Alice Cambridge

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Alice Cambridge
Born(1762-01-01)1 January 1762
Bandon, County Cork
Died1 January 1829(1829-01-01) (aged 67)
Nenagh
NationalityUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Known forPreaching

Alice Cambridge (1 January 1762 – 1 January 1829) was an early Irish Methodist preacher.

Life

Cambridge was born in

Methodists in Bandon. She wanted to be a preacher and she abandoned a boyfriend to concentrate on evangelism. It was a novelty to hear a woman preaching,[1] although Agnes Smyth had already done some Methodist preaching in Ireland.[2] Cambridge still attracted interest as she visited towns in the county of Munster.[3] Some thought women preaching was against scripture and in 1791 she wrote to John Wesley. Wesley reassured her that she should follow her heart if she was inclined to preach, but she should not preach near a male preacher as she may take some of his audience.[1]

After Wesley died, the Methodist church decided that it did not support women preaching. In July 1802 the Methodist conference passed a resolution that any women preaching or merely exhort should be ejected from the church.[4] Her supporters suggested that she found her own church but she kept faith with the Methodists despite being excluded from any Methodist building.[3] In 1811 the conference decided to readmit her to the Methodists even though she had never ceased preaching.[4] She had worked in shops in Dublin and Cork, but in 1813 she decided to preach full-time. She toured the country and occasionally spoke to thousands as in Lurgan in 1816.[3]

By 1827 she was exhausted by preaching and stopped travelling. She died on her birthday in Nenagh and was buried there in 1829.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Graham, Dorothy (1998). "METHODIST WOMEN LOCAL PREACHERS" (PDF). Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  2. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/67131. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/59930
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-1-57910-668-3
    .
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