdenominational, unheard of at the time, and had only women board members and women missionaries. Over the next twenty years, the organization appointed more than twenty missionaries.
Another extraordinary woman, RCA missionary doctor Ida Scudder, paved the way for missionaries in India and inspired women across the denomination. The medical work Scudder began in India in the early 1900s and the Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital she founded still minister to the people of India today. According to a Ripley's Believe It or Not column of that time, "Ida Scudder, founder of the Missionary Medical College for women in Vellore, India, was so popular in India that letters from America reached her addressed only to 'Dr. Ida, India.'"
In 1973 Joyce Stedge Fowler was the first woman in the denomination to be ordained as a minister of Word and sacrament. At age 47, Stedge began serving Rochester Reformed Church in Accord, New York. A year later seven overtures to General Synod asked that her ordination be revoked, but synod upheld her ordination.
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