Shaw was ordained by the Methodist Protestant Church, becoming one of the first women ordained as a minister in the United States.
On June 10, 1878, Anna Howard Shaw was ordained as a minister by the Methodist Protestant Church, making her one of the earliest women in the United States to be formally ordained in a mainstream Protestant denomination. This came after she graduated from Boston University's School of Theology in 1878, where she was the only woman in her class and endured isolation, financial hardship, and outright hostility from male peers and faculty.
Her ordination was a landmark moment amid fierce theological and cultural resistance to women in the pulpit. Many denominations at the time argued that scripture forbade women from preaching or holding religious authority. Shaw's ordination proved that women could serve competently as spiritual leaders, and she went on to pastor churches in East Dennis and Wareham, Massachusetts, for several years.
This achievement was foundational to her subsequent activism: her skills as an orator, honed in the pulpit, later made her one of the most compelling public speakers of the suffrage movement. Her ordination also symbolized the broader push by nineteenth-century women to break into male-dominated professions, paving the way for future generations of clergywomen. Shaw's dual identity as minister and reformer allowed her to frame women's rights in moral and religious terms, broadening the appeal of the suffrage cause to religious audiences across America.