Draft:Mary C Jones (Baptist)

Photograph of May C. Jones (1893)

May C. Jones (born November 5, 1842) was a Northern Baptist minister, most known for being the first woman to be ordained by the Northern Baptists in 1882.

Ministerial Career

Born to an English father and Scottish mother in New Hampshire. In 1867, Jones and her husband moved to California, remaining there until 1880. In 1880, they moved to Seattle, Washington, and that year she began serving as an interim pastor for the First Baptist Church of Seattle. She was ordained in 1882 during a meeting of the Baptist Association of Puget Sound.

Jones’ ordination and ministerial career were extremely controversial within the Northern Baptist convention. The opposition argued that First Baptist Church of Seattle had not filed a request of ordination prior to the association meeting and that it was a hastily made decision by First Baptist Seattle. Furthermore, many of the ministers present at her ordination, opposed her ordination because she was a woman. They were so offended by the concept of a woman being ordained, that they left the meeting in protest. This resulted in Jones being ordained because they were not present to vote against her ordination.

Much of the opposition did not recognize Jones’ ordination as legitimate. One minister remarked, “This so-called ordination was not accepted on the North Pacific Coast, except among a very small per cent of the members of the churches. The author does not recall more than two ministers of prominence who sanctioned it as scriptural, and neither of them as a pastor. The ordination of a woman to work of the gospel ministry was held to be unscriptural." This was also controversial on the rest of the Northern Baptist convention, with ministers on the East Coast mocking Northern Pacific ministers due to Jones’ ordainment.

Despite the opposition and claims of illegitimacy, Jones had an extremely successful and prominent career as a minister. After her ordination, Rev. Jones pastored several other churches, such as Fuyallup Baptist Church (1883-1884), Chehalia Baptist Church (1885-1887), and Centralia Baptist Church (1886-1887), Olympia Baptist Church (1886), Spokane Falls Baptist Church (1888-1889), and First Baptist Church of Spokane (1891). In addition to pastoring churches, she was was also an extremely popular evangelist and was often in high demand. Furthermore, she was extremely involved in church leadership and initiatives. She built two sanctuaries during her career, and she held leadership positions in the state convention. She also founded Grace Seminary, a now-defunct seminary, once located in Centralia, Washington.

In 1892, she retired from her pastoral post at the Baptist Church of Spokane to take care of her disabled husband, who died later that year. She continued evangelistic work after her husbands death alongside her daughter. May C. Jones’ date of death is unknown.