HARKNESS — A special commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Dr. Georgia E. Harkness will be held Wednesday, Aug. 21 in Harkness.
The commemoration begins at 2 p.m. with a brief graveside service at the Harkness Cemetery, 300 Harkness Rd., Peru. Immediately following the graveside ceremony, a memorial program will be held at the nearby Harkness United Methodist Church, 780 Hallock Hill Road, Peru.
The tribute concludes with a reception and light refreshments at the Church Hall, 776 Hallock Hill Rd., Peru.
“We expect our district superintendent to be there,” the Rev. Nina Dickinson, pastor, said.
“We will be reading a letter from our bishop who will not be able to join us because of his schedule. We will be sharing a letter from a person who holds the Georgia Harkness Chair at Garrett (Evangelical Theological Seminary) at this time as well as hearing from a couple of women who have received a scholarship to pursue seminary that is named for Georgia.
There will be some recognition in her honor. Women continue to be trained to follow the call into ministry. We end the festivities with a time of fellowship and food and more time for learning more about Georgia as well as sharing together in Harkness Hall, which is just right across the driveway from the church.”
BIO
Dr. Georgia E. Harkness (1891-1974) was born in Harkness and became a prominent figure in Methodism. She was a doctorate-prepared scholar, activist, member of clergy, and a prolific author of books and poetry.
Her writing contributed to the inspiration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She helped blaze the trail for equal rights for women’s ordination in the Methodist Church, and she served as the first female professor of theology at a U.S. seminary.
Her legacy continues today in several ways, including annual scholarships awarded to women studying to become Methodist clergy.
LONG SHADOW
Dickinson, pastor of the church since 2002, first learned of Harkness through music.
“I have been a singer in the churches for pretty much all of my life,” she said.
“I have come across, particularly her hymn, Hope of the World. Because she is a hymn writer, she wrote a handful. She wrote the third verse of one of the most commonly sung hymns, This Is My Song. So, I had heard of her as a songwriter, and then a little bit later on in my life, I started working on going further than just filling the pulpit occasionally as a lay person and came across her as an influence in women being accepted into ministry, particularly in the ‘50s when it was being debated whether women should be allowed full ordination rites in the United Methodist Church.
She was a really vocal supporter of that and was a support behind the people who were actually speaking on the floor in, I think it was 1956, when the Methodist Church finally allowed full ordination rites for women.”
EDUCATION EXCELLENCE
Harkness received a scholarship for undergraduate studies at Cornell University and continued her education at Boston University, Union Theological Seminary, and Harvard and Yale Divinity School.
Between 1912 and 1918, she taught Latin, German and French in high schools in Schuylkill and Scotia.
Her collegiate career included posts at Elmira College, Mount Holyoke College, Garrett Biblical Institute and Pacific School of Religion.
“I didn’t know as much about her work at Garrett, which is the first seminary that she taught applied theology at,” Dickinson said.
“In fact in a way, they kind of created the space for her because at that time applied theology wasn’t as much a discipline as it was an aspect of teaching systematic theology. It was kind of like taking philosophy and how do you apply philosophy in life.
She was the first one at Garrett and probably among many seminaries at the time to be assigned a title for applied theology. It was really truly about living our life according to what we say we believe. She started teaching at Garrett as a professor of applied theology.”
ECUMENICAL LEADER
Firsts for Harkness include first female member of the American Theological Society.
She authored more than 30 books and was a trailblazer in the modern ecumenical movement. For Methodist women ministers, they would not be without her.
“I think she is important today especially because she broke so much ground for women in ministry, even though she herself never was actually a minister in an ordained sense,” Dickinson said.
“She broke so much ground and the fact that she taught the women who went before me into ministry gave them an example of what it means to be a woman of faith and living out that faith in a way that God is calling them to. I think a lot of times we kind of overlook someone who doesn’t do those things that the world thinks are so important and especially in our faith.
That’s not the measure we use. We use the measure she moved into a call God placed on her life and lived it against all odds. So an amazing example of what it means to live what God calls us rather than to abide by what the world says is appropriate.”
MISBEHAVING GOODLY
“Well-behaved women rarely make history” is one of Dickinson’s favorite quotes often seen on posters and T-shirts.
“She was one of those women who that if she had behaved the way that society said, she would have never broken ground in becoming a professor in a segment of theology that is much more practical to everyday life for everyone than what we had been learning throughout generations,” Dickinson said.
“Her teaching, her writing, her life is all much more applicable and tangible for the everyday person, especially the everyday woman and supported women where God was calling them to something that the world said, ‘Well that’s not something women do.’ Without necessarily breaking ground directly herself, she was setting up a support system, a safety net, a background for women to pursue whatever call God was calling.”
Living her best life, Harkness parted from the dictates of “original sin,” woman’s place, and society at large.
“That’s one of the things that made her challenging because she continued to work in a way that wasn’t out and out challenging, but yet was true to who she was and who God was calling her to and opening up a space for the women who would come behind her to go wherever God was calling them without restraints that people her age were feeling,” she said.
Dickinson loves the stories of the theologian’s childhood in the North Country, her loving family, and her radical great-grandfather, settler Daniel Harkness, who defied his Quaker faith to fall in love and marry Abigail Cochran, not a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and even more scandalous, was a flashy dresser who dared to wear a red cape.
“So women like myself who had been called into ministry, I came a lot of years later but it all started with people like her that pushed the limits a little bit,” Dickinson said.
“Recorded pushing the limits a little further all the time and listen so that God was calling rather than listening to what men were saying. I think that is probably the biggest part of her legacy that she listened for what God was calling her to and didn’t let what men were saying stop her and that became an example for generations of women that followed.”