Lee Anna Starr
Lee Anna Starr was an American Methodist minister, temperance and suffrage in the United States|suffrage] activist, and writer. She was an ordained minister in the Methodist Protestant Church.
Early life and education
Starr was born in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the daughter of David Lee Starr and Sarah Jane Harper Starr. Her father was a physician and an ordained minister. She attended high school in Athens, Ohio, and was the first woman to graduate from Allegheny Theological Seminary, in 1893. She earned her Doctor of Divinity degree at Kansas City University in 1911.Career
Starr was pastor of churches in Canton, Illinois, Paris, Illinois, Adrian, Michigan, Bellevue, Pennsylvania, and Avalon Park, Chicago. In 1905 she made headlines when she discussed her refusal to perform marriage ceremonies for people who were divorced, though that policy was in keeping with her denomination's stance at the time, and she made exceptions. She addressed the 1922 and 1923 meetings of the International Association of Women Preachers.Starr's The Bible Status of Woman laid out several feminist interpretations of women's roles in the Bible, based in her understanding of Greek and Hebrew texts. "One cannot but admire the author of this remarkable book for her broad information, scholarship and painstaking research," commented a 1927 reviewer, who highlighted Starr's "surprisingly strong argument" for Priscilla as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Beyond her religious work, Starr took an active interest in social reforms. She was arrested three times for picketing saloons in Pittsburgh, and eventually served a brief jail sentence for "praying in front of saloon" with her sisters. She organized women's suffrage groups in Pennsylvania, and was a lecturer for the National Woman Suffrage Association and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She spoke at the National Prison Association's annual conference in 1904.
Publications
The Ministry of Woman- "Where is My Soldier Boy Tonight?"
- ''The Bible Status of Woman''