While most Canadian denominations didn’t earnestly consider the question of women’s ordination until the mid-to-late twentieth century, there are stories of several ordained women in Canada before that time who laboured to spread the gospel. One of the country’s earliest known ordained women was a Black preacher named Jennie Johnson (1868–1967), who ministered in a Baptist church almost forty years before any Baptist denomination in Canada officially approved women’s ordination.1 Although she faced adversity and her story remained untold for many years, she is an example of a woman who was faithful to God’s calling and dedicated her life to pastoral ministry at a time when it was well outside the norm.
Early Life and Call
Jennie Johnson was born to Isaiah and Charlotte (née Butler) Johnson in 1868 in Chatham Township, southern Ontario. Due to its proximity to the United States border, this region had been a major terminus of the Underground Railroad, which had resulted in thousands of former slaves arriving and settling there, including Johnson’s family. The story goes that when Johnson was born, her parents had expected her to be stillborn, but Johnson’s mother rubbed her chest and “literally brought life to that stilled little heart.”2
In this birth narrative, Johnson went from death to life—a change that had thematic resonance when she was “born again” at the age of sixteen and dedicated her life to the ministry. Indeed, soon after her conversion experience, she became active in her Baptist community and was baptized in the Sydenham River. Shortly thereafter, she began preaching revivalist sermons at Union Baptist Church, which were exceptionally well received. For Johnson, the positive reception to these early ministry activities affirmed her calling as a minister of the gospel.
With dreams of becoming a missionary to Africa, in 1892, Johnson enrolled at Wilberforce University, a historically Black institution in Xenia, Ohio. As a Methodist Episcopal school, it impressed on Johnson the doctrines of free will and open Communion. After two years at Wilberforce, Johnson left the program and returned to Canada. There are several details about Johnson’s life during this period that are unclear. For example, we don’t know with certainty why she left her educational program at this stage.3 Moreover, we don’t know why she opted not to follow her dream of becoming a missionary. At the time, women interested in serving the church had few options. Most commonly, they took an active role in the missionary movement as administrators and missionaries. In the words of Kate Bowler, “Since the late nineteenth century, this had been the chief area in which Protestant women could wield genuine influence in their churches and have a real impact around the globe.”4 Johnson, however, resolved to use her gift as a preacher in her local context, where she helped organize a body of believers in the Prince Albert district near Dresden, Ontario.
Ordained Ministry
Now engaged in professional ministry, the next step was ordination. The denomination in which she was raised, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec (today, the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec), didn’t officially approve women’s ordination until 1947. Instead, she looked across the border to the Michigan Association of Free Will Baptists, with whom she shared theological similarities—especially on the topics of human agency and Communion, which she had learned from her time at Wilberforce.5 Unlike her denomination, the Michigan Association had supported women’s ordination since at least the mid-to-late nineteenth century. In October 1909, convinced of her calling, the Michigan Association ordained Johnson to the ministry.
In 1910, the group of believers she led in Ontario joined the Michigan Association and became known as the Prince Albert Baptist Church. Supported by the Michigan Association, Johnson breathed new life into her faith community. Johnson’s contributions included the construction of a new church building. (Significantly, the cornerstone identified her assistant and successor, the Rev. James Browning, as the founding pastor—a clear sign of the times.6) Not everyone supported Johnson’s ministry, and she experienced some opposition from inside and outside of her church due to her gender. Nevertheless, she remained steady on the path that she believed God had laid out ahead of her.
In the 1920s, Johnson shifted her ministry focus. With support again from the Michigan Association, in 1926, Johnson opened a downtown mission center for “colored people” in Flint, Michigan, where she provided relief for the disenfranchised amid the Depression. In her late fifties by the time the mission center opened, she continued to minister there for more than twenty years. The center operated as a settlement house and a church, through which Johnson provided for the material and spiritual needs of all those who entered. Finally, in her mid-eighties, she retired in the late 1940s.7
Although Johnson remained in Flint after her retirement, she kept in close contact with her friends and family north of the border, which included her denominational connections. Indeed, despite the limitations that had been imposed upon her earlier in her life, she continued to support her Baptist family in Canada by attending some of the annual convention gatherings and, later, keeping in contact with some of the denominational officials. In 1967, at the age of ninety-nine, Johnson passed away.8
Conclusion
Johnson’s ministry was overlooked for many years, which was likely the result of the combination of her gender on one hand and her race on the other. In recent years, however, historians have recognized her as the trailblazer that she was. She led revivals and oversaw construction efforts, and she followed God’s calling for her life at a time when women’s ordination was not even a consideration for most Baptists in Canada. On each side of the border, Johnson personally encountered racism and sexism that limited the reach of her ministry, including which pulpits she could occupy. Nevertheless, she did not shrink from her calling. As Johnson’s biographer, Nina Reid-Maroney, correctly observed: “In our time, her ordination still holds the potential to overturn long-accepted assumptions about women, Christianity, and race in North American history.”9
Although Johnson penned two autobiographies during her lifetime (the first in 1928 and the second in 1951), she didn’t leave behind a series of great works that readers can easily find today. Instead, she left behind a witness—and an example for others to follow. Johnson made important contributions to the kingdom of God during her time, and her story remains a strong testimony today.
Notes
- For a fuller retelling of Johnson’s life, see Nina Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 1868–1967.(Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013) and Wendy J. Porter, “A Quartet and an Anonymous Choir: The Remarkable Lives and Ministries of Four Black Baptist Women in Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario,” in Canadian Baptist Women, ed. Sharon M. Bowler (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 89–112.
- Jennie Johnson, My Life (Dresden, ON: np., 1951), 3.
- One early twentieth-century author speculates that it was because she had experienced ill health. As quoted in Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson, 80.
- Kate Bowler, The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 84.
- Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 86.
- Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 97–98.
- Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 104-25.
- Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 133. On her enduring connection to the BCOQ, see p. 126.
- Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, xi.