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Celebrating 150 years!

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions

The Reformed Church in America honors the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions and the impact these women—and many others who followed in their footsteps—made as they followed God’s call in mission, locally and globally. Through the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions (WBFM), women saw themselves as active participants and even leaders in the Reformed Church in America nearly 100 years before they served in ordained ministry positions. From 1875-1946, the WBFM brought lay women and ordained male leaders together to partner for the sake of the good news of Jesus Christ.

These stories are worth sharing. That’s why we are celebrating this anniversary: to honor RCA women in mission—past, present, and future. You are invited to join this celebration and engage this milestone in your own community!

Special thanks to the people and groups who helped create and shape this celebration: Rev. Liz Testa and RCA equity-based hospitality and women’s transformation and leadership; Kelli Gilmore and RCA Global Mission; Rev. Dr. Katlyn DeVries and the Commission on History; Patricia Johnson, MA, and the Commission for Women; and RCA archivist Dr. Elizabeth Pallitto.

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Morrie Swart and family

Mary Sturges

Harriet and John Scudder

Room 10 in the Reformed Church Building at 25 East 22 nd Street, NYC, was the official home base for the WBFM after their first 18 years at Marble Collegiate Church, up 5 th Avenue at 29 th Street. They remained there until the building burned down in 1939.

History of the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions

On a blustery January evening in 1875, thirteen women traversed the icy streets of New York City. They came through freezing rain and sleet from Brooklyn, New York, and Hackensack, New Jersey, and from as far afield as the northern Catskills to gather in the lecture room of Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Their common goal was to respond to a call from the 1874 General Synod to form a women’s auxiliary missionary society. Grappling with debt and financial hardships compounded by the Civil War and postwar reconstruction, the Reformed Church in America called upon women to help keep its commitment to support global mission.

“These were no ordinary women, and this was no ordinary church meeting. The lives of these women, and the ministries of Reformed Church women who followed them, … tell a story that speaks of a powerful and aching passion for the gospel that led to an equally powerful commitment to share the gospel with and to care for all women and children throughout the world. It was an auspicious moment. ” –Mary L. Kansfield, Letters to Hazel, p. 25

While other women’s mission societies already existed at local and regional levels, this moment marked a turning point for women’s involvement in denominational life.

It sparked a cross-country movement that not only raised significant funds for missionaries, but also launched new mission opportunities that educated women and girls in China, India, Japan, and Arabia. Closer to home, the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions inspired women to serve as missionaries themselves by sharing women’s stories. Women in RCA churches were also invited to form auxiliaries, through which women and children contributed financially to mission and became active participants.

The women’s board continued until 1946 when it was merged with the Board of Foreign Missions of the RCA.

Kick-off celebration moment at Mission 2025, led by Jean Van Engen and Grace Newhouse

Events and opportunities

Timeline: RCA Women in Mission

  • Early 1800s: Church women form “cent societies,” contributing one penny each week to support seminary students. This is one of the earliest recorded ways that local women contributed financially to ministry and mission.
  • 1819: Harriet Scudder accompanies her husband, Dr. John Scudder, to Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka), becoming the first RCA woman in the mission field.
  • 1829: Sarah Doremus and other RCA women are present at the dock to say farewell to Rev. David Abeel, who sails for the eastern side of the Asian continent to serve as an RCA missionary. Upon Abeel’s return six years later, Doremus and other women are again present at the docks, eager to hear about Abeel’s mission work. This became a long and distinguished tradition of women saying goodbye and welcoming missionaries back home.
  • 1834: With other New York area women, Sarah Doremus organizes the “Society for Promoting Female Education in China and the Far East,” the first Protestant woman’s foreign missionary society to support independent missionary work in foreign lands.
  • 1836: Sarah Doremus and other church women approach the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), asking for permission to organize a women’s board of foreign missions. The women are asked “to defer indefinitely” the organization of a women’s board.
  • 1836: Miss Azubah C. Condict becomes the first single woman to serve as an RCA missionary, serving in Borneo for three years.
  • 1861: Sarah Doremus persists and organizes the Women’s Union Missionary Society, an interdenominational union of American churches. This board inspired other denominational women’s boards, many of which appeared during the Civil War years.
  • 1874: The RCA General Synod votes to establish a Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions, specifically to aid the Board of Foreign Missions in reaching women and children in other parts of the world.
  • 1875: On January 7, thirteen women gather in New York City for the first meeting of the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions (WBFM). Mary Sturges serves as the first president, from 1875 until 1894. Two weeks later, the women meet to identify and approve members for the Board of Managers, and to approve the board’s constitution and bylaws.
  • 1880: The General Synod “unquestionably” affirms the women of the WBFM: “The rapid increase of auxiliaries, as well as the interest manifested in their meetings, are prophetic of large and blessed results. It is the opinion of your Committee [on Missions], that there resides among the ladies of our denomination a power which, when fully developed, will tell with mighty effect upon our foreign work” (MGS 1880, p. 569-70, quoted in Kansfield, Letters to Hazel, 61).
  • 1883: The WBFM publishes its first issue of The Mission Gleaner, a bimonthly missionary magazine primarily by, for, and about women. The periodical continued publication until 1917.
  • 1884: Miss H.F. Winn of Yokohama, Japan, becomes the first woman to speak at the annual meeting of the WBFM. Early annual meetings were conducted entirely by men.
  • 1895: Amelia Van Cleef, the new president of the WBFM, presides and reads the Scripture lessons at the annual meeting, the first time a woman has done so at such a meeting. In the following years, women receive increased leadership at the annual meetings, reading their own reports and closing devotions.
  • 1897: The Women’s Board of Domestic Missions established.
  • 1899: The work of the WBFM has grown to the extent that the Board of Managers needs to meet five times per year, instead of four.
  • 1902: Standing committees of the WBFM are instituted, broadening the life and work of the board.
  • 1918: A 17-member Board of Directors is approved to assume the corporate legal power previously held by 30 managers. Dr. Ida Scudder opens Vellore Medical School for Women in India.
  • 1925: The WBFM celebrates 50 years, marked by the publication of Mrs. W.I. Chamberlain’s book Fifty Years in Foreign Fields: A History of Five Decades of the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions Reformed Church in America. Chiapas Mission started by John and Mabel Kempers.
  • 1946: The Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions merges with the denomination’s Board of Foreign Missions (BFM), with the encouragement of the General Synod and a majority vote of the WBFM board members. Overall efficiency and greater church unity are named as the motivating factors behind this merger. A Women’s Executive Committee of the BFM forms to help with the merging process.
  • 1950: The Women’s Board of Domestic Missions follows suit, merging with the denomination’s Board of Domestic Missions.
  • 1975: The 100th anniversary of the WBFM is celebrated with the publication of “Call to Remembrance: My Song,” a pamphlet by Dorothy Burt. The publication is also in honor of the 15th Anniversary of the National Department of Women’s Work.
  • Kansfield, Mary L. Letters to Hazel: Ministry within the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America. Volume 46. The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
  • Gasero, Russell L. “RCA Women’s Chronology.” Archives of the Reformed Church in America. Added May 7, 2018. https://rcaarchives.omeka.net/items/show/40.
  • House, Renee S. and John W. Coakley, eds. Patterns and Portraits: Women in the History of the Reformed Church in America. Volume 31. The Historical Series in the Reformed Church in America. Eerdmans, 1999.
  • Chamberlain, Mrs. W.I. Fifty Years in Foreign Fields: A History of Five Decades of the Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions Reformed Church in America. New York: Abbot Press, 1925.
  • Ratmeyer, Una H. Hands, Hearts, and Voices: Women Who Followed God’s Call. Reformed Church Press, 1995.
  • Archives of the Reformed Church in America. “Women in the RCA.” Online Collection. https://rcaarchives.omeka.net/collections/show/3
  • Archives of Hope College. “Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions Annual Reports.” https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/foreign_annual_report/

Books and resources

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