Who are we? Helen Barrett Montgomery

What kind of Baptists are we?

In 1922, Helen Barrett Montgomery became the first woman elected president of a major religious denomination in the United States when she presided over the Indianapolis meeting of the then Northern Baptist Convention. She was also the first woman to translate the New Testament from Greek into English.

The wife of a rich industrialist, she wasn't content to enjoy the trappings of privilege. She saw people in her community who suffered from poverty and ignorance and she was keenly aware that members of her gender had no say in the political decisions that effected their lives. Helen didn't hesitate when Susan B. Anthony urged her to stand for election as the first president of the Rochester, N.Y., Women's Educational and Industrial Union, an office she held for ten years. When she was elected to the Rochester School Board in 1899, she was the first woman to hold public office in the city – twenty years before women won the right to vote.

She was president of the Women's American Baptist Foreign Mission Society from 1914 to 1924. She could have been content to live out her life as a rich lady from Rochester, but her conscience wouldn't allow it.

When we think of what kind of Baptists we want to be, we think of her.