Author Montgomery Helen Barrett

ssed under four headings: church, social reforms to benefit women, Bible translation, and missions. It is obvious that much of what she did flowed from her interests in more than one category, but this framework is an attempt to organize the information. Montgomery stayed on at Lake Avenue Baptist Church (her father the pastor having died two years after her marriage). She organized and taught a women’s Bible class there, continuing this for forty-four years. Shortly after, in 1892, the congregation licensed her to preach (not the same as ordination). Her involvement and leadersip in church cicles grew beyod her congregation to the point that she was elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention in 1921, the first woman to hold this office. She soon became involved in a number of social reforms, especially activities to benefit women. In 1893, she joined with Susan B. Anthony in forming a chapter of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) in Rochester, Montgomery serving as president. The WEIU followed the example of chapters in Buffalo and Boston serving poor women and children of Rochester. WEIU also founded a legal aid office, set up public playgrounds, established a "Noon Rest" house where working girls could eat unmolested, and opened stations for mothers to obtain safe milk. She was also an advocate for education. After establishing her credentials in the community by her work with WEIU, she became the first woman elected to the Rochester School Board, in fact the first woman ever elected to any public office in Rochester, (particularly noteworthy as it came during an era when women rarely spoke in such public venues). She served 10 years as a member of the Board. During her tenure, she was an integral part in implementing several reforms, such as introducing of kindergarten, vocational training in schools, and inclusion of health education in the curriculum. An elementary school in Rochester bears her name today. In 1898, she began working with Susan B. Anthony to raise fund to open opportunities for women students to study at University of Rochester, a goal which was reached in 1900. Her interest in education for women was not limited to the USA, so she also raised funds for missionaries in Asia to start Christian colleges for women. Montgomery was also the first woman to translate the New Testament into English from Greek and have it published by a publishing house. (Julia E. Smith did her New Testament translation from Greek, but published it herself.) Her motivation to produce a new English translation grew out of teaching street boys in her church, finding that they did not understand the King James Version. She tried using the Weymouth New Testament of 1903 and found that they understood it much better. Still not fully satisfied, she decide to produce her own translation, utilizing her Greek education, to “make it plain” for the “ordinary” reader. It was published in 1924 as The Centenary Translation because it was published by the American Baptist Publication Society in celebration of its one hundredth anniversary. This has been reprinted under the title, The New Testament in Modern English, with a spine and cover labeled “Montgomery New Testament”. Her translation was also notable for beginning the practice of inserting chapter and section titles (as seen in photo), a pioneering feature that is now common in Bibles in many languages. Not surprisingly, her translation included some interpretations that supported enlarged roles for women in the church than were found at the time, with clear influence from the work of Katharine C. Bushnell. For example, she translated 1 Cor.11:13-15 as statements, rather than as questions as they are interpreted by others, as illustrated below from the New American Standard Bible and the King James Version. Montgomery: “It is fitting that a woman should pray to God with her head unveiled.” NASB: “Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?” KJV "Is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?" It is not surprising that Montgomery was intensely interested in Christian missions, since her Barrett grandparents had shown a strong awareness and interest by naming her father after Adoniram Judson, a famous Baptist missionary (1788-1850). Her missions support activities included a national speaking tour (1910-1911), book writing, and serving as president of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (1914 - 1924). She wrote Western Women in Eastern Lands (1910), a book which examined the role of women missionaries and women’s mission boards overseas. She did not limit her missions writing to adults, but was also associate editor of Everyland, a magazine for children. She was also president of the National Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions (1917 - 1918). She was one of the founders of the World Wide Guild, an organization that encouraged young women to become involved in missions. An autobiography was assembled posthumously from her papers and published in 1940 along with tributes by friends and associates, Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship. New York: Fleming H. Revell. The following is a partial list of writings by Helen Barrett Montgomery, though the facts of publication are not always comlete.