Call To Preach
As Shaw matured, her drive to attend college became firmer. After the Civil War, she abandoned her teaching job and moved in with her married sister Mary in Big Rapids, Michigan. There she hoped to learn a “money-making trade," but she soon found that “the fields open to women were few and unfruitful.”
The onset of her preaching career began when she met Reverend Marianna Thompson who was the first person who supported her pursuit of an education. Thanks to Thompson's help, Shaw entered Big Rapids High school where she began reciting poetry to audiences and taking “speaking and debating classes”. At the age of twenty-three, Shaw was invited by Dr. Peck—a man looking to ordain a female Methodist minister—to give her first sermon. Shaw hesitated at first because her only lecturing experience had been “as a little girl preaching alone in the forest...to a congregation of listening trees.” With some encouragement from Dr. Peck, Shaw agreed and, over the course of six months, prepared her sermon to be given.
Despite the success of her first sermon, her newfound passion to preach received much disapproval from her classmates, friends, and family who agreed to pay for her college education only if she abandoned preaching. Despite such continual opposition and isolation from so many, Anna chose to keep on preaching. She was “deeply moved” by Mary A. Livermore, a prominent lecturer who came to Big Rapids. Ms. Livermore gave her the following advice: “if you want to preach, go on and preach…No matter what people say, don’t let them stop you!”
Read more about this topic: Anna Howard Shaw
Famous quotes containing the words call to, call and/or preach:
“Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)
“Ma’am! What am I your maiden aunt? Call me Mrs. Aragon. Call me Belle. Call me madame if you’re tired of living, but don’t call me ma’am.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Cotton Mather died when I was a boy. The books
He read, all day, all night and all the nights,
Had got him nowhere. There was always the doubt,
That made him preach the louder, long for a church
In which his voice would roll its cadences,
After the sermon, to quiet that mouse in the wall.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)