[2] Sellew was a prominent figure in the Wesleyan—holiness movement, writing on the topics of the importance of a woman's headcovering, the ordination of women in Methodism, and missions.
He held pastorates successively at Tonawanda, Rochester, Spring Arbor, Dunkirk, Gerry, Allegany, and Buffalo.
[2] Between 1887 and 1898, Walter Ashbel Sellew was the presiding elder of the Chautauqua, Allegany, Buffalo, Oil City, Bradford and Pittsburgh districts of the Free Methodist Church.
[3] Sellew was the primary architect of the resolution in the Free Methodist Church that led to the ordination of women as deacons in 1911, which read: "Whenever any annual conference, shall be satisfied that any woman is called of God to preach the gospel, that annual conference may be permitted to receive her on trial, and into full connection, and ordain her as a deacon, all on the same conditions as we receive men into the same relations.
"[3] Sellew wrote on the ordinance of headcovering among Christian women in an article titled "Woman in the Public Service"; in this, he stated:[6] The claim which God's word has upon us is infinitely stronger than the convenience or inconvenience of the individual, and to consider it in that light is to bring it into our contempt.