Lee, Jarena

By: Jualynne E. Dodson

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Lee, Jarena

Sex:  Female

Born:  Cape May, New Jersey, United States
11 February 1783

Died: 
Date unknown

Activity/Profession:  Christian Clergyperson / Lay Leader, Evangelist, African Methodist Episcopal Lay Leader

(b. 11 February 1783; d. unknown),
preacher.

Jarena Lee was the first woman known to petition the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church for authority to preach. She was born in Cape May, New Jersey, and is recorded to have made a first request to preach in 1809 at Bethel African Methodist Church of Philadelphia. The denial of this request did not stop Lee from preaching, and neither did her family life.

Jarena Lee, the first African American woman preacher. This portrait was the frontispiece to Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, published in 1836.

Austin/Thompson Collection, from the Library of Congress

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She married Reverend Joseph Lee, an AME pastor, in 1811 and moved to Snow Hill, New Jersey. In the sixth year of marriage, Joseph Lee died, and Lee was left with two children and a commitment “to preach his gospel to the fallen sons and daughters of Adam's race.”

Jarena Lee returned to Philadelphia and renewed her request to preach. Reverend Richard Allen, who at Lee's first request could find no precedent in Methodist discipline for women preaching, had become bishop of the newly organized African Methodist Episcopal Church. Lee asked “to be permitted the liberty of holding prayer meetings in my own hired house, and of exhorting as I found liberty.” Bishop Allen granted the request and was affirmed in the decision when Lee was moved to speak when Reverend Richard Williams, the assigned preacher for Bethel Church, appeared to lose the spirit. She spoke so well and so connected the text to her life that Bishop Allen publicly proclaimed her gifts.

Lee went on to preach throughout the northeastern region. Although she often traveled alone, her autobiography reports constant companionship among African American evangelical women. Because Lee was an itinerant preacher and because she carried out her ministry with and among other “sisters in Christ,” she was a pathfinder for future preaching women, particularly women of the AME Church. The constant and success-ful preaching efforts of AME women eventually forced the denomination to create gender-specific positions where no organizational authority for women had previously existed.

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