Women of Faith--Selena Moore Holman

In the later years of the 1800's, the question "Shall the sisters pray and speak in public?" raged throughout the pulpits and religious periodicals of the church. In March of 1888, a man wrote David Lipscomb, then editor of The Gospel Advocate and asked if I Cor. 14:34 prohibited women from teaching children in Sunday school.
Lipscomb replied that they could teach children and even their husbands, but only in a modest, deferential manner, not assuming authority.

Silena Moore Holman, an elder's wife from Fayetteville, Tennessee responded to Lipscomb with this, "A learned Christian woman may expound the scriptures and urge obedience to them, to one hundred men and women at one time,as well as to one hundred, one at a time...and no more violate a scriptural command in ne instance than the other."

In several lengthy articles she wrote about the public ministries of Deborah, Anna, Priscilla, the women assembled at Pentecost, and Phillip's four daughters. She agreed with Lipscomb that man is the head of the woman and should take the lead; however, she wrote that women who possessed God-given gifts should be allowed to "go out in the world and tell of the "unsearchable riches of the gospel and to combat the social evils that threatened the home.

According to Leonard Allen in his book, Distant Voices, Lipscomb's replies to her
were often sharp, sometimes patronizing, and occasionally marked with exasperation. In those exchanges, Lipscomb revealed his allegiance to what historians of the period called "the cult of true womanhood." (an interesting study in itself--it is from this vision of the ideal woman that many of the constraints put on women today have their origins.)

In 1895, the Advocate and Lipscomb printed an attack on "the new woman"--these proponents supported woman's suffrage, women's reform societies like the temperance unions, higher education for women, and a more public role for women in the churches.
Holman wrote, "the days of 'the clinging vine woman' are gone forever." In her place "a husband will find walking by his side the bright wide-awake companion...a helpmeet in the best possible sense of the term."

Besides raising 8 children, Holman worked faithflly in her church, wrote many articles for publication, and served for 15 years at president of the Tennesse Women's Christian Temperance Union. At her funeral T. B. Larimore praised her wonderful intelligence as a public leader. Her portrait was hung in the Tennesse State Capitol two years later. She was only the 2nd woman up to that day accorded that honor.

You can see why I admire her. Thanks to Leonard Allen and Doug Foster for publishing information about her.